Lucketts.net is a Wireless Internet Service Provider (WISP)
providing high-speed wireless Internet access to residential and
business customers in the Lucketts Virginia area. Your computer
connects to the internet through our radio network over 30 times
faster than you can through most telephone lines.
The Standard Service Plan is $70 per month and includes equipment lease, a connection that provides
peak speeds of at least 1 Mbps, 5 email accounts with 100 Mbytes each of disk space that can be used
for email or personal web sites.
For most customers the initial cost is $250 and $70/month each month there-after. Special radios or
complex installations may cost extra. If you us to provide a router, that is an additional cost.
Factors that can complicate an installation: Climbing tall trees, poles or steep roofs; Extra long
wire runs from the antenna to your PC; Need for an amplifier to make up for poor signal strength at your
location; Setting up a customer home wireless network; etc.
Between 9AM and 9PM you can call us at 703.349.3661. Leave a message if you get
an answering machine (rare during business hours but it happens when we're busy) and we'll get back to you right away.
Most problems can be fixed over the phone or remotely over the web. If there's really
a network problem, we are probably already aware of it, but not always. Please call.
Yes, within the terms of service posted on
www.lucketts.net/terms.html
. We will not approve high bandwidth servers because of their impact
on the other users' bandwidth. Dedicated bandwidth solutions can be negotiated for the business user.
The old standard plan provides a connection that is capable of at least 1 Mbps, usually more. But we are transitioning to a faster new backbone,
so we have increased the web download speed to 3 Mbps, and everything else is still 1 Mbps max. Our goal is to provide a peak speed to each customer
of over 5 Mbps.
1 Mbps (million bits per second) is 20 times faster than a 50Kbps dialup connections. If anyone in the
Lucketts Area actually gets 50Kbps on dialup, I'd be surprised. Usual dialup speeds run around 30 Kbps,
which makes the standard 1Mbps Lucketts.net 33 times faster than dialup, and 3 Mbps is 100 times faster.
We will install an antenna with a built in radio that can connect to our network. The radio connects into your PC or router via a cat5 cable. We lease
the radio to you as part of the monthly service fee. We use 900MHz, 2.4GHz and 5.8 GHz radios, and they are usually between 1 and 2 sq ft in size,
smaller than a satellite dish.
We provide 1 static IP address so you can connect either 1 PC or
a router to the internet. With the router, you can share your connection among more
computers in your home or business. Lucketts.net is not responsible for
building or supporting your internal network.
No. Lucketts.net does not require term contracts for normal installations. You may cancel your service at
any time. For exotic/high cost installations, or if we are matching another providers plan, a term contract may be required on a case by case basis.
Yes, sort of. Lucketts.net offers a $5/month discount if you pay 6 months in advance. The receipt for that is a defacto contract
for service. You can still discontinue at any time and we will return the outstanding balance after prorating at the normal monthly price.
No, not directly. Our signal is not noticeably affected by the heavy rain, snow or fog that
will shut down a satellite signal. But, our signal is affected by solid ice on antennas, or extreme
amounts of wet vegetation between our antenna and your antenna, so some installs could experience problems
when it is very wet.
Wireless internet, like regular internet, is inherently insecure.
But, just like the internet, the user can mitigate any security risks
with the proper tools and techniques. Lucketts.net uses a variety of security measures to
protect the data traveling across the network.
First, buy and install a good anti-virus program. Second, install a software firewall
or use a router. Third, be careful when transmitting sensitive information across
the web. Always use a secure connection when shopping or banking.
The network is configured so that it does not permit one user to see the traffic generated by another
user. If a snooping user were to hack the network,
they may be able to monitor any traffic. Once. Then they would be an ex-user.
Lucketts.net has hardware and software dedicated to monitoring the network for
hacking and intrusion.
Sometimes. Encryption is one of the tools available to help secure the connection,
but it is not a cure-all. Encryption of the link is activated
as the situation warrants, but email encryption is available now so that your password is
protected. If you use secure connections to banks, your data is always encrypted.
Yes, if he is a waiter at a local diner. If you maintain a firewall, properly use anti-virus
software, and use secure connections when contacting banks or shopping on-line, then the hacker
will be out of luck - just like regular internet.
Yes. Any radio that can tune to the proper radio band can receive the signal. Putting together
all of the pieces and reading what you are sending or receiving is very difficult
but possible. Lucketts.net will use various methods and tools to give the hacker a hard time,
but we cannot guarantee absolute security of the data link, which is why you need to use
secure https connections when banking or buying things over the internet.
If your work requires a secure connection, use a Virtual Private Network (VPN).
Most workplaces with sensitive information will be able to help you set up a VPN
between your home and office. With a VPN, all of your traffic is encrypted and
cannot be intercepted by anything less than the NSA.
You can set up a home network to share the lucketts.net connection
with all of your computers at home. You need a broadband router, network cards
for your PCs, and some cable. Under $100 to network 2 PCs or Macs, about $25 for
each additional machine.
You can use either. An unfortunate fact of the wireless business is that, all else being equal, wired networks
are better than wireless. They are faster, more reliable and easier to maintain. If your home is already wired with cat 5 cable, then
that solution is the way to go. If there are many PCs to connect and no
cat 5 cable in the walls, the an in-home wireless solution may be the best choice.
Not as part of the standard free installation. We will install
service to 1 computer and/or router as part of the standard installation, and for
anything beyond that we may charge extra.
Buy a simple 54 MBps 802.11G router. Most brands are OK, with differences being a matter of personal taste.
That said, we are happy with Netgear routers. The newest model from Linksys (WRT54G v5) demonstrates
unsatisfactory performance on our network. Older Linksys model do well.
Avoid buying the 108Mbps versions, as they use multiple channels to get the higher speed, and that
could conflict with your signal from Lucketts.net. Pre-N routers will interfer with other wi-fi devices, so we do not
recommend buying them at this time. Your neighbors will thank you.
The wireless connection refers to the connection between your PC and your wireless router. The homeowner is responsible
for connections between their components. We will make sure the signal gets to your router, but you take it from there. If
you buy a router or wi-fi bridge from us, we will install it at no additional charge if we're there already.
Yes, we answer basic home networking questions over the phone, and help debug problems, at no charge. But the free support
is limited, usually about 15 minutes. For serious problems we can send a technician out to fix your home network for a fee.
A static IP is a set of 4 numbers seperated by dots that is assigned to a computer as its permanent address on
the Internet. Computers use IP addresses to locate and talk to each other on the Internet,
much the same way people use phone numbers to locate and talk to one another on the telephone. It would be simple if
every computer that connects to the Internet could have its own static IP number, but when the Internet was first
conceived, Al Gore didn't foresee the need for an unlimited number of IP addresses. Consequently, there are not
enough IP numbers to go around. To get around that problem, many Internet service providers economize on the number of IP addresses they need
by temporarily assigning an IP address to a customer computer from a pool of IP addresses. The temporary IP address is called a dynamic
IP address. Those ISP are betting that not all of their customers will be online at the same time, so they need fewer IP addresses. Lucketts.net customers
are connected to the internet 24x7, so we must have at least 1 IP address for each customer.
Yes. We block all traffic on ports 67, 135, 137, 138, 139, 445, 593, 1080, 1434, 1978, 2002, 3127, 3128, 4156, and 4444.
Other ports are occasionally blocked or filtered to prevent abuse. If you need access to a blocked port, we can open any port to specific users.
As a Lucketts.net customer, your email address can be from @lucketts.net, @taylorstown.net, @glynntarra.net, @bvwisp.net,
@catactinweb.net, @evanspond.net or @leescrossing.net. We can also host your private domains.
Lucketts.net has two primary email servers. One hosts the @lucketts.net addresses and the other hosts the rest of the
domains provided by lucketts.net, such as taylorstown.net and vilgreen.net. Users must log onto the machine thats hosts their email
accounts. The plan is to migrate @lucketts.net accounts to the 2nd server.
Webmail allows 5 tries to log in to your account, then it locks you out for 1 minutes. Wait a minute and you can try another 5 times,
or give us a call and we can reset your password.
See if you can get to the lucketts.net homepage. If you are successful then you have
a good connection. Go to the correct webmail option on the home page and try to log into your
mail account from there. If you can log in, the mail server is running and you have the
correct password. If you can log into webmail through our wireless connections but not through an email client, then most
likely the problem is in your computer.
Recent changes to XP and anti-virus programs such as Norton have been known to disable secure email. If you are using
a firewall, try turning it off and seeing if the mail starts back up
again. If that works, you will have to train your firewall to allow email. This has
happened to a handful of customers recently. To learn how to correct the problem, try
searching Google with error code your email client gave you the name of your firewall
program. If turning off your firewall doesn't fix it, give us a call
and we'll try diagnosing the problem from this end.
Turn off the scan outbound email & privacy protection options. Both of these try to read out-bound emails, but are blocked by the encryption. Your
PC takes too much time trying to decrypt the email and the email server disconnects you. Norton has posted this issue on the internet, and explained
that turning off outbound scanning doesn't decrease your security, as your PC is still protected against any viruses.
If you would rather have email scanning allowed by Norton, you can turn off email encryption. We believe email encryption
is more important than email scanning.
Lucketts.net uses SPAMAssassin to add " [SPAM] " to the subject of any email we believe may be SPAM. You can use filters in your email client program to
automatically delete those emails marked as "[SPAM]" or to move them to a SPAM folder for later review. You can also use our webmail interface to set up
your account to automatically delete the SPAM. There is a tutorial on this here.
SPAMAssassin is a program running on the lucketts.net servers that examines emails coming into the network and tries to determine if any of
them are SPAM. If so determined, the email is flagged as potential SPAM and passed on to the customer for disposition. Lucketts.net does not
block any email from reaching the customer, we just flag it for you so you can filter it out if you so choose.
You have probably exceeded your allotted storage on the email server of 100 Mb per email account. Webmail stores copies of all messages it sends & receives.
If you use webmail you have to clean out those folders occasionally. If you have more than 20 MB of mail you will be quite slow, even with broadband. If you have too
much mail, you will not even be able to see the message screen because there is not enough space left to create the temp files needed to run the program. If you're
locked up give us a call and we can clear the files for you. We recommend you use an email client program such as Outlook or Outlook Express for best performance.
Lucketts.net accepts VISA, Mastercard AMEX and Discover. You can call us and pay over the phone, or you can use our online billing to pay at a bank site, or
we can bill your credit card automatically each month.
We email invoices to the customer each month 10 days before the invoice is due. If you prefer US Postal service, we have a mailing service that will mail
invoices and correspondence to you in a nice envelope for $2.50 per month. We prefer to use email, as we're sure all of our customers have internet access.
The webmail interface will sometimes not launch links because of interactions with security settings in your browser. To see the invoice, you can do
any of the following: 1) right click on the view invoice button and choose to open in a new window 2) change your webmail users preference to view emails as text
3) use an email client program such as Outlook Express to view your email. It works better and is faster than webmail anyway.