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Comment by 2Xheadpalm | Hacker News Reader

Although the story and your account are United States centric, I live pretty remote British Columbia, Canada and the same mentality, personalty types exists here as well. As the crow flies, I am less then 300KM to downtown Vancouver yet a trip to the closest town center for supplies is a 10 hour round trip in the truck and that is on a good day. I do not leave the house without chainsaw, firearm and various other sundry gear and items as i may have to sleep in the wilderness overnight or repair my truck on the side of a dirt road.

I do all our property maintenance and repairs etc., even if I could convince a 'professional' to come out this way, the expense would be anywhere from 3X to 10X for the same job in town.

Self reliance and self-sufficiency are not new, trendy traits, it is a necessity for survival that has always been that way and it will probably never change for the people living in this part of the world.

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I have family in BC less than 125 Km from Vancouver, but that is still 10 hours and a ferry trip... if the one and only road is open. That is the reality of life in mountains. There is only ever the one road. Even famous places like Whistler: one road.

How do you use the internet? Do you have a phone signal?

I live in a similar way in Canada, and I run long range ubiquiti radios (~12km) to nearest small town. get 150-200mbps and since I have battery backup + generator, usually the only reason it goes down is if the ISP router dies. I get ~1 bar of LTE that flickers to 3g, but with wifi calling it's not an issue. In addition to changing my own alternator, I run a small ISP for my neighbours :)

I'd like to know more about how you arranged this. In that small town, it sounds like you have some sort of connection to an ISP. Do you lease space on a tower to do that? Do you have a friend with an office nearby, and you connect there somehow? Is the ISP friendly and willing to set this up with you?

I have a 30m tower, and at the town I have a friend with a good connection. I rent roof space and pay half the bill. ISP is ok since it's a business plan, and both of us are using it for mainly business — it's similar to a shared office that provides internet from their perspective.

Wow I didn't even know about these radios and how reasonably priced they are for the range!

You might also be surprised to know that microwave is faster than fiber. Not necessarily more reliable, mind you, but faster.

There's a reason all of the HFT folks are using microwaves.

Only if by 'faster' you are referring exclusively to latency. In some situations (not all) you can achieve slightly better latency with wireless than fiber, but for raw throughout nothing compares to light in glass.

Where can I learn more specifics about configuring/deploying a similar setup? Thanks.

I run a website about this kind of thing. You might find this page useful: https://startyourownisp.com/posts/backhaul-picker/

Nice, this is exactly the kind of practical guide and reference material I was looking for!

There are open comprehensive resources like the open book "WiFi networking in the developing world" [1] which seem pertinent here even though we're talking about North America. :P

[1]: http://wndw.net/book.html

Also very curious also. At ~12km I would think it would require some specialized microwave testing equipment to get the alignment right.

12km isn't too bad actually for alignment unless you're using really high frequency (>10Ghz) equipment. Even then though you probably don't need specialized equipment other than maybe binoculars and a voltmeter[1]. I've taught beginners to align 24ghz radios at 12km by hand.

[1]The voltmeter is for quick feedback on the signal level as you aim. Many high-capacity wireless radios have a connection point on the back that will adjust voltage to match the current receive signal level (measured in dBm). That's usually the fastest way to watch the signal level as you aim, especially if you're hanging off a tower while you do it.

I spend a lot of downtime in what I thought was a very remote area of the Rockies. I learned many neighbors have been doing satellite Internet for years, though. Recently I started getting very good cell phone service, too. No other utilities, hardly accessible during the winter - but I can still check Hacker News.

My guess and not to answer for OP, but hughesnet or some type of satellite based internet. I know people who live far from broadband and cable and they all use hughesnet or something similar.

There is no cell reception, we have satellite, the ISP here in Canada is called Xplornet, which I believe uses Hughesnet. Download speed is pretty good, streaming services typically work fine with SD, voice comms. can be a bit of pain with the 700ms latency. Since covid-19 with many more people working from home etc. I have noticed a significant drop in bandwidth and how spikey latency can get at times.

I would guess satellite. I've lived in remote places before (but it was only 20 minutes to a big city mall, so not nearly as remote as described) and that is what I used. It was okay for most things, but the 600ms ping time to anything else sometimes was noticeable.

I was wondering the same thing.

Where are you? Gold Bridge?

Close! We a fair bit further North. I would consider Gold Bridge the southern most parts of the Chilcotin, whereas we live more in the middle of Chilcotin. Without giving it away, if you look up Chilko Lake it is a reasonably short drive away.

Yeah that is really far out there. I'm guessing the closest real town or city for shopping is Lillooet? 5 hours to get there and 5 hours to get back...

  For us, Williams Lake is the closest town with supplies. We travel in a generally northerly direction via various 'tracks' to we turn onto Chilko Lake Road, which ends up on Tatlayoko Lake road, which will in turn lead to Hwy 20. From there, it is all paved to Williams Lake.  

  Distance wise is not obscene but the 'tracks' i refer to can be a pain to maintain due to wash out and tree blow down etc. If that is the case it can significantly add to travel times. Winter can be good and bad depending on amount of snow or icy conditions etc. Typically, up until about January, winter driving is actually easier IMHO, as all the potholes/ditches are filled out.  We use heavy duty chains on the tires if it gets too slippery and/or too much snow, this can make for a really long drive due to having to travel much slower with chains on.

What do you do for an ISP out there? I'm guessing a small consumer-grade Ku or Ka band VSAT. Or do you have a local WISP?

You are correct.

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