[Tfug] DakotaCom and Gain Merger. Was Simply Bits? - Strike 1

Sat Sep 9 14:09:59 MST 2006

My company just switched to Simply Bits after we experienced a few to 
many T1 outages with DakotaCom. So far the service is great, though a 
few times the speed has seemed a little slow. I have not had a chance to 
really test the bandwidth yet. The owner has turned almost all of our IT 
stuff over to Nextrio, a sister company of Simply Bits. I still am not 
sure how I feel about this, as I built our network from the ground 
up--but he signs the paychecks.... And in fairness to him, I was being 
pulled in many different directions prior to that move.

Nextrio put in a MikroTik firewall solution using RouterBoards and 
RouterOS. We will have failover features which will fail over to Cox 
cable in the even that SimplyBits ever dies for some reason. We were 
using SmoothWall Corporate Server, a Linux based software firewall 
solution which is pretty robust, but Nextrio went with what they knew, 
and the MikroTik router can act as a wireless hotspot which is one of 
the things we wanted. Smoothwall does not do this.

--
Craig D.

bigj at flatwan.net wrote:
> Oh we don't take it as a commercial, Mike. I'm glad you spoke up to state
> your company background and offerings. I'm also glad you quit lurking.
> haha
>
> --
> Jon
>
>   
>> Since you asked...
>>
>> Simply Bits (locally owned and operated) purchased the network
>> infrastructure of bbl a couple of years ago.  Then the entire Tucson based
>> wireless network was upgraded in '05/'06 by Simply Bits.   Since then we
>> have quietly aquired other wireless companies and several others have
>> chosen to close up shop, or merge with other business to try and survive.
>>
>> The SB Wireless network infrastructure is now fed from multiple tier one
>> providers in multiple locations (so you are both Carrier and Location
>> diverse [BGP/IBGP])
>>
>> The SB backbone rings now consist of Licensed DS3 links and Fiber, with
>> OSPF running between all of the QOS enabled Tower routers (should be about
>> 30 by years end) from the backbone towers to the Net, or our 2,500 sqft.
>> Co-Lo facility, is typically under 5ms!.
>>
>> All of the towers are geo-synced to the high resolution 1-pps. Signal from
>> the GPS infrastructure which insures that all of your towers are either
>> talking to subscribers, or listening at the same time.(So we are not
>> stepping on ourselves)
>>
>> Most of our "Low Speed :)" (1Mbps-7Mbps) customers are installed with a
>> hard back dish that resembles a DirecTV dish pointed to one of our towers.
>> They have an excellent rear rejection and we have found the manufacturing
>> tolerances to be superior to mesh style parabolic dishes of the same size.
>>   We utilize Motorols Canopy Equipment for our Customer Premise
>> Equipment(CPE).  Simply Bits is now the #1 Motorola Authorized Canopy
>> Solution Provider (ACSP) in Arizona.
>>
>> Our "Higher Speed" (8Mbps-155Mbps) customers are typically engineered
>> links and the antenna form factor varies as a result of this, there are
>> many factors that can affect this, distance, power, frequency, terrain,
>> local RF interference, Etc.  So these will usually range from 1.5'-2' foot
>> square panels, or 2'-8' Radome enclosed dishes.
>>
>> Our customer base has been doubling each year, so we are always looking
>> for the best and brightest in the field(Support, Install, Data Center Mgt,
>> Network Mgt, RF Engineers, Etc, so if resumes are getting dusted off... ;)
>>
>> I apologize if you read this as a commercial, that was not my intent, our
>> network speaks for itself and I thought that this list might want to know
>> about something technical about it, we have built a great team that has
>> been working very hard for the last year and a half to build Tucson a
>> wireless network that we can all be proud of, right here, in our own back
>> yard.
>>
>> No wires, No strings...
>>
>> Mike Bernstein
>> Simply Bits, LLC.
>> 5225 N SABINO CANYON RD
>> TUCSON AZ  85750-6435
>> www.simplybits.com
>> MikeB at SimplyBits.com
>> 520-545-0402 voice
>> 520-232-5401 fax
>> Lat:32°18'7.72"N Lon:110°49'28.11"W Earth
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: tf
>>     
>
>
>
> ug-bounces at tfug.org [mailto:tfug-bounces at tfug.org] On Behalf Of
>   
>> johngalt
>> Sent: Friday, September 08, 2006 11:18 PM
>> To: Tucson Free Unix Group
>> Subject: Re: [Tfug] DakotaCom and Gain Merger. Was Simply Bits? - Strike 1
>>
>> From: "keith smith"
>>     
>>> Recently my employer told me I needed to sell to fund my
>>> position. My response: "If I could fund my position I
>>> would not need you!".  Got a blank stare.
>>>       
>> Is your resume up to date?
>>
>>
>> Back to the topic of WISPs:
>>
>> About dark gray offset Parabolic WISP dish antennas seen all
>> over town.... are these specific to a provider, who?
>>
>> Maybe I just answered my question... Ya know, thought I saw
>> one on the very top of former e-city/bblabs antenna tower
>> location on south Park.
>>
>> Gain used to use prime focus parabolic antennas with wire
>> dishes. do they still use those?
>>
>> Who offers WISP service  in Tucson?
>>
>> Dakota/Gain
>> Sprint
>> Simply Bits?
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Tucson Free Unix Group - tfug at tfug.org
>> Subscription Options:
>> http://www.tfug.org/mailman/listinfo/tfug_tfug.org
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Tucson Free Unix Group - tfug at tfug.org
>> Subscription Options:
>> http://www.tfug.org/mailman/listinfo/tfug_tfug.org
>>
>>     
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Tucson Free Unix Group - tfug at tfug.org
> Subscription Options:
> http://www.tfug.org/mailman/listinfo/tfug_tfug.org
>
>
>   