Linux and Satellite Internet Services

jd142 asks: "I'm considering getting a satellite dish, DirectPC, for high speed Internet access. Has anyone had experience setting one of these up with Linux, and if so, does one distribution do a markedly better job out of the box? I'm not interested in the DirectPC push content; I already pay for a decent news feed, so all I want is highspeed download from the Web, ftp, and news. This will go in a PC I haven't bought yet, probably a CyberMax AMD 700 or 800 Athalon dual booting some flavor of Linux and some flavor of Windows. Thanks!" Satellite Internet service? Now this is interesting. Where can one find more information on this?

Comments

You will need a linux compatible receiver card

[Eg0r]

Last time I checked, broadlogic supports linux (that is at the hardware level, they're not ISP) in their PCI receiver cards. Not only that, but they even use linux in some of their stand alone receivers. Cool hey?

So maybe they're the people to ask and the website to check first. My guess is that because you have the satellite receiver inside your computer, you should get a pretty high transfer rate to the HD or memory or whatever talks to the bus.

Whether such a data bandwidth is already available on some sats and/or from ISPs is another question.

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Linux is not an option for most of these

[arivanov]

Linux is not an option for most of these.

The reason is that especially the new kernels are quite stubborned on the topic of receive only interfaces. You do have problems making those work and most vendors do not bother.

Amidst the few noteable exemptions are satellite news feeds and stuff but you hardly need such a staellite service. The only reason these use linux is that it is a platform of choice for combining encryption (these services cost money), hardware access and a working news server.

direcpc

[danipell]

Hello. We have been using Direcpc for about three years in isolated locations across Canada. To use Linux with direcpc we use a product called Helius. http://www.helius.com , This allows other computers on the network to access the internet. Then we use the NAT software on the linux software. We have taken the Helius software and the Linux OS and created an embedded version for deployment in the field http://www.knet.on.ca/knetrouter .
I imagine that someone out there is looking at making an open source driver for the direcpc card. One of the uses of the direcpc we are experimenting with is in the use of remote kiosks. Because in Canada we use Express Vu we can set it up anywhere that there is a TV dish. The Kiosk mode would get material on a regular basis. Museums, catalogues, training videos etc. Lots of uses. . Now I just need to take sleep and personal time out of my life to work on these ideas..

Not Quite Yet...

[grantdh]

We've been doing a spot of research into good connections for an "out back/bush" project we're working on. Here in Australia, the ISP service provided by BigPond (the ones we all love to hate :) have a satellite downlink with an ISP return feed.

Bigpond supplies a relatively good/cheap "rural" service that works all around the country (if you can get the phone lines to where you are). Given the quality & distance of country lines, you're lucky to get 28.8 or 33.6 - many consider 14.4 wonderful :)

Thus, satellite could be pretty good for bringing down standard surfing, news feeds, etc. I too am concerned about emails being broadcast to anyone looking at the satellite (just what encryption do they use again? :) Additionally, the lag due to Earth->GEO->Earth routing makes it pretty much a consumption operation. As has been noted, gaming would suck :)

Other issues are, as noted, getting the things working on Linux. Not many drivers/etc for these systems, unfortunately.

If you're in the middle of nowhere and 14.4 in both directions is killing you then yes, satellite is a good idea. If you're in an urban or regional center area, get ISDN/DSL/Cable and get a real connection.

Personally, I'm hanging for good, competitive LEO systems like Teledesic and/or Iridium. Mmmmmm - solar powered laptop, satellite 128kbps link, total planetary coverage - "People who don't need people are the happiest people!" :)

There are others...

[madprophet]

I do a lot of work with Ultimate Satellite Internet, & I think the service rocks for the area I live in. They say that the max download is around 400K /sec but I run at a normal rate of aound 700K /sec with a max jump of 1.25 MB /sec when I was pulling from a site that was near the landline connection at the other end of the dish.

Ultimate Satellite Internet gets its dishes from Harmonic Data Systems & they have what is called an E-1 Router, and it runs Linux. The drivers are there, but due to the large difference in the various Linux Distros, they do not want to support it until there is a larger demand.

I just thought I would leave that opinion.

Direct PC

[vagablonde]

I live in Wisconsin and whenever we get heavy snowfall or thunderstorms, the clouds in the sky block the satellite signal.

The military spy satellites do not work well in bad weather either.

So while you may get exceptional sped and everything from satellite, you cannot stop mother nature from blocking your feeds from time to time.

making DirecPC work with Linux

[romkey]

I was able to get DirecPC to work with Linux. Unfortunately, I had to pay to license some drivers from Helius, but they're the only place I know of to get DirecPC drivers. Their code works with the ISA and PCI cards.

I was able to set up IP masquerading so that other machines could get high-speed downloads, too.

Some caveats -

1. you still need some kind of regular ISP for your outgoing packets
2. I had to "commission" my DirecPC card under Windows, then take the config file this generated and move it to Linux.
3. Hughes (who operate DirecPC) are infamous for their FAP (Fair Access Policy) under which they throttle you down to regular modem speeds if they decide you've transfered too much in too little time. In the past they haven't published how much is too much, so it was difficult to know when you were about to get into trouble. A recent class action suit against them might have changed that.
4. Until recently, Helius didn't even have 2.2 kernel support, though they seem to now (2.2.5).
5. Helius has a 30 day eval you can download for free.
6. Helius' licensing policy restricted the number of connections that you could have at once (ie: more connections == more money). This only worked eratically with me, I was usually able to do more simultaneous connections through ipmasq.

Satellite Internet

[pb]

Here's a site in Australia that has some more detailed information. Everything the Anonymous Coward first poster said sounds pretty accurate (!).

The card they're using here is the Telsat Turbo, from SatNet. It's a PCI card, and it says in their FAQ that they're working on drivers for MacOS and Linux. It should already work under Windows NT. And yeah, you need a modem too.
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

Push feeds

[slim]

The original poster might not care, but I imagine the average reader will. These providers run push services, whereby email and news get broadcast, and your computer receiveds it without the upstream modem connection being needed.

Two things worry me about this: one is that I don't know the protocol, and whether it is open (and therefore supportable in Linux). The second is that I'm concerned that mail might be being broadcast from a sattelite in plaintext.

I think I'll investigate these things now, and follow myself up if I unearth anything...
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*sigh*

[revnight]

anyone considering using DirecPC should probably read the following article.


http://www.hamradio-online.com/1999/nov/direcpc2 .html

Not a good option

[mauddib~]

Like said above because you'll need an ordinary modem connection for upload, it won't push the telephone costs. And if you want a satelite uplink it will cost you money, a huge lot of money.

We've been asking for such an option for an outdoor lan-party here in Europe, the total cost of rent for one year would be around 400,000 dollars (800,000 dutch guilders). Besides, the ISP which with you're connecting (here in West-Europe) is mostly relying on cached stuff. As soon as you try to obtain stuff which is not cached (newsfeed, slashdot, freshmeat etc.), the connection is very slow.

Therefor, I think a satelite link has too much disadvantages to be ever cost-effective in the near future, however I don't know how the situation in the States is.

PLEASE read alt.satellite.direcpc before buying

[JohnA]

Please check out alt.satellite.direcpc before making any purchase decisions. There is a whole lot of bad mojo associated with this outfit, and most people never receive the advertised performance.

Buyer Beware.

Direc PC Limits Total Download Per User - D'Oh!

[cybrpnk]

I had DirecPC for a while and bailed out of it. In addition to the disadvantages I see others listing here, they had what they called a "Fair Use" policy that choked down your personal data flow per day once you hit a certain limit - around 1 or 2 MP3 files worth, roughly. Sure, you get 400 Kbs, but only for the fraction of a second required to download a static web page. Sustained high speed downloads? Forget it.