[ELECTRON] Broadband

[Simon Yuill]

I saw Kenny (CCA) earlier this week and he was asking about exactly this
thing. The CCA's network is, to be honest, pants and always has been,
they seem to be locked into some kind of commercial provider who does
not provide a very good service.

I am not every knowledgeable about this kind of stuff (ie. traffic
shaping etc) so if there were other people who are, and are willing to
take a look at what the CCA currently have and advise on how to get it
better then I can set up a meeting with Kenny or put you directly in
touch with each other.

As for having subscriptions to pay for the broadband I am completely
against this. Membership has always been, and should stay, free.

I agree with Bob's point that better internet access from the space
would be beneficial, however it is also the case that not everyone's use
of the space depends upon this, and as Mark pointed out, there are other
needs which perhaps also should be covered. I would be unhappy to see a
situation where one type of use was being subsidized through membership
fees, whilst others were not.

Dan from the 'social centre' groups has offered to help run a
fund-raising event to pay for the broadband. He has been tied up with
exams and stuff but has recently been in touch to say he's still keen to
take this on. I would suggest that a combination of fund-raising and
voluntary donations from those who have a need for broadband would be a
fairer way of getting it off the ground.

Dan also made some enquiries about costs (which is where the figure of
600 came from). The Phone Co-Op are willing to offer us a domestic
package - Kenny Dufus is correct that a business package would be too
expensive for us. The 600 also covers the installation of a new BT
phoneline which we would need and an ADSL modem/router. Ongoing annual
costs for the broadband after the first year would therefore be lower
(about 300-400). If people have stuff like a spare ADSL modem that can
be lent/donated then that would reduce the initial costs further.

I would like us to have better internet access from the space, we could
resurrect the project server that some people were using for example.
There have been some good suggestions made in people's emails about the
broadband, and Gordon's one is a good starting point that could cost us
nothing, so we should be able to combine some of those ideas to do it
cheaply, fairly and realistically.

best wishes
Si




Gordon JC Pearce MM3YEQ wrote:
> On Wed, 2009-04-08 at 09:29 +0100, Bob wrote:
> 
>> members over the door. The space is unused about %80 of the time if we had 
>> a half decent internet and a few computers that worked it might encourage 
>> people to us the place to work in in the day time.
> 
> Maybe the CCA would accept some advice on filtering and throttling the
> Internet connection to stop people running bittorrent all the time, and
> flattening the upstream bandwidth (which is the real issue).
> 
> That improves things for *everyone*, even the people torrenting.
> 
> Gordon
> 
> 
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