Moving to Tuluksak (buy, schools, price)

[warptman]

I'd go with a snowmachine, it's windy here all the time and you don't get much protection from the wind on a atv. The trail is well used to the villages below and up to Kalskag upriver.

You'll be in good company in Tuluksak, everyone is friendly up there to everyone. I have many good friends up there, well, in all the villages around here.

[AlienOddity]

Wow- Thanks for all of the info! My wife and son will actually be going up in August while I get the house ready to rent. I plan being there by spring 2011, and may not have the funds to make any purchases until then. And we expect to stay year-round- I've heard about great Salmon fishing there!
I also was wondering about cell service providers and DSL- anyone know the dirt on that?

[momofmany926]

Hey you will be up the river from us! My husband just got a job teaching in Akiak, and we have been having the same discussions. Boat is definitely in our future (no plans on being gone through the summer, except for some exploration of Alaska) but still not sure what to get ATV or snowmaching. We were told to wait until we saw what the locals were driving and to get the same make as was most popular so that parts were easier to come by.

[RDawg]

Outstanding, and congratulations to you all. It's looking like I'll be a little further upriver from you guys in Kalskag. Sounds like a party waiting to happen!

[warptman]

GCI is the only provider of Internet and Cellular service here. They're supposed to add data this fall at some point. I'll believe when I see it.

[momofmany926]

We have been told its Satellite provided internet for Akiak.. anyone know how much that is going to run and how reliable it is? RDawg definitely sounds like a party.. I wonder if either of you are the ones my husband has been talking to on his board.. his name is Owen

[Floyd_Davidson]

Originally Posted by momofmany926

We have been told its Satellite provided internet for Akiak.. anyone know how much that is going to run and how reliable it is?

I'm not sure what it will cost there, but you can look it up on GCI's web page. Up here in Barrow we pay just over $100 a month for 512K connection, and something like $65 for half that.

The first thing you'll notice, after the sticker shock wears off a bit, is that satellite connections are different. The satellite is 23,000 miles out in space, and it take a radio signal something like 1/8th of a second to get out there. Then another 1/8th of a second to get back, and then whatever you did (like press a key that should then show up on your screen) the effect will take that much time to come back too! So you press "F", and half a second later that is what you see. I'll let you figure out how long it takes to cuss at yourself...

But the way data transfers work will change the effects slightly. For example a little while ago I accessed some site that took about 40 seconds to come up. I could watch what was happening, because for every single doo dad they put on the screen, there was another round of request/acknowledge exchanges before the data could be sent. Add 40 or 50 of those, at something over 1/2 a second each, and getting something started takes what seems like forever. But once you've got everything cached, it's fine. Hence if your browser caches a few megabytes of stuff it will not be slow for things you access every day.

And there's another level of that, which your ISP (GCI) will provide. They also cache gigabytes of data on their end of each satellite link. The main cache is for "DNS", or Domain Name Service. When you enter "google.com" your computer accesses a DNS server to find out what the actual network address is (or which one of many it should use). For example I just did a ping on "google.com" and got back 74.125.45.103, then I did it again and the second time it gave me 74.125.45.106 instead. Anyway, GCI here in Barrow has a DNS server that caches such requests to avoid going out over the satellite to get Internet addresses. If anyone in town has recently hit that address, the response will be fast. If you are the first one, it will be slow.

With regular data transfers there is a different trick that prevents the satellite delay form being a problem. A data packet gets sent, and eventually the receiving end tells the sending end that it has arrived. There is something called a "sliding window" to buffer the packets. Years ago when most data transfers were using 300 baud modems, the data buffer would hold all of 7 or so packets, and if the sender got that many out with no acknowledgment, it would stop and eventually start resending. Well, with a high speed internet connection and a 1/2 second round trip time, the window is necessarily much larger than 7 packets. And the effect for the user is that your 512K connection, despite the 1/2 second latency that makes connection setup times slow, can still download video fast enough to watch.

Which is to say that youtube.com works!

[FloridaKash]

Originally Posted by warptman

I'd go with a snowmachine, it's windy here all the time and you don't get much protection from the wind on a atv. The trail is well used to the villages below and up to Kalskag upriver.

You'll be in good company in Tuluksak, everyone is friendly up there to everyone. I have many good friends up there, well, in all the villages around here.

Thanks Warpt, I was sure I had my ATV sold, until you said Snowmachine. I already sold my snowmachine!

[AlienOddity]

Cool- I'll check out GCI's info on the Web. Irks me that we'll have to end her contract with Qwest early, oh well. Also nice to hear that the locals are friendly: We'll need plenty of mentoring, but we're really looking forward to the new experiences! Life is too short to have a closed mind, I always say.

[AlienOddity]

Hey all,

So it looks like wifey will get a chance to head up to Tuluksak for 2 weeks in June for some orientation classes. She's gonna be there on the longest day of the year, but I have to stay behind and mind the rug rat.. Any other teachers-to-be having to do the same?