[MCTG] Internet during the power outrage

[Stewart Dickson]

My wife and I did a WarWalk through downtown on Monday.
City Hall at Laurel & Franklin had a bright, strong radio signal, but no
upstream connection behind it.
I bet they are reconsidering the value of their PEG franchise with
Comcast.  They should be.

The Redwood Coast Senior Center had both electricity and public Wifi.
However, as the week
wore on, the quality of the internet connection degraded.  But that might
have been due to
the load as word spread and people started using it.  Headlands coffee shop
had a generator
running yesterday, but I didn't check for Wifi.

I work remotely for and internet company, so no internet for a week is not
an option.

--http://us.imdb.com/Name?Stewart+Dickson  http://www.ifp.uiuc.edu/~sdickson
http://mumstudents.org/~000-10-8151/Lab1/aboutme.html

On Tue, Oct 29, 2019 at 1:40 AM bO Shmo <bo at immaculateflame.org> wrote:

> Mendocino Coast Tech Guild - to facilitate technical education and
> community business startup.
> Hi Stewart.
>
> As you are learning now, Fort Bragg has a terrible shortage of
> publicly accessible WiFi. This is mostly a nation-wide problem, but
> Fort Bragg is less hospitable than most other towns of it's size that
> I have computed in.
>
> Moody's in Mendocino might be your best bet for a coffee shop connection.
>
> Since you've already mentioned a long-term solution for your home, be
> aware that most of that 15 Watts is being pumped out of your router in
> the form of radio waves (probably). You should be able to access your
> router's configuration with any web browser, and switch off the WiFi.
> You would then have a functional router (in the classic sense) that
> you physically plug your computer into with a Cat 5 cable. Ping me if
> I can give you any tips about that.
>
> Reason #1 why the 'WiFi-off' solution may not help: Laptops typically
> dissipate 65 Watts or more, which makes your router's power
> dissipation much less significant than the use of other devices. Many
> laptops actually use 90W on average. Monitor size is a big factor
> here, but so are processor speeds and high-performance graphics cards.
> If a 15W router is compromising your battery charge, then you are
> going to need a second, more powerful battery to run any device too
> large to fit in your pocket. The inverter which converts your DC to AC
> will also waste a lot of charge.
>
> Reason #2 why the 'WiFi-off' solution may not help: Telecom
> corporations in the US are scamming, blood-sucking, parasitic
> bastards. Your router might have been sold to you by a telecom. In
> recent years, some telecoms have sold routers without admin passwords,
> so you literally cannot configure your own device (Verizon = guilty).
> But this really should NOT be a problem for you, because everybody
> *should* be using an after-market router, anyway. Just make sure that
> whatever rectangular device which functions as your modem is not also
> broadcasting any radio signals, and then perhaps the 'WiFi-off'
> solution is right for you. On that note, If your modem is separate
> from your router, which is most typical, then you could plug directly
> into the modem, and remove your router from the equation.
>
> --
> bO Pierce
> +1.580.530.6660, text messages only
>
> No people have ever significantly reformed capitalism without
> threatening its existence.
>
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