I live near a town where “the internet is down” is an actual phrase. One that hasn’t been used for a few years but it does happen and when it does it demonstrates the danger of excessive reliance on a single technology. The whole town’s commerce comes to a near complete halt.
The last time this happened was three years ago and it was a doozy. This one lasted something less than a full day but it did coincide exactly with me trying to post something. Workmen have been laying orange conduit all through the whole town since Spring and I can hope that has something to do with better/faster/more reliable internet service but I really don’t know and anyway doubt it will affect me. My service remains entirely tied to an ephone hotspot – which still works remarkably better than the old satellite dish, and is substantially faster since I got a signal booster a couple of years ago. But still – when the ‘internet is down,’ I’m back to smoke signals.
If you talk to the guys with the orange spools they’ll probably give you some Mule Tape. It’s a sort of nylon strapping, maybe a 1/2 inch wide, and makes strong cord for whatever you can imagine. Apparently, it’s a leftover of installation and they have miles of it.
Mule tape is handy, but try not to let it lay in the sun too long – my last batch turned to powder in AZ sun – and that was at a much lower elevation than you are at Joel. I need to keep my eyes open for another batch now that I’ve been reminded….
I dumped my internet about a year ago and moved to Starlink – it has been working great (knocking on wood). I put a medium UPS on the hub and my laptops and phone are good for a few hours after a total electrical outage. They make small portable version, and I think you can turn it on and off as you need it. Yesterday I was watching three streaming audio/video feeds of the Starship launch and doing normal work on two computers with no problem. We run our telephones via the system, too. Probably out of budget right now, but they have programs and deals for remote areas, etc. that might make it worth watching. (I’m not affiliated in any way other then them taking money out of my account every month to pay for my service.)
Starlink?
It isn’t just your remote location. Though I haven’t seen an article in a couple of years, every once in a while you will see that 911 service is down for an entire state, or a group of states. It usually comes down to someone with a backhoe digging up one fiber-optic line. There is no redundancy in the infrastructure.
That doesn’t even include the stuff that is a literal house-of-cards design that is the internet. Domain Name Service is a literal house of cards, though since it was pointed out to everyone a while back, they have been working to fix that
I had a complete outage recently. No internet/phone/cellphone. IF I had an emergency I had literally NO WAY to call for help, whether that be medical, fire, or intruder. It didn’t last long and there were no emergencies in my life.
Starlink, if you can swing the cashflow. We are early adopters, getting it the day they told us it was available. The conversation cancelling Comcast is one of my fondest memories.the ONLY time it is out is with extremely heavy rainfall, and that lasts 5 miuutes at most. And we live surrounded by trees so the # of satellites it can hit is minimized at any given moment. If you can plug an extension cord into a wall socket, you can set up Starlink- beyond easy installation.
Query: I’ve been told Starlink is quite power intensive. Fact or fiction?
“the danger of excessive reliance on a single technology”
Tried to gas up at a (Major Brand) station that happened to be one of my Point-Of-Sale customers. Sign on the pump said “sorry no gas satellite down”. Lucky me, I installed their gear and trained the manager. I go inside and tell the new guy (of course he was the new guy) to turn on the pump and process the transaction manually. I imagine his expression was not unlike a beagle trying to grok calculus. Sigh. I point out the manual imprinter on the shelf under the counter and walk him through the procedure. No doubt the next customer after me couldn’t buy any gas. Our POS (no, it was good stuff) was eventually replaced with a new system lacking that manual processing. Progress! Newer credit cards don’t even have embossed characters, making an imprinter useless. More Progress! We are doomed.
AI Overlord, er, Overview says 50-75W active and 20W idle for a standard system; the deluxe model pulls 110-150 active and 45 idle. Starlink Mini uses 20-40 active and 15 idle. Dunno if those numbers are good or bad.