Service Info

General Service Information - What CWX.NET is all about
Availability - Find out if you can get service in your area
Equipment - The equipment required for the network
Pricing - Membership and monthly costs for service
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General Service Description
Colorado Wireless Exchange (CWX.NET) is a member owned, member operated, nonprofit Colorado cooperative providing low-cost high speed wireless data connectivity and transport for business, government, and residential customers. By using a combination of mountain top, high ground, and high building "repeater" radios CWX.NET provides bi-directional high speed data connections between points where traditional copper and fiber point-to-point links are either not available or too expensive. The CWX.NET network provides a cost effective alternative to Satellite, ISDN and T-1 data services for business and residential internet customers.

Unlike dedicated point-to-point solutions like DSL, high speed wireless is a shared bandwidth network. Because of this certain applications that are not flow controlled or flood the network, are not compatable with a shared bandwidth wireless network. The most common appliations of this type are Peer-to-Peer file sharing with a large number of concurrent transfer sessions and certain multiplayer first party shooter games with extensive realtime graphics. Many other multiplayer games do not flood the network, and are acceptable.

CWX.NET uses unlicensed public spectrum which is shared by the Front Range communities without fee. The FCC's only requirement for using this free unlicensed spectrum is that all users must accept any and all interference, even if it produces unreliable operation. CWX.NET used to regularly talk and meet with other wireless providers in the area to minimize interference for all our customers and members, until they refused to cooperate in spectrum sharing and forced CWX out of our initial service areas to the east of the foothills. Individual sites may experience excessive interference due to other wireless providers or home RF equipment near you, or down your line of sight to the mountain. We do our best to avoid this when possible by moving to other unlicensed channels.

To provide service to remote areas which have no other Broadband Internet access, CWX.NET uses high ground (mountain top) repeater sites. These sites have an excellent view and coverage area, but are also at higher risk of interference. In addition they are prone to "icing" caused by the wind driving moisture from clouds onto the radio, tower, and antennas. By evaporative cooling, the wind freezes significant amounts of ice to everything on the towers and hill top. It's not uncommon to have 6-18" of ice coating every surface and object on a tower after a several day freezing storm with moderate wind at the hill top. The hill tops get significantly more snow, and combined with very difficult conditions on north and east facing access roads, a failure may not be servicable for several days or more. In addition sites which are farther away from hill tops, near the maximim range of the technology, may see significantly degraded, or no, service from cloulds, rain, hail, snow or fog. It is strongly suggested that members which need internet access during these weather outages, maintain alternate internet access like a low cost or free dialup account.

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Availability
Wireless service is delivered via microwave radio equipment. To be eligible for the service, a technician may have to visit your site, and evaluate the location to check that the site is suitable for radio communications, and to ensure that the equipment could operate properly in the planned environment. Most sites under 10 miles are easily supported as long as good RF line of sight is available and the Fresnel Zone is more than 80% clear. Link to FCC Exemption for Fixed Wireless Data Services is provided here for those concerned about restrictions by local regulations, rental agreements, and Home Owner Associations. Our standard antenna is less than the 1 meter size specified in the exemption.

Below is a general checklist which defines some important criteria which need to be present for a radio site installation :

You must be within the current service area. The current CWX.NET service area is technically a 15 mile line-of-sight radius from our Canopy Repeaters. Generally speaking this covers the front range from north of Longmont to north of Wellington, areas west of the mountain top repeaters. CWX was forced out of most city areas to the east of the foothills by the aggressive for-profit wireless companies refusing to share spectrum. The CWX.NET service area continues to expand in other urban and rural areas.
RF-Line of sight to one of our repeater sites. This means that you must have an unobstructed view (No trees, buildings, etc) of our mountain top radio towers , and it must be clear of obstructions and reflective surfaces 10-25 foot around the visual line of sight. For more information on where the repeater sites are located, please access the Repeater Sites Page
A place to mount the antenna. The required 802.11B antenna is a 24dB Directional antenna, which measures approx. 24"H x 32"W (Comparable to 2 side by side DSS dishes). Its aluminum design makes it lightweight, and relatively easy to mount. Canopy dishes are smaller.

** Each installation may need to be evaluated by a technician for a number of criteria to insure availability of service

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Equipment
CWX.NET Canopy system uses Motorola Canopy radios with small dishes to narrow the beam to minimize interference problems for the system and members. Most of the canopy dishes are modified satelite TV dishes with the LNA horn removed and replaced with a Motorola canopy radio mount.

This system is easly self installed by many members as the dish is easy to mount and aim. It must be grounded with at least #8 wire to meet state electrical code, and is connected to your home system with standard CAT-5 ethernet cable.

Professional installation and site surveys with estimates are available for those not interested in self-installation (a site survey fee may be required by your installer).

The coop can provide the equipment for a refundable $300 deposit, or you can purchase your own off eBay. Typical initial costs for a canopy self install are about $560 ($300 refundable deposit, $125 non-refundable CWX startup fee, and $135 first quarters service).

Because all connections are 24x7, we require members use a firewall solution. This can be either the Canopy built-in firewall, cable modem router/firewall product, or a Linux PC configured as a router, server, and firewall.

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Pricing

Service Type *	Member Fee **	Monthly Charge	Fair Share	Over Quota Threshold	Over Quota Rate
Canopy 1-1.5mbps Half Share	$100	$35	38.4kbps up to 12GB/mo	1.25GB	$4.00 per GByte
Canopy 1-1.5mbps Full Share	$125	$45	76.8kbps up to 24GB/mo	2.5GB	$4.00 per GByte
Canopy 1-1.5mbps Two Share	$125	$70	153.6kbps up to 48GB/mo	5.0GB	$4.00 per GByte
Additional Bandwidth Shares	N/A	$25	76.8kbps/ea	2.5GB	N/A
802.11B 768kbps ***	$125	$40	38.4kbps up to 12GB/mo	2.5GB	$4.00 per GByte

* 1-1.5mbps is only available where capacity is available. The technology may limit speeds to 512-768kbps in certain areas.
** Members share of common infrastucture costs, non-refundable. Member fees do not include radio/dish deposit, site survey or installation costs.
*** 802.11b service is only available in a few areas

Since we are a member owned, member operated cooperative, our policy is that each member pay their own direct costs and fair share of common costs - we do not offer "Unlimited Use" rate plans. Members are encouraged to monitor their own bandwidth usage using bandwidth monitoring and management tools.

CWX uses between 15:1 and 20:1 over subscription ratio to share costs and engineer bandwidth allocation in our network. This defines each members "fair share" as 1/15th of the norminal bandwidth they purchase. A full share is defined as 1.1mbps/15, or about 76.8kbps average over each 6 hour, or quarter day period. Depending on protocol overheads, this allows full speed transfers between 150-200MB/period as each members "fair share". This can be as much as 600-750MB per day, or 16-24GB/month if large downloads are throttled to under each members 76.8kbps "fair share". "Fair share" bandwidth not used in any 6 hour, quarter day period is forfeited.

Use in excess of "fair share" is allowed at any time, is summed over the month, and subject to an "Over Quota" charge of $4/GB when it exceeds the allowed "Over Quota" threshold each month. This allows a typical member to download at full bandwidth a DVD, several CD's, or a couple hours of movies, TV shows, or YouTube with little to no over quota charges. Heavier use can incur significant charges.

Heavier bandwidth use members that see frequent over quota charges, will find it cheaper to purchase additional shares. About 1/4 of CWX is inside the "half share" quotas, and about 1/4 of CWX see an over quota bill every once in a while or have purchased an additional 2-4 shares. This allows CWX members to use as much bandwidth as they want, and only pay their "fair share" of direct CWX costs.

We do not invoice, but currently provide quarterly email statements around the middle of the second month of each quarter as a reminder to pay. We may drop that in favor of providing member passwds and access to their account status on the web site.

We expect members to pay their base service fee, in advance, at the beginning of each quarter. This amount is DUE on the 1st, and LATE if not received by the 10th. Over quota amounts are due on receipt of the monthly statement, and subject to late fees if not received by the 10th of the following month. The best way to avoid late fees is to get your payments in the mail on, or before, the first of each month. While most local mail seems to be getting delivered next day right now, we also frequently see it taking two or three business days. So waiting to mail your check on the 8th or 9th will risk a late fee at times.

A $10, or 10%, whichever is more late fee is applied for payments received after the 10th of each month. Accounts with two month delinquent balances are subject to a $35 disconnect/collection fee and will be sent a 10 day demand notice. If the account is not brought current within the 10 day period, the account will be disconnected and referred to small claims for collection.

Each member is expected to monitor their own usage and pay for all overquota fees. This is no different than metered billing by your water, gas, electric, phone, pay-per-view, or other usage based services.

CWX does not block users needing Peer-to-Peer services like Bittorrent, but does require that the member restrict the number of upload and download concurrent sessions to no more than two, and throttle both the download and upload to your 76.8ikbps per share. Be aware that once your "fair share" quota is exceeded, that you will be charged Over Quota fees. Members that allow P2P services to saturate the network with a large number of concurrent sessions will be warned to keep their use within their "fair share", and may find their bandwidth restricted to only their "76.8kbps" "fair share" until the problem is resolved.

We do not allow members to directly or indirectly resell services, including sharing a connection outside the member's home/business or commercial web/mail/ftp hosting.

CWX provides only basic ISP services: internet connectivity, DNS services, and routing for IP address blocks. We allow members to run their own gateway/firewall/server system (typically Linux or NT) and host their own low volume mail, web, and ftp servers. We also allow members to host a very low volume charity web/ftp site for non-profit organizations like a local scout troup, hobby club, or church - just check with us first.

The canopy radios contain a builtin NAT based firewall which provides basic protection for you home computers. The version of NAT on the radios only allows compliant IPSEC and L2TP VPN traffic; it does not handle the flaweed Microsoft PPTP VPN. If you MUST use PPTP, which is NOT recommended, you will need your own cable/DSL router/firewall if you need VPN access using PPTP or other non-standard VPN protocols. Review security issues with PPTP at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point-to-Point_Tunneling_Protocol

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