Ask HN: How can we get better internet?
Unfortunately, internet access here is pretty awful. I live in an old (50 years?) dormitory. IT bills us about $1.50/GB, and it's filtered like you wouldn't believe (packet inspection, no bittorrent, VPNs, lots of spurious firewalling...). Unfortunately, moving not an option, and IT is deaf to student concerns.
Along with several other angry CS majors, I've been paying Clearwire (pre-Wimax ISP, claims 1.5mbit) about $40/month, but lately they've been getting on our case for "over-usage" and are threatening to cut us off. We're talking about 2-3GB/week of traffic. They do some light packet shaping as well, so we're looking for something better.
I'm only about 600-700ft from the nearest neighborhood, so there's some talk of paying someone to get a fat pipe and figuring out how to microwave it to where I live. I don't know enough about the equipment I'd need, or what would fit in the budget (Motorola stuff looks expensive!). Administration takes a very dim view of this sort of thing, so the equipment on my end would have to be indoor. Any recommendations?
AFAIK, the buildings are too old to be wired properly for DSL/Cable (or not worth Ma Bell's effort). Satellite requires an external mount, which is a no-no.
Can any clever hackers out there think of something we missed?