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Obviously, you've never been fapped

Except that 800ms pings is unacceptable for gaming, and 100kbps happens so rarely it might as well not... oh yeah, I'm on teh satellite interNot.

Also, take a look at their handy Fair Access Policy -- don't let yourself get FAP'd... or your connection slows down to about 2kbps: http://fairaccess.direcway.com/

A better explanation of the FAP: http://www.copperhead.cc/fap.html -- don't try downloading any Linux CDs!

All this can be yours for only $100/month _with_ a 15 month contract!!

Call me stupid^H^H^H^H^H^Hdesperate.

Maybe by the time my contract is up in Sept, something decent will be in my area.

I'm a Marine and am damn thankful for the things you and your Corpsmen do for us. Believe me, I wouldn't be humping around the country side with only a 9mm.

You are welcome to my DirecWay dish (parabolic.. about 2' x 3') and the RX/TX unit (a DW4000). See the dish. The dish weighs 80lbs approx. Aiming the dish is usually done by a professional installer with a special signal strength meter. Anyone have a good POC for getting one of those? Little yellow device IIRC.

I don't have the DW4020 (right model number?) which has the built-in router so a Windows machine would be required as the RX/TX unit is USB with no available OSS drivers. A headless mini-ITX machine would be perfect. It could do bandwidth control and NAT/DHCP as well. I've run this same setup (albeit stationary) without any trouble. Download speed is great but capped to 169Mb per four hours (see more detail. Upload is good enough for email and the all important pr0n.

As long as the motor pool would allow it, it could be mounted to the side of a hummer or 5 ton very easily. Setup/takedown would be minimal. It's bright white so motor T may need to donate some paint as well. Might be a bitch getting cami netting over it.

Can the rest of Slashdot see any problems or offer any other help?

I used the system for just over a year, re-sold through Earthlink.

Yep, the download cap sucks, but I found that I didn't hit it very often. Also, the upload is basically that of a dial-up, and I could never get it better, though some people claim that they have.

As for the uptime. I found that the weather problems weren't as bad as they made them out to be, but I'm in Northern CA so it never gets any worse than kinda foggy and cold!

Never had a problem with DNS servers not including sites, but then again I wasn't doing anything other than editing and maintaining a site.

The support blows chinks. Forty minutes a call sounds like heaven to me. When I first had it installed the installer guy gave up after a couple hours and I personally spent the next week on the phone with those idiots trying to get it to work, and it was a mistake on their end. Basically, if you have a problem, you have to learn how to fix it yourself, unless you have a week or so to waste, but as was said before, this might just be Earthlink, although I have my doubts that the Hughes support staff even exists. If you need help, I found Direcway Uncensored to be very useful and informative.

I found that the Hughes software locked up our machie once or twice a day, but after fighting with it for a year I think I finally got that worked out. Now, however, I think they're only offering the DW6000 which plugs directly into a network, which should make life so much easier. I have heard nothing but good reviews of that unit, but can't afford it right now, so I've never used it myself.

Basically, as long as you can get it set up and are willing to dedicate some time to learning how to run the stupid thing, it's better than dial-up and pretty good, as long as you're not expecting anything like regular broadband. I would recommend it if you have a choice between dial-up and this.

Good luck!

The most comprehensive FAQ that I know of about Direcway is at BBR.

I've had Direcway since December 2002. In short, it sucks, but at least it ain't dialup.

The lag is god awful. Minimum latency, by the laws of physics, is 600ms, and more usually twice that. Forget ever playing any online game. Pages take nearly 5 seconds to even begin loading. FTP and email are so painfully slow you want to gouge out your eyes.

The download speed can't be beat (depending on what satellite/transponder they activate you on), but upload is a joke. All customers on a transponder fight for the same 128kbps upload speed. Dialup is better and more reliable for uploading any file larger than 20kb. When you do upload something, don't hold your breath because you will probably max out at 20-45kbps.

Yes, rain/snow/heavy cloud cover knocks it offline. Since you're in the north, it will go down easier than it would here (weaker signal the further north you are). I usually have to cycle the modems when the rain knocks it off. It fills up with static (probably could be grounded better).

This probably won't apply to the new Dway 6000, but the model I have (4000 I think) has software which Direcway uses for A.) Remote Access and B.) Popping up full page advertisements. See here for details.

Tech support is a joke. Don't bother. Go to Copperhead or BBR if you need help.

I don't know about the newer system, but I'm behind a NAT (and I think this applies to everyone unless you pay for a static IP). You cannot run a server because of the NAT. SSH probably won't work. I can't use VNC unless someone on the server side initiates a client connection to me first.

Then, there is FAP. FAP (Fair Access Policy) is a joke. If you download more than 169MB within 4 hours, they firewall your connection. They claim they throttle it to dialup speed, but that is a lie. The internet connection dies for hours after the FAP kicks in. If you decide to download a .ISO or other large file, use dialup because it'll download slower but in much less time than trying to work around FAP.

I would suggest taking a very hard look at Starband before spending any money with Direcway. I plan to switch to them myself as soon as I can afford to do so because of Direcway's popping up ads on my PC. I need to recover from Christmas first.

Stay away from Hughes "Directway" Sattelite Internet!!! They have a policy affectionately known as "FAP" (Fair access policy) that effectively turns your "high speed" connection into something closer to dialup... for more information, see this page.

I needed to make a similar decision and decided to go with DirecWay instead. There seems to be less problems with DirecWay (not that it doesn't have problems). Make sure you get service directly from DirecWay, as resellers such as Earthlink and Pegasus seem to have more problems (as an example, DirecWay customers get software upgrades much quicker).

A good site for info is DirecPC Uncensored.