Wireless Internet Providers

Discussions about Internet service providers (ISPs), the Meetinghouse Firewall, wired and wireless networking, usage, management, and support of Meetinghouse Internet
craiggsmith
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Wireless Internet Providers

#1

Post by craiggsmith »

Anyone out there use a wireless internet provider for their building? Wondering what options are available (specifically in Utah). Neither my FM nor HQ could give me an answer.
Craig
South Jordan, UT
russellhltn
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Re: Wireless Internet Providers

#2

Post by russellhltn »

Yes. We have one building via Verizon 4G. It was set up and installed by FM.

Imagine sharing your cellphone connection with 100 of your closest friends. It also seems to have a tendency to die, forcing me to reset the modem. I solved that problem by installing a timer to power off/on the modem every day in the early morning hours.

The clerk has reported that he's unable to do his work on Sundays until everyone has left the building. We've tried the "middle" filtering option - it helped, but didn't go far enough. We're now trying the most strict filtering option.

In contrast, it seems our other building on DSL is doing better, even if it is slow.

In short, it's better than no Internet at all - but I'd rank it as the least desirable option.
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craiggsmith
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Re: Wireless Internet Providers

#3

Post by craiggsmith »

russellhltn wrote:Yes. We have one building via Verizon 4G. It was set up and installed by FM.

Imagine sharing your cellphone connection with 100 of your closest friends. It also seems to have a tendency to die, forcing me to reset the modem. I solved that problem by installing a timer to power off/on the modem every day in the early morning hours.

The clerk has reported that he's unable to do his work on Sundays until everyone has left the building. We've tried the "middle" filtering option - it helped, but didn't go far enough. We're now trying the most strict filtering option.

In contrast, it seems our other building on DSL is doing better, even if it is slow.

In short, it's better than no Internet at all - but I'd rank it as the least desirable option.
Yikes, that doesn’t sound fun. I was thinking of something like Vivint or Utah Broadband or Rise Broadband, not exactly sure what technology they use. Some of those can provide pretty high speeds.
Craig
South Jordan, UT
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Mikerowaved
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Re: Wireless Internet Providers

#4

Post by Mikerowaved »

craiggsmith wrote:Yikes, that doesn’t sound fun. I was thinking of something like Vivint or Utah Broadband or Rise Broadband, not exactly sure what technology they use. Some of those can provide pretty high speeds.
The companies you refer to are Wireless Internet Service Providers, or WISP's. They provide service through a terrestrial link using a dish antenna about the size of a Dish or DirectTV antenna. They are a good step up from using 4G, but not without obstacles to overcome. The first of which is having a building in direct line of sight with one of their transmitting towers. The second may prove impossible in some areas and that's getting approval from the FM folks to have an antenna installed on the building's roof. The hurdles to jump are pretty large and I wouldn't go there unless there are absolutely no other providers for your building.
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Jacobdaviddean
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Re: Wireless Internet Providers

#5

Post by Jacobdaviddean »

Just a small suggestion, if your building uses a WISP or Cell Modem, I'd discuss disabling the Wifi with your Stake Presidency. DSL is bad enough, but I couldn't imagine leaving Wifi on for the entire building with either a WISP or Cell modem. WISP might be able to handle it, but they just aren't built to handle more than 20 devices in reality.

Remember, Wifi is not required in the building. The primary function of the building internet is to facilitate the clerks. If they can't do what they need, then other offerings must be reigned in. It's ultimately up to the Stake Presidency, but if there's a problem, I'm sure a decent argument can be made.
russellhltn
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Re: Wireless Internet Providers

#6

Post by russellhltn »

Jacobdaviddean wrote:Just a small suggestion, if your building uses a WISP or Cell Modem, I'd discuss disabling the Wifi with your Stake Presidency.
If filtering doesn't work, that's the next step. There's 4 APs. We'll have to discuss if we want to turn some/all of them off.
Have you searched the Help Center? Try doing a Google search and adding "site:churchofjesuschrist.org/help" to the search criteria.

So we can better help you, please edit your Profile to include your general location.
lajackson
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Re: Wireless Internet Providers

#7

Post by lajackson »

Jacobdaviddean wrote:I couldn't imagine leaving Wifi on for the entire building with either a WISP or Cell modem.
Due to some stellar planning, our stake center was on a wireless provider for the first few months after it was built. The problem was that there was only one cell tower in the area. We found out fairly quickly that if we disabled the meetinghouse WiFi because we were out of bandwidth, the phones tagged the cell tower instead, and our Internet service itself ran out of bandwidth to supply us.
jamiep39
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Re: Wireless Internet Providers

#8

Post by jamiep39 »

Here in Saint George the majority of our church buildings are connected through a WISP. (It's a little hard to dig through the lava rock just to get an internet connection.) Some of the downtown buildings have had fiber run to them in recent years but the majority are still wireless. The wireless service actually works fairly well as long as you have enough bandwidth (like anything else). At my building we have a 100mbps x 100mpbs wireless connection but it's a YSA building with 6 wards so that'd be overkill for a regular chapel, but it works really well for wireless.

As far as overall connectivity, our building just got the new Meraki APs and that made a very significant improvement with usability. With the old Cisco APs, once 4 wards were in the building at the same time everything pretty much died even though we had a decent internet connection. Now with the new APs the wireless is still usable even with hundreds of clients. If you don't have the new Meraki APs yet, I imagine you will soon. I was told by our FM that the church is rolling them out in batches and about half the buildings in our group got approved in the first batch.
craiggsmith
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Re: Wireless Internet Providers

#9

Post by craiggsmith »

jamiep39 wrote:Here in Saint George the majority of our church buildings are connected through a WISP. (It's a little hard to dig through the lava rock just to get an internet connection.) Some of the downtown buildings have had fiber run to them in recent years but the majority are still wireless. The wireless service actually works fairly well as long as you have enough bandwidth (like anything else). At my building we have a 100mbps x 100mpbs wireless connection but it's a YSA building with 6 wards so that'd be overkill for a regular chapel, but it works really well for wireless.

As far as overall connectivity, our building just got the new Meraki APs and that made a very significant improvement with usability. With the old Cisco APs, once 4 wards were in the building at the same time everything pretty much died even though we had a decent internet connection. Now with the new APs the wireless is still usable even with hundreds of clients. If you don't have the new Meraki APs yet, I imagine you will soon. I was told by our FM that the church is rolling them out in batches and about half the buildings in our group got approved in the first batch.
Thanks, good to see someone's experience with a WISP.

This building was actually part of the pilot for the Meraki APs because of its low bandwidth. I was told they would give stake's the ability to control who and what and therefore maximize bandwidth, but that never materialized. They did split our wifi into multiple networks but we got too many complaints so abandoned that. Not sure what the overall results were of the pilot otherwise. Our other building only got one to replace the wifi in the router, but that caused more problems than it solved. Hopefully they will replace all to remedy that, as yes, they can handle many more clients than the 1041s could.
Craig
South Jordan, UT
craiggsmith
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Location: South Jordan, Utah

Re: Wireless Internet Providers

#10

Post by craiggsmith »

Jacobdaviddean wrote:Remember, Wifi is not required in the building. The primary function of the building internet is to facilitate the clerks.
Well, MLS used to work fine via a modem, and I assume that's still an option. The web is required for other clerk tasks but not all of those need to be done on Sundays. But the Church has/is moving all lesson content to the web, so it's becoming pretty important for teaching. All manuals, pictures, and videos in our libraries are being disposed of at the end of the year. As much as we tell people they have to download everything ahead of time, not everything can be downloaded and people are always going to forget something. Or a teacher has something come up and someone has to fill in.
Craig
South Jordan, UT
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