Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with internetaccess

How do you monitor up/down Internet usage on a dial-up connection?

fujiko — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 15:38:19 -0800

Rural Internet Connection: I need help with gauging current data use before investing in mobile broadband. So, like 4% of American homes, my parents have no access to broadband Internet service. The valley they live in is technically covered by Verizon 3G, and my dad is considering erecting his own cellular repeater. (He's a mountain goat, so I'm not worried about him running cable up 200ft of hillside.) We've already been assured that you can use 3rd party equipment to rebroadcast 3G service directly in the house.

We totally get how the repeater works and is set up.

Here's the real problem: How the hell do you know if you're using 5GB of Internet access in a month? I understand there might be monitoring software out there, but I don't know what it's called. Looking for "monitoring software" leads to software teaching you how to snoop on other people's browsing habits. I just need to know how much data they're pulling down and sending up in a given 30-day period. I want them to have better Internet access (instead of 28.8 kbps) and access to phone service during fire season (lots of things related to the phone lines get burned). He's not going to spend $600-$800 on repeater equipment if I can't make this a watertight presentation.

Anyone know of any good candidates? Remember: this is dial-up. I can't configure a router to monitor or help me monitor their usage.

Thank you!

Translation help badly needed.

Neiltupper — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 22:01:59 -0800

USB Internet dongle in Italy: Can someone who reads Italian help me with this page and its links? I'm looking for internet access from my laptop in Italy next month. There is a Vodafone shop in the airport, where I plan to purchase the dongle described on this page.

With my limited Italian and the help of Google translator, I understand that this offers the dongle for 75 Euro which includes 25 Euro of internet usage. What I can't figure out is how much traffic that will purchase in terms of email and light surfing. I'm unable navigate the site to find this info. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

"order for sea is given"

paduasoy — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 15:14:23 -0800

Is it possible to get a broadband ISP without a landline? My father is moving to live on a boat*. He will not have a landline, but he has a Vodafone mobile broadband connected to a laptop through a USB modem. Vodafone provides the link but is not an internet service provider. He needs an ISP that does not requure a landline. He says that this can't be a dial-up provider because the Vodafone setup requires broadband.

Can anyone suggest a way round this? Thanks.

*Damp, cold and inconvenient, not romantic.

AirCard internet access with no plan? Possible?

susandennis — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 18:35:07 -0800

Do any of the services that offer aircards for wireless anywhere access to the Internet also offer a pay as you go or prepaid plan? I'm looking for backup, emergency, occasional, anywhere internet access. One of the aircards (or usb cell modems) offered by the cellphone companies would work fine BUT I can't find one that is plan-less.

Since I will only be using it occasionally and may go months without using it at all, I do not want to pay a monthly plan. Having said that, I suspect that I will have to buy the card at top dollar (since I won't have a plan) and the per minute or per data charge won't be budget either.

I use Virgin Mobile for pay as you go cellphone service and it is perfect for my needs but, alas, they don't have any non-phone or phone-as-modem offering.

I've scoured the obvious suspects and found pay-as-you go and prepaid options for Verizon and T-Mobile and AT&T cellphones but not air cards or usb modems.

Anyone seen such a thing or am I just living a decade too soon?

Boat docks and the internet

small_ruminant — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 15:14:17 -0800

What's the best way to get internet access without a phone line? Specifically, on a docked boat. What has your experience been with getting internet access someplace without a land line?

Our boat is docked someplace with such horrible phone service that it's not worth paying for. We need internet access for email, web browsing, and transmitting sending secure/ confidential files, usually via email.

I hear satellite access is prohibitively expensive. Is that still true? Would it be worth it if a few boats got together and shared it? What are the drawbacks to this sort of arrangement?

We are in the Berkeley Marina, in the San Francisco Bay. Currently we aren't worried about internet access while sailing.

Advice, anecdotes, or horror stories all welcome.

Help me get internet access for a few months in Accrington, UK.

chudmonkey — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 07:15:45 -0800

Help me get internet access for a few months in Accrington, UK. I'm staying at a family home in Church, near Accrington. I'll be there until the end of December 2006. The house doesn't have an active landline phone. An across-the-street neighbor has broadband access through BT, but he's elderly and not the person to ask for details or advice.

I'd like broadband access where I'm staying, preferably without the requirement of an active phoneline. (I've seen ads for Orange Broadband that say you don't need a phoneline for their services, so I'm hoping something like that is available to me.) I'm afraid I'm feeling very ignorant because I don't really know how the process of ordering and setting-up would differ from what I'm used to in Canada.

Can anyone give me any suggestions as to what companies to call and what to ask for when I do? My only requirements are that it cost less than £30-50/month and that I can use the service for only two months.

If you need any more information to advise me on this, please ask away!

DSL is impossible, T1 is expensive. Is there another option?

turducken — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 19:09:36 -0800

How can I get internet access for less than $400 a month? The problem: I just moved into a new office in Los Angeles. My officemate pays $400 semolians for a T1 line that is slower than DSL -- indeed, it rivals dial-up in its pokiness. And he wants me to contribute 200 bucks a month.

Why don't we get DSL? Because our building is 13,580 feet from the AT&T node, and the DSL limit is 14,000 feet. AT&T claims it should be possible to get DSL; but officemate insists that multiple techs have already come out, tested the line condition, and declared DSL impossible. (Yet, before the Yahoo merger, there was DSL thruout the building; now everyone pays for the shitty, expensive T1 -- that's $400 for each office, kids.)

Help me stop the insanity. It will make me physically ill to write this guy a check for $200 every month for the privilege of watching the NYT home page crank up like a Model T. (Yes, I know I shoulda asked about internet access before signing the lease -- but it's a great office. Free coffee, dog-friendly. And no, I can't just mooch off of some other office -- I'm the new guy. Also, the solution has to be good for both of us -- I could buy a PC card and get semi-slow internet directly from the sky, but I'd still have to pay the man his 200 bucks.) Thanks!

How can I get and stay connected to the 'net while travelling in Europe?

chudmonkey — Tue, 18 Jul 2006 19:22:53 -0800

How to best stay "connected" while travelling in Europe? I'm looking for experiences or anecdotes MeFites can share on this topic; there's a lot of raw info out there, but not many detailed testimonials.

I'll be travelling in Europe for about a year starting in a month or two. My companion and I are both travelling with laptops, which we'd like to use to access the 'net on a regular basis. We'd also like to travel with a phone that can be used easily for "local" (i.e. wherever we happen to be) calls, calls to other parts of Europe and overseas calls which would likely be limited to Canada.

We'll be staying frequently in cities and populated areas, but might find ourselves in the boonies or a less-developed nation every now and then.

So, please: Do you have any suggestions about 'net connectivity and/or cellphone use for travellers in Europe? I want to leave the field open to any suggestions, however broad - for the purposes of this question, money is not an issue but portability and usability are.

Broadbandfilter: How can I get internet setup without a current phone number (in SF)?

gramcracker — Tue, 18 Jul 2006 06:05:11 -0800

Gah! Broadbandfilter! Moving to a new apartment next week (in SF). What broadband provider, and how do I search for it without a current phone number? (Cable vs. DSL vs. FIOS vs. Wireless?) Cable is Comcast obviously; DSL looks like it can be from any number of providers, but I need a phone line first to verify. And then there's Verizon FIOS and Sprint or Verizon Wireless available as well. Need service earlier than Google rolls out its free product in SF.

Any experience with FIOS or Wireless? Good, bad?
I used a nearby restaurant's phone number to checkout availability of DSL in the area, and it looks like I'm close enough to a CO to get it. Anyone know the cheapest phone line I can get--or "naked DSL" without a phoneline--or a cheap DSL + phone line package? (Have Cingular wireless, could I do their "triple package" thing?)

Any advice, especially SF-specific, would be greatly appreciated. We're students, so we'd like to stick to the ~$40 per month range. Thanks!

How can I connect to the Internet at work?

tesseract420 — Mon, 30 Jan 2006 18:46:09 -0800

I work as a contract employee at a large corporation. The company has provided us with laptops. Because I won't be there long, I don't have Internet access. I noticed, though, that I can ping yahoo. But I can't otherwise connect to any websites. Any suggestions as to how I might read my e-mail, other than leaving the office and going to a cyber cafe?
I tried booting up a live Knoppix CD and for the first day I could connect. Now though, I get a message saying, "time out on port 80" when I use that option.

I'm assuming the company has a firewall, but I don't know what kind of software they use.

Highspeed-ish internet access in wild and small-town Botswana?

Good Brain — Fri, 06 Jan 2006 15:04:55 -0800

I am looking for net access options for a wildlife researcher operating in Botswana. He currently has limited net access, and is looking to improve his situation, both at his home and in his camp in the bush. Tips on satellite internet and other things I should be considering are appreciated. A bit more background, the researcher splits his time between a home in Maun and a semi-permenant research camp ~80km to the NW. In Maun they have some sort of wireline dialup that gets 28kbps at best. In the bush, they have a radio based dservice called Bushmail, which is pretty cool in many ways, but only handles e-mail and small attachments (under 100K).

They are going to start a website soon to better communicate their research to supporters and the general public and would like better connectivity so they can post images and multimedia. They'd also like to reduce their generall isolation from the outside world.

I'm interested in what people know about satellite internet access in this sort of situation, and other options we might consider. As cool as it would be, I don't think they'll be trying to setup long haul WiFi repeaters (unless they can piggyback on an existing effort in that regard).

I think the main option for Maun is probably getting an ISDN line from the telco, but I'm really not sure what all the options are for the bush access. I think ideally they'd be able to get 128-256kbps at both locations, but getting 128kbps in town and the ability to more reliably transfer 1-10MB files from the field would probably be a huge improvement.

On a related note, does anyone know how well rsync works over high latency/low bandwidth links?

Tips, experiences, or pointers to other resources would be much appreciated.

Best Broadband Provider?

Penks — Wed, 13 Jul 2005 16:51:11 -0800

I just cancelled Roadrunner internet access, and I need help finding another ISP. We had to cancel Roadrunner because they didn't want to give us phone support when it stopped working and said they were going to send somebody over in five days.

This is a vacation home in Mission, TX, which we use quite a lot, and usually take a laptop with WiFi. My parents are the ones who will use it most, and ideally, they should be able to just turn the laptop on and be connected automatically.

What we need is something reliable, with good phone support, that can support wireless access, not dialup because we have only one line and of course, cheap would be nice.

We're willing to switch phone providers if necessary, as long as we can keep the same number.

Wireless Internet in Ottawa

darsh — Tue, 14 Jun 2005 06:37:23 -0800

Leaving for Ottawa in 3 hours, and I just realised the place I'm staying has dial-up access only. Does anyone know of places in the vicinity of the US Consulate (or anywhere else downtown, really) where I can get wireless internet access (free would be great, but not necessary)? As a follow on, what can I do to kill a few hours in the area? I'll pick up a tourist guide, and don't mind walking. Anything I should definitely not miss? Any Ottawa residents know of hidden gems?

Where can I find free dialup in Switzerland?

letitrain — Thu, 23 Dec 2004 09:59:24 -0800

Free dialup internet access in Switzerland? (mi) So far I've found Bluewin, Swix and Sunrise. Bluewin is huge and reliable, but they require a mailing address in Switzerland, and I don't need the extras. Swix and Sunrise look simple (no reg, call this number, use this password), but I want to make sure there's not some kind of per-minute charge or other catch. Has anyone used one of these services? Thanks!

Seekng simple, cheap (free) local dialup access in San Diego.

garethspor — Wed, 29 Sep 2004 12:39:59 -0800

I'll be in San Diego for the Society for Neuroscience conference in late October. My hotel seems to have no ethernet and I would like to be able to go online with my laptop. Any suggestions for simple, cheap (free), local dial up services? Should I get a temporary AOL account (shudder) and use some of those free hours? Suggestions?

Ethics and dangers of tapping into your neighbor's wireless net access.

CunningLinguist — Sat, 19 Jun 2004 10:08:34 -0800

Ethics and dangers of tapping into your neighbor's wireless net access. So I just got a wireless laptop and I know zilch about how all this works. When I turn it on in my apartment, it tells me there are nearly a dozen available networks I can access. Some seem to require some kind of password, several don't. I'm assuming these are networks my neighbors in nearby apartments are paying for. My questions are: is it ethical to leech off someone else's account? Will it affect their own surfing? (The second question has implications for the first, in my view.) Will they notice? Should I try to find the person whose access I'm using and offer to pay half their bill?
What security dangers am I opening myself up to? If I keep doing this, can I get away with just not using this computer to send banking passwords and the like, seeing as I don't really care if anyone reads my email. Can someone now access my computer, not just the stuff I send? Are there any programs I should be using to protect myself? (Oh, and if you could use teeny tiny words, that would be great - I'm clueless technologically. Part of the problem here is I don't even know how to go about getting my own wireless access.)

what do you do when you're staying at hotels and their network blocks traffic on port 25?

redshifter — Mon, 07 Jun 2004 17:36:13 -0800

Road warriors: what do you do when you're staying at hotels and their network blocks traffic on port 25? It's frustrating to not be able to send email, and SquirrelMail as an alternative to Mail.app in OS X isn't quite good enough for me.

Webmail

ralawrence — Thu, 27 May 2004 03:35:38 -0800

Where I work has suddenly become all fascist about internet access and blocked SSH access. This is a pain because it was how I used to access my emails (SSH in, use Pine). I can't use a POP3 client on my PC because they've had that port blocked for ages. I'm currently using mail2web but don't like the way it handles replies and the general lack of functionality. My question is: is there a good free webmail application out there that is either managed (like mail2web) or I can install in my account (Linux, no db access, no root). If the latter can cope with the folders I have (I use spamassassin), safely render HTML emails (possible junk mail) and is easy to install, then that would be excellent. I have tried Google and Freshmeat but all the ones I saw were either commercial or looked rather featureless. Any recommendations?

How do I share the internet from my desktop to my laptop?

aclevername — Mon, 03 May 2004 13:00:40 -0800

I have a Hub, a desktop and a laptop. The desktop is currently hooked up to the net via Rogers. How do I arrange to have the internet access shared with the laptop? [more inside] I know this is likely a simple thing to do, but I can't seem to manage it. A former roommate and I had this set-up (I didn't hook anything up though), but we had made it official and ordered a second IP address from Rogers. Is this really necessary?

I tried connecting it all, (cable modem to hub, each computer to hub) and nothing. I cannot seem to find any simple instructions. I feel stupid for not being able to do this, so thanks for helping.

Low cost temporary internet access in Arizona

kelrae3 — Thu, 15 Jan 2004 05:36:30 -0800

Low cost temporary internet access in Arizona? My parents are snowbirds, as in, they spend most of the year in Canada, but choose to live the last few months of winter in AZ. They left last week with a laptop and promises of emailing often, if they can find not-too-expensive-only-for-a-few-months-easy-to-hook-up-ISP. [More Inside] I setup their last internet access as they have very limited knowledge of this sort of thing. I haven’t a clue where to start, and googling produces a kajillion results. Thx in advance.

How to access a blocked website at work

anastasiav — Thu, 11 Dec 2003 17:51:34 -0800

On the computer I use at work, there is one -- just one -- website that I cannot access. Any idea why and how to fix it? {more inside} PC running Windows 2000. Using both Mozilla 1.4 (primarily) and IE 6.0 (if I have to), I am completely and utterly unable to access any page hosted by ebay.com. Both browsers will think for a long time, and then tell me that "The Document Contains No Data" (Mozilla) or "Cannot find Server - The Page Cannot Be Displayed" (IE). Very occasionally, IE will let me go in and look around for a minute or two, but the minute I use any buttons (like 'search') I get "Cannot find Server - The Page Cannot Be Displayed".

I know there's no blocking software of any kind on this machine or network. Our Internet access is via cable. I've checked the hostsfile, and nothing weird there. I can get to any other site on the internet ... porn, other online auction sites, chatrooms, everything but ebay. Its putting a crimp in my last minute sniping for holiday gifts. Any idea what might be causing this and how to fix it?