Satellite internet???

[Barger]

Well we moved into the new house and it's great!!
Except I lost all access to high speed internet. Dial up is driving me nuts, I get kicked off every 15min atleast.
Who has experience with satellite internet connections?
How reliable is it?
Is it worth the cost? About $20 a month then DSL and cable plus equipment
It'll be atleast 2 years till anyone else comes out this far. I gotta get rid of the dial up.

 

[Glenn B]

Good luck. I did it a while ago (Starband 2 Way Sat), and it had tons of problems. When it worked, the download speeds were good, though the upload speed was close to dial-up speeds.
Some people had great luck, others bad luck. It also seemed to depend on what part of the satellite your modem was set-up to use.

The equipment was spendy too. Got rid of it all when we finally were able to get aDSL here.

I know one guy that was using the directTV version 1 way, and he was able to shotgun his dial-up for uploads. Depending on your ISP and your PC skills, that may be worth looking in to.

Good luck

Well we moved into the new house and it's great!!
Except I lost all access to high speed internet. Dial up is driving me nuts, I get kicked off every 15min atleast.
Who has experience with satellite internet connections?
How reliable is it?
Is it worth the cost? About $20 a month then DSL and cable plus equipment
It'll be atleast 2 years till anyone else comes out this far. I gotta get rid of the dial up.

 

[RichP]

How many neighbors do you have that want it too. I have my ways....and it's going to **** off the telco too...

 

[OT]

I use Direcway and for the most part love it. It has it's problems just like any other ISP, but the downloads are lightening fast. As Glenn stated, the uploading is a bit slow compared to the down, but it is managable.

The 1st year is pricey ($100 per month) but after that is only $50, which is good if you don't have access to anything else. Besides, when access is a must, you have to have it no matter what the price. We made up for the extra $$ by not taking the family out to eat 2 less times per month.

The reliability side is predictable. It depends on the weather, and mine is only out in the strongest of storms, but for the most part, if your satellite TV is working, then your internet probably will be too and vice versa.

All in all, we're happy with the service and probably wouldn't switch, even if there were other options.

 

[old_man]

The biggest problem I've seen with my cohorts setups is that the latency can get anoying or cause other problems. It is caused by the time it takes the signal to go up to the satellite and then back down. We had problems maintaining a high speed debug connection to the server, but unless you are doing high end IT crap, you shouldn't see it on anything other than role playing games on the internet. You will always be a second or so behind the other guys, and that is certain death.

 

[Gridikal]

Yeah I looked into direct way since there is no other alternative where I live, there was no way I could have afforded it. So for now I'm stuck with dial-up.

 

[RichP]

Yeah I looked into direct way since there is no other alternative where I live, there was no way I could have afforded it. So for now I'm stuck with dial-up.

There is always an alternative, A full T-1 is down to about $500 a month, with a router and if you add a couple of wireless access points you can use your neighbors to subsidize the montly bill and provide them service. A second T adds another $300 a month. Talk to your neighbors. setup a co-op if you have to but it is an easy thing to do IF your neighbors are interested....

1st T-1 =1.5 meg full duplex
2nd T-1 takes it to 3meg full duplex
And you can run servers

 

[Gridikal]

There is always an alternative, A full T-1 is down to about $500 a month, with a router and if you add a couple of wireless access points you can use your neighbors to subsidize the montly bill and provide them service. A second T adds another $300 a month. Talk to your neighbors. setup a co-op if you have to but it is an easy thing to do IF your neighbors are interested....

1st T-1 =1.5 meg full duplex
2nd T-1 takes it to 3meg full duplex
And you can run servers

Ha, I live in a private community that is filled with (no-offense) old retired people who probley don't even know how to use a computer. They do have money though....
The only other option I would have is to have the local Cable company extend their coverage area, as of now they are stopped about 200 yds from my house- I'd hate to guess how much it would be to have them extend it, especially since I'd be the only one using it.

 

[OT]

Ha, I live in a private community that is filled with (no-offense) old retired people who probley don't even know how to use a computer. They do have money though....
The only other option I would have is to have the local Cable company extend their coverage area, as of now they are stopped about 200 yds from my house- I'd hate to guess how much it would be to have them extend it, especially since I'd be the only one using it.

Oh come on now. How much could 200 yds of coax cost?

 

[Lincoln]

Good luck. I did it a while ago (Starband 2 Way Sat), and it had tons of problems. When it worked, the download speeds were good, though the upload speed was close to dial-up speeds.
Some people had great luck, others bad luck. It also seemed to depend on what part of the satellite your modem was set-up to use.

The equipment was spendy too. Got rid of it all when we finally were able to get aDSL here.

I know one guy that was using the directTV version 1 way, and he was able to shotgun his dial-up for uploads. Depending on your ISP and your PC skills, that may be worth looking in to.

Good luck

Dad is still using his, just at home and not at the business. Still expensive, but the reliablility is about 1000 times beter than it used to be. Upload speed has improved too.

 

[Glenn B]

Dad is still using his, just at home and not at the business. Still expensive, but the reliablility is about 1000 times beter than it used to be. Upload speed has improved too.

Good to hear. I was a very early user..... and as such probably suffered many of the growing pains..... including the ~ $1500 equipment purchase.

Glad they got it decent now. It can be a good option for folks.

 

[RichP]

Ha, I live in a private community that is filled with (no-offense) old retired people who probley don't even know how to use a computer. They do have money though....
The only other option I would have is to have the local Cable company extend their coverage area, as of now they are stopped about 200 yds from my house- I'd hate to guess how much it would be to have them extend it, especially since I'd be the only one using it.

Don't be selling those 'Old People' short, I work on alot of the older crowds computers in the neighborhood and have had my eyes opened about their tastes in ahhh 'movies', it's also a dead giveaway when they ask 'what do you do with a .rar file' :scared: , and 'how do you join .wav and .mpg files' a few of them also have been pretty vocal about the 10gig per month limit on newsgroup downloads :laugh3: , meanwhile the kids in the neighborhood have no idea the nntp news servers even exist.... :doh:

 

[Lincoln]

Good to hear. I was a very early user..... and as such probably suffered many of the growing pains..... including the ~ $1500 equipment purchase.

Glad they got it decent now. It can be a good option for folks.

If I remember correctly we went on it about the same time. Those modems (early and the 360) almost got used as traction control way too many times. Sounds like they have another modem coming out that doesn't require software control too.

 

[Glenn B]

If I remember correctly we went on it about the same time. Those modems (early and the 360) almost got used as traction control way too many times. Sounds like they have another modem coming out that doesn't require software control too.

Yup. I started with the Gilat 180 (still have that sucker too ) The only earlier ones were the Beta testers. I got the 360, and was not happy. I had my 180 rigged for ethernet... the 360 required a PC. Basitds.

 

[Lincoln]

Yup. I started with the Gilat 180 (still have that sucker too ) The only earlier ones were the Beta testers. I got the 360, and was not happy. I had my 180 rigged for ethernet... the 360 required a PC. Basitds.

Yup, but after all my cursing and putting off the 360 it was light years ahead in speed. Just sucked it has to be hooked to a PC. Had to pull it out because of some reverse DNS issues that were never changed. Went to microwave and a few months ago changed to cable. Dad took the 360 home and has no complaints with it. Having problems getting the proxy to play nice with their latest software though.

Check out this crap though:
PLEASE NOTE:
When purchasing a new StarBand system, each customer is charged a $100 Refundable Modem Return Fee (RMRF) in addition to the prices listed below. Upon the customer's service termination and the return of a working StarBand modem, StarBand will refund $100 to the customer.

So they charge you $600 +100 for the equipment. They'll give the $100 back after you return it. Nevermind the above, they still suck.

 

[Ragin Cajun]

When I was out in the boonies I bought the Direct PC 2 way system. It was fast and reliable. The only time I had problems was when it rained. They have since updated it to run even faster during both upload and dwnload. Should be faster than cable now and approaching DSL speed.

The only bad side I can think of it their customer support was difficult to deal with at times. But it is better than dial-up!

 

[Root Moose]

I have the Directway 2-way system here (quite rural). Been using it for almost a year. I have the DW6000 based system. I run a combination of Mac OSX and Gentoo Linux in the house so the cheaper system was not an option since they required a Windows software widget to work (what the hell were they thinking?). Not sure if they sell the Windows based system any more.

It is an ok system if all you want to do is web browsing. For that it works very well.

There is a certain amount of latency in the system. As someone above alluded, the system goes up to the bird, comes back down and then the return trip. Light only travels so fast...

Additionally, the network ops center at the ground station does a lot of caching of web content - form of bandwidth reduction I suppose. In addtion there is web caching in the DW6000 unit - and I run squid on the Gentoo box - so there is three layers of caching. That helps a great bit. I find the caching in the DW6000 can be flaky at times so I'll bypass it occasssionally if I'm to lazy/busy to get up from the desk and go into the cellar to power cycle it.

If you are doing anything that primarily requires ssh/ssl this is not the system for you. I occasionally ssh into systems at work - it is painful. Multipple seconds between typing a character and seeing it appear on the screen. Sometimes you will get a burst of characters at a time - but that is not the norm. Each packet has to make the up and down trip individually instead of being aggregated into a large burst the way regular ftp/www/etc does. It's bad enough that I've got an old analog modem for a ground connection to work when I need to work from home (ssh). I use the satellite for getting documentation when working (apache, php, mysql, etc.).

For an experiment I tried telneting to another host and ssh'ing from there. No difference in the latency so that isn't a work around.

Web banking is very painful (https/ssl) but mostly usable. In theory you should be working at dial-up speeds when doing ssh/ssl connections but it isn't. The latency is much too high. 30 seconds or longer to load a page is not uncommon.

One thing some people complain about with the satellite systems is that you click a link and nothing happens until the entire page is downloaded. Then the page "POPS!" onto the screen. Most of the time this is just a second or two. Sometimes longer. Doesn't bother me, it is so much faster than dial-up I'm willing to put up with it.

Online gaming? Never tested since I'm not a gamer but I can't see it being usable.

Need a VPN connection for work? Again, encrypted connections suck over this sytem. Look for something different. I haven't tried the VPN stuff because it was apparent to me that it wouldn't be worth the effort.

There are occasional problems with the system. I have a feeling that things in their NOC are not as robust as they should be, mostly related to the web proxying. The system will be "down" but I can still do stuff on the commandline and such. It's not very often - but at the worst possible times it seems. I need to stick squid proxy on one of my servers in the city and bypass the web traffic through the DW NOC altogether I think.

HTH. Any Qs, just ask.

r@m

 

[RichP]

For those of you complaning about lack of broadband access read this, might make a nice sideline...

http://www.rric.net/

Before they turned the cable modems on where I live I actually put up a WISP with a 90 deg panel antenna, 5km range during the winter, 1/2 KM [half a kilometer] after the leaves came out, the leaves sucked that signal up like nobodys business and to get thru it with increased power I would have been frying every squirrel and bird in the area.. For those of you who live in a good line of site area where you can see your neighbors a WISP is a good setup, the antenna's can be used as forwarders and rebroadcasters. However read the ruby ranch and see how they used the unused spare pairs from the telco to provide DSL to the local homes off that service box. Ruby is not the only one either, quite a few have been setup in areas that are being ignored by the telco and catv companies. The setup is easy, takes about 2 hours depending on where the main antennas go, the big part is the feed, T-1 on up, alot of the stuff can be gotten off ebay and there are help groups on dslreports.com that have boilerplate instructions. Initial hardware cost me about $1900 for the router/transceiver and one 90Deg panel antenna that came with it plus the extra 90 deg that I ordered giving me 180 deg coverage. If there were less trees here it would have worked out well but living in a developement that frowns on cutting them down killed what I wanted to do... I mounted both antennas on my chimney, one facing west the other facing south.

 

[Lincoln]

I looked into doing that at my dad's business (on your advice) and there was a big demand in town. Problem was getting the T-1. They wanted something like $2500/mth and the setup charges were double that. The crappy part was the main fiber trunks from Denver to Portland run right though the middle of town and their is fiber for something behind his office. No taps.

I don't think those guys would do this though. Some are destined to be screwed with a wired line.

For those of you complaning about lack of broadband access read this, might make a nice sideline...

http://www.rric.net/

 

[RichP]

That was like 2 years ago we talked about it. T's have come down dramatically much to the T carrier departments chagrin, alot of those T customers with their big monthly recurrings have moved over to DSL, Verizon is offering a 7mb/768k business dsl for about $249 a month in this area. Shot the legs right out from under the other dept that was supplying T and fractional T. I expect to see the T's drop even more and once they hit sub $100 a month I'll drop the cable and business DSL I have here and consolidate to one T-1 or maybe a dual T. Got a cisco 3600 with two T-1 wics and an OC-3 wic just sitting there on the shelf ****waiting**** The business DSL is nice, 1.5/786 w/static IP for $79 a month, mostly I'm just playing with it, two dns servers, smtp server, apache w/ssl but it still can't hold a candle to the 3mb pipe of the cable modem when it comes right down to pulling the newest ISO images from sun and mandrake...
There is always a way to do it though, there are a couple of companies out there that specialize in getting the phone company to make T carrier service available in an unserviced area, probably golf partners with the boards or something.
As far as wireless goes, if you have line of sight you have it made, it's those pesky water filled leaves that hang from trees in the summer that mess things up...