It started out as an idea that had been haunting me over the past few years, but now it just might become a reality. You see, we live out in the sticks. Out in the country. Out in the middle of nowhere. After working for Hillsdale College and having gotten used to the raw power of a T1 and a host of servers to play with, I had a somewhat difficult time adjusting myself back to country life (a little over three years ago, my wife and I moved back to my home town so that I could start working with our family businesses). After playing with three phone lines and multiple dial-up accounts, then testing the fledgling two-way satellite internet service, I came across (a now defunct company), Dakota DSL. They ended up changing their name, but its been so long and the service was so short lived that I can't even remember anymore. I polished up some old workstations I had accumulated over the years and others gotten off of eBay and put Windows NT Server on two machines and started my own little webhosting operation. It was costing me a fortune, but still better than anything I had seen since moving back to Wisconsin. At the time, Aaron and I did a little webhosting off of the servers for both of our domains. It didn't become anything more than two pokey websites because about three months into it, we got hacked... We were hacked pretty badly, too. So, I researched around and around and around and realized that upgrading to newer versions of Windows NT was going to be too costly, so I decided to learn what I needed to do to get our services running on some form of Linux or Unix. By that time, Aaron had split - found a better and more reliable host - and I was convinced I could do webhosting better and cheaper than anyone else. I took about three more months and learned the basics of FreeBSD and got apache, qmail, php4, mysql and a host of other services running on my first FreeBSD box. I also learned that I couldn't do webhosting better and cheaper than anyone else because 1) I had a real job and 2) the box that was hanging off the net was 15 minutes from work - so any time there were troubles, there were troubles. It suited my needs, but I needed stronger, faster and more of everything in order to make the venture work. Then Dakota went bankrupt and I lost my super fast connection. Then, we also got kicked out of the house we were living in (not really, but the owners wanted to move back in and we had to look for a new place to rent or buy). So, I shut my website and hosting service (of one) down and took a 4 month hiatus.
Between then and now, I have been on Charter in one form or another and have amassed a server farm that makes my head swim (when I realize the money I have sunk into my addiction). I had, at one time, a neighborhood wireless network running - which is what got me started on this topic in the first place - whereby I supplied some of my neighbor/friends with access to my mega-pipe to the net and they helped defray the cost of my service. My wife and I ended up moving, yet again, to a place where I think we'll stay put for some time to come. We also moved our offices and are closer to where I live and are in a business park - whereas before, we were literally in the middle of a very large corn/soy bean field.
If you are still reading by now, you are either entranced by my writing, you are on the loo with your wireless laptop and having nothing better to read or you are trying to sleep - BUT, I'm actually getting to a point. I'm starting up another wireless project. This time, however, my project has no grand goals other than covering my @ss on bandwidth expenses. I don't want to be the worst and if you graded what I want to do solely on price, I can't be the best - but I can give you the best experience for your dollar and help us help each other. If you are somewhere near this area (click on the link and you will see an amazing little satellite photo), then there is a good chance I can get you online. Sure, there is competition (GenevaOnline and ElkNet - and a few other dial-up entities), but I think we can beat them in every way - price, service and accessibility. But, we can only do it by pooling our resources. I found some great equipment by Proxim and some people who seem genuinely interested in the project. I hope to use this site to document my progress. I have a few goals in mind and would like to put up a chronology of what happens:
1) Get the center base station up and running this weekend.
2) Get final commitment from other users (hopefully 10 of us will sign up).
3) Based upon final commitment, I will put in my T1 orders.
4) Get a few subscribers up and running next week.
5) Keep those subscribers up and running...
6) Get the rest of the subscribers up and running.
7) Keep the rest of the subscribers up and running...
8) Monitor bandwidth to make sure we are utilizing it to the best of our abilities.
9) Put in redundant nodes in case the main node goes down.
10) ...I'm thinking residential on a different scale than approached by ISP's before. Fully private addressing scheme, SPAM filters on all email addy's and nodes supplied by private DSL lines all over the city and countryside. P2P sharing limited to 256kbps of overall bandwidth... period. A ResNet for Darien, built in much the same fashion that the Co-Op is designed to run - a few volunteers and a lot of users.
We'll see how it goes...
