---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message-ID: <20201023012819.GA3363@telecom.csail.mit.edu> Date: Fri, 23 Oct 2020 01:28:20 +0000 From: Bill Horne <malQassRimiMlation@gmail.com> Subject: Re: CO backup power On Thu, Oct 22, 2020 at 09:43:21AM -0400, Fred Goldstein wrote: > This does lead to a push to use more private microwave solutions. > We've replaced Verizon repeater backhauls with a mix of licensed and > unlicensed microwave here. You'd be amazed what you can do unli- > censed if you know what you're doing, though you really do have to > know what you're doing or at least run it by someone who does, since > some vendors will happily sell you a bill of goods. And unlicensed > links need maintenance to check that they're not being clobbered by > interference -- you may sometimes want to change frequency, > especially on the popular 5 GHz band. Is interference a common problem? Can low-beamwidth antennas help? > The Wireless ISP industry has come a long way in 20 years. Its > vendors have gone through multiple generations (not the same as > mobile G's!) of technology. Fixed outdoor (WISP) gear is not the > same as fixed indoor (WLAN, like Wi-Fi) or mobile. It's a category > of its own. The biggest unlicensed-band equipment vendors in the US > market are probably Cambium Networks (spun out of Motorola almost a > decade ago), Ubiquiti, and Mimosa. MikroTik is a major radio-gear > player in, uh, developing countries, but mainly a major router and > switch player in the US. Which vendor do you recommend for short (1-3 miles) and for longer routes? How are the prices? How much time and effort goes into aiming the dishes? > Point to point and point to multipoint are different too -- with > PtP, both ends have a highly directional antenna, while PtMP > typically pairs a highly directional client radio with a sector. On > 5 GHz, power limits for PtP use are highest, so you can easily shoot > 10 miles with a pair of 2-foot dishes, if you have line of sight. If > there's clutter (trees or buildings) in the way, though, all bets > are off -- 5 GHz gets through a little bit of wood but not a lot. I > do blast it through clutter on some short links though. There used to be a couple of sites that would let me lookup the Tower Height needed for a given route, without charge: do they still exist? Thanks for the info: there's always another way to get it done, but knowing how and who makes all the difference. Bill -- Bill Horne (Remove QRM from my email address to write to me directly) ------------------------------ Message-ID: <26e49e6a-7c64-b01e-c25e-b3a908327947@ionary.com> Date: 22 Oct 2020 09:43:21 -0400 From: "Fred Goldstein" <invalid@see.sig.telecom-digest.org> Subject: Re: CO backup power On 10/17/2020 7:13 PM, Steve Marquess wrote: > ... > So when my $22K T1 contract came up for renewal in late 2016 I decided > to spend a small fortune on an antenna tower for line-of-sight access > to local WISPs (I live in rough terrain). That has been much more > reliable, not to mention way cheaper. > Several years ago, Verizon said that they'd be discontinuing their T1 service. A couple of years ago the FCC lifted their "carrier of last resort" obligation for it. So basically they haven't bothered to go around disconnecting working lines, but they're deteriorating in the field and can't be trusted the way they used to be. Verizon's usual answer is that they have FiOS in some places offering high-speed Internet service you can watch TV on... but that has nothing to do with what T1s are often used for. In particular, our local public safety agencies use them for remote receivers on repeaters, so fire fighters' walkie-talkies can be heard from fire scenes even when trapped in basements. That has nothing to do with watching reruns on Hulu, which seems to be what VZ wants you to buy instead. They basically took out the copper plant and replaced it with an entertainment medium that doesn't replace all of the old uses. This does lead to a push to use more private microwave solutions. We've replaced Verizon repeater backhauls with a mix of licensed and unlicensed microwave here. You'd be amazed what you can do unlicensed if you know what you're doing, though you really do have to know what you're doing or at least run it by someone who does, since some vendors will happily sell you a bill of goods. And unlicensed links need maintenance to check that they're not being clobbered by interference -- you may sometimes want to change frequency, especially on the popular 5 GHz band. The Wireless ISP industry has come a long way in 20 years. Its vendors have gone through multiple generations (not the same as mobile G's!) of technology. Fixed outdoor (WISP) gear is not the same as fixed indoor (WLAN, like Wi-Fi) or mobile. It's a category of its own. The biggest unlicensed-band equipment vendors in the US market are probably Cambium Networks (spun out of Motorola almost a decade ago), Ubiquiti, and Mimosa. MikroTik is a major radio-gear player in, uh, developing countries, but mainly a major router and switch player in the US. Point to point and point to multipoint are different too -- with PtP, both ends have a highly directional antenna, while PtMP typically pairs a highly directional client radio with a sector. On 5 GHz, power limits for PtP use are highest, so you can easily shoot 10 miles with a pair of 2-foot dishes, if you have line of sight. If there's clutter (trees or buildings) in the way, though, all bets are off -- 5 GHz gets through a little bit of wood but not a lot. I do blast it through clutter on some short links though. Disclaimer: The Wireless ISP Association (WISPA) is my client; I'm their FCC Technical Consultant. ------------------------------ Message-ID: <82595f97-e85d-4c4d-c93b-5b80da7d2f2e@veridicalsystems.com> Date: 23 Oct 2020 19:59:19 -0400 From: "Steve Marquess" <marquess@veridicalsystems.com> Subject: Re: CO backup power Jeff asked me to repost my tower pictures. I've attached a shot of the competed tower (I have over half a gig of tower photos). The tower is 140' feet high, an unfortunate necessity since I'm located in a little valley. I also included: 1) a shot of the foundation; those piers are 9' tall. 4400 pounds of rebar and 34 yards of 9000psi concrete, and 2) a shot of the tower structure which I assembled horizontally on the ground in two pieces. Those give a sense of how much labor went into this (random factoid: 800 lbs of hardware, every nut and bolt of which was torqued by yours truly). BTW the country permits office told me this is the largest privately owned tower in the county. The tower cost about $30K for materials and subcontracted services (permits, geotechnical survey, crane rental). I saved another $30K (at least) by doing all the erection myself, from foundation excavation and pour to tower assembly (many manweeks of labor). If I had just written a check I think it would have cost me at least $70K. The full process, from getting the permit (non-trivial), the engineered design and fabrication, foundation prep and assembly and erection, spanned a good year and a half. Note I already owned a backhoe and forklift, both of which were essential and heavily utilized. Also tools like a transit, also essential. That sounds expensive, and it was, but my company paid for it as a business expense and keep in mind I was paying over $7K a year for the T1 line. So payback is (counting my own labor as free) only about five years. That's assuming the T1 service was viable, which at that point it wasn't. The WISP I'm using via the tower charges me $80 a month for 10Mb service (up and down), which has been pretty solid. An additional significant bonus was that I put a cellular repeater on the top of the tower, and for the first time ever cell phones are now usable in the house (not in the yard, unfortunately). I have some nearby neighbors (right next door and right across the street for instance) with a zero bar cell signal, and that's a real hassle when POTS service isn't usable either. Well, I've been very pleased with how it turned out. A big gamble, in time and effort, but it paid off. So I think I'd do it again, more or less as-is, even knowing how much work it turned out to be. -Steve M. Images: The completed tower The tower foundaton The tower sections lying on the ground, with Steve in the picture -- Steve Marquess Veridical Systems, Inc. 1829 Mount Ephraim Road Adamstown, MD 21710 301-874-2571 marquess@veridicalsystems.com gpg/pgp key: http://veridicalsystems.com/docs/0x2FC01B38-pub.asc ------------------------------ Message-ID: <86sga6cx8l.fsf@telecom2018.csail.mit.edu> Date: 22 Oct 2020 11:32:10 +0000 From: Moderator <telecomdigestsubmissions@remove-this.telecom-digest.org> Subject: Utah's 911 system crashed and there are still no clear answers about what went wrong By Scott D. Pierce February 25, 2020 Beginning Saturday morning and continued intermittently until Sunday morning, cellphone users were unable to connect to emergency services in areas across the state. The problem affected Salt Lake, Davis, Weber, Utah, Summit and Washington Counties - and more. https://www.sltrib.com/news/2020/02/25/utah-authorities-still/ -- Bill Horne Telecom Digest Moderator ***** Moderator's Note ***** As I've written before, stories about Centurylink's service failures can be extremely difficult to find. This one, which came up while I was searching Google for something else 911- related, illustrates the point: it seems I can only find info on Centurylink's troubles by accident, or weeks/months after the fact. Bill Horne Moderator ------------------------------ Message-ID: <20201021214051.GA28871@telecom.csail.mit.edu> Date: Wed, 21 Oct 2020 21:40:51 +0000 From: Moderator <telecomdigestsubmissions@remove-this.telecom-digest.org> Subject: Adblockers installed 300,000 times are malicious and should be removed now If you have Chromium versions of Nano Adblocker or Nano Defender, pay attention. By Dan Goodin Adblocking extensions with more than 300,000 active users have been surreptitiously uploading user browsing data and tampering with users' social media accounts thanks to malware its new owner introduced a few weeks ago, according to technical analyses and posts on Github. ugo Xu, developer of the Nano Adblocker and Nano Defender extensions, said 17 days ago that he no longer had the time to maintain the project and had sold the rights to the versions available in Google's Chrome Web Store. Xu told me that Nano Adblocker and Nano Defender, which often are installed together, have about 300,000 installations total. https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/10/popular-chromium-ad-blockers-caught-stealing-user-data-and-accessing-accounts/ -- Bill Horne Telecom Digest Moderator ------------------------------ Message-ID: <cadfae6d-6475-8874-2703-3e3c09ce3c9f@veridicalsystems.com> Date: 20 Oct 2020 16:09:25 -0400 From: "Steve Marquess" <marquess@veridicalsystems.com> Subject: Re: CO backup power I don't know of Jeff mentioned it, but I've been complaining about connectivity options here in Maryland for a long time; e.g. http://veridicalsystems.com/blog/life-in-a-digital-ghetto/index.html I also posted a detailed background piece for my neighbors (some of whom are piggy-backing off my tower) as I was building the tower that replaced the T1: http://veridicalsystems.com/gallery/Community/WISP-options.html Thanks, -Steve M. -- Steve Marquess Veridical Systems, Inc. 1829 Mount Ephraim Road Adamstown, MD 21710 301-874-2571 marquess@veridicalsystems.com gpg/pgp key: http://veridicalsystems.com/docs/0x2FC01B38-pub.asc ------------------------------ Message-ID: <rmqg71$ope$1@dont-email.me> Date: 21 Oct 2020 23:28:34 -0000 From: "bob prohaska" <bp@www.zefox.net> Subject: Re: CO backup power Steve Marquess <marquess@veridicalsystems.com> wrote: > > So when my $22K T1 contract came up for renewal in late 2016 I decided > to spend a small fortune on an antenna tower for line-of-sight access > to local WISPs (I live in rough terrain). That has been much more > reliable, not to mention way cheaper. And I'm fretting about reliability of a $100/month connection............ Which, up to now, has been quite good. Maybe I should just shut up and be happy, then look for a WISP when I'm demonstrably not happy. Thanks for the perspective! bob prohaska ------------------------------ ********************************************* End of telecom Digest Sat, 24 Oct 2020