[sf-lug] Fwd: two projects

[Marc Juul]

I would be very interested in anything you find on the subject of
marine Internet.
I've only sailed around Scandinavia / Germany / Latvia and generally
trips < 1 week, and mostly pretty close to land, so my experiences
might be of little use, but nevertheless:

I was surprised at how far out gprs is sometimes possible, though the
speed is very sucky. A lot of harbours have wifi now, even if it's not
announced. Usually they're just completely default-setting open APs.

Of the satellite type connections I've only used Iridium. Very slow,
only really good for email or browsing with a textbased browser, but
it is surprisingly stable and one of the nice things is that you don't
have to fiddle with pointing an antenna at some specific place in the
sky, just a general 'up' kind of direction works, even when moving the
antenna around while connected (good when the waves get big). Another
plus is that Iridium works anywhere in the world and also gives you
voice. The speed is amazingly snail-like though, comparable to using
your cell phone as a modem in non-gprs mode.

> 2: very low power linux boxes on a boat. The idea is to have a
> small, very low power network on the boat, hopefully directly
> powered by 12VDC.
>     I cannot find a source for internet access from a boat that's
> out on the ocean. Gotta be satellite connex, I think, unless
> possible to tap a passing submarine.