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Wireless broadband - coming to Ahuroa... General notices and updates - Sun, 15-Nov-2009Initial Letter to the Ahuroa Electronic GrapevineSun, 15-Nov-2009 Hi. I live on Martin Access Road, to the west of Ahuroa, 5km inland from SH16, off West Coast Road, just beyond Komokoriki Hill Road. If you’re like me then you’ve been frustrated with the lack of any decent broadband options in this area. We’ve been here for 9 years now, when we moved here the question was ‘How good is the dial up?’ – 9 years later it seems like we’ve not progressed much, it’s still either dial up, or expensive satellite. First update - 22nd NovSun, 22-Nov-2009 Hi there, Thanks very much for your indicated interest. We've let the email have a week now and we have received 12 individual indications of interest which is a reasonable start for week one, but not that many in order to get this off the ground. Next Steps...Sun, 29-Nov-2009 Tonight I have sent the following email to James Comer of Strata Networks to formally invite him to respond to our group given the level of interest which we've collated to date... Response from StrataNetworksFri, 04-Dec-2009 On 4/12/2009 4:05 p.m., James Comer wrote: Great site visit with James - Action needed by you now.Thu, 10-Dec-2009 News... James from Strata visited us again yesterday, a few of you were able to meet him and ask him some questions which was excellent. COMPLETED APPLICATION FORMS NEEDED...Wed, 16-Dec-2009
Great news guys! - Things are moving along nicely...
Please click on the following link to download an application form, print it, fill it in and return it to their office at the below address.
Strata Networks When it gets closer to the install, and they have a firm date from which they will start the house by house installs, they'll circulate an automatic payment form. Please, a quick response is critical here, please save me the effort and time chasing you for a response. We *need* at least 18 people's responses promptly back to them in order to move this along. If you are interested in seeing the map which outlines where the repeater is going to be placed, and who is easily servicable from it, please see the following: [ ::LINK:: ] Even if you're not green on this map, if you respond with an application you will recieve prioritised treatement, investigation and installation whereever possible. - Just for fun, over the last week we setup a test proof of concept extension of my home internet connection and shared it wirelessly with equipment loaned by Strata to link Brent and Angela Tuffley at the top of Martin Access Rd, they're able to get over 10Mbps over this wireless link to my home network... This stuff is pretty easy to setup and get going, so extending networks into those hard to reach places should be reasonably easy too... If you have any questions about the service, then please feel free to get in touch with James.
James Comer Please drop me a note when you respond, and I'll tick you off my list. Also, if you're not longer interested, please let me know and I'll remove you from the list so that you don't feel hassled with unwanted further follow-up. Thanks, regards, Chris. Letter sent out to customers from Strata NetworksFri, 18-Dec-2009
Wicked! - I got the following letter from Strata Networks today [ ::LINK:: ] , and a phone call to say that things were shaping up nicely in terms of getting a link out to us. It might well be at a higher more improved speed as they're now looking at using a microwave link to bring ~100Mbps out to our distribution pole! :)
Anyway, if you are interested in getting broadband into the area, they need 20x firm application forms completed, so if you've already expressed your interest, and you're still interested, then please don't delay in getting your application back into them. If you are new to this and want to get involved, then please visit: [ ::LINK:: ] - Go to the 'Expression of interest form' and return it to me so that I can place you on the map, and pass your details on.. Or, if you would prefer, just fill in an application form and send it in to them. [ ::LINK:: ] Wireless Broadband - Happy New Year!Thu, 31-Dec-2009 Hi there, Happy New Year! :) - Things seem to be moving along nicely, James has poles (4 of them) and has been making plans with SkyWorks (the local helicopter people) to help to get them set into the ground. WiltshireWireless Mailout: Jan 2010 Strata UpdateFri, 15-Jan-2010 Hi Everyone, James Comer from Strata Networks here. Firstly Happy New Year to you all. Just thought I better give an update of where things are at currently. We are aiming for a go live date on the 15th of February. What we are wanting to do is start getting peoples CPE (Client Premises Equipment) installed at each home. This will speed things up with the roll out if we can be installing equipment at your homes, while we get the main feeder livened up at the top of the Kaipara Hills Rd. Update 22nd Jan 2010Fri, 22-Jan-2010 Hi Guys, Chris here again, time for your weekly update. There's been a flurry of activity now, with a total of 16 application forms returned (out of our initial 29 expressions of interest), so whilst I'm not delighted about the overall response rate since we've been kicked into action there are enough of us in order for Strata to continue with their planned installations. WiFi UpdateMon, 08-Feb-2010 Hi All, James from Strata Networks. Just thought I would give an update of where things are currently at. A week from now, weather dependent, we should see the Point of Presents masts go into the ground and a day later the equipment installed onto them. There have been a few issues with Kordia & resource consent for spectrum licensing but we have almost sorted these out through the correct channels. We have installed the equipment up Sky Tower as I mentioned in the last update a few weeks ago. We had hoped to have the masts installed on the 8th of February but the company manufacturing them had some delays. Breaking NEWS! - Install happening this week...Mon, 15-Feb-2010 Dear All, Hi, Chris here, wicked news, I just heard from James and the installation is happening Thursday 18th, THIS WEEK! :) Wireless Update, Ahuroa Valley Rd and others.Thu, 18-Feb-2010 Hi All, James from Strata here. There have been a few questions asked about Ahuroa Valley Rd and if it will be included within this round of hardware installation. The short answer is no, this will come shortly; in a couple of weeks - to a month later. Exciting news! - Poles are in! :)Mon, 22-Feb-2010 How about this for exciting news!!!: The first two poles are in! :) - 2x 18 meter tall poles; 480mm diameter at the bottom, 325mm at the top. They needed a 700mm, 3m deep whole to sit them in... The digger threw a track half way through one of the poles, thankfully Brent was on hand and was able to aid in getting it back on with his digger... Today's wireless progress.Tue, 23-Feb-2010 The transmission equipment has been mounted up the primary pole today, and preliminary tests show things are behaving well... News just in...Wed, 24-Feb-2010 The connection from the sky tower to our primary inward feeding pole is up, a speedtest on this with very minimal fine tuning of alignment ect has yielded 132Mbps of throughput, sending a 480MB file across the link in 29 seconds, all the while maintaining a very low 3ms ping time across the link! Cabinet now needed, going in tomorrow.Tue, 02-Mar-2010 Very quick update today…. There’s been a slight variation from plan, the supporting ‘gear’ which is needed for each pole has grown in size slightly and now requires a small cabinet rather than simply being mounted up the pole or in the ground by the base… I’m transporting these up to home today.. Things still moving along...Sun, 07-Mar-2010 Hey Guys, Whilst things might seem to be moving along slowly, they are moving along. I've just spend parts of Saturday and all of Sunday helping James out, working on the poles to get the Solar panels mounted and the cabling run for them. Quick update on wireless progressWed, 11-Mar-2009 There are new photos up on the website: [ ::LINK:: ] - Some of last weekend's work. :) James has been up here again a couple of times this week. The Martin Access site is fully charged, and the daily monitoring of the battery states using the remote monitoring gear is showing the solar panels to be working well. Wireless Rollercoaster Ride...Thu, 12-Mar-2009 So, today's update is that the account has been presented and paid, from Sky City to Strata. Something which James had been told would be the final step before they'd get the access they need to liven their outward connection up... Then they were told that the next step is to get their security cards and credentials sorted out for their access into the Sky City datacentre... It's in and working - WELL! :)Fri, 26-Mar-2010 Sorry things have been a little quite from me, I've been over in Aussie for the last week and only got back home last night. There has been a significant amount of good progress to report. - The connection to the Sky Tower was livened up last Thursday, giving the Strata guys some time to play with the quality of the link during last weekend. Wireless - New applications - costs will rise.Tue, 30-Mar-2010 Installs are happening. - So far there are 7 people on board. AVG causing 'patchy' connectivity.Sun, 11-Apr-2010
Hi there,
So this last weekend there's been a few social gatherings and it's presented a good chance to catch up with of the installed customers and to find out how things have been going. There's been a few people with 'patchy' connectivity, sometimes going slowly to the point where it's stalled and never completes downloading. So today I made some time to go around to a couple of the houses to take a look at the performance first hand, and I have to say that what I saw was a concern, it didn't look at all like the performance which I've become used to at home. The first properly had a single laptop and a comparison between it and my laptop at the same time on their network yielded quite different results. My laptop was consistently quick, without any drop outs, whilst theirs continued to perform with intermittent patchy behaviour. At the second property there were three computers, two laptops and a desktop PC, all of their computers behaved in the same manner, and at the same time, my laptop was quick, responsive with no issues. - This helped us to pinpoint the problem. Interestingly their 'patchy' connectivity coincided with each other computer, they were almost coordinated. Obviously, without my laptop performing properly within the same network, you would normally assume that it's the connection at fault, however having my functional laptop there at the same time, performing properly within their networks helped us to know with confidence that it wasn't the network, but some other point of commonality in the their computer's setups. The only common software across the 3 computers in the second house was the AVG 8.5 - Free edition anti virus software, it also performs anti-spy ware, checks and anti-phishing checks too. Whilst I'm not 100% sure why it was managing to cause drop outs across numerous computers, it could have something to do with anti-phishing checks or something similar?... We firstly removed AVG from one of the laptops, and re-tested the connection, the speed was immediately noticeably quicker, their laptop started to be as responsive and as quick as mine when browsing. Updates and software downloads which had been failing before now started to work without incident. We've opted to install 'Nod32's Smart Security' package - the 30 day free trial version available from [ ::LINK:: ] on all of these machines. - All three of them have been behaving since. I passed this information on to the first household and they've done the same. So, we'll have some more to report on this later on in the week, but felt the need to pass these early findings on in case there's anyone else out there suffering the same kind of issues. - if you are, it's unlikely to be the network, it's likely to be something on your machine. - Try getting rid of AVG and trailing NOD32 instead if you're running that and have 'patchy connectivity'. Cheers, regards, Chris.
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