Rural Broadband arrives...

I was just out visiting the prior generation at their lovely Lanark Highlands redoubt. Upon the occasion of my visit, I supervised the installation of a wireless broadband system including a squarish dish antenna outside and the cable to bring the system into the living room. The dial up 26.8 kbps link is replaced by a 3 Mbps link - allowing all manner of new options including remote support from yours truly.

Yon new wireless connection to the Internet was itself connected to a Linksys WRT610 multi-frequency Wireless Access Point. This unit also can act as a connection point for network attached storage, a 4 port wired gigabit Ethernet hub, and can do streaming to a media pc via the dreaded UPnP. For file serving, it can dish it up via http, ftp or as streams.

Step two appears to be the acquisition of a computer and software and me configuring all sorts of stuff upon said computer, the router/firewall, and various remote tech support technologies. And all of this has to take into account the limited physical capabilities of my progenitors. Dear old mum just couldn't handle the weight of a full fledged laptop on her jigsaw-puzzle of a leg.

So, the challenges aren't over, but the parental units should be entering the Internetz without adult (ie me) supervision within the next couple of weeks. Clearly, Vint Cerf never saw this one coming.