[LINK] The PLAN, and broadband speeds?

[Stephen Loosley]

At 01:22 PM 21/06/2007, Stewart writes:

> I don't see the economic value of running fibre out too far into the
> wide-brown land past, say, 20 to 50kms outside of towns ... after
> 50kms you've got to start introducing optical amplifiers or repeater
> /regenerators.  Stewart Fist, writer, journalist, film-maker

Yes, and living in a tiny town way past 50kms from a major burg, one
can attest that our townsfolk here would be astonished if we got fibre.

We have just 3 reliable TV channels, (not the ABC), two radio stations
without static, and, ADSL arrived at our local exchange about a month
ago, for this Victorian village four hours train from Melbourne. Looxury!

One imagines the deprivations for Linkers living in more remote spots.

So, one is glad Richard agrees regards problems with mesh networks,
and despite Tom's points about neighborly sharing and sys robustness,
and also the point that mesh arrangements 'may' extend network range
one would mightily push for no more than 2 user-hardware-hops before
carrier network injection, and, bush consumer connection charge parity.

On this point, the press today are asserting a bush charge of $1,000++
per user for The PLAN's consumer hardware. Parity with metro please!

And if, gentle reader, one is tempted to say, stuff the bush, you chose to
live there, (and feed you), maybe, the following email from a local school
can help explain the situation better. With nought to do on the wide open
plain at night times, kids here can be remarkably inventive. (Being a high
school teacher, with an info tech Masters degree etc for many years one
still gets asked to do the occasional emergency teaching). And, some of
the PC game-writing skills of the neighborhood kids are astonishing. And
they have a great future for themselves, and for the rest of Australia. The
point is that, they, and their schools, may well just feed future-Australia in
lots more ways than just with wheat, beef & canola :-) With a broadband
access good enough for gaming, country schools and kids may very well
eventually bring in 'lots' more than the cost of providing bush kids access.

Anyone on Link with the same or better computer-network smarts? Sorry,
perhaps there is, Howard, but, this is another example today of the bright
teachers probably teaching your normal government school enrolled kids.
Colleagues able to provide good left/right awareness, and, great IT skills!
Ones impression is linkers would agree but feel-good reminders are nice:

At 02:02 PM 20/06/2007, (Victorian High School Info Tech teacher) writes:

Hey I just thought I would let the list know that we at xxx secondary college
have managed to set up and run Apple, windows and linux Fedora, Ubuntu
and Debian operating systems on 'each' of our machines in one of our Info
Tech labs.  That's five operating systems running at the same time on any
one machine   The best of all worlds and lots of free software.
--

Regards Linkers
Stephen Loosley
Victoria, Asutralia
.