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Always-On Internet For Cheapskates?

Posted by timothy on Sun Feb 20, 2005 04:55 PM
from the get-to-know-your-neighbors dept.
The Internet The Almighty Buck
chuck writes "I like my broadband Internet access because of its always-on nature, but my usage doesn't really justify paying $40-$50 each month for hundreds of kb/s when all I really do is read and write email sporadically, light web browsing and IM. Are there any options for cheapskates like me to pay less for lower bandwidth (modem speeds would be fine) but still have an always-on connection for cheaper than cable or DSL? I have a $5/mo ISP that I use when I'm out and about, and my 2.5G wireless phone can give me internet access on a shoestring (with free evenings and weekends) but neither of those has that always-on quality. Any ideas?"
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  • The cheapest solution... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Rick Zeman (15628) on Sunday February 20 2005, @04:56PM (#11730611)
    Piggyback on your neighbor's unsecured WAP. :-)

    • Re:The cheapest solution... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by TrippTDF (513419) <hiland AT gmail DOT com> on Sunday February 20 2005, @05:02PM (#11730656)
      Hey, not such a bad idea. Here in New York I've set up Wi-Fi enabled laptops for friends and just had them piggy back on an open network... Just about anywhere you go in New York you can pick up at least a couple open networks (I once saw 20 at once). A friend of mine actually put a Wi-Fi card in his desktop and canceled his cable modem, and now he just piggy-backs off someone in his building.

      Better yet, move to someplace like Philly that is going to have free Wi-FI city wide soon.

      • Re:The cheapest solution... (Score:4, Interesting)

        by LinuxHam (52232) on Sunday February 20 2005, @05:46PM (#11730937) Homepage Journal
        I once saw 20 [networks] at once [in New York]

        My record for a single sitting on the 38th floor of the Hilton in midtown is **247** networks. Not all open, sure, but still... ;)

        • Re:The cheapest solution... (Score:5, Informative)

          by Doug Neal (195160) on Sunday February 20 2005, @06:47PM (#11731267) Journal
          Depending on how good your card is and how far away you are you usually pick up far more networks than you can connect to - the AP's signal is strong enough to pick up but the card isn't always transmitting at high enough power for the signal to get back to the AP.

          • Re:The cheapest solution... (Score:5, Funny)

            by compjinx (733142) on Sunday February 20 2005, @11:59PM (#11733286)
            They invented a new technology to combat clogged up wi-fi networks; they are called CAT5 cables. You can plug them between your cable modem and your computer and have up to 1Gbps all to yourself!

            • Re:The cheapest solution... (Score:5, Funny)

              by bigman2003 (671309) on Sunday February 20 2005, @06:31PM (#11731185) Homepage
              I work on a fairly large campus, with wireless access in a lot of places.

              When I am there, I turn on my Pocket PC just to see who is accessing the network at the time.

              It usually looks like this:

              Jenny Chu
              M. Choi
              Lynn Park
              Yokomoto Comp
              Sun Yee
              MaXHaXoR
              Martin Wong

              Gee...I wonder who that nerdy looking white guy over in the corner is...
      • My uncle anc cousins have an interesting setup. They pay their neighbors about $10 a month and their neighbors supply them with a wireless key. They bought a kick-ass directional antenna and pointed it at their neighbor's house. Its not technically piggybacking, buy I dont know what the IPS's polocy is on sharing internet.

    • Re:The cheapest solution... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by zarozarozaro (756135) on Sunday February 20 2005, @05:09PM (#11730705)
      Or better yet, work out something where you split the cost/month, and piggyback with some security.

      • Re:The cheapest solution... (Score:5, Informative)

        by jc42 (318812) on Sunday February 20 2005, @05:41PM (#11730909) Homepage Journal
        See if speakeasy has service in your area. They encourage sharing of connections, especially with wifi. They will help you set up line sharing with neighbors (or tell you if you have a neighbor that's already doing this). They'll help you set it up and take care of the billing for you. Depending on the actual speed you need, you could share one DSL line among N people, and each would pay 1/N of the monthly bill. It would all be open and legal.

        They also don't block any ports, so you could run an email server on your own machine if you like. For that matter, you could run your own web server, making it easy to share your pictures with friends. I've done a lot of this, just sending a URL so they can browse the thumbnails and download any pics they like.

        Are there other ISPs that encourage this? You'd think they all would, if they were actually interested in giving good service to their customers.

          • Re:The cheapest solution... (Score:5, Informative)

            by danheskett (178529) <danheskettNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Monday February 21 2005, @08:47AM (#11735313)
            Yes, speakeasy gives static ips by request, and they'll even set your reverse dns name however you want.

              • Re:The cheapest solution... (Score:4, Interesting)

                by danheskett (178529) <danheskettNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Monday February 21 2005, @01:44PM (#11737707)
                Sign up for a regular package you want, and call up and ask for a static ip address and a reverse address.

                Most of the black lists out there that block spam based on "dynamic" ranges do so based on what IPs are allocated to dial-up ISPs and home style cable modems. I've not had any problems with speakeasy's being accounts of any type being blacklisted. Your mileage may vary. Even if you don't get a static IP from speakeasy, the lease times are very much staticish. I dont have speakeasy no more, but I had the same IP from them for like 18 months - even though it was "dynamic".

    • Re:The cheapest solution... (Score:5, Funny)

      by fm6 (162816) on Sunday February 20 2005, @05:09PM (#11730711) Homepage Journal
      That answers the requirement for low cost and instant-on. But not the requirement for low speed...

    • Re:The cheapest solution... (Score:5, Funny)

      by temojen (678985) on Sunday February 20 2005, @05:52PM (#11730977) Journal
      I believe the name for this service is "IP freely"

    • Legal Analysis (Score:4, Interesting)

      by ari_j (90255) on Sunday February 20 2005, @07:48PM (#11731599)

      DISCLAIMER: First off, know that I am not a lawyer, nor have I ever played one on or off of TV. This comment is not legal advice or legal analysis, despite any evidence to the contrary, and any reliance you take on it is evidence of your own stupidity, and you assume the risk inherent in so doing.

      But something I've heard about from law school professors (don't ask what I was doing in a law school classroom, I'm not a lawyer, remember?) is that we have a doctrine of adverse possession and its related cousin, prescriptive easement. Adverse possession lets you take ownership of land if you've been trespassing on it for 20 years if you have used it as if you were the legitimate owner for all that time. Prescriptive easements don't require exclusivity or possession - you just have to use property for a long time and then you get to keep using it in the same way forever. Also, the statutory period is often lower for prescriptive easements, like 5 or 10 years.

      Enter the digital age. If you use your neighbor's wireless for 5 years straight, you could convince a (very gullible) court to grant you an easement that ensures your neighbor never gets rid of his wireless connection or tries to lock you out of it. And that burden would probably run with his apartment or home, so no future tenant or owner could lock you out of his wireless or cancel his Internet connection.

      Yes, the non-lawyer in me definitely thinks this is a good idea.

      • Re:The cheapest solution... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by ScrewMaster (602015) on Sunday February 20 2005, @05:21PM (#11730795)
        I dunno if it's illegal exactly ... ISPs aren't part of law enforcement (yet.) But I'm sure it's against the TOS of most providers.

        • Re:The cheapest solution... (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Grax (529699) on Sunday February 20 2005, @05:46PM (#11730940)
          (IANAL)
          I would presume it is prosecutable under the same laws they would use against cable signal theft.

          Under those laws they only need to show that you are wired up in such a way to enable "signal theft" and then it is up to you to prove that you were not "stealing" their signal.

        • Re:The cheapest solution... (Score:4, Informative)

          by YrWrstNtmr (564987) on Sunday February 20 2005, @06:11PM (#11731095)
          If I can legally do that in my own home (and I guess it would be pretty weird if I couldn't), what's stopping me from sharing the same line with one or two neighbours if I would be living alone (instead of with others) ?

          In the US, residential service is supposed to be for one residence. A lot of people do it (I did the same 25 years ago with cable TV, and am about to do it with my current connection), but that doesn't mean the provider has to like it or authorize it. Who does the neighbor call for a service issue? You, or the cable company?

          From the TimeWarner RoadRunner service Acceptable Use Policy: [rr.com]
          "...the RoadRunner service is provided to you for personal, non-commercial use only."

          From the TimeWarner RoadRunner Cable Modem Service Subscription Agreement [rr.com]
          "5. Subscriber Conduct.(d)
          Subscriber will not resell the Road Runner Service, or any portion thereof, or otherwise charge others to use the Road Runner Service, or any portion thereof. Further, Subscriber will not redistribute the Road Runner Service, or any portion thereof, whether or not Subscriber receives compensation for such redistribution. The Road Runner Service as offered under this Agreement is a residential service offered for personal, non-commercial use only."

          Each house/apt/condo is supposed to pay for their own connection.

  • motionsensor + autoconnect (Score:5, Funny)

    by Lord Bitman (95493) on Sunday February 20 2005, @04:57PM (#11730616) Homepage
    feel like you're always on by having your computer connect as you enter the room ;)
    • Did exactly this with Misterhouse and diald. I configured the reaction to the staircase motion sensor to be a ping to an off-network IP. Previously, I just configured diald to be "always connected" to my office VPN (an 800#). It took months before they nagged me about it, so then I moved to the motion sensor approach. It definitely stopped the nagging.

      As an aside, you may be able to get free (or cheap) AOL/Yahoo!/MSN IM on your cellphone. I get all three unlimited for free on my Nextel. I only use the AOL

  • Not many options (Score:3, Insightful)

    by yotto (590067) on Sunday February 20 2005, @04:58PM (#11730624) Homepage
    Make sure everybody calls your cell and use your land line for internet. I did that for about two years before DSL was available in my area.

  • A practical solution (Score:5, Funny)

    by Faust7 (314817) on Sunday February 20 2005, @05:00PM (#11730638) Homepage
    my usage doesn't really justify paying $40-$50 each month for hundreds of kb/s

    Cancel your cable TV subscription and get BitTorrent. Your broadband cost will suddenly be justified.

      • Re:A practical solution (Score:5, Funny)

        by Ian Action (836876) on Sunday February 20 2005, @05:10PM (#11730715)
        yeah but where are some good places to get torrent downloads these days, suprnova and lokitorrent are the shutdownohnoes

        Hey, no problem! Check out...

        Wait a minute... You don't work for the MPAA do you?

      • Re:A practical solution (Score:5, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 20 2005, @05:11PM (#11730726)
        torrentreactor.net
        btefnet.net
        baka-updates.com
        boxtorrents.com
        bi-torrent.com
        shuntv.net
        mysp leen.net

  • Check with your cable/DSL company (Score:5, Informative)

    by antifoidulus (807088) on Sunday February 20 2005, @05:02PM (#11730662) Homepage Journal
    some of them have slower connections that you can get for less money(though they don't like to advertise them). For example, the cable at home I can get for $25, or you can get a faster connection for about $40, of course YMMV

  • DSL Lite (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Talisman (39902) on Sunday February 20 2005, @05:04PM (#11730671) Homepage
    BellSouth offers DSL Lite; a 256/128 dsl circuit for $24.95 per month. Perhaps your local DSL provider offers something similar.

    Or, download NetStumbler and sniff out an open WAP in your neighborhood and leech bandwidth. There are about 5 I can reach from my house.

  • Piggybacking works, and it isn't always stealing (Score:4, Interesting)

    by matyas47 (811167) on Sunday February 20 2005, @05:04PM (#11730673)
    Find a neighbor who's got wireless and offer to pay half the cost. My landlord got wireless a few months ago. I was still on dialup at home at the time, but I had wireless in my laptop for hitting the hotspots. He told me to go ahead and use his connection, since he's paying for it anyway. (I did offer to cover half of the cost, but he simply repeated that he's paying for it anyway, so he didn't care.)

  • ISDN? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Bri3D (584578) on Sunday February 20 2005, @05:05PM (#11730681) Journal
    You could try a single ISDN(56k), though it might be more expensive than broadband anyway.

  • Dial-Up/Linux (Score:3, Informative)

    by Zebra_X (13249) on Sunday February 20 2005, @05:07PM (#11730691)
    Your only other option is a dial up connection. If you want it to be dedicated however, you'll need a dedicated phone line. That will run ~ $16 - $25 Dollars US add in $5 mo. for your dial-up provider. Worst case you are at $30 best case $21.

    The trick is to use a dial on demand linux box. You can have a script that will automatically dial into your provider. When you get kicked, it calls back. Couple this with an ethernet card and you'll have a gateway, and even a hardware firewall to protect you from all the evils that would have their way with your box. You can also use this machine for common services such as a caching DNS server which will speed up page load times over dial-up and as a mail gateway which also speed up perceived mail send times.

  • ISDN (Score:3, Interesting)

    by strredwolf (532) on Sunday February 20 2005, @05:13PM (#11730738) Homepage Journal
    Ask ISP's around if they still do ISDN. Granted, it's 128K, but since most everyone's broadband, the price should be cheap now. Plus, you don't need to light both B channels all the time. Keeping the D channel lighted at 9600 bps for small stuff will keep you online all the time anyway for monitoring (like POP or long, slow downloads), and for harder stuff (regular downloads, surfing, etc) you can light the B's up.

  • Some creativity (Score:3, Funny)

    by Piquan (49943) on Sunday February 20 2005, @05:17PM (#11730761)

    Okay, let's consider alternatives to always-on.

    Autodial gets you a good portion of the way there. A good autodialer should take only a couple of seconds, in other words, not much longer than you need to focus on the screen anyway.

    A cronjob can fetch your email periodically, so you can glance at your screen and see that you have mail. And you don't care if there's a few seconds delay on your outbound mail; let your MTA deal with that.

    As for webbrowsing... hmmmm, that's a bit tougher.... Okay, here's one. Put in a proxy. If the net connection is up, then it just works transparently. (And by the way, Squid really does seem to speed up my web fetch times, even from the same computer!) If the connection is down, it brings it up, sure, but what to do in the meantime? Well, if you're visiting /., then it says "Nothing to see here, move along". If you're not, then it redirects to the same URL with a typo (so you'll assume you screwed up), and then displays a parking page. Okay, that sounds pretty authentic.

    IM? Piece of cake: grab an IRC server and a bunch of Eliza-bots.

    Okay, you're all set! Always-on experience, on a dialup budget!

  • Be Happy (Score:3, Insightful)

    by bmazloum (856559) on Sunday February 20 2005, @05:21PM (#11730793) Homepage
    Be happy with what you have. I just moved to Lebanon, waited 6 months for a "high speed" connection. That's 30KB/s downloads and 12KB/s upload for a whopping $120USD/mo. I'd take your connection and prices anyday. Funny thing is, this is $200USD/mo. cheaper than the dialup since you pay/min. here. haha...

  • It's not just the speed with broadband (Score:5, Insightful)

    by urlgrey (798089) on Sunday February 20 2005, @05:23PM (#11730808) Homepage
    From having had numerous friends and family members bemoan that "I just don't use the Internet that much!" as justification for not getting DSL/cable, in 100% of the cases, they've all had worlds open up when they saw how painless things became once their access was so dramatically faster. (Waiting several seconds for a single page like Yahoo! to download gets tedious quickly.)

    Their faster access meant more Internet usage (now they're paying bills online, banking, and shopping for instance), which in turn meant they "needed" the higher speed conenction.

    Very quickly, they realize how much more than just faster speed, the faster speed meant.

  • Speakeasy (Score:4, Insightful)

    by miyako (632510) <miyako@[ ]il.com ['gma' in gap]> on Sunday February 20 2005, @05:30PM (#11730844) Homepage Journal
    Speakeasy.net will allow you to sublet your DSL connection (not sure of any other providers that officially support this). You might look into just making back some of your cost by subleting out connections to a few neighbors over wireless. Offer a wireless connection and maybe a few other services and price according to how many subscribers you have (maybe divide the cost of the connection evenly?)
    I have a friend who does this, and has had some pretty good luck. Biggest thing to watch out for if you do that is to have some sort of document outlining what exactly you offer (especially that you have no uptime garuntee, and what, if any, tech support you offer, and when).

  • How about UUCP? (Score:3, Funny)

    by zoid.com (311775) on Sunday February 20 2005, @05:37PM (#11730888) Homepage Journal
    This isn't really the solution but it's the on we used 10 years ago to send email. Wow.. Things have really changed in the past 10 years.

  • Try my ISP (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 20 2005, @05:41PM (#11730912)
    My ISP, "Linksys", is said to have nationwide presence, and best of all, their service is free! They are Wi-Fi only, however; look around, they might be servicing your neighborhood.

    This is not a plug. I'm just a happy consumer, er, I mean, customer ;-)

  • Don't make the tail wag the dog (Score:5, Interesting)

    by EtherMonkey (705611) on Sunday February 20 2005, @05:56PM (#11731008)

    I think your going about this the wrong way. While you might not NEED the speed of high speed Internet, you admit you want the convenience of always on service.

    I would urge you to look in a different direction. Instead of dropping the HSI, (high speed Internet), I'd drop my analog telephone service and switch to a VoIP provider. Depending on the optional services and amount of long distance, you could save $40 or much more each month by using an unlimited VoIP package from Vonage, VoicePulse, AT&T, etc versus traditional telco rates. Since you also have a cellphone that apparently works at your home, there's really no downside to this scenario.

    If you are dead set about nixing your HSI, your best option is to find an agreeable, nearby neighbor to share their HSI account. But if you do this, definately use wireless -- not copper -- to connect to his/her service. Differences in ground potential between houses can destroy equipment, cause a shock or even be a fire hazard.

    You could use something like a Multitech RouteFinder RF500, or any other router that provides a serial port to use an external modem for ISP dial-up. This would give you an always-on dial-up connection. However, since a bare POTS line for your always-on Internet is around $22/mo, plus a bare-bones, unlimited dial-up ISP is another $10/mo, when you add in taxes and fees, you're maybe going to save $5 - 15 per month: not worth it in my view.

    ISDN, at least in the USA, is probably not an attractive option, since most telco's charge per minute of use per B channel, plus the ISP's usually charge a higher rate for access. Where the telco does offer unlimited data service it's at a considerably higher rate than $50/mo. So you'll pay more for slower speed via ISDN.

    I know several people who have "cut the cord" to the phone company and rely solely on VoIP over the Cable Internet and cellphone for voice calls. They save an average of $30/mo and are quite satisfied with the quality and reliability.

  • DSL Lite... (Score:3, Informative)

    by microTodd (240390) on Sunday February 20 2005, @05:58PM (#11731026) Homepage Journal
    I'm not sure where you live and who your baby bell is but....my DSL ISP, BellSouth, offers what they call DSL Lite, which is always on but has much lower bandwith for less cost, $24.95 a month.

    http://www.bellsouth.com/consumer/inetsrvcs/index. html [bellsouth.com]

  • Move to Canada (Score:3, Informative)

    by ninja_sqrl (829421) on Sunday February 20 2005, @06:01PM (#11731038) Homepage
    If you want cheap broadband, move to Saskatchewan. I get 1.5 Mb up, 300 Kb down ADSL for $25 Canadian/month, and you can get 64 kb download speed package (extra-light) for like $12/month. You just have to deal with the shatty weather.......... Older Price List for Sasktel [usask.ca]

  • zerg (Score:5, Informative)

    by Lord Omlette (124579) on Sunday February 20 2005, @07:15PM (#11731430) Homepage
    I'm surprised no one's linked to Paul Boutin's How To Steal Wi-Fi [msn.com] (and how to keep the neighbors from stealing yours)

    • Re:Easy, get dial up, then (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Bri3D (584578) on Sunday February 20 2005, @04:59PM (#11730632) Journal
      Except that a 2nd phone line+dialup costs the same as broadband, so you might as well get the broadband.
        • Exactly. I was on "Unlimited" access with DelaNET. After being online for a bit, I started getting e-mails, something to the effect of:

          "By unlimited, we do not mean unlimited. You are using your connection without limit, which is not the meaning of unlimited. You can't possibly use your connection 24/7. What you're doing falls under the category of business connectivity, and if you keep staying online, your rates will shoot up into the hundreds of dollars per month." (from joybenz@delanet.com)

          I'm not

    • Re:Easy, get dial up, then (Score:4, Informative)

      by Osty (16825) on Sunday February 20 2005, @05:01PM (#11730652) Homepage

      Get dial up then have a dedicated 2nd phone line just for it, and leave it connected 24/7. I did this in college and never had a problem. There are lots of free programs out there to do stuff like keep your connection alive, redail on dissconnect, etc.

      Unfortunately, most "unlimited" dial-up plans are actually hour-limited. If you read the TOU carefully, they'll tell you what "unlimited" means, but it's typically a high (but not impossible) number of hours per month. If you pass that limit, you'll either get blocked for the rest of the month, or charged a very large amount, depending on the ISP. Not every ISP will catch you, and those that do won't catch you every time, but if you keep a dial-up connection up 24/7 for months on end, any ISP you use will notice sooner or later and take some action.

      The best thing to do is ask when you sign up for the ISP. They may have a more expensive dial-up plan that allows you to stay up 24/7/365. It might cost you $30/mo rather than $10/mo, but that's still cheaper than $50/mo broadband.

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