internet on rattlesnake
 

Hi everyone,
My wife and I are new residents on Rattlesnake Island (north side) --- bought our place last Fall and we absolutely love it!!!

I was wondering if anyone can comment on options for internet access on Rattlesnake. I saw an old thread that discussed possibilities of either satellite, running cable, or somehow accessing mainland towers...but the thread ended without resolution.

I would love to hear your experiences and thoughts on this.

Thanks and best wishes,

Gene Tunik

Welcome to island life Lake Guy!

I use my Verizon cell phone as a hot spot. Its a little slow if you usually use a high speed internet connection but its great for checking email, weather, and reading the forum. Another option would be a dial up internet service provider using a phone line which would be even slower but more reliable.

Welcome to the Island!
 

We use a verizon hospot, we had 5 people on it over the 4th and it worked fine. Not as fast as cable broadband, but works for working from the island for us.

Downside is that that there is a two year term with a cancellation fee.

Welcome to the Island. We spent the first several years with the truly painful experience of dial up. I think we were doing about 8K with the quality of the land line.

By comparison, my Verizon cellular INTERNET seems quite delightful. Speed wise the best reference I can offer is that about half of the You tube videos I try to watch get hung up with downloading pauses and the other half keep up.

A few weeks ago I was watching a netflix movie without a problem. (It took about 2 minutes before the movie decided it had enough to give it a go)

The signal where we are, facing parker Island, is 4 bars.

Wait a second... you guys are killing me! You're on vacation out on an island in Lake Winnipesaukee.... what in the world do you need a computer for? That's shameful, go outside sit on the deck, get a camp fire going and cook some marshmallows, go fishin off the dock, read a book, or just sit back and enjoy some peace and quiet ... live the good life!

When the day comes for me, hopefully soon when I am so lucky to have my island place all portable electronic devices will be banned, but with one exception, if I happen to have a good spot I may have to setup a small ham shack!

Just giving you guys a hard time :rolleye2: it's all about perspective, guess being an IT guy will do that to ya!

Thanks
 

Thanks everyone! This is really helpful.
Next summer my family and I would like to spend an extended stay at the island so being able to go online for work will be important.
Cheers

Work????:rolleye2:

Main reasons we have island internet:

I can work from the lake and be here every possible day I can while others are in an office.

Let the kids get their fix before they go to bed, we have found that a limited amount of internet and connection with the friends back home keeps the troops calmer and makes it better for all.

Finding things to do, eat, boat parts, Home depot numbers, etc, all part of island life.

Oh, and one bonus reason, loading my Go Pro videos so those at home can see all the fun we are having! The waves in the broads on Sat were a blast, I am still sore from the waverunner.

Getting Metrocast to Rattlesnake Island
 

A number of us are formally petitioning the Town of Alton to make Metrocast live up to their franchise agreement and extend the Metrocast system to Rattlesnake (and possibly Sleepers) Island.

Metrocast is stonewalling. But, what the franchise agreement states is this: If we have 10 subscribers per mile who pay for 1 year of service, in advance, Metrocast has to extend the system to cover those subscribers.

So, we will eventually need some folks to sign up if we want to get Metrocast over here.

Last year, Metrocast conducted a complete survey of the Island (and Sleepers Island) - measuring all of the poles, figuring out how many houses there are, etc.

Metrocast is blocking all other avenues of bringing Internet to the island. I can build a 5.8gHz link from the Rattlesnake Island Association Landing in Alton (45 megabits), but when I went to order the service, Metrocast refused to install it when they found out I was going to beam Internet over to the island.

Anyway, I wanted to fill everyone in on what's going on.

Regards,

Steve

IslandRadio,

Is there a formal petition and is it online? Also, I would be willing to prepay the year if you are keeping a list.

No formal petition yet. When we have one, we'll need folks to sign up. Thanks for letting me know you're interested. What lot are you? I'm #250 / Lot 73.

Internet at the Lake
 

Paul has the cellular internet for his work and thank goodness for that or we would hardly ever get to see him. Can you say work-a-holic? ;) We gave up the tedious dial-up and now he occasionally checks my e-mail etc. remotely for me. That leave me free to do as you say... sit on the dock, read a book, enjoy the campfire, play with the dogs and so on. :D

And... if there weren't internet capabilities at the lake, our Webmaster would have to shut down the website while he's at the lake. :eek: :D :laugh:

Island Cable Service
 

MetroCast service came to Bear Island [Meredith] several years ago. My understanding is that 25 customers were ready so service was installed. The north end of Bear Island is close to the mainland [via scenic Pine Island]. We have cable TV service at our place, but others have internet service so are now able to spend time on our small piece of Paradise. :liplick:

Verizon MiFi
 

I'd recommend buying a used Verizon 3G MiFi (about $75) on eBay and then opening a prepaid acct with Verizon. They have several plans for prepaid, its on the expensive side per use, but its much cheaper than a multi year contract based plan. I only use mine at the lake, so I pay $80 for 5 gb for the month of August, it works well and up to 5 users can tether off the device. Coverage is excellent on Cow, a lot more than I can say for AT&T!

http://www.verizonwireless.com/b2c/m...nd/?page=plans

:D

That's what I use now (Verizon). At least on the South/West side of Rattlesnake, the service is marginably usable. The signal strength is fine, but the network performance is absolutely abysmal. I run a constant ping against my Virtual Private Network. Here are the results:

Ping statistics for 10.0.0.11:
Packets: Sent = 270076, Received = 264442, Lost = 5634 (2% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 197ms, Maximum = 4500ms, Average = 597ms

Notice the AVERAGE time is just short of 600ms. That includes the times at 3:00AM when no one is using the system! Daytime and particularly evening ping times are much longer - 800 to 1000ms is often a typical average.

Reasonable cable-based Internet will yield ping times of 30ms or better, and DSL about the same - maybe 40ms if it's not super fast.

In practical terms, you're doing a LOT of waiting - sometimes over 2 minutes for a web page to load (try mlb.com or something like that). Remote Desktop is often unusable because the performance is so poor. Even simple protocols such as ssh or telnet - it may take 3 or 4 seconds for a single character to echo!

Verizon claims the particular cell that we're hitting from here is terribly overloaded, but then again there are no immediate plans to upgrade it to 4g - the cities are going to be done first.

Other people near me have the same experience.

Is it possible to get PtP link into Wolfeboro (even if multi hops), and get a 15M DSL from Fairpoint? (Don't have my mapping software with me ATM).

Or some bonded T1s right to the land shoreline, its not cheap, depends on how much you really want it :)

The only viable alternative to getting Internet to Rattlesnake is either a fast DSL or cable (probably Metrocast). I looked into bonded T1s and T3s and WOW, would that be E X P E N S I V E (up to thousands of dollars per month!).

I already have the equipment to do a 45 megabit 5.8gHz link, and I have tested it. I am able to achieve full bandwidth from the rattlesnake landing, which is probably almost 2 miles from my place. I have built links like this that are over 10 miles long.

So, I attempted to do this with Metrocast - order service to the Rattlesnake Island Landing (which they can do from a technical standpoint), and they absolutely refuse to deliver service to any location if the only intent is to beam it over to Rattlesnake.

But, they did say if someone has a land based location that is serviced by Metrocast and we don't specifically get it to send over to the island, they will deliver the service no problem. This whole sending it to the island affair doesn't seem to be a problem with Fairpoint - it's just that DSL isn't available - from what I can tell, anywhere that can see the shore of the island at least on the South-West side. Please correct me if I'm wrong!!

So, is there anyone in Gilford or Alton with a direct view of the peninsula of Rattlesnake Island who is preferably located anywhere between the Rattlesnake Island Landing (on Nowicki road off Rollins road) in Glidden Cove, and Samoset who wants free high speed Internet in exchange for letting me mount a small outdoor antenna somewhere (like on a tree or a boathouse or any other place out of the way)? If so, please contact me at islandradio@rattlesnakeisland.net. You would be our hero!!!!!

We can also come in from the Alton side, but Sleepers and Redhead islands are in the way for most of it.

We can also bring it in from the other side, but the distance to the mainland is a lot further.

Once we get it over here, we can do a wireless mesh type of distribution system.

Thanks so much and Regards,

Steve

rattlesnake internet
 

Everyone, thanks for the really nice discussion. Steve, wow, you certainly have put in a huge effort into all this...very impressive!

I'd be curious to know what the fees would be if your plan is successful to get Metrocast....but assuming reasonable fees during the season...I'm interested. I'm on the north side, about 1/3 of the way from the northwest tip. Do you think the wireless grid work on the north side given the mountainous terrain of the island?

Gene

Oh, I can get it over there and around the island all right, but the biggest problem right now is getting a mainland location. This has been the biggest problem right from the start.

This is strictly non-profit, sort of like a co-op. If it breaks even, that's all that matters. Can't operate at a loss (at least not for very long!).

The highest monthly expense will be technical support (keeping the network working properly, building it, maintaining it) and if there's customer support involved that is also a cost. The 2nd steady cost will be the Internet access itself. Once we reach a certain number of users, the Internet connection will need to be duplicated (more than one connection) until we reach the capacity of the backhaul (45 megabits in this case), and at that time the backhaul will need to be either duplicated or upgraded to a larger "pipe". Otherwise, performance degrades and eventually we're no better than Verizon Broadband Wireless, and we all know how absolutely terrible THAT is!!!

But this is not really a big deal when you have a lot of folks all sharing the costs. I was owner/chief engineer of an Internet Service Provider, and once the costs were spread out over a lot of customers, we were able to keep the monthly charges quite low, provide outstanding customer support, and still eek out a small profit (small ISPs are noted for being unprofitable). In this case with the Island it's ok because the thing isn't designed to make a profit - just break even.

By the way, the RIA board supports this effort and is well aware of it.

We'll see.. We just have to get that mainland site!

Regards,

Steve

internet on rattlesnake
 

Is there another way to reach out to the mainland owners beside through this forum? Maybe some are not members on the forum or don't read the threads....

Excellent investigation to internet link on Rattlesnake!
 

Very interesting -- I'd be happy to sign a petition. Currently use a verizon broad band modem... I'm on the broads side - lot 706. I'd be happy to help also.... Solar-powered bridge/link extensions might be interesting. I emailed MV Communications about a point-point link a few years ago, they said they'd have the owners consider it, but that was as far as I got....(And they've now shut down services.)


Andrew

KA1VYX and RF/Microwave Engineer

Wow, MV communications - I haven't heard much about them in a number of years. I think they were around when I started an Internet Service Provider business back in 1996 or thereabouts.

Fairpoint would make a better upstream, if they are available because generally there is very high bandwidth to the C/O, and one can order multiple DSL circuits and distribute the load among them. While no single stream could exceed the bandwidth of a single DSL circuit, the total bandwidth will be the sum of all the incoming circuits.

Went looking at island houses today and tried verizon 3g internet at all of them... Broadside of rattlesnake was ok, east side of sleeper was the best, mainland side of rattlesnake was a total bust as was the broadside of diamond.

Very frustrating since I need to be able to work from "home". I can't justify the $$$ for a weekend hangout.

We have officially petitioned Metrocast to deliver broadband to Rattlesnake (and I am presuming they will do Sleepers at the same time). Metrocast is currently "resisting" the idea - they have flatly refused to do it, however the franchise agreement is very clear - if we get 10 full time subscribers per mile for a minimum of one year, they have to do it.

I currently use Verizon on the mainland side of Rattlesnake (on the West side of the peninsula) and the signal is very good. The performance is VERY bad, but that's not a signal problem, it's an overloaded system problem. Over the weekend, I had a couple of friends over and one of them uses A,T+T - it worked fine (the performance was almost 10x that of Verizon, by the way). All of this on the mainland side of Rattlesnake.

Where on the mainland side of Rattlesnake were you looking? I'm surprised it didn't work there.

I wasn't paying attention to signal strength. I was running speedtest on my verizon phone to see what I might get with tethered perf or a dedicated verizon "mifi".

I was seeing ping=over 1 second
download speeds of 100kbs
upload speeds of 50kbs

Clearly working from home isn't going to be very productive with that.

Guess I could look at hughsnet. The place has a wide open south view. But ping times would still be lousy, so picky vpn stuff wouldn't be great.

This all makes a hard decision much harder.

I was a little west of the peninsula on the mainline side (just look for the for sale signs)...

Guess I could pick up an AT&T hotspot and go play with it and return it within the 30 days. Cost isn't even really an object here.

I assume the islands ate all too far away for DSL to work?

We're going to have something over there after a while. It actually would be there now, but Metrocast blocked my efforts to bring high speed Internet to the island using my own equipment, so now going through the "official" channels - invoking the line extension in the franchise agreement Metrocast has with Alton.

Lots of people need this, so you're certainly not alone - which is why it's going to happen.

I think I might know which place you're looking at - the cottage with a lot of white lattice work at the front? Or is there another one over there...

As I mention in another thread, Verizon signal strength is great around the lake especially the west side. I've been using my phone and Blackberry for years with great coverage. This year I tried to tether my Blackberry. I can get four or five bars almost everywhere even inside my boat. But the data rates are horrible. Some mornings I can only get 50 kbps, late night I can usually get 200 kbps. Early in the spring I was getting 800kbps all the time. I never bothered to measure ping times, I'm sure it's slow.

I'm really disappointed with this, others in my marina said that this year seems worse. One lawyer had to go home to work one nice weekend, just couldn't get enough data across. This clearly is a not a RF issue, it's a network issue. Never trust a Bellhead to set up a data network. This is posted by a reformed Bellhead.

yea, the wall of white lattice cottage (guess I'd have to paint that some neutral color if I was to buy it)...

I can imagine congestion being an issue with all the people around in the summer... And I can see Verizon being reluctant to increase capacity for 90 high demand days a year.

I went to the at&t wireless site and it didn't even want to sell me a mifi with an Alton zip code.