http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3353911.stm
Radio boost for rural broadband Rural broadband has been given a boost by the UK Government's decision to free up a key radio frequency.
Just before Christmas, the Department of Trade and Industry said it would let internet service providers and community groups use the 5.8Ghz Band C spectrum.
[...]
The three-month trials are taking place in Ballingry in Fife, Scotland, Pwllheli in Wales, Porthleven in Cornwall and Campsie in Northern Ireland.
The technology being tested sends the internet signal using radio waves, without the need for wires, similar to wi-fi technology.
The signal travels from a base station to a home computer through a low-power antenna. It is similar to a satellite dish, but is smaller and diamond-shaped and fits onto the side of a house.
If successful, it could be used to take broadband to rural areas which cannot get it by cable or over the phone line.
The trials are part of BT's pledge to offer broadband to all of UK by 2005. ===================================================================
This could be a buutiful breakthrough. That's a long way from anywhere, where Oi live, and maybe lots of you too.
Any chaance we could use our comboined muscle to set up a commuunity group that could offer to join in them troials in Anglia region?
What dyou think then?
Ted.
-------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) Ted.Harding@nessie.mcc.ac.uk Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 167 1972 Date: 29-Dec-03 Time: 14:49:51 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------
On 29 Dec 2003, at 14:49, (Ted Harding) wrote:
If successful, it could be used to take broadband to rural areas which cannot get it by cable or over the phone line.
The trials are part of BT's pledge to offer broadband to all of UK by 2005. ===================================================================
This could be a buutiful breakthrough. That's a long way from anywhere, where Oi live, and maybe lots of you too.
Any chaance we could use our comboined muscle to set up a commuunity group that could offer to join in them troials in Anglia region?
By the time it will be up in 2005, Korea, China and the rest of the world will be using faster net access. And we billy boys in the UK won't get to see such speed ever ;)
BT seriously need to be thinking investing in better technology.. Comparing to my friend in .nl. He got a sweet 8mbit dsl pipe for around 60 euros a month (or it was 50...).
So take your pick.. 512kbps or 8mbit..
C
Ted
If successful, it could be used to take broadband to rural areas which cannot get it by cable or over the phone line.
The trials are part of BT's pledge to offer broadband to all of UK by 2005.
I think you'll find that BT intends to use wireless only for the few areas where they have not now issued triggers figures for ADSL (i.e. the number of subscribers who need to have registered an interest with an ISP to 'trigger' the exchange upgrade).
You'll probably know that BT issued triggers for almost every exchange a few weeks ago. That means that they can now claim to have made BB 'available' to almost all of the UK already. Smoke and mirrors...
But it does mean that it could be worthwhile getting some sort of campaign going for your area, depending on the trigger required. There's a link to all the exchanges, their trigger numbers and current registration figures on adslguide http://www.adslguide.org.uk and if in Norfolk look at http://www.broadbandnorfolk.co.uk - there is a link to a league table for norfolk exchanges - the Norfolk League - on the front page.
Syd
Adding to my own post:
I think you'll find that BT intends to use wireless only for the few areas where they have not now issued triggers figures for ADSL
also... subscribers in areas served by BB-enabled exchanges who cannot get adsl for various technical reasons such as being too far from the exchange, wrong type of cable etc.
Syd
Hi Syd! Thanks for the info in your mails.
On 31-Dec-03 Syd Hancock wrote:
Adding to my own post:
I think you'll find that BT intends to use wireless only for the few areas where they have not now issued triggers figures for ADSL
also... subscribers in areas served by BB-enabled exchanges who cannot get adsl for various technical reasons such as being too far from the exchange, wrong type of cable etc.
Well, I qualify on some grounds here but not others.
My local "exchange" (actually a brick hut next to a pumping station) is Brandon Creek ( 01353 676 *** ) which, as it happens, is just inside Norfolk by a few yards.
I'm certainly too far, and on the wrong cable (4.9km of copper cable, much of which is suspended in the air); but the "exchange" itself has no ADSL kit in it, according to BT, and in any case it only serves a few dozen addresses. I've never found it on the trigger lists, but maybe my search was inefficient!
Distributed over Fenland, E Cambs, W Norfolk (just for my area) are a lot of extended areas where the density of addresses is very low. It is hardly going to be economic for BT to set up cable BB for these, which may be why they don't show up in trigger lists -- they just know before they start that there ain't the custom. For instance, though I haven't counted exactly, I doubt Brandon Creek serves as many as 50 addresses, some of which could be 3-4 miles (as the crow flies, never mind the cable) from the exchange. And, quite probably, not all of these would be bursting to get broadband.
Areas like these would be ideal for a wireless link, since a central hub could pick up such scattered homesteads all at once, without the infrastructure needed to hard-wire them to an exchange.
Further informed thoughts would be gratefully received!
Best wishes, Ted.
-------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) Ted.Harding@nessie.mcc.ac.uk Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 167 1972 Date: 31-Dec-03 Time: 10:54:38 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------
I've just wiped my hard disk installation of Knoppix and installed Debian Stable then upgraded to unstable with a 2.4.18 kernel.
In Knoppix I used mplayer with the GUI front end to play DVDs and got excellent results for an 800Mhz, 256Mb computer with an ATI Rage 128 graphics card. Mplayer was using the xv output and I think XFree86 was using the ati driver for the graphics card.
In Debian X won't start with the ati driver so I'm using the vesa driver. When I play DVDs the X11 video output manages to play a DVD but very poor quality. the xvidix and xv video outputs both do nothing at all.
What should I try next?
Thanks tola ^/.
On Wednesday 31 December 2003 1:05 pm, Ben Francis wrote:
I've just wiped my hard disk installation of Knoppix and installed Debian Stable then upgraded to unstable with a 2.4.18 kernel.
In Debian X won't start with the ati driver so I'm using the vesa driver. When I play DVDs the X11 video output manages to play a DVD but very poor quality. the xvidix and xv video outputs both do nothing at all.
What should I try next?
Is DMA switched on for the DVD drive? Thats my only suggestion I'm afraid (apart from suggesting that you should play with the ati driver some more).
(I would insert the hdparm options you need to use to check DMA but I haven't got it installed on my box ATM (just moved back to LFS, and have finally managed to compile KDE. yay!))
BenE
On Wednesday 31 December 2003 13:05, Ben Francis wrote:
In Debian X won't start with the ati driver so I'm using the vesa driver. When I play DVDs the X11 video output manages to play a DVD but very poor quality. the xvidix and xv video outputs both do nothing at all.
What should I try next?
Thanks tola ^/.
The vesa drivers represent the lowest common denominator of graphics card features over a standard command set. This is why they work with most modern cards. However they give very poor performance, no 2D acceleration, no 3D acceleration, no access to texture memory etc... and quite possibly no access to whatever video overlay mode xv needs.
I think you should concentrate your efforts on getting the correct drivers for your Ati card working. AFAIK the X11 output does a software render to a window box, poor quality and resource consuming. the overlay modes I think xv uses open a video window and then pipe a raster image stream over to the card.
beneboy wrote:
Is DMA switched on for the DVD drive? Thats my only suggestion I'm afraid (apart from suggesting that you should play with the ati driver some
more).
I wasn't sure how to check this, but thanks for the reply!
Wayne Stallwood wrote:
The vesa drivers represent the lowest common denominator of graphics card features over a standard command set. This is why they work with most modern cards. However they give very poor performance, no 2D acceleration, no 3D acceleration, no access to texture memory etc... and quite possibly no access to whatever video overlay mode xv needs.
I think you should concentrate your efforts on getting the correct drivers for your Ati card working. AFAIK the X11 output does a software render to a window box, poor quality and resource consuming. the overlay modes I think xv uses open a video window and then pipe a raster image stream over to the card.
Yup, this solved it. I kept hacking at it but couldn't get the ati driver to work single handedly so I stuck Knoppix 3.3 in my CD-ROM drive and let it write an XF86Config-4 file for me! I then copied the relevent section to my debian config:
Section "Device" Option "sw_cursor" Identifier "Video Card" Driver "ati" VendorName "All" BoardName "All" EndSection
It also detected some better settings for my monitor which was handy. I now have lovely smooth DVD playback using the xv output in mplayer, thank you.
As an aside, what are the issues surrounding the licensing on mplayer and is this the reason that a more recent version is not in Debian's package list? Someone in #alug (sorry I can't remember who it was, may have been thom) said that mplayer had licensing issues because of some proprietary software being bundled with it.
People on freenode in #mplayer claim mplayer is fully compliant with the GPL and any proprietary codecs do not come bundled with it and are optional extras available for download. They do, however seem to show some hostility to the Debian community, although I may have imagined it!
Shame really as I've found mplayer a fantastic piece of software.
On 2004-01-03 12:23:49 +0000 Ben Francis ben@franci5.fsnet.co.uk wrote:
I wasn't sure how to check this, but thanks for the reply!
I think "hdparm" can check and set DMA on DVD drives, despite the name.
As an aside, what are the issues surrounding the licensing on mplayer and is this the reason that a more recent version is not in Debian's package list?
Search http://lists.debian.org/ for mplayer on debian-legal in October 2003. I think mplayer used to have a contradictory licence. There are some unanswered questions about the application of the GPL, problems with libraries used and enforced patents on the code. About GPL 2a, "Gabucino" of mplayer core asked for help rather than committing to fixing this basic legal problem of their own making. It's sort of ironic, given their current front page rant about someone infringing their copyright!
[...] They do, however seem to show some hostility to the Debian community, although I may have imagined it!
I think it's real. They publish news stories on their web site saying "Debian sucks - that's the opinion of most of the core developers" and that's hardly friendly, is it?
The mplayer developers on debian lists that I've seen have been very rude. They seem to think that Debian is obliged to include mplayer; help fix their problems; or give a checklist which mplayer must satisfy and then admit it. They also seem to suggest past errors create precedents, by citing problems with other software already in Debian. Of course, the normal outcome is to examine the other problems and solve them, not compound them.
I'd like Debian to include mplayer, but I don't think it should break the social contract to do so. I'm not going to help while the mplayer core seem no fun to work with. If you think they are fun, go for it. Someone to keep a real list of current licence bugs may help.
Why not just use the unofficial Debian mirror on www.apt-get.org? I'm using this line in my Debian unstable desktop box's "/etc/apt/source.list" file:
#[MPlayer] deb http://marillat.free.fr/ unstable main
I guess its better to help the Debian project to get mplayer into the main project, but not everyone is a developer or wants to be. It works great for me and I'm guessing the codecs will not be Debian friendly anyway(so an unofficial source will be needed still).
- Dennis Dryden
#[MPlayer] deb http://marillat.free.fr/ unstable main
I think the version here is very out of date.
I guess its better to help the Debian project to get mplayer into the main project, but not everyone is a developer or wants to be. It works great for me and I'm guessing the codecs will not be Debian friendly anyway(so an unofficial source will be needed still).
I'd like to help if I can
Hi Ted
My local "exchange" (actually a brick hut next to a pumping station) is Brandon Creek ( 01353 676 *** ) which, as it happens, is just inside Norfolk by a few yards.
I'm certainly too far, and on the wrong cable (4.9km of copper cable, much of which is suspended in the air); but the "exchange" itself has no ADSL kit in it, according to BT, and in any case it only serves a few dozen addresses. I've never found it on the trigger lists, but maybe my search was inefficient!
Here's the direct link for the exchange trigger levels.
http://www.adslguide.org.uk/availability/btprereg.asp?order=trig
Brandon Creek has a grand total of 9 pre-registrations! But no trigger level set so, as you say, could well be a candidate for wireless sometime in the future.
Good luck! Syd
On 01-Jan-04 Syd Hancock wrote:
Hi Ted
My local "exchange" (actually a brick hut next to a pumping station) is Brandon Creek ( 01353 676 *** ) which, as it happens, is just inside Norfolk by a few yards.
I'm certainly too far, and on the wrong cable (4.9km of copper cable, much of which is suspended in the air); but the "exchange" itself has no ADSL kit in it, according to BT, and in any case it only serves a few dozen addresses. I've never found it on the trigger lists, but maybe my search was inefficient!
Here's the direct link for the exchange trigger levels.
http://www.adslguide.org.uk/availability/btprereg.asp?order=trig
Brandon Creek has a grand total of 9 pre-registrations! But no trigger level set so, as you say, could well be a candidate for wireless sometime in the future.
Good luck! Syd
Thanks Syd! (and 1 of the 9 is mine! -- I think I'll need that luck). I did a little sample of the listings, according to which all the trigger levels that had been set were at least 100; there were many exchanges with less than 10 registrations, with triggers at 100 or more, as well as the many with no trigger set.
These look as though they are in a similar position to Brandon Creek. If BT are looking for 100+, then places like Brandon Creek will never make it since there ain't that many subscribers on the exchange!
Ah well, let's hope for wireless then. I was just wondering if there was anything one could do to lobby for it in a region like this.
All the best, Ted.
-------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) Ted.Harding@nessie.mcc.ac.uk Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 167 1972 Date: 01-Jan-04 Time: 13:35:17 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------
On 2003-12-29 14:49:51 +0000 (Ted Harding) Ted.Harding@nessie.mcc.ac.uk wrote:
[...]
The signal travels from a base station to a home computer through a low-power antenna. It is similar to a satellite dish, but is smaller and diamond-shaped and fits onto the side of a house.
What did Ionica's kit use? Anyway, sounds nice, but what actually has to be done to get it in our region?
Apologies if this has allready been stated (i got lost in the thread)... but bt is producing something called Rate Adaptive ADSL which is basically ADSL with a box at your end as well. They're using this to access places outside of ADSL coverage (we have two factories being converted into rate adaptive at the moment (i think))
I havnt heard of this in the public domain, and only found out about it through a BT engineer and we contacted their sales department directly - I also dont know how much it costs, but at a guess a lot less then killastream lines...
J
On Fri, Jan 02, 2004 at 07:29:20PM +0000, J wrote:
but bt is producing something called Rate Adaptive ADSL which is basically ADSL with a box at your end as well. They're using this to access places outside of ADSL coverage (we have two factories being converted into rate adaptive at the moment (i think))
No it isn't :) it gives you exactly the same presentation as all other ADSL products.
http://www.adslguide.org.uk/qanda.asp?faq=radsl
Adam
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adam＠thebowery.co.uk -
Ben Francis -
beneboy -
Craig -
Dennis Dryden -
J -
MJ Ray -
Syd Hancock -
Ted.Harding＠nessie.mcc.ac.uk -
Wayne Stallwood