[HN Gopher] There are six internet links on my office on wheels-...
___________________________________________________________________
There are six internet links on my office on wheels--seven when
Starlink arrives
Author : ghuntley
Score : 351 points
Date : 2021-09-20 13:42 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (ghuntley.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (ghuntley.com)
| berdon wrote:
| The title is confusing if you think of hyperlinks first.
| ghuntley wrote:
| hah indeed it is :/
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| I set up a and will be using StarLink in an RV on the weekends.
| _Pro Tip: go somewhere strange if you want to get into the beta._
|
| It's surprisingly good.
|
| I don't think I have any special anecdotes except that I'm
| getting 85Mpbs up and a 35ms ping to speedtest.net.
|
| Initially the connection wasn't reliable, but it apparently needs
| to be set up for a few hours before it "locks in".
| 101008 wrote:
| Wow. I am in the middle of a big city and I have 50Mbps down
| and 11 down and you have that speed in the middle of nowhere...
| the future sounds amazing.
| elif wrote:
| latency will go still down significantly as v2 and v3 join
| the constellation with laser interlinks. For long
| connections, they will be theoretically faster than fiber due
| to geographical constraints on straight lines and routing.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| Tell me about it. My 1Gbps docsis3 has an upload of 35Mpbs
| because of 1980s cable tv frequency choice reasons. I'm
| slightly impressed with StarLink and slightly annoyed at my
| main ISP.
|
| This is on the edge of nowhere, but still cool. The only
| other option I had here was dialup or if I wanted to pay
| outrageous rates, I could get a .5-1Mbps T1 only because
| there is a ranger station not too far off that put one in and
| I can access some of the trunk hardware a few miles away.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| Side notes: The more I thought about it. In case anyone is
| interested:
|
| - The setup is stupid easy. Place dish outside, plug in. That's
| about all.
|
| - It's weird having a dish that points straight up, used to
| them all pointing south (hemisphere dependent of course)
|
| - The router box (thing?) is a bad design. Stupid little
| triangle that tips over all the time. Seems cheap.
|
| - Shipped with no wifi encryption. I thought that was weird. I
| bet this changes to for real release.
|
| - Got a few "outside your home area" messages without moving.
| Errors.
|
| - It is good for streaming or websites, but currently I have it
| on the ground and it seems like it loses connection fairly
| often. I'll put in up on a poll now that I know...
|
| - The dish is heated. GOOD. I was worried about this with the
| amount of snow it's going to get.
|
| I don't really geek out over these things. It's good. It's
| exactly what it should be I think. We'll see how it lasts the
| winter. I expect the reception to get better when it's mounted,
| but it'll be interesting to see how white-out snow effects the
| performance.
| parhamn wrote:
| Is it generally accepted that these wavelengths and devices that
| operate them are safe around humans? Should I feel concerned at
| all having so many large antennas and amplifiers and what not
| near me?
|
| I never really stopped to ask this of my phone either, I guess.
| astrea wrote:
| This section of the EM spectrum is non-ionizing. So unlike,
| say, X-rays, you won't get cancer as the waves aren't strong
| enough to strip an electron off an atom and therefore change
| your DNA. However, they will heat your cells to some degree
| (since 2.5GHz is the same freq as a microwave). This can cause
| cataracts over long exposure to high enough power as your eyes
| can't regulate heat.
| goodpoint wrote:
| > you won't get cancer
|
| Hold on: heating up part of the human body that are not
| capable of dissipating heat efficiently can increase cancer
| risk as well.
| asdfasgasdgasdg wrote:
| Generally accepted by who? You can find some people who are
| concerned about this stuff. 5G truthers and all that. But
| nobody in the evidence-based medicine community.
| parhamn wrote:
| > But nobody in the evidence-based medicine community.
|
| Yup, exactly. Was wondering if there was any data in the
| evidence medicine based community to be concerned about.
| Sounds like there isn't.
| goodpoint wrote:
| On the contrary, there's plenty of literature indicating a
| range of effects on lab rats and so on:
|
| https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=microwave+exposu
| r...
|
| This is not to say that low power microwave exposure is
| worse than exposure to pollution, unhealthy food, risks of
| car accident.
|
| But it would be incorrect to say that microwave
| transmissions are free from risks.
| asdfasgasdgasdg wrote:
| Nothing is entirely free from risks. That's part of why
| we do studies on things like this. But, for example, the
| second study on the page you linked concludes: "At the
| present state of knowledge there is no positive evidence
| that pulsed or continuous microwave exposure in the non-
| thermal range confers elevated risk to the health of the
| brain."
|
| The mere presence of studies on a subject does not
| indicate positive evidence of material risk to health.
| mothsonasloth wrote:
| Doesn't the author know that Starlink is limited to a specific
| location that the subscription address is at (+/- 25miles)?
|
| https://sebsebmc.github.io/starlink-coverage/index.html
| [deleted]
| ghuntley wrote:
| Answered here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28593949
| [deleted]
| briffle wrote:
| They have said those restrictions are part of the beta, and
| going away soon.
| Ancapistani wrote:
| Got a source for that? When I last looked into it, their site
| said it was a technical limitation and that there were no
| plans for creating a truly mobile receiver.
| hkchad wrote:
| As with most things elon it was in a tweet,
| https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/16/22388378/elon-musk-
| starli...
| _moof wrote:
| Eagle-eyed observers have noticed Starlink antennas on SpaceX's
| drone ships. So mobile capability is definitely already
| implemented, it's just not publicly available _yet._
|
| (Edit: And evidently some regular users are already beta-
| testing it too.)
| DanAtC wrote:
| I'm interested in which NUC has 8 Ethernet ports.
| ghuntley wrote:
| Aliexpress is the place to start your quest. Look for "pfsense
| routers".
| LurkingPenguin wrote:
| Couldn't help but notice the link to the author's Twitch account,
| which has the description "I live a minimalist lifestyle..."
|
| Amazing what passes for a minimalist lifestyle these days!
| nickthemagicman wrote:
| Basic utilities like water, internet, and electricity are what
| I would consider minimal.
|
| They're just much more involved to get in a Van.
| ghuntley wrote:
| I have a single bowl, fork and knife. Everything that I own has
| a purpose or it gets chucked. There really isn't much space in
| a 7m long van.
| ddalex wrote:
| No offence, sir, but 6 different ways to connect to the
| internet is not minimalist.
|
| Your priorities lies elsewhere, perhaps not in bowls, forks
| and knives, but certainly with internet connectivity :)
| Ancapistani wrote:
| I disagree.
|
| It sounds like OP has found that six different ways to
| connect to the Internet is the minimum that is viable for
| him, and that meeting that is important enough to justify
| spending a large portion of his limited budget (both
| financially and in terms of space in/on his vehicle).
|
| If one fork does the job, one fork is enough. If five way
| to connect aren't enough, then maybe six will be enough :)
| ddalex wrote:
| I disagree. The highly specialized monitoring equipment
| and dual high gains antennas and the plethora of other
| bits and pieces are NOT required to run a "a meeting" or
| a "netflix stream". A phone with a sim card usually
| suffice. All this frivolous spending points out that this
| is a hobby. Nothing wrong with having hobbies, of course,
| but the spending is not compatible with the definition of
| minimalism.
|
| A minimalist online meeting is an IRC connection over 3G.
| FooBarBizBazz wrote:
| Pfft. Mahavira didn't even have clothes.
| FooBarBizBazz wrote:
| Admittedly a low-effort post, and too late to delete, but
| just to explain, this whole idea of having a single bowl
| (used to collect alms) is a thing in monastic/ascetic
| traditions. Which I always get the sense minimalism is
| vaguely inspired by. Anyway, whatever, it was off-topic.
| lucideer wrote:
| Given the size of cutlery, coupled with the fact that
| multiple bowls will fit inside eachother, is this
| overcompensation for an extreme maximalist lifestyle on the
| electronics side?
| wrycoder wrote:
| Physical misanthropy FTW
| lucideer wrote:
| Well there's nothing necessarily wrong with maximalism
| per se, it's just the misrepresenting was a bit odd
| LurkingPenguin wrote:
| > I have a single bowl, fork and knife.
|
| And soon 7 (!!!) internet links! Anyway, I just find it
| interesting how individuals (including myself) describe
| themselves and rationalize their descriptions.
| MayeulC wrote:
| That's cognitive dissonance
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance
|
| It's normal to a point :)
| panzagl wrote:
| "Dad, can I use the bowl today?"
| slumpt_ wrote:
| This definitely sounds like a rough experience for the
| kids, practically and socially.
| sparcpile wrote:
| For the wireless connections listed (Telstra, Opus, and
| Vodaphone), I do wonder how much of this are on the same physical
| tower and network. Certain parts of this multi-home connection
| would be running off the same physical network due to how
| wireless providers provision out their towers. They will share
| physical space on a tower and even an underlying fiber run out to
| the local POP.
|
| This may be a situation of someone being too clever by half.
| rozenmd wrote:
| In Australia - Telstra, Optus, and Vodafone maintain their own
| independent mobile networks & equipment (Telstra having the
| most coverage in rural areas).
|
| If the author used 3 MVNOs from the same network, _then_ it 'd
| be silly.
| DavidVoid wrote:
| Telstra, Optus, and Vodafone might share the same physical
| tower though (while using different antennas and RRUs). But
| that's only an issue if there are severe interference issues
| there (on all the bands the author is connecting to) or if
| the tower itself suffers some catastrophic damage.
| jjeaff wrote:
| As long as the bottleneck isn't the fiber coming into the
| tower, then I don't see the issue. It could easily be that one
| company's equipment is over provisioned and overloaded while
| the other is fine.
| barbazoo wrote:
| Impressive setup. As someone who has lived in a van for a little
| bit, I'd be terrified of that van getting stolen or even just
| equipment getting stolen off the roof, especially in cities. I
| wouldn't want to leave the van much.
| ghuntley wrote:
| Theft is indeed a concern. It's not something I talk publically
| about but if you look closely at the header image you'll see
| some clues about one of the mitigations. Footage is backed up
| offsite.
| kingforaday wrote:
| I have been using the following for the last six (6) months in
| the USA and it has been "just okay": - Pepwave
| Max Transit Duo Cat12 - Poynting 7 in 1 Omnidirectional
| Antenna
|
| Allows two active cellular connections, but has four (4) sim
| slots (2 are reserved for hot standby). I have them filled with 2
| T-Mobile (100GB/month plan), 1 ATT (50GB/month plan), and 1
| Verizon (50GB/month plan).
|
| Along side that, I have a T-Mobile Inseego 5G M2000 Hotspot with
| a 100GB/month plan). This sometimes gets better performance than
| the externally mounted antenna and Pepwave Cellular connections.
| The pep wave does allow the use of Wireless-WAN, so I connect to
| the hotspot from the Pepwave's WWAN and can then have three
| active bonded connections.
|
| This is being used in a travel trailer as I tour the country with
| my family. The result is just okay meaning it doesn't blow me
| away, but it does work. Everywhere I have been so far, I have
| been able to get connected, largely without doing a thing, and
| get to work.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Can this setup migrate a video call from one link to another
| without a lost frame or glitch?
|
| So far, nearly every redundant link I've found seems to lead to
| bugs and glitches all round when failover actually happens.
| AlexGizis wrote:
| Alex from Speedify here. Yes, we make a multi-path VPN tunnel,
| so that calls can be shifted from one link to another without
| glitches (apps see the same IP address the whole time). To make
| this work, we do some smart things like retransmit packets that
| were just sent on the failed link, on the still-working link
| since they were likely to have been lost.
| pgrote wrote:
| When Windows NT released ISDN bonding it seemed magical.
|
| It was short lived magic as DSL came along. lol
|
| I had no idea bonding was still a thing.
| nickthemagicman wrote:
| This is inspiring. As a Van life person myself without much
| money.
|
| Any guidance you could give on the most bang for your buck way to
| get internet?
|
| Just a hotspot?
| turtlebits wrote:
| I would recommend EasyTether on an Android phone. It bypasses
| hotspot specific data limits.
|
| I use a Pi running Easytether connected to a 5G phone, with a
| travel wifi router connected to the Pi over ethernet. Runs my
| off-grid internet + security cameras.
| ghuntley wrote:
| Go for the backpack route (in the blogpost). Speedify + iPad
| (or Phone) with LTE + Hotspot.
| nickthemagicman wrote:
| Awesome!
|
| Did not know about the Nighthawks!
|
| Those are frickin sweet!
|
| Thanks.
| [deleted]
| H8crilA wrote:
| How does the "redundant" mode work? You cannot just double TCP
| packets as within that protocol it's a sign of congestion, it
| will drastically reduce the throughput. Does this include VPN-ing
| through some service that can understand duplicates and clean
| them up?
| jmuguy wrote:
| Maybe it determines whatever route is faster when talking to a
| specific host for the first time, or every so often, and then
| sticks to that route for that specific host?
| sgtnoodle wrote:
| All the connections are likely being used to talk to the same
| speedify server. Only once the packets make it to that server
| do they get forwarded to the destination.
| stefan_ wrote:
| As someone mentioned you can round-robin connections, but then
| you don't get failover (without interruption, anyway).
|
| What I think most of these solutions do is use MPTCP or a
| custom homebrew protocol to a server that then holds the actual
| TCP connection you want. So a slightly more complicated VPN.
| There is an open source project for this:
|
| https://www.openmptcprouter.com/
| thrashh wrote:
| OP is using a commercial VPN that does this.
|
| There's more than one choice in the space.
| hcarrega wrote:
| wich one??
| thrashh wrote:
| Speedify (it's in the article...)
|
| Peplink also has their own but it's geared towards
| businesses and is pricey.
| 0xffff2 wrote:
| >Does this include VPN-ing through some service that can
| understand duplicates and clean them up?
|
| Based on other comments here, I think that's exactly what
| Speedify is.
| Tepix wrote:
| OK, i get what he's doing and it's cool, however i then stumbled
| over this:
|
| > Yes, this setup is overkill but having functioning internet is
| especially important _when going camping with young kids._
|
| No, it's not. 100% no.
| dreyfan wrote:
| I remember when HN used to discuss cool technology hacks and
| not incessant hand-wringing about the plague of internet-
| connected children at campgrounds or the deluge of fraudulent
| handwriting in the postal system.
| bumby wrote:
| I mean, as a technology minded forum, isn't it also the place
| to discuss the downsides of tech as well?
| [deleted]
| rytis wrote:
| Well, I think he's mostly doing that, because he is actually
| working remotely, while camping:
|
| > If you are going to work remotely anywhere in Australia from
| a van, you need damn good internet.
|
| In that context it may not be an overkill. If you're 2-3 days
| away from nearest wifi enabled spot, then having a solid backup
| strategy might be a good idea...
| chromanoid wrote:
| Yea, I just thought "wat"?
| anotherBreeder wrote:
| Are you surprised by the entitlement of parents? I used to be,
| but no longer.
| ghuntley wrote:
| It is for my family. It may not be for yours. When they reach
| the age where they have their own cellphones / social media
| media then it's different. Freshly popped popcorn from the
| microwave + salt + butter and introducing kiddos to "the dish"
| movie after _they have been to the actual dish_ is A+ and
| highly recommend.
| est31 wrote:
| You don't internet for that. The movie is available on DVD as
| well as Blu-Ray.
| ghuntley wrote:
| Answered here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28593998
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| The more modern answer would be to download ahead of
| time.
| ghuntley wrote:
| That assumes I'm departing from a house? This is my
| house.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Yes, meant to add that if folks are misunderstanding,
| perhaps you could clarify. (But I was not yet awake.)
|
| From the text however, its not clear how often the kids
| are around. Maybe they could benefit from some downtime,
| maybe not. Maybe it is their link to school and would
| therefore be even... crucial. In absence of info people
| tend to speculate. ;-)
|
| Also, I have a stash of important movies that I keep for
| posterity. Even at a normal home with reliable internet.
| I don't want to pay for rental every single time, or have
| them go off streaming at random as they so often do.
| You'd be surprised what can fit on an SD card or micro
| usb flash these days.
| ghuntley wrote:
| > its not clear how often the kids are around
|
| Deliberately so, this information is private and
| personal. Especially right now due to lockdowns in
| Australia. I have publically shared this recently because
| enough is enough:
|
| https://twitter.com/GeoffreyHuntley/status/14335483401221
| 857...
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Sorry, not trying to pierce your privacy, it was merely a
| factor on the discussion. Also, I don't use twitter for
| various reasons, so couldn't read the blurb there.
| msh wrote:
| How much dvd storage do you have in a van?
| est31 wrote:
| Enough to take one DVD with you plus a USB based drive.
| It's not that much space. And depending on your
| jurisdiction, it might even be legal to rip a DVD and
| take the ripped version with you for the trip on say a
| tablet's flash storage. No need for the internet.
| msh wrote:
| But why bother? Its easier to bring some internet.
| goda90 wrote:
| I don't have young kids myself, but I feel like if you are
| camping for long enough(like if you live in a van), it becomes
| less of a "escape the modern comforts to reset" kind of deal,
| and you'll want to start blending in modern parts of life.
| ghuntley wrote:
| BINGO.
| m0ngr31 wrote:
| Maybe for a weekend trip or just an overnight camping trip
| sure. But when your life is living in the camper you need
| internet.
| Retric wrote:
| Young kids get over poor or no internet, but it's not
| instantaneous. It's part of that whole actually being a child
| thing rather than simply childish behavior.
| eu wrote:
| Can confirm. At 8pm every evening a cron job adds a few
| firewall rules that block a few devices in the house. Much
| better than arguing w/ the little one about stopping what
| they were doing and getting ready for bed.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| OP lives in Australia. Which means that functioning
| telecommunication is an absolute _must_ given the number of
| living lethal things that are out to kill you.
|
| For what it's worth it's interesting (but _possibly_ explained
| by the ridiculous cost of anything not SpaceX) OP doesn 't have
| a satellite internet uplink too.
| chrisbroadfoot wrote:
| That's just what we Australians like you to think. Drop bears
| are actually not very common.
| danielheath wrote:
| Nothing is out to kill you. It might do it by accident, or if
| you startle it by trying to use a toilet or wear your shoes,
| but there's no malice in it.
| ghuntley wrote:
| [straya] The van has a toilet so toilet spiders don't kill
| me or the kids https://ghuntley.com/toilets
| temp8964 wrote:
| Fixed: Having NO internet is especially important when going
| camping with young kids.
| ghuntley wrote:
| My "camping" is "your living" but in nature instead of being
| a slave to a circa $912,382 home loan in Sydney, Australia.
| When I want to go "your camping" I house-sit or stay at
| friends houses.
|
| https://ghuntley.com/how-long/
| npteljes wrote:
| "This post is for newsletter subscribers only"
| ghuntley wrote:
| Indeed
| pengaru wrote:
| > indeed (and it's worth it)
|
| thanks for the spam
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| Yikes. I was with you until this comment. It may be worth
| it but you're not likely to get a lot of support with
| that level of... hutzpah.
| reedf1 wrote:
| On my reading I thought - no need to justify this obviously
| cool project! I think sometimes people feel the need to have a
| good reason to do something, even when they are doing it
| because it's just intrinsically awesome. I've totally
| overengineered my home network, and have spent more than I
| probably should have, but I don't think it's a waste at all
| because there is something deeply satisfying about it. But when
| I defend my purchases to others I am tempted to say, "I need
| good internet for work", or "we run many IoT devices" and those
| things are true, but could have been completed with much less
| time, money and effort.
| seanw444 wrote:
| It's a learning experience, and a hobby. And there's
| absolutely nothing wrong with finding joy in that, and
| absolutely no reason to have to explain it to others, because
| you're likely the only person who gets it.
| wpietri wrote:
| For sure. We doing a camping family reunion every year at a
| site with no service and it's great. Camping for me is about
| particular and very useful kind of giving up. We've done things
| at that reunion together that never would have happened if kids
| (or adults) could wander off with their devices. E.g., one year
| I brought many cheap copies of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and
| over two nights we did a firelight readthrough. Many of the
| kids were suspicious at first and then really got into it.
| rektide wrote:
| Still using a Alfa AWUS036ACH for a wireless connection: 802.11ac
| wave1 from 2015.
|
| There's simply nothing better available, in 6 years of
| intervening time.
|
| This world would be so so much more awesome if there were some
| really really good USB wifi adapters. This is yet another further
| leap, but I also think of all the guides to turning the RPi into
| an access point, via usb adapters: it starts out working fairly
| well, but the hardware either has hard maximum client limits or
| just fails to work well once you get to half a dozen devices.
| Even if you have something like PCIe or M.2 expandability,
| options are still extremely limited, & availability is incredibly
| poor.
| ghuntley wrote:
| Alfa AWUS036ACH is a slapping good WiFi adapter. It's mounted
| in my roof and I run a 10m USB extension cable from the roof to
| the network rack.
| rektide wrote:
| I'm a huge fan of Alfa gear, for a long time. They do an
| amazingly good job.
|
| AWUS036ACH is one of Alfa's most up to date USB cards. It is,
| however based off an RTL8812AU chipset[1], which is 8 years
| old now[2]. I'd love at least to have a good client chipset &
| equipment that supports WiFi6 that has good RF performance. I
| still think the market is overly structured & segmented. No
| one makes AP-class chips for USB, but to be honest I really
| think they could & should & that it'd be exceptionally useful
| & good. But no one dares to threaten the AP market like that.
|
| Thankfully in wifi, RF engineering & antennas count for a
| huge amount. You still have great gear. But it does hurt me
| to see what seems like rampant tech-stagnation & neglect, of
| such a vital, interesting, basic part of modern communication
| technology: our wireless systems.
|
| [1] https://wikidevi.wi-cat.ru/ALFA_Network_AWUS036ACH
|
| [2] https://github.com/lwfinger/rtl8812au#purpose
| r0m4n0 wrote:
| Just to share my own setup, I've been living in a van for the
| past year. I develop mostly via SSH and RDP so I found that any
| connection was important and total bandwidth wasn't the highest
| priority. Also in the US, way better coverage of 4g. Because of
| that invested fully in 4g and not at all in 5g.
|
| * 11 in 1 Panorama External Antenna (LG-IN2447) around $500. 4
| internal cradlepoint antennas, see photo below. In retrospect
| would not have invested so heavily in wifi antennas and bought
| more 4g. I also added a little antenna lifter to make sure it has
| line of site of all cell towers, I wanted it to be the highest
| point on my sprinter van roof.
|
| * Cradlepoint IBR1700 1200M-B around $900 on ebay. Runs on 12
| volt, a ton of antenna ports has 1 internal modem that supports
| big US carriers, came with an additional modem that does the same
| for carrier aggregation. A bunch of different ways to configure
| the router to aggregate links, mostly I switch back and forth
| manually, I found that if there was an issue it would be obvious
| and I could just switch the link. Cradlepoint software wouldn't
| handle issues and signal strength that well. Honestly one carrier
| has been plenty good for me though and between ATT and Verizon, I
| only have issues in the national parks where there are cell dead
| zones.
|
| * Verizon and ATT 4g cell plans. I added 1 line on my family plan
| for Verizon and the same with a friends family plan with ATT for
| $20 a month each. Took some phone calls into support to get it to
| work but after some escalations in the support chain I have
| unlimited 4g data. Total bill is around $50 a month.
|
| * Still room to add more sim cards and more antennas. It honestly
| works great though, get 20-150 mbps basically everywhere.
|
| Photo of my antenna and cradlepoint router/modem:
| https://imgur.com/a/MOdJkT8
| tristor wrote:
| That sounds really similar to the setup I made for my parent's
| RV. Cradlepoint devices are really fantastic for what they do.
| If you set it up correctly, you can also use it to bridge WiFi,
| so all the devices internally only ever connect to the WiFi
| from the Cradlepoint and when you can you can park near a
| public WiFi hotspot and bridge it. This can often be faster or
| more reliable than 4G, depending on your location, or in their
| case if you pay for RV park premium WiFi.
|
| We found that Verizon had very good coverage of 4G/LTE,
| especially in areas that were unlikely to be covered by other
| providers. AT&T was a good backup. T-Mobile was not, even
| though it was cheaper, coverage off the Interstate or in
| sparser populated areas was pretty bad. We also found how much
| throughput was needed to handle my dad's work remotely and set
| an upward limit on throughput on the Cradlepoint so we would
| overwhelm any WiFi networks we used as a courtesy to others,
| which ended up being around 10Mbps. Honestly, if you could just
| get 10Mbps nationwide without interruption, I think it would
| make a huge difference in the possibilities of remote work and
| rural technology.
|
| Love the photos, we also used the IBR1700. I set it up with
| NetCloud though with an active license from Cradlepoint (and
| bought new) so I could help my parents remotely administrate it
| while they were traveling.
|
| Have you tried satellite internet with the rooftop dishes that
| have electronically controlled seeking / adjustments? It was
| another thing we considered but hadn't done yet, but once
| Starlink becomes more widely available would be worth a
| consideration.
| r0m4n0 wrote:
| Yes exactly! The wifi bridge mode of the Cradlepoint is super
| interesting. One major drawback I've found in practice is
| that if the campground/public wifi network has a splash page,
| I basically can't get it to work. It takes some serious
| troubleshooting to get setup even when everything should be
| straightforward and obvious sometimes too. Cannot beat the
| few instances where I got massive bandwidth off of a terrible
| wifi connection though. No wonder the campground wifis always
| seem to be terrible with direct connect normal devices :)
|
| I've been rather lazy the last 6 months and don't even bother
| with wifi bridging and just rely on Verizon as primary and
| ATT as backup.
|
| Good call on managing their setup via NetCloud, it is rather
| nifty. My license expired a few months ago and I can no
| longer edit any of the settings so it's just locked in on
| cruise control with the last settings I had saved.
|
| Haven't tried any satellite link options, 4g has been too
| cheap and decent for me to explore other options personally.
| I am on the waitlist for Starlink but from what I have
| researched, the current box is extremely power hungry (even
| if you get around the coverage limitations that apparently
| will be lifted soon). At a campsite I could see that being a
| great option though. In the next 5-10 years I think we could
| see some serious improvements on satellite
| didntknowya wrote:
| is there some kind of router that can combine connections to
| increase total bandwidth?
| ghuntley wrote:
| Nice, thanks for sharing. Since you mentioned SSH - make sure
| you use MOSH. If using an iPad https://blink.sh/ is an absolute
| gem.
| etherael wrote:
| It has been my dream for decades to do exactly this on a sailboat
| at sea. With providers like Starlink it might be finally getting
| close to time to pull the trigger.
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| A bit of overkill ???.
|
| I have backup LTE dongle if my fibre conks out but it happened a
| few times last year - we had 2 hourly power cuts so the CPE
| device would send a DHCP request when it rebooted.
|
| The local POP DHCP server then got flooded with DHCP requests so
| no connectivity but it was addressed by the provider - also added
| a battery to CPE as well.
| spiffytech wrote:
| The article is about living out of a camper van, where fiber
| isn't an option.
|
| I lived and worked remotely out of an RV in 2012. There's
| really no such thing as overkill when you can't have a hardline
| internet connection but need internet to do your job. Though
| Starlink may change that.
|
| When I was doing it, I had a T-Mobile unlimited cell plan, a
| Verizon hotspot, and I'd go into town to find wifi. It still
| wasn't enough to feel like I could count on internet being
| there.
|
| While travelling, it's easy to not have quality cell signal (or
| any signal). "Unlimited" plans never mean "you're allowed to
| push 90GB/mo through this". Public wifi is hard to track down,
| has highly variable quality, and you're always working in
| Starbucks instead of at your desk with your equipment. If you
| have to stay at an RV park, the costs are astronomical enough
| that you save money by parking out of town, where the cell
| signal is worse. Satellite offerings are extremely expensive
| (pre-Starlink, at least), and don't work if you can't get clear
| line-of-sight to the satellite.
|
| If I'd been making more money at the time, I absolutely would
| have invested more in my internet access. And it sounds like
| today this stuff has more-numerous and better-documented
| solutions than when I was doing it.
|
| It was easily worth the trouble to live that way for a while.
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| Point taken.
| chrisbroadfoot wrote:
| > In the future, I intend to sell internet access via the UniFi
| Captive Portal
|
| I'm pretty sure Telstra, Optus, Vodafone disallow reselling.
| m0ngr31 wrote:
| This is a pretty impressive setup. Recently I lived in an RV for
| a year and my setup was much more janky than this...
|
| Basically consisted of a gl.inet router that I plugged in a old
| Moto X4. This allowed me to get wifi from whichever campsite we
| stayed at (always garbage) and then I would pay for 100GB from
| Cricket and T-Mobile. I would swap sims when I would run out of
| data about half way through the month.
|
| Then I discovered I could get unlimited data on Cricket with a
| regular phone plan if I changed the TTL on the router. Ended up
| being the most stable option for the last few months.
| cloudify wrote:
| that's quite interesting, do you mind elaborating on your last
| sentence? How does that work?
| m0ngr31 wrote:
| I setup a firewall rule in openwrt that said anything coming
| over USB needed to set the TTL to 65 so it looked like the
| data was coming from the phone itself and not from the
| tether.
|
| IIRC, on the plan I was using on Cricket, I would get
| unlimited data + 15GB of tether. This just byapssed that
| limit.
|
| I think they can almost figure it out because if I tried to
| tether without the TTL trick, data wouldn't work. So I'm
| guessing it still counted the data I was using against some
| kind of cap?
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| I'll admit I don't know much about networking, but what's
| special about 65?
| m0ngr31 wrote:
| That's the TTL that some carriers use from the phone. So
| once it hits the router it goes down - meaning the
| carrier knows you're tethering. Setting it to back to 65
| on the router makes it harder for the carrier to detect.
| redfern314 wrote:
| Close, but it's a little bit different than how you
| describe it. The router is connected between the phone
| and the other devices in this user's scenario. The
| default TTL on Linux and Android is 64. If you tether,
| the packet will go through your phone and have its TTL
| decremented to 63 (the phone is a gateway). Then when it
| arrives at the cell tower with a lower TTL, they know
| you're tethering and drop the packet.
|
| If you set it to 65 on your host device or router, it
| will be decremented to 64 on the phone - and is now hard
| to distinguish from real traffic from the phone.
| ayewo wrote:
| I was bit confused while trying to digest the TTL hack up
| thread, but your explanation completed cleared up my
| confusion, so thank you for that.
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| So 65 isn't necessarily the correct value, but whatever
| the phone's default is?
| evgen wrote:
| You want it to be one more than the value the phone uses
| as its default. Then when the packet arrives at the phone
| via the tether its TTL is decremented and it is passed
| out to the tower. Tower sees a packet with a TTL that it
| is expecting and assumes it is phone data.
| thrashh wrote:
| On Android, there are apps that you can install that do
| this for you.
|
| I used to use them a lot when I was traveling with my
| laptop a few years ago and it always worked great.
| daemoens wrote:
| Can you mention some? I've been having an issue with my
| phone having its hotspot limited to under 1mbps.
| thrashh wrote:
| I switched to iPhone and can't even remember the name of
| the app anymore, sorry
|
| But the good news is that I got it from the Play Store
| back then and you didn't even need to jailbreak.
| jjeaff wrote:
| Years ago, I did this with my jailbroken iphone 3gs. When
| visiting lots of websites, it would serve up the mobile
| version, so I assumed that the app was somehow modifying
| request headers to look like a phone request. I guess not
| as many sites used TLS back then.
| walterbell wrote:
| With some carriers, it can bypass tethering quotas, appearing
| as if usage is originating from the "phone".
| fossuser wrote:
| Visible is a Verizon subsidiary with unlimited everything for
| $25/month with "Party Pay" and no contract.
|
| You can tether with it and the only trade off is that you get
| deprioritized first in crowded environments.
|
| There's also no store, but I see that as an improvement.
| m0ngr31 wrote:
| That was the first one I tried, but I was getting data speeds
| of about .1 Mbps
| k3oni wrote:
| Same here, tried it on out last time out with the travel
| trailer. Canceled the plan after we got back home as it was
| terrible, and not to speak that we were in areas where it
| should have run flawless. Ended up using my main phone's
| connection for some of the work i had to do.
| fossuser wrote:
| Interesting - must be regional I guess, I get good speeds
| where I use it.
| mdasen wrote:
| Visible's tethering is limited to 5Mbps (according to their
| pricing page). Have you been getting more than 5Mbps
| tethering? Do you do anything to get around tethering speed
| limits?
|
| Deprioritization can be hard in some areas. Verizon has the
| most customers and the least spectrum at the moment.
| fossuser wrote:
| I think I've gotten more than 5mbps (or at least was for a
| time) - I haven't done anything, but I might be wrong about
| this (I don't rely on tethering most of the time so haven't
| noticed).
|
| IIRC a long time ago all of Visible's data speed was capped
| at 5mbps and that was the 'tradeoff' of the low cost
| service in addition to deprioritization. They eventually
| dropped that cap, but it's possible it still exists for
| tethering.
|
| I will plug Starlink for those that can get it though - not
| mobile yet, but we went from a crappy calnet connection to
| a stable 50+ sometimes 150+ mbps connection. When they get
| it working across cells (which Musk tweeted interest about)
| it'd be a pretty sweet option for an RV. If you're out in
| the boonies though and looking for stable home internet, it
| can't be beat (as long as you have a clear view of the
| sky).
| turtlebits wrote:
| Are there any solutions for dealing with xfinity hotspots which
| are in range to join, but may not have internet access?
|
| I'd like to leverage the open access (as a Comcast subscriber),
| but I stopped auto joining the networks as sometimes with 2-3
| bars of signal, there is no internet.
|
| I already have a Pi connected to 5G phone and it would be great
| to be able to utilitize the hotspot as well.
| AlexGizis wrote:
| Actually Speedify on your phone is pretty good for that. If the
| hotspot doesn't work, it fails over to the LTE automatically so
| the bad hotspots never knock you offline.
| wjamesg wrote:
| This is cool
| sgtnoodle wrote:
| You may see a material improvement in wifi usability if you can
| figure out a way to use an Intel or Qualcomm wifi chipset over
| the Alfa, aka Realtek chipset. You probably need an M.2 slot
| somewhere though.
|
| Not every wifi radio is made the same. In particular, they seem
| to cope with the ambiguity of received packet collisions
| differently, and Realtek and Mediatek receivers don't do as well.
| davb wrote:
| OT/meta, but I love those handwritten style diagrams. If the
| author notices this, I'd be interested to know how he made them.
| Ancapistani wrote:
| You'd probably like the style of the diagrams created by Julia
| Evans, then: https://jvns.ca/
|
| I've followed her blog for years at this point mostly because I
| enjoy her diagrams and pretty much always learn something from
| the way she presents information.
| dislick wrote:
| I think they've been made with https://excalidraw.com
| ghuntley wrote:
| They are indeed.
|
| https://excalidraw.com/#json=4810888066367488,n9qcxzAN-
| ynr7k...
| f3lds wrote:
| Running all of that separate network equipment seems particularly
| power hungry when not plugged into a campsite.
|
| I wonder why the author didn't consider a Peplink router which
| can handle redundant cellular/wifi connections out of the box.
| That's how I recreate a setup akin to this while I'm on the road
| in a single device.
|
| Not to say this isn't awesome as is and I'd love an excuse to
| install a full Ubiquiti stack in my own camper!
| ghuntley wrote:
| Oh, this _seriously_ chews power. I need to do a blogpost up
| about the eletrical system that makes it all possible. Leave
| your digits at https://ghuntley.com/newsletter to be notified
| when it ships. I looked into teltonika (ie https://teltonika-
| networks.com/product/rut950/ ) but stopped because the modems
| are Cat4 (similar story with Microtik).
| Integer wrote:
| FYI, Teltonika RUTX14 has CAT12.
| ghuntley wrote:
| Cheers. If anyone at Teltonika wants to send me a RUTX14
| I'd love to try it out.
| fouric wrote:
| Care to give us a sneak peak - say, what your typical power
| draw is like? :)
|
| I'm particularly interested in this topic because I've been
| thinking about power a lot after the Texas blackouts
| (considering building a bike generator so I can have power in
| case of a disaster like that one).
| conk wrote:
| Why did you opt for a UDM-Pro instead of virtualizing the
| router on exsi? It would save space and power over running
| another appliance.
| IronWolve wrote:
| While I'm waiting in queue for my starlink since last year, I
| went and got a mofi with directional antennas and a 12 foot pool.
| Its not fast at the rural cabin, but I can stream 480p yt, and
| ssh. And its always on.
|
| I have a grandfathered unlimited wireless account, so I just
| ordered a another sim card. The mofi changes the network settings
| so data looks like a phone not a tethered device.
|
| I bought a 4g router, they have 5G but its 2x the cost, but seems
| to cover all the bands, and does channel aggregation.
|
| https://mofinetwork.com/
| rcMgD2BwE72F wrote:
| What is their carbon footprint? What % of the energy consumed
| (for Internet but also driving) comes from the solar panel vs
| ICE? It's nice to live in the nature, but is it ruining it?
| ghuntley wrote:
| It's all solar.
| Freestyler_3 wrote:
| How much WP you got on there? edit: just read you got 3*350wp
| While that is plenty for your computer and routing, do you
| have any other electrical devices on board? You have a tour
| of the vans inside?
| ghuntley wrote:
| Tour of the final kitout is coming; leave your digits at
| https://ghuntley.com/newsletter
|
| Fridge, Freezer, Electric Blanket, Electric Hotwater, 12v
| Oven, Microwave, Instapot, Telephony Kit (blog post),
| Gaming Computer and Xbox.
| Kayou wrote:
| Sure enough for the power consumption of the modems, but I
| don't think the 5G networks are solar powered in Australia.
| Using multiple networks at the same time will use more power
| than using only one.
| Reason077 wrote:
| Does a 5G/4G tower consume more energy when one extra
| device is connected to it (for redundancy), but not
| actually transferring data? The answer might be yes, but
| it'd be very marginal.
| anfractuosity wrote:
| Would it be possible to achieve something like Speedify yourself
| by routing traffic from your multiple interfaces to/from a VPS
| using Linux?
| goodpoint wrote:
| Yes, it's very possible.
|
| Also you can simply use multiple uplinks without VPS and it
| provides better latency. The drawback is that you can't
| failover/balance protocols that use only one connection. Mosh
| and browsing work well tho.
| bvm wrote:
| I have tried Speedify (not with such an impressive setup) on
| multiple 4g connections (different towers, different providers)
| and didn't see much, or indeed any, throughput bump. So I sort of
| gave up, because ~20mbps is surprisingly livable-with. I would
| definitely be interested in trying again, especially with a
| starlink + 4g + crap-uk-rural-adsl.
|
| I did also once have to manage one of those Mushroom bonding
| things and....never again, please.
| shkkmo wrote:
| My use case was multiplexing poor wifi in central american
| hostels with poor cellular data to get a single stable
| connection. I never tried to get faster speeds but only to
| improve connection stability by reducing packet loss.
| bvm wrote:
| did it work well for you?
| shkkmo wrote:
| It did, I was able to get sufficiently stable connections
| to do work calls when neither connection was reliable
| enough alone.
| ajvs wrote:
| Speedify is very intriguing. Does anybody know of an open-source
| alternative?
| mattmatt wrote:
| This is what you're looking for-
| https://www.openmptcprouter.com/
| chinathrow wrote:
| I remember channel bonding from my ISDN times and it made sense
| since both channels led to the same ISP over the same ISDN
| card/phone line.
|
| How does channel bonding work across multiple ISPs/NICs?
|
| Edit: This seem to be it:
| https://speedify.com/blog/featured/speedify-protocol-mptcp-d...
|
| "The way Speedify used to work is it opened one TCP socket over
| each Internet connection it used - e.g. one TCP socket over Wi-Fi
| / cellular / wired Ethernet / etc. With the new protocol,
| Speedify opens up multiple sockets over each connection (for
| example 8) - 8 over Wi-Fi / cellular / wired Ethernet / etc."
|
| That seems a bit wasteful towards the server destinations.
| phh wrote:
| The 8 sockets are opened only towards speedify "VPN" server.
| Once you're out of speedify network, you only have one standard
| TCP connection, so destination server only sees one connection
| as expected.
| chinathrow wrote:
| Thanks for the clarification, I didn't know that Speedify
| also tunnels every packet through their servers first but it
| makes now sense to me.
| uKVZe85V wrote:
| On top of this plethora of technology and various providers,
| doesn't bonding all links to a single solution provider
| (Speedify) create a single point of failure?
|
| From https://speedify.com/features/
|
| > What kinds of servers do you have? > We use a combination of
| dedicated and virtual servers, depending on location and
| scalability needs. All of our servers have at least 1 Gbps
| network access and are optimized for bandwidth intensive usage
| such as live streaming, video conferencing or online gaming.
|
| Let's assume the best case, where Speedify implements this as
| swarms of redundant servers, so that even if some servers or
| datacenters are down it may continue to work.
|
| I could not find in the article any mention of disabling Speedify
| and falling back to using a single provider, or a local bonding
| solution like described on https://wiki.debian.org/Bonding .
|
| Isn't speedify still a "single point of failure", in the sense
| that any incident with Speedify (e.g. accounting glitch of any
| kind) may cause the whole contraption to fall like a house of
| cards?
| goodpoint wrote:
| Apart from the SPOF, speedify introduces additional latency
| because you have to bounce through their servers.
|
| Most of the time you can simply route traffic through multiple
| uplinks without bonding.
| dmurray wrote:
| Having a single point of failure here might be OK, if Speedify
| is so much more reliable than the other solutions (4G wireless
| in potentially remote areas). Though yeah, I'd like to see an
| option to failover to a single provider, because it's
| conceptually so easy to add.
| IshKebab wrote:
| If you're trying to get internet in a van in rural Australia,
| the chances of Speedify going down are completely insignificant
| compared to more basic things like not having phone signal.
| ghuntley wrote:
| Yes:
|
| 1. https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2020-05-01/rural-
| residents...
|
| 2. https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2020/05/telstra-sms-over-wifi-
| lau...
|
| 3. https://www.itnews.com.au/news/experts-call-for-rethink-
| of-c...
| ghuntley wrote:
| The UniFi Dream Machine Pro has a backup WAN link. I plug my
| backpack nighthawk LTE router into it when it is not in my
| backpack. If speedify fails, it falls over automatically.
| AlexGizis wrote:
| Alex from Speedify here. Yes, exactly, we have swarms of
| redundant servers. The servers are very reliable, but in case
| of failure, you're on another server in 30 seconds.
|
| Your comment makes me realize we may need more options on what
| to do when the connection fails. Security-types had us add a
| "kill switch" to make sure traffic _couldn 't_ get out when the
| encrypted tunnel fails. But if you don't care about that,
| another option to _guarantee_ it would go right out, would make
| sense too.
| mithro wrote:
| Does Speedify have an open source client?
|
| I'd be interested in paying for the service but not willing
| to run closed source software locally and then send all my
| traffic to it.
| ghuntley wrote:
| Use Speedify as the underlay network then run a self-hosted
| VPN on top (configure in the UniFi Dream Machine Pro). :)
| sgtnoodle wrote:
| just from reading the article, it sounds like speedify
| does a lot of packet inspection to prioritize traffic.
| Wouldn't a VPN negate that?
| AlexGizis wrote:
| That works, and has been done before. It can be confusing
| to run Speedify and the VPN client on the same box, but
| if there's a Speedify router box with the internet, and
| another box with the VPN client, it should just work.
| AlexGizis wrote:
| Not at this point, sorry.
| Femur wrote:
| Hey Alex,
|
| Just wanted to drop in this thread and let you know I think
| you have an awesome product and I have been happily using
| speedify for almost a year now. I hope you keep up the great
| work and are able to keep growing!
| wyldfire wrote:
| Geoff: some of the photographs have blur spots to conceal
| something you don't want to be public. Just an FYI that malicious
| attackers could bypass this blur in some cases by starting with a
| generated version of the 'before' content and blurring it and
| iterating different inputs until it matches your blurred photo.
| This matters for things like a document with an account number or
| some other secret. It may not matter much for your network
| adapters (mac addresses, maybe?). Just a heads up.
| germinalphrase wrote:
| Is there a standard "good enough" alternative solution?
| VMG wrote:
| black boxes
| wyldfire wrote:
| Anything opaque would work. But aesthetically that's not
| always preferable. Maybe an opaque central region with
| blended borders would be a good balance.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| I black out all sensitive regions in magenta, blur any bits
| I suspect might have reflections (blacking them out if I
| can _see_ that there 's actually something there), then
| copy from elsewhere in the image to get the aesthetics
| right, _then_ blur to hide the fact I copied stuff.
| ghuntley wrote:
| Thanks wyldfire; the photos that are blurred are the
| identifiers of my RIPE atlas nodes. It's not a big issue if
| they become public knowledge. Fully aware of attack vectors
| related to image bluring.
| rozularen wrote:
| would adding a black stripe over instead be better?
| vxNsr wrote:
| I think so. If you don't like the way that looks
| aesthetically, I've overlaid the text with a white background
| and more text and blurred that, so you get the same blurred
| effect but you're blurring nothing important.
| DoctorOW wrote:
| Yes, making sure that the file format you picked doesn't
| support layers (or at least that those layers are flattened)
| that mistake bit the New York Times a while ago.
| vxNsr wrote:
| Oh I always thought the attack vector was reverse engineering
| the blur algorithm, interesting that there's another method.
| yathern wrote:
| You can't reverse a typical blur algorithmically, since it
| destroys information. You can only guess at the information
| that was there before the blur, and work from there.
|
| The stronger the blur intensity, the amount of possible
| starting states to get to that blur increases exponentially.
| If you blur enough, every pixel is the same color, which
| obviously has destroyed all information.
|
| But if I know that the blurred content is a social security
| code written in 12pt Times New Roman - I can perform a blur
| operation on a million SSNs, and see which one matches most
| closely to the mess I have on the screen. It's easier with
| bar codes.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| > _If you blur enough, every pixel is the same color, which
| obviously has destroyed all information._
|
| Not true. The ASCII art people have sorted characters by
| their "shade"; if you know the foreground and background
| colour of a letter, and you know the single colour of pixel
| it blurs to, you can still work out what the letter was.
|
| Blurring discards _some_ information and obfuscates _other_
| information, but really, given how easy it is to reverse-
| engineer such things, we should measure the number of bits
| of information remaining.
|
| If information in image + information about image > bits of
| information in sensitive data, then in _theory_ you can
| recover the data.
|
| So simply deleting the data from the image (e.g. blacking
| it out, removing reflections) is preferable. Saves you a
| lot of effort!
| Ancapistani wrote:
| In my head, blurring is a "visual hash".
|
| It's difficult or impossible to derive the original
| information from the output, but if you have a small enough
| keyspace you can generate all of the blurred ("hashed")
| versions and compare the results.
| yunohn wrote:
| Pretty interesting setup!
|
| What is the added benefit of having 3 different 4G connections?
| My understanding is that most of these networks would overlap.
| cjrp wrote:
| Seems like it's win-win; if coverage overlaps then the
| connections are bonded and you get 3* 4G lines, and if you only
| have coverage on some of the networks that's still a usable
| connection.
| etherael wrote:
| Those specific three have their own dedicated spectrum and
| don't overlap in Australia. There are many other MVNOs there
| that just resell that spectrum under a different brand name
| with sometimes better deals, but those three are the
| "upstream".
| secondcoming wrote:
| That Nokia 5G router looks great. I'd like to replace my Huawei
| router with it but it seems they cannot be bought easily;
| 'Contact Sales'... why???
| mdasen wrote:
| T-Mobile US is using it for their home internet service. With
| the global supply chain and chips issues, it's been hard for
| T-Mobile to get enough of them. It seems likely that at this
| point Nokia might just be doing enterprise sales because of
| this. If you can't produce enough of them for a customer like
| T-Mobile US, why would you try selling one to a single end-
| user? T-Mobile US won't require support, won't be doing returns
| because they don't like it, won't need an individual shipment,
| etc. Given that T-Mobile US can't get the supply of these that
| they need, I'd guess that Nokia is making as many as they can
| for corporate customers and they don't want to deal with
| individuals at the moment.
|
| https://www.nokia.com/networks/products/fastmile-5g-gateways...
|
| In fact, their website indicates that they're customizing the
| device with differing specs for different customers with
| options like an LCD touchscreen and differing antenna designs.
| xpe wrote:
| Tip: blurring photos of sensitive information is a bad idea:
|
| https://dheera.net/posts/20140725-why-you-should-never-use-p...
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8078747
| ghuntley wrote:
| Answered at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28594133
| creamynebula wrote:
| The most powerful magic number.
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| Kind of off-topic, but I really don't like the use of
| "handwritten" fonts (as popularized by XKCD where it _does_ work)
| for technical drawings. It's hard to read without zooming in
| (especially on mobile) and it takes longer to grok for things
| that your brain can't just deduce (eg technical terms, model
| numbers, random devices, etc) the way it can with natural text.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| I think the main issue is that they're _not handwritten_.
| Handwriting isn 't just about having uneven shapes of the
| letters; it's about the kerning, and the spacing, and the
| layout, that all helps make it clear despite the uneven shapes
| of the letters.
| hall0ween wrote:
| I try to avoid cynicism in comments, but here it's tough. Tech
| bros bringing work out to campsites is shite.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| Does your enjoyment of the campsite require everyone to be
| enjoying it the same way you are?
|
| Why do you care if some person is coding away while your walk
| by their campsite?
| hall0ween wrote:
| It bothers me because this behavior is an outcropping of
| consumerism. Author came from town/city that was not good
| enough. Thus author wanted more* **. And I say more b/c
| author continues to have many of the comforts of a residence.
| Other than lack of community community/roots, which is
| probably one reason author decided to take up a van in the
| first place.
|
| And no, not everyone must enjoy things the same way as me.
| But not recognizing the sources of ones behavior does,along
| w/ bringing consumerism & the city mindset to a place w/o it.
|
| *These opinions paint in broad strokes and are debatable,and
| have a good chance of poorly describing the OP. But this van
| life is a trend, some people see it on social media / blogs &
| proceed to replicate it, indeed messing with wilderness.
|
| **Thinking about the word _more_ and author 's post...six
| internet links not being enough, evidence in favor of
| consumerism.
| wheybags wrote:
| He lives in the van, he's not just holidaying...
| hervature wrote:
| I believe OP's gripe is precisely this. Most people go to the
| wilderness to escape technology/work. There is a reason why
| we don't run fiber optic lines and electricity to every park
| and it isn't because of cost.
| hall0ween wrote:
| https://ghuntley.com/a-new-chapter/
|
| I can't read the post, but it seems the author seeks to work
| from forests . Also doubtful the appeal of living in a van is
| working from a city.
|
| It's not difficult to have a minimalist lifestyle from an
| apartment in the city. I sense the author felt a void in
| their life and decided to experiment w/ a van. And odds on
| favor is it will be temporary as it is not addressing the
| root cause.
| ghuntley wrote:
| More insights at https://ghuntley.com/how-long/
| mercurywells wrote:
| Geoff, how do you handle washing your car, especially when you
| get the Starlink dish on it?
| ghuntley wrote:
| I have a collapsable ladder which is used to clean the panels.
| There is absolutely no space on the roof left for Dishy and
| mounting it up there would cast shadows on the solar system
| (which is circa 3 * 350w house solar panels). For dishy, it's
| going to be a matter of running a ethernet cable out the van
| during the day.
|
| https://i.imgur.com/WeKOofK.jpg
| adadchggg wrote:
| I love ads disguised as content.
| alphabettsy wrote:
| Where's the ad?
| bob778 wrote:
| It's an ad for Speedify with referral links and marketing
| events linked in it?
| thrashh wrote:
| For Speedify
| cantreadiguess wrote:
| Uh the entire thing? It's all an ad for the author. Look at
| me. Use my software. Watch my twitch stream. Hire me.
| [deleted]
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| In the USA, Starlink requires registration against a particular
| set of satellites visible to a fixed/bounded area - you can't
| just take the modem and satellite with you and move to another
| location (and especially not use them while moving continuously).
| Is that not the case in Australia?
| shkkmo wrote:
| This seems a bit inaccurately stated.
|
| The registration is tied a a particular geographic cell over
| which a large number of different satellites will pass.
|
| Starlink has added the ability to change your address if the
| cell of your new address has available capacity. You do need
| some sort of internet access to submit that address change.
| Ancapistani wrote:
| IIRC, you have to call them and they stress that it's not
| something that they will support doing multiple times in
| series. It's for moving to a new address, not working as a
| nomad.
| Reason077 wrote:
| Interesting that he places Starlink above the 5G link in "network
| priority".
|
| I would think that 5G would usually offer better speeds and ping
| times than Starlink in areas where it's available.
| ghuntley wrote:
| Starlink would be used when camping; 5G doesn't work in
| scenarios like [1] this and is only useful when hanging around
| cities as the range of 5G is very poor.
|
| [1]
| https://ghuntley.com/content/images/size/w1600/2021/02/Photo...
| [deleted]
| ezfe wrote:
| The point of the priority system is that it isn't based on
| what you're doing ("camping") but instead on the actual
| network conditions.
|
| If Starlink is ranked above 5G, then it'll never fall back to
| 5G. 5G should be ranked above Starlink, and then when camping
| and there's no 5G it doesn't matter the ranking.
| rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote:
| Starlink is still geofenced to 25 miles IIRC, so his setup
| should fall back to other options when he leaves that area.
| I'm still not sure if it makes sense to rank starlink above
| 5G, though.
| sgtnoodle wrote:
| If Starlink gets their lasers working, it may be better than 5G
| in some areas, since it depends on the backhaul.
| koeng wrote:
| Does anyone know when starlink is going to be available for RVs
| or campers? I'd love to bring the internet while I camp around
| California, but right now there are range restrictions.
| Pasorrijer wrote:
| They've submitted a proposal to the FCC, but I haven't heard
| anything further.
|
| As a boat owner... I'm with you!
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| It's in beta now. Set mine up. If it works the way it does now
| when the masses join you are going to really like it. Anecdotes
| in another comment here.
| ghuntley wrote:
| Indeed there are range restrictions with Starlink. What I did
| was order Starlink to the nearest post office to a place that
| has a unique intersection of lovely camping grounds that
| doesn't have internet access. The idea is to rotate between
| them. Use https://sebsebmc.github.io/starlink-
| coverage/index.html to calculate how big your cell is and then
| intersect with your camping guide :)
| londons_explore wrote:
| That site has seen no 2021 updates. I suspect it hasn't been
| updated with new orbits, cell maps or satellites.
| sebsebmc wrote:
| Hi, yeah I created that and haven't updated it in a long
| time. You can pull the github repo and run it yourself to
| get a new map but there are some issues that have cropped
| up since that have prevented me from being able to update
| the site myself.
| londons_explore wrote:
| I guess it's all stars now if updated anyway, so not
| super interesting.
| sebsebmc wrote:
| I did manage to run the simulation in May and
| surprisingly the data appeared to indicate less stars but
| higher average coverage time (by a few minutes). I didn't
| push this update because it wasn't much of a change from
| the current map, but I probably should have since that is
| interesting in itself.
| sebsebmc wrote:
| I will note that the cells that I have rendering on the site
| there are for performance and download size reasons, and were
| never meant to correspond to any geographical restrictions
| that Starlink has put in place.
| dalben wrote:
| The power usage of a Starlink station is 90W. Seems not
| feasible for an RV unless at a campsite with electricity?
| ghuntley wrote:
| If you setup your eletrical system correctly then 90w at
| 240v is nothing. Answered at
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28594552
| turtlebits wrote:
| Unless you have huge batteries, 90w constant draw is
| 2.1kW a day.
|
| With all that other hardware, you'd have to be
| essentially tethered to the grid, or be recharging your
| batteries from grid regularly. (looks like you have 6x100
| watt solar panels which won't do much for that kind of
| consumption)
| casi18 wrote:
| They have been sending out surveys recently, seems like they
| are working out pricing and mounts for RVs.
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/prgrbb/starlink_r...
| ghuntley wrote:
| Yo, SpaceX/Starlink employees. Hook me _up_ _please_
| bayindirh wrote:
| I guess the geofencing is for balancing loads. When there's
| ample bandwidth, coverage and maybe handoff support, they may
| remove the limitations.
| peytoncasper wrote:
| Never knew Speedify was a thing. What a great idea and I'm sure
| something that is standard in industrial applications or LTE
| routers.
| thrashh wrote:
| SpeedFusion is one alternative
|
| https://estore.peplink.com/categories/speedfusion-cloud/spee...
|
| We use to use Peplink at a company I worked at
| ghuntley wrote:
| If someone at Peplink wants to send me a router; I'd love to
| try it out. https://ghuntley.com/contact
| phh wrote:
| AFAIK multi-path is not too common, though most people who do
| multipath are using MPTCP.
|
| Last I checked, It's part of LTE standard, but used exclusively
| in South Korea. Some providers across the world provide multi-
| path gateways: in France, OVH has OverTheBox which is line-
| provider agnostic, Free has ADSL+4G aggregation where fiber
| isn't available. In Switzerland, Swisscom also has some multi-
| path offer.
|
| Also, Apple's Siri uses MPTCP. (And developers love the fact
| that only Siri can use it, and not other apps).
|
| Google/Android said no to MPTCP, saying QUIC/HTTP3 already has
| the provisions needed to do multipath, but I don't know if
| Google actually uses it somewhere.
| mwint wrote:
| > and not other apps
|
| Looks like there's been an API for at least a few years.
| http://blog.multipath-
| tcp.org/blog/html/2017/07/05/mptcp_exp...
| lapinot wrote:
| From experience, Free's ADSL+4G aggregation is stupid. The
| router needs ADSL to be up all the time and aggregation is
| unpredictable and opaque. Being the carrier for both ADSL and
| 4G would've enabled them to do multi-path magic and assign
| the same IP to both endpoints yet they don't. It seems to be
| basic bonding.
| goodpoint wrote:
| It's way too expensive tho.
| nathanyz wrote:
| Makes Multipath TCP actually usable in the real world. Great
| product that not enough people know about.
| nsonha wrote:
| I was wondering about this exact same thing the other day.
| Working from home makes my mobile data go wasted every month. I
| actually have a company phone in addition to a personal one.
| donkarma wrote:
| I just stumbled onto Speedify a few minutes before I noticed
| this article surprisingly. I wanted to try it but unfortunately
| it doesn't take crypto and has no free trial
| shkkmo wrote:
| That's a shame. They used to have a free trial with a data
| cap which I used intermittently while traveling for years
| before converting to a paying customer a year ago.
|
| Maybe they looked at their numbers amd couldn't didn't see
| the free tier paying for itself in conversions, but it did
| convert me.
| AlexGizis wrote:
| We still have the 2GB per month free tier with no
| registration. It's available everywhere but Linux...
| unfortunately, without us doing anything really creepy
| (which we won't do), it was just too common for Linux users
| to trick us into endlessly starting the 2GB over. I think
| there was a script for automating it making the rounds on
| some sites.
| shkkmo wrote:
| Huh, I looked but didn't see anything on your pricing
| pages about the free tier, just the 30 day free trial.
| AlexGizis wrote:
| Oh, yeah, sorry, I guess that's not so clear. Just
| install, and you start on the free tier.
| tenebrisalietum wrote:
| SD-WAN for consumers? Reviewing the documentation a little it
| seems like it's installable on a Debian box.
| ghuntley wrote:
| Yup. My bonder virtual machine is running Ubuntu + Speedify.
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