SDR Info
Here is a link to very interesting
site with information about Software
Defined Radios or SDR.
http://www.sdradio.org/
by Alberto, I2PHD
Good Lightning
My son Joe and I went west on Highway 12 towards Willmar and took this dusk photo.
Nice Fall Weather
The last week has been very nice. The weather has moved into a very fall like pattern which is a pleasant change from the extremely warm and dry summer that we have experienced in 2006.
Watering our yard is much simpler compared to mid-summer with a new lawn and
no rain.
Watering our yard is much simpler compared to mid-summer with a new lawn and
no rain.
Frustrating Internet Connectivity - Updated
My ISP stopped by my house tonight. They turned my dish to a couple of different towers
and peaked my signal.
My performance seems to be much better now.
|
Time will till. Now I need to test VOIP and see how that performs.
Frustrating Internet Connectivity - Updated
Another
painful night of Internet connectivity.
dslreports.com speed test
result on 2006-09-03 20:03:04 EST:
470 / 4
Your download speed : 470 kbps or 58.7 KB/sec.
Your upload speed : 4 kbps or 0.5 KB/sec.
I am seeing 22ms of latency to
my next hop on the wireless network with 1% packet loss. That is awesome considering
how far away I am from next radio.
I am seeing about 26ms of latency to my
ISP's web server with 2% packet loss.
The network
latency and packet loss tonight are better than average but it appears that
there is some sort of upstream issue with my ISP again.
Arghhh... they are really nice people but I am dying a slow death here.
Just for grins I ran another test a few minutes later and got
475 / 22 Arghhhh!
Let's hope that I get moved to the new tower sometime soon.
Camping Weekend
We had a nice weekend of camping. We went to Great
River Bluffs state park in south eastern Minnesota.
The campground is
one of the smaller
parks that we have been to. It has very lush green campsites with a decent amount
of privacy. We took a three mile hike (round trip) and ten
mile bike ride (round trip) with the boys.
The Root
River State Trail was a great place for a bike ride. We parked in Rushford and
rode to Preston and
had lunch then back to Rushford.
Here is a link to some other state
trails.
Link to the rest of the
camping photos.
Little Kids, Big Hills, and some Bikes - Part 2
Last weekend we took the boys to a BMX track in Maple Plain. I have some good photos
that I will upload later this weekend.
Last time Jacob was the one that wiped out and shead some blood. This time Ben left
some blood and skin as a token to the BMX gods. 
Frustrating Internet Connectivity - Updated
Another tough night. (Thank goodness I can watch the football game instead of work
on the Internet.)
DSL
Reports stats for tonight:
277 / 45
366 / 55
378 / 32
Frustrating Internet Connectivity - Updated
They are putting up a new tower in the area. With luck maybe next week I might be
able to try to hit the new tower. Sometimes living in the middle of no-where can be
a bummer.
John's new telcom rule: If you can get dial tone you should be able
to get reliable broadband.
Frustrating Internet Connectivity
Argghhhh.... I am getting frustrated with my current ISP Xtratyme. They
are very nice people but seem too busy to follow through with supporting my account.
I live in Kingston,
MN which is in rural central Minnesota about
an hour west of the Twin
Cities. There is no cable or DSL to my community. (You can get DSL north or south
of me a couple of miles away.) My local phone carrier is Sprint/Embarq who
has no interest in providing any advanced services other than basic dial tone.
I can get ISDN to
my house but Embarq will not provide any services like Internet on top of the ISDN service.
(I would prefer one provider.)
I am right on the fringe coverage area of two wireless ISPs:
Xtratyme and BroadBand-MN.
With Xtratyme using
a 512k account I am seeing 450/120.
Upload speeds are brutal often in the 30-50k range.
It makes general web activity pretty rough let alone working over a VPN, uploading
content to my web site, or any decent VOIP activity.
I maybe forced to hunt for another ISP or other connectivity options if we can't get
this resolved ASAP.
