Internet - the hard way

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 We have what I call cross-country internet. Essentially it is an antenna on the roof pointed to a receiving tower. In our case the tower is 18 kilometers away through hills and trees.

Getting a clear line-of-sight to the tower has been a challenge for us these past 4 years and this is our 4th antenna and a total of 8 service trips by our internet provider to our house. The trees have grown around us and down the line as well so this obviously has presented reception problems for us..

I have to to applaud Seaside Communications for putting up with us. No argument, you've got a problem? - we'll check it out.

And out they came, 8 times. The last call (this week) involved a bucket truck in order to effect a better placement of the antenna. In our case to the opposite end of the roof in order to get the best possible signal was the best possible option.

Hopefully this is the final solution to our many problems of dropped signals, intermittent reception or in some cases no reception at all.

After the install, I decided to do a speed test to see if there was an improvement. According to a test I just completed my download speed is 12.91 mbs and upload is 1.72 mbs which is a significant improvement over the antenna position we had before.

So, this appears to be the final solution.....we hope! The second photo shows the final placement of the antenna.

Yes, it was a miserable day in Nova Scotia, just one of many miserable rainy, cloudy cool days this spring.



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