EVDO Makes the Grade

I've been an internet outcast for years. It's by choice, mostly. I choose to live in a rural area. But this choice has severely limited my internet connection options. The larger cities in Mississippi have been wired for broadband since about 1996, but folks in the sticks have been left completely out. Our choices have been dial-up (not even the 56k variety .. more like 33k), or satellite. I was a subscriber to DirecWay for a few years, but the service started out as bad and only got worse. Even when the service is working nominally, the inappropriately-named FAP (Fair Access Policy) keeps you from doing anything useful with the satellite connection. About a year back we ditched the satellite connection and turned on the data connection through our cell phone provider. The connection was much slower, but also much more reliable. And since the cell phone company does not impose any usage limits, the phone connection is actually a lot more useful than the satellite connection. But let's face it, GRPS is painfully slow. That's right, we don't even get EDGE in my area .. forget about UMTS!

When I recently found out that Alltel offers EVDO in my area, I jumped at the chance to try it out. I received a Franklin USB modem for my birthday and switched on the EVDO service. It's amazing! The ping times are relatively low, consistently less than 500ms (please understand, I'm used to seeing >1000ms pings with the satellite and >700ms pings with the cell phone service). The downstream speeds are good, between 600-700Kbps, while the upsream speeds are a usable 60-80Kbps. I've only had this service for a few days, but it looks like the real deal!

You may be thinking this review is unbalanced since my previous forms of internet connectivity have been so bad. So it's important to point out that the internet connection at my office is an 8Mbit cable connection. I know and appreciate what good internet is. And I'm certainly not saying the Alltel EVDO service competes with with that type of service. However, it is leaps and bounds better than any other form of service previously available. I've waited a long time for reasonable internet service in my area, but it looks like the wait is finally over.

Java Plugins

I learned something pretty neat today. The team at my office is working on a medium-sized Java project and we have the need (desire really) to develop some components as plugins. One of the guys came across some example code to do just that (thanks to the folks at javaranch.com). After seeing the example we realized that Java has a handy utility built right in that handles plugins nicely. The ClassLoader class (sorry, I forgot the namespace and don't have a reference handy) makes quick work of plugins. And check out his friend UrlClassLoader to load code from any standard URL style resource. Stuff like this is why I like Java. I have developed plugins before in C++ and Linux. It was not this easy. So go ahead and make your code plugable. It's easy!

Loving Linux Journal

I was at a book store last night and flipped through the latest copy of Linux Journal. I have always been impressed at the timeliness of the information inside the magazine. If you're a Linux user or developper, then you should check it out. If you're a Linux sysadmin, well then you already know how good it is.