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Two-Way Satellite Internet Is Here!
spectro writes: "Wired is reporting the first two-way satellite Internet service has been launched by StarBand.
The service promises speeds up to 500Kbps down and 150Kbps up, but a ping latency of about 400ms, so gamers are out of the question. Anyway a nice alternative for those of us who cannot get DSL yet, but watch out... The Evil Empire is part of the joint venture." It's nice to know that someone has finally made the leap, after years of promises and millions of R&D dollars. Check out the article for information on some of the competition, too.
I am a current beta tester on the starband system. I have only one thing to say about it. It frigging rocks, in three months of testing the network has only been down for about 5 minutes once for upgrade. It is rock solid and really offers up some pipe 100k download speed is the norm. All this and I got to tell Verison where to stick their extra phone line.
Besides, I can surf in the arctic!
Gilat and starband are the same.
Colony said Radio Shack is packaging the Starband service with new Compaq computers for $59.95, but does not offer upgrade products for PCs.
I've never seen a store shoot itself in the foot more than Radio Shack. And actually, not to mention Compaq, which has seemingly turned itself into something just a bit better than Packard Bell (which as I recall was also sold by Radio Shack.)
On the other hand, low-orbit satellite arrays are on the way (again), and they'll be able to offer latencies around 30 ms. Similar to ISDN, even if it doesn't touch DSL and cable (at about 3 ms).
Check this out After getting the the end of signing up for their "$300" satellite, the final cost is $1059.00. Sounds like they are going to be pulling the same stunt as Radio Shack for a bit.
Windows 9.X/ME/NT/2000 and this company is partnered with who? I would at least expect support for MACs. All well
mobile use = not possible.
A dish based sattelite link must be properly aimed at all times, the US navy figured it out at the tune of $2M per dish (huge fast servos and gyroscopes) Until someone puts in place really low orbit sattelite networks that can handle gigabyte traffic, and not require directional antennas on the earth stations, it will never happen for anyone butthe richest of corperations (and then they won't do it, they just use sattelite phones instead... Like johhny driver needs to see a web page, he needs, " go to X,Y now.")
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Except that things have to fling back and forth several times to get a TCP connection going.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
Security concerns are completely bogus. Wired systems are vulnerable too. If you're doing stuff you don't want other people to see, encrypt it yourself. It's that simple.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
You missed half the trip. You->satellite->internet is .236 seconds. But then internet->satellite->you is another .236 seconds, which sucks even worse.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
You mean like credit card purchases? With personalized encryption? For now I think that this kind of thing just needs to stay off or wireless.
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I guess that I'm a fool, but I assume that a packet is pretty anonymous except really near one end or the other, which really limits the audience. I don't think that one can even assume that they take approximately the same path, much less that there are no intervening packets. Now it's true that there are tools that can peek, but this seems a lot less wide open than a broadcast over several square miles. True, even that would take a bunch of effort to decode (and as to how much, I really have no idea), but the comment said better than DES. That seems certainly needed.
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Methinks ground-based will always have the edge both when it comes to bandwith and to response. REsponse for the obvious reason that sattelite is slow for reasons of ligthspeed which are unlikely to change :) Bandwith because sattelites /are/ farther away, and because they've got a larger footprint on each transponder, so you've got more people to compete with.
It's evident that you haven't researched the Gilat system more in-depth than reading the Wired article. They have channels on several satellites purchased for use.
Steve's Computer Service, Hobbs, NM
Not available in the Great White North. Bastards!
And another.... http://209.53.1.1
hold on there, chief.
I don't think he said that Air Switch was sat-based... it looks to either be land line or LOS...
....
Karnal
That happens to me quite often as well. But only in Netscape. IE and Mozilla don't suffer at all from this problem.
-- Spelling and grammar errors tend to be a sign of erroneous thinking.
then how do you sleep at night?
http://Lenny.com
I think they save some serious support costs
by not offering it yet
the support for this has to be a nightmare
http://Lenny.com
The thing is, either something is encrypted strongly, or it's not really encrypted at all. Sure, you might discourage "casual in-listeners" from, say, reading your emails, by using weak encryption, but then who cares? That data can't have been that sensitive then. If somebody at my dial-up ISP decided they wanted to for some reason (e.g. the police decided they wanted to snoop my communications, or a competitor looking for trade secrets bribes one of their tech staff, whatever, there are probably 101 possibilities) they could quite easily build a log of every single packet sent and received by me, simple as that. Whatever reasons "they" might have, I'll have no way of knowing if it's just some "casual in-listener", or somebody who means business. If you have sensitive data, and/or you're serious about encryption, it's incredibly foolish to take a chance. If your data isn't that sensitive, why bother? I don't really believe in the concept of "inbetween" encryption. If it's, say, a very personal email to my girlfriend or something like that .. nothing I would *worry* about keeping from prying eyes, but also something I wouldn't want just anybody to read, then I can *still* just as easily use whatever weak encryption I might *usually* use to encrypt my emails. In which case it matters not a jot if you're xmitting via satellite, modem, cable, fiber, whatever. So I still don't see how this is an issue that relates to satellite. It's the same as any other internet communicates medium - choose your own encryption *at your computer*, anything else is a waste of time. Once a packet goes out of your computer, there are too many unknowns to guarantee anything.
"Plus there is the fact that anything beamed to you is probably also being beamed to everyone in a multiple state area around you. I sure hope they have some *strong* encryption built in. They ought to be doing something better than DES, no?"
Whatever you transmit with weak/no encryption on the Internet is *anyway* completely insecure - Carnivore aside, your packets can be read by anybody on the route. If you assume that non-satellite internet is somehow any more secure than satellite internet then you're a fool. What it boils down to is that if you want to transmit something securely, strong-encrypt it, and there is nothing to stop you from doing this on your satellite connection. So your point is entirely a non-issue.
The majority of ISP customers believe that the internet consists of the web and email - truly a horribly watered down interpretation of what the Internet really is - or could be. Yet based on these public opinions, ISP's dilute their services with crap. If we allow popular perception to define what the internet of the future is going to be, then the internet of the future *will* only be web and email.
The public should somehow be taught that the internet has the capacity to be really amazing and useful; if people understood the true potential of the internet, then maybe they would start demanding more from ISP's. I'd like to think so anyway .. *sigh* .. I'm afraid of a situation one where I try to connect to my Linux box at work from home with vnc and not getting through because my ISP has decided that the only remote-access capabilities I may use are a few Microsoft-approved bloated proprietary protocols, or something like that. Right now, the internet has the potential to be turned into a completely useless watered down advertising experience ..
Only big difference is Look is Microwave-based, which means you have to have a line of sight to the microwave tower. This limits it to a range on the order of 10's of kilometres, rather than most of a hemisphere covered by a satellite. Microwave towers must be installed in your town, which limits probability of rural users getting in any time soon.
(I don't even consider the 'buy a PC at Radio Shack' option worth discussing. Only a moron would buy a machine at Radio Shack)
I'll wait for the Ethernet version, thank you. With a free-unix IPMasq setup it might be worth messing with..
No mention of the price, of course. Why do companies never want to advertise their price?
The whole thing sounds pretty much like Iridium 2. This is useful for polar expeditions, mountain climbers and african not-for-profit organizations, groups that Iridium showed (in practice, since theory isnt enough for some...) cannot support the costs of running a massive sattelite network. For everyone else various DSL services will be cheaper and faster, and for the providers *far* easier to upgrade.
Neither will it improve to anything useful for a huge segment of the population, since the latency is there and will remain there unless they figure out a way to speed up the speed of light.
Shooting unsupportable junk into orbit isnt even cool as space science.
Er... 1) This has already been /.ed: here mentioning the MSN end of the partnership. 2) Starband is really just the new name of what used to be Gilat 2 Home and what currently is my major ISP...
WorldMaker
you want to talk about ridiculous downtimes? try a UK ISP.
and as for articles stopping half way, I quite often get 800K of a /. article and then an empty page, on a 56.6 this is no joke, I mean separate the tables FGFS. (actually this might be what you were talking about, I've always been scared to discuss it in case it was some disgusting personal thing I'd picked up)
FFFF
I like timothy, he posts fun fun stuff :))
/me happy happy one
~ppppppppö
I've worked on them now and again. Those fuckers are full of crap components that are hemmed in by sharp edges and held in with slide fittings that cause the drives to FLY out when they finally come lose. They usually draw some blood when I have to dive into one. I HATE Craperd Bells!!! I'm very delighted that these cheezebags went out of business. It means there won't be any new Craperds to slice me into ribbons. Be sure and wear gardeners gloves if you ever decide to work on one. I think they subcontracted their case manufacturing to Ginsu. Don't bother with the gloves. Just chuck the nasty things into a dumpster. If you find one in a dumpster....LEAVE it there.
Of course, if you live in the desert/bottom of the Grand Canyon, etc, there are no other choices. The Havasupai reservation has no landline links. The mail comes by mule train. But they do have net access via satellite!
Best Slashdot Co
Apparently you didn't read carefully enough either. Despite the competition with Teledesic, the fact remains that both Microsoft and Echostar have invested heavily in StarBand (formerly Gilat-To-Home) and the system uses MSN as the ISP.
Bob
Biggest reason not to go with Starband: The monthly cost is $69.95.
Bob
I just got RR and am very happy with it0 .0
BTW, if you want to check your Bandwidth, I find a nifty tester here- http://www.2wire.com/bandwidth/bmresult.asp?kbps=
Another: http://www.dslreports.com/stest
I got 1.3Mb/s from my cable modem. Woohoo!
Chris
ports 20 and 21 to be exact.
Great news. I have RR right now and get about 3 right now. As soon as they get the 3Mbs going, I will buy.
- I like pudding.
Both Tachyon and Starband use "latency mitigators" (my phrase) to spoof TCP and cache web. The resulting response time is actually very good, in spite of over 500ms of round trip delay.
"You can't have everything. Where would you keep it?" -- Steven Wright
The service should shine for big downloads, but be rather poor for highly "chatty" stuff, with many request-response pairs. Loading web pages with many small objects would be rather disappointing, I should think. Checking POP3 email, if there are many small messages, would be pretty poor.
You are absolutely correct. I know this from personal experience. See my other 2 posts under this article for some calculations and timings.
-Todd
---
"The details of my life are quite inconsequential..."
they can't code (or test) site's broken in Netscape 4.76
While the article doesn't come out and say it, I'm guessing there will be serious total bandwidth limitations- since there are no tracking antennas, and since this is referred to as part of a satellite TV service, it must be from (and probably to) a satellite in geosync orbit. All traffic is probably going to just one satellite. Once a lot of people sign up for this- popularity will kill it- since I'm sure that they can sign people up to long term contracts faster than they can put more transponders up.
You obviously don't know what you're talking about... The average transponder Bandwidth on the newer GEO satellites is 72 MHz, using 8PSK modulation with FEC 2/3 Viterbi or 216/205 Reed-Solomon encoding gives you roughly 90 Mbps to use... most High-Speed VSAT (Very Small Aperture Terminal) systems allocate bandwidth in two chunks, one outbound carrier (From the hub) and several inbound carriers (From the station). Those are TDM/TDMA slotted carriers where you should contend for available slots (Slotted-ALOHA) which usually have an efficiency of 60-65%. If you split the transponder in two you have 45 Mbps downstream (Subject to a 85% efficiency limit)and several (Usually 2-4 Mbps) upstream carriers which serve a group of VSAT's.
Since you're using a multiple allocation mechanism you can effectively guarantee at least some upstream traffic per station using streams (Pre-assigned slots). Have too many users in your service, get another transponder, it's not expensive to implement since these kinds of systems have independent modems.
Plus there is the fact that anything beamed to you is probably also being beamed to everyone in a multiple state area around you. I sure hope they have some *strong* encryption built in. They ought to be doing something better than DES, no?
Oh brother... can you tell me how are you going to demodulate the signal you receive from the satellite? (QPSK and 8PSK are not easy to implement with a breadboard you know?, not taking into account the fact that you'll need to build a fairly big decoder for viterbi or Reed-Solomon plus the encryption on the timeslots). You will receive what's intended for you and only you... you will be expecting some downstream timeslots and your IDU (Indoor Unit) will only decode those.
I hate to say it, but the microsoft backed Teledesic system is a much better system (many satellites in low earth orbit- kinda like a cellular system) the satellites are closer and cover smaller areas, so the amount of bandwidth/satellite is much smaller.
Of course you don't mention that these satellites are smaller, have less transponders, drift like mad and have poor signal footprints (The amount of power you receive down in earth). Cellular systems only work for small amounts of data (Look at how painful it has been to get GPRS working, not to mention 3G). Of course, fixed cell systems like LMDS do provide better bandwidth but they use modified versions of ATM, Frame Relay or PPP in order to dynamically allocate bandwidth and those aren't good when you have 500 users downloading pr0n at the same time.
If you need more proof that these kinds of systems work (Only for mail and browsing, trust me) look for DVB (Digital Video Broadcast) services, or check out systems from Hughes Network Systems or STMI.
ZoeSch
I hate to agree with davecrazy but...
Bingo. Unlike ground based systems where you can lay in more fiber or set up more towers to build a bigger pipe, satellites are stuck with the bandwidth originally installed. At least as far as hardware goes.
While they can probably restrict the footprint to a metro-area size, there is also the point of everyone listening to the signal. The same issue you have with virtually any wireless system really. That 56-bit encryption is ok, but not strong enough for serious security.
As others have pointed out, this will be a great option for rural areas that wouldn't be able to get broadband any other way. I wish 'em luck, but I'll stick with a wired system or a 2Ghz band wireless solution.
Never attribute to malice what can as easily be the result of incompetence...
Don't tell anyone, but the high speed datalink is an RS232 serial port in a 15 Pin Dsub connector. That's how Tivo controls your DSS receiver.
"Proximity to wonder has blunted our perception and appreciation of it" --Tim Hartnell in 'Exploring ARTIFICIAL INTELLI
I know dish network offers a GPS tracking mounts used on RVs for it's tv service. quite expensive i might add. i wouldn't recommend driving with your dish up though :P
---------
AlmostFreeLinux.com
It is only a 24"x36" dish.
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AlmostFreeLinux.com
yes, you can keep your cable modem, but for some of us, DSL and cable modems arent' an option
My company has both satellite and terrestrial circuits to India. Our satellite circuit has a round trip delay of about 660 ms on a good day, the terrestrial is 249 ms, still higher than it should be. There's something magical about getting it down below 200 ms, and that's the ability to provide toll quality voice service over the connection without inducing so much delay as to create a half duplex conversation. Might they want to provide some sort of voice service over this at some point they will need to bring delay down.
This is why I'm waiting for Teledesic using LEO satellites.
I work at RadioShack, and we've actually been offering this quite a bit for the people that couldn't get DSL access. We arn't selling it individually yet. It's only with the purchase of a new Compaq. MS plans on selling access on it's own later, but till then, I'll settle for dialup.
BTW, just cause I sell it doesn't mean I like it...
Check out my sysadmin blog!
I should know, I've been working for a company that has provided two-way satellite internet since 1995. Several hundred sites, and a few thousand more in the works . . . So it's a misnomer that it's finally "here". But it's just now becoming consumer-targeted rather than company-targeted.
There are software packages that can be used to significantly improve response even with such a large latency. Mentat makes such a package. You can't overcome the latency but you can use a proxy that converts TCP to a protocol better suited to high latencies.
About the only thing "out of the question" on such a link is gaming. Other things might be slower but still possible. Webhosting would be a bad idea since you can be sure those figures are _shared_ among many clients, but you could use such a link to connect to a reverse proxy on a faster network.
Right, SpeedChoice did offer two-way wave microwave service in Phoenix, but only if you had Line Of Site to their tower in the foothills. I hadn't heard of uplink problems with the 2 way service though... I moved away right as they were deploying this in my area, becoming the only broadband service available to my apartment complex. Of course, I moved to Seattle, and still have no broadband access. >:/
They offered something on the order of 6mbps links too, pretty fast stuff. Maybe now that Sprint bought them, they'll deploy this in other large metro areas?
BAM!
Any info on pricing?
THIS SPACE FOR RENT
While this may be fine for rural net solutions, what I really want to know is whether the dish needs to be stationary.
If it can be used mobile, the dream of checking out and living off the net becomes true. Imagine telecommuting from the Carribean or running a content site from a homestead in Alaska. This is very empowing stuff.
Shrug, my @home cable modem HAS encryption, albeit 40bit low security. I think most cable modems have encryption built into the hardware.
> I hate to say it, but the microsoft backed Teledesic system is a much better system (many satellites in low earth orbit- kinda
> like a cellular system) the satellites are closer and cover smaller areas, so the amount of bandwidth/satellite is much smaller.
Teledesic says in their FAQ that "Mr. Gates's investment is a personal one not associated with Microsoft."
-b
sig is
http://www.starband.com/images/gl_fa ces .jpg
tell me those faces don't say (in order - from left to right) "what the fuck", "does this mean my napster will be faster" and "what?"
-neil
"Now you see that evil will always triumph because good is dumb."
Van Jacobson's sliding window algorithm helps here. The sender can transmit multiple packets before receiving the ACK. See RFC 2581 for details on how this is implemented in TCP.
Yeah, not to mention telnet. Half a second between the time I type a key and when it appears on my screen just isn't going to cut it.
Check this out
http://www.astrolink.com/welcome.html
Think they are too late? Launching in 2003 they'll have to fight for market share (if terestrial networks don't dominate)
I have an idea. Just put the Quake server on the satellite! That way everyone will have a handicap of 236ms....
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How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
It wouldn't be _true_ mobile Internet, of course, but if I mounted the dish on a positioner on the roof of my SUV, and ruggedized the installation of the transceiver and Ethernet hub, I could at least use the bandwidth while I'm parked in a field ..
.. this has possibilities, even if I am sharing the pipe with about a million other users. Have to think *seriously* about that. ;-)
And, of course, connect an 802.11 base station so I could sit outside with the laptop and surf from there
73 de N5VB (ex-KD5BIV) AR SK
73 de N5VB (ex-KD5BIV) AR SK
If you're out in nowheresville where no other high speed options are available, this is great. If it's this or dialup, I'll put up with a little latency. And on most things, including IRC, you probably won't notice a half-second lag.
400ms isn't enough for gaming, what would it be like to telnet over a satellite connection?
ok then your [sic] infringing on my copyright! Could you as [sic] me next time before STEALING my comments for your own?
What, me worry?
Speedchoice had 2-way Satelite ISP access deployed a year and a half ago in Phoenix.
There were two options; you could have a satelite downlink and a phone uplink or satelite both way.
The uplink via satelite was a bit choppy, but when it connected it was very fast. I believe it was a 10mbs channel each way.
Alas, Speedchoice was purchased by Sprint, which has truly ridiculous terms of service, and discontinued the satelite in favor of their microwave crap.
I have a few clients who still are using the Speedchoice equipment - Sprint didn't turn them off - but I don't think Sprint is selling new orders for satelite.
Compaq's suck large hairy donkey balls. My company uses them exclusively, and they are unstable, over priced, and are full of annoying features (BIOS saved on HD, on/off switch doesn't work like an on/off switch, weird physical layout inside the case, older MMX machines would spontaniously choke on PNP network cards after working for months previously, I could go on...) Besides, if I wanted an unreliable but somewhat fast internet connection, I would stay with Rogers@home, they fit *that* bill perfectly.
Use a proxy server!
IT makes all those dinky little connections; the browser makes JUST ONE connection to the proxy server.
Certainly, it wouldn't be hard to do this. (Squid, anyone?)
It may be that my understanding is a bit off, but I don't think so.
-Ben
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
I've seen that Sprint broadband also is 2-way. They provide the equipment, tout 512k - 1.5mb down and 256k up, although from their website can't tell if that is line based upload.
Distance is what causes the delay - someone already did the calculations, and the signals take roughly a quarter of a second to travel between the satellite and Earth twice, even at lightspeed (72000 km roundtrip @ 300000 km/s takes approx. 250 ms).
They should definately be able to work more on the remaining 150 ms, but it's probably a case for the law of diminishing returns - it's too expensive and not worthwhile to get rid of some of the 150 ms, when the lightspeed-induced 250 ms is like a constant of nature. I mean, does 325 ms sell all that much better than 400 ms, if it increases the price of the service?
Black holes are where God divided by zero
400 ms isn't that bad. Before I got cable (I am too far out for DSL, even though I am surrounded by a city) I had pings of between 450 and 500 on games. If I lived out in a rural area I wouldn't mind 400ms if it was internet access, 400 is better than nothing. Also, the speeds aren't that bad. If you had to you could get used to 400ms ping (for rural people).
--Kai
--slashsuckATvegaDOTfurDOTcom
Definitely true, but isky doesn't have their service anywhere near rollout. They keep pushing the date back, now it is early 2002! They claim they will have a ethernet based satellite device that will support up to eight networked devices. So that would be even better. I guess I just need to up and move to DSL country!
Actually if you go to their site they mention that a USB version will be available eventually. So until your company is offering the same service in my area, I will be looking at these guys. :-)
I have it on good authority that one of the projects that Microsoft had to shelve as a result of the antitrust lawsuit was a major upgrade to the speed of light.
As soon as President Dubya cans the lawsuit, maybe they'll get back on track.
--
Welcome to the Turing Tarpit, where everything is possible but nothing interesting is easy.
So what can we get from upstream packets?
Looks to me like they need to rethink their encryption policy.
Also, we've been assuming that "56 bit encryption" means "DES". Doesn't have to; could be 56 bit ROT-13 ....
--
Welcome to the Turing Tarpit, where everything is possible but nothing interesting is easy.
Looks good, but does anyone know a service with a smaller dish - I remember that technomad chap had a little dish on the back of his bike.
Im thinking couple something like this with a wearable computer and youd have a pretty good system, especially if you added a camera, the possibilities are endless.
Problem I guess is having something powerful/widespread enough to be readable at the satellite end. That said even 14.4/9.6 would be good with an iridium sized aerial.
Anyone got any ideas????
--
Lauren Child, lauren@laurenchild.net
It is land based. I don't think I said it was sat. Could have given the wrong impression. Also I'm not "hawking" it I'm pointing out that there are some very cool solutions being worked on that do not limit your choice of OS and that do not have silly ping times. High bandwidth and low ping.
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
Oh man, I had a Packard Bell as one of my first computers. Those things sucked hard. One day I awoke to find my CDROM drive (state of the art then) no longer being detected by the OS, even though the computer had been on all night. Ever tried opening one of those things? I was gonna add a hard drive to an old PB I picked up somewhere. I opened it up and saw the mounting spots for an additional drive, but guess what? No IDE slot to plug it in to the mobo! wtf!?
-antipop
The website says: "Inside your house, the StarBand system consists of either a "satellite modem" that attaches to your home PC through the USB port, or a pre-configured desktop PC outfitted with a satellite receiver card and a satellite transmitter card. In both cases, no telephone connection, dial-up account or other Internet service providers are needed. StarBand does it all for you." Why do I think Windows is a common denominator in both these configurations?
RadioShack is just as bad as the Evil Empire...
You wouldn't live in Vermont by any chance ??
Adelphia has been rewiring me area recently..
I'm also outa Bell Atlantic territory..
Of course the day I moved out of my old apartment, there was a mailing in the mailbox announcing Adelphia "Power Link" service..
I actually use DirecPC now. I have no problems with it... Not getting 400Kbps lately... but I probably just need to go adjust the sattelite dish. (its on a wiggly pole)
I was at a meeting today for a tech briefing on the DirecPC setup. (I work retail) You can use this system with any ISP for $39.99 on top of your ISP charges, as long as you have a place to put the dish that faces south without obstructions and as long os you run windows 98. The start up cost is $199 for a 2 system LAN with each additional available via software download/purchase from the web. The downside is that (if I remember correctly, my notes are at work) that oyu need a 300mhz+ win98+ system with USB on the motherboard for someresaon it is not compatible with add-on USB cards or at least not compatible when using AOL as you ISP which is not multi user ready.
Not bad when for another $50 plus service you can also get a TV receiver for hte same dish.
John
Someone that lives a 50 minute drive from the nearest grocery store, who doesn't have a local ISP, not even the phone equipment to support dial-up, let alone ISDN is going to jump all over this. A farmer can plan, sell, buy, compile large amounts of data and send it through the air and be 200% faster than traditional ways of doing it. These kind of people are what this is aimed toward. They aren't going to care as much about a high ping playing thier UT. This will be good for the e-commerce that never had a chance to in the past.
when will microsoft go away? i don't think i'd want microsoft to have any of my info when they "let" hackers compromise their servers.
Finally a way to stay mobile and keep a head of the fuzz. I am going to add this to my mobile pirate radio station.
"Quick ByteBoy! to the Hack mobile!"
Papa Legba come and open the gate
Are these dishes susceptible to the same sort of interference that DirecTV gets when the weather gets bad?
Also, Adelphia is the local cable company, and they just spent the last 6 months rewiring the whole town. They are done now. Called them up and they still don't have any idea when they'll be ready to actually offer the service. At earliest, it should be another 2 months. At most, another 6 according to them. Bell Atlantic told the village last August that we would have DSL by 3rd quarter of this year. Liars. I've given up on Bell. Does anybody have anything to say about Adelphia though?
Are there any activities which will be prohibited on the StarBand service? In consideration for all StarBand Internet users, StarBand reserves the right to limit "bandwidth hog" activities such as audio and video streaming, and automatic file exchange applications (file-sharing). See the Terms of Use of the service for more information on restricted activities.
I don't know about you, but I read that as a license to stop FTP, Napster, Web serving, Gnutella, FreeNet, etc. etc. etc...
So much for setting up a web site via that route. :(
science is a religion
Unless I can shell out a big fat wad of cash to some hosting service that will put my machine in a locked room I can't get to without their supervision, people like me don't have an option.
science is a religion
Manditory karma whore link can be found here!/a
-atrowe: Card-carrying Mensa member. I have no toleranse for stupidity.
Old news?
For the last 2 months we've been hearing about 2-way sattelite service offered by one of the sattelite providers in Canada. (Not sure which one it is. I know it isn't ExpressVu, and am pretty sure it isn't PrimeStar. Dammit. Gonna come to me in the middle of my sleepy-time. Think it's DirecTV)
They're expected to launch it for Christmas. 2-way sattelite at Cable speeds. Nasty lag, but otherwise pretty good.
If you believe everything you read, you'd better not read. - Japanese proverb
I got a bunch of questions for you communications/engineers/physicists out there:
What's the cause of this latency?
Is it the physics? Is it caused by the distance the signal has to travel or the medium that the signal waves have to propogate through? Is it possible to get around this by using a different EM spectrum?
Or is it some internal routing issue that will improve with better hardware?
The evil empire is not a part of it. They are part of a competing venture. RTFA.
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Moderators: I've got tons of accounts, do your worst.
Hey Ed and gang... I did some quick math. On the satellite solution's page, they mention that the sat is 22,000 miles above the equator. So, i calculated the BEST possible ping time you could have... (22,000milesX5280ft/mile)divided by 3ft/meter, divided by 300,000,000 meter/sec (speed of light) is about .3872 sec per leg (387 millisecs), but there's 4 legs on the journey, so even if the routers were instantaneous, you couldn't possibly have a ping time less than 4x.3872 sec = 1.5488 sec.
That's rediculous. I was going to buy one until this, but not now...
I guess majoring in chemistry paid off :>
Like all technology, it will improve. Eventually they'll get it low enough that Quakers will think they're on a LAN.
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Technoli
But most downloading programs will suffer.
Maybe I'm off my rocker, do things like FTP use TCP or UDP to transmit data?
I remember when the dude came and installed our dish-tv, and said something about this happening.
True to his word, their is a high-speed data port on the back of the reciever
Now what they need to do is put a CS server ON the satellite, so that you only have a 200ms ping...
Ping latency of 400ms isn't bad only for gamers... it's bad for a lot of things.
I do a lot of work over my cable modem. This means that I use my home PC as an X server, and run terminals, editor sessions, etc., on my work computers, displaying to my home computer. Not to mention graphic displays (astronomical images, plots, etc.). When the ping gets up over 100ms, the "feel" and feedback of the terminal sessions and editor sessions starts to get annoying. If it's 400ms, it's to the point where I'd consider it unusable.
The bandwidth is crucial for when I'm displaying images (and, of course, when I'm cruising the web). But, I'd trade off some of that for better latency.
-Rob
Browsers could also send all the requests in advance (pipelining) and then await all the replies. But I don't think any popular browsers do any request pipelining.
Gilat = StarBand. They recently changed their name because people had a difficult time pronouncing 'Gilat'.
If you can't beat them, embrace and extend them.
I happen to know one of the folks developing the system here in Atlanta. In addition to Radio Shack, it will be possible to purchase it from EchoStar as a USB-based peripheral. You would need to purchase EchoStar's satellite TV service as well, and the tech who installs the dish (30" by the way) would also install the service on the PC.
If you can't beat them, embrace and extend them.
This is the solution for rural internet access, not huge land-based networks. This rules!!!!!
Of course if this is available, why are they wiring Canada again?
Heartland Communications http://www.vsat.net.au/ have 250 remote farms in Australia up and running with 2 way internet access over satelite as we speak.
You can order StarBand from The DISH Network (the satellite TV people) and you don't have to buy any PC - especially not a Compaq - just the dish and the service. For those that have DISH Network already, or want to get it anyway, they have/are/will be releasing a combination dish (two-way internet and satellite TV all in one). The system still only runs on Windows, and while there are plans to port it to Mac, there are no plans for Linux.
I'm out of my mind, but feel free to leave a message.
On a perfectly clear day, my system at work will hit up to 600k/sec. In Michigan ,the weather is rarely like that, and I'm normally around 350k/sec. I think a lot of that though is bottlenecks on the Internet side of the connection, not in the satellite use itself. I've had speed tests which I run daily range from 280k/sec down to 750k/sec down, with my receiver hardware set to receive at a maximum of 800k/sec (go figure). I've had one complete outage on the system, and that outage also took out my DirecTV satellite system, and my phone lines at the store - It rained so hard my parking lot had water over 6 inches deep standing, in under 15 minutes.
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
OK, here's the deal: The hardware at RS only runs on satellite in about 240 of the 7000 stores. (If anyone near Michigan wants a demonstration, my store in Waterford runs it - this is not a sales pitch) Most of the stores have SDSL installed. No secret: Good DSL service is better. No secret: Good DSL service is not available the the large majority of people.
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
Having been using this system at work for the last 2 months, I can tell you a few things about it from personal experience. But, FIRST, let me mention that the system that i'm using is not exactly the system that is being released to customers. The StarBand satellite that I have at work is basically attached to a server that interconnects all 300 or thereabouts of the stores that are on this same network. Our server is vastly overloaded at some points, and my times are claimed to be quite a bit slower than what real customers are experiencing from the beta test, and apparently now we have real paying customers getting into the service right now.
Ping times: Ping times are rotten. I see anywhere from 850ms return time to >2000ms return time, depending on time of day and weather conditions.
This makes it virtually useless for gaming.
However, my experience with chat programs (I use PIRCH on it on a regular basis) with IRC and Yahoo! and such is that it's really not all that noticeable. I haven't tried ICQ, since ICQ operates a little bit differently than Yahoo Messenger does, I imagine it would show more of an annoyance factor with ICQ than with Yahoo or MSN Messenger.
The other thing that's totally out is telephone applications.
However, many improvements have been made in the service that I am seeing over the last several weeks. I've noticed that although in the beginning web pages with lots of small data files included initially were painfully slow, but over the last several weeks, the speed has increased dramatically. I don't know if they are using some sort of caching software that will take all of those requests, then respond to them with the burst download speed, or what.
I do think that software caching certainly becomes a very important aspect of this, and that if you were using this 2-way satellite connection, that it would be a very good idea to have your own on-network caching and DNS service. On the computer at work that it is hooked up to, I have Internet Explorer set to not expire the cache at all, and use the Refresh button when necessary, since I don't have the privlege of installing decent caching or DNS software.
I haven't tried much telneting with it, but I imagine that a Character mode telnet would be absolutely intolerable, though I have used MUDs that use Line mode telnet without any annoyance factor. (I should develop a scale for that.. the XO Annoyance Factor scale.. *laugh*)
To the bright side of things: My system which, as I said, is supposed to be quite a bit slower than the consumer system, does return (using the MSN speed test page, I don't know the URL right off hand) speeds around 350k/sec download and around 100k/sec upload. It may take some time to get the data streams started, but once they are started, they are _FAST!_
I can pull up NASA TV after a second or two delay in incredible audio/visual clarity, most real audio/real video things come down at maximum speed (I notice that a -lot- of RA content out there is optimized for 21k/sec, which leaves a SERIOUS amount of quality to be desired!), my customers who play with the system are on a regular basis amazed by it's speed, particularly if they are stuck with dialup or with a low-grade (ie 144k/max) DSL connect, etc.
The only downside of this whole thing is, since it's very new, they are only offering it with one particular computer setup - though this is not necessarily a bad thing. The computer that you get pre-tested and ready to rock on this system is a Compaq system, I don't have the specs, it's around 600MHz with 64MB RAM, etc. Would make a fabulous network gateway for those of you with more powerful machines already, or a great upgrade computer if your main machine is an older one (like mine's a very nice 400MHz with 96MB.. when I get the satellite setup, I'll be hooking up about 6 other machines to it, all inferior computers)
. The other thing that my system has is that my system is running Windows, and has to use CyberPatrol, with full blocking on. So although I imagine that it could very easily be configured for use with Linux, and such, the software isn't immediatly available.
The hardware to actually operate the satellite dish is in the form of 2 (two) PCI cards, one dedicated for transmit, and one dedicated for receive. (You may notice that they are currently being sued by another company who holds a patent on something like "receiving and transmitting data into/out of a computer using two seperate interface cards" - a BS patent if I've ever seen one) I would very much love to see OpenSource software to handle these cards, and although I haven't been a Linux user for quite some time (Windows gets me by just fine for email and reading slashdot which is all I ever have time for anymore), I would seriously love to provide any information that I can. Which isn't going to be a lot, since I'm not privvy to the internal workings of it, but.....
If you guys have any questions, drop me a line, ericblade@freeatlast.com, I'll try to do what I can. Recognize that although my store will be selling these systems, I'm not here for sales, I just want to help keep everyone informed. It's definitely against company policy to go and sell things away from the location of business.
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
Absolutely correct, sir!
From what I understand the downstream isn't quite that fast, either since the synchronization (ACK/NAK, or whatever it's equivalent in this scenario is) is coming over the telephone lines, via 56K modem.
For what it's worth, DirecPC is talking about dong 2-way sometime in late 2001 or early 2002.
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
Alright, I typed nearly a 4K response to this question earlier, and accidently clicked the wrong close button. I hate Microsoft's decision that CLOSE should be next to RESTORE. Dammit.
Anyway: Here's the reason
TECH SUPPORT.
THis is a brand new system. BRAND new. Very little has been done like this before, except for the few people who've talked about DirecPC, which isn't in the same category, and the person who mentioned that they had a very very pricey two way satellite a couple years back.
When StarBand sells you this computer and the satellite hardware, they are going to KNOW that there are not going to be any hardware issues with this computer. The system is tested at the manufacturer, that it -WILL- work with the cards and the preconfigured software. THis way, StarBand can very quickly, easily, painlessly tell if you are having a hardware problem, a cabling problem, or a software problem. Then they can fix it very easily. When you start packing in the 238645579 different PCI and ISA and VLB and EISA and whatever cards from the history of PC's, then you don't know what the hell is going on insided the machine when something breaks down.
--YOU-- as a technically savvy person who knows the ins and outs of every single transistor and capacitor inside their computer may understand fully what the problem is, but technical support doesn't have the ability to try these PCI cards with every single hardware combination that ever could come up.
First: A higher end computer will be available, hopefully by the end of the year, or early next.
Second: I'm -sure- the transmit/receive cards will be availalbe individually in the future. Just NOT RIGHT NOW. This is a NEW product, a NEW service, and they want to make sure it DOES what it's SUPPOSED to do.
Recomendation: you don't want to use the computer that comes with it? Load up some good proxy caching and DNS software on it, throw it in a closet, and ignore it. Hook up your other computer(s) and let them surf off it.
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
Install good caching proxy software, and your own DNS server, and the system will perform spectacularly for nearly any normal use. As I said in my huge post way up towards the top of the topic, Quake, Telephony apps, and probably character mode telnets are out of the question. Most other applications work very well.
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
Wow.. thats a lot of ping there. I do suppose satellite access is better than none, and it is better than dialup at least. I could see a whole bunch of advantages using satellites, but what about if the satellite goes down? See if you use dial up, usually there are backup servers for you to dial on, (a lot here in California). But if a satellite goes down, what happens next? I don't think all satellite ISPs can launch 20 satellites like the GPS did. calvin
I called Microsoft earlier today, and wanted more information on the MSN high speed satelitte internet. The agent told me I need to buy a $900-1400 computer from microsoft in order to use their service. She stated that these PC's we tested, and they are compiabltle with MSN High speed Internet. What a load of crap. I need to buy an ordinary PC from Microsoft just to use their serivce. The comptuer that they provide has no special modifications on it.
...
A bunch of crap if you ask me
If you do not currently have Dish Network satellite television service, Starband will cost you $69.99/month plus $599 for the satellite dish, transceiver, and "USB satellite modem". If you already have Dish Network service, the cost is $59.99/month plus $399 for the equipment. If you currently have cable TV, or DirecTV, you can switch to Dish Network satellite television for free (you have to sign a 12 month contract for $39.99/month). You can then pay $59.99 per month for the Starband service, plus $399 for the Starband equipment. You can get all of this info from local Dish Network dealer. Please note that this is the non Radio Shack route. You can also get this service through Radio Shack. BUT- you have to buy a Compaq PC from them AND your upstream provider will be MSN! If you go through your local Dish Network dealer, you do not have to buy a new PC and you will not be stuck with MSN!
DirecPC is not a two way satellite service. You get ~400Kbps downstream, but you are stuck with ~56Kbps dial-up for your upstream. This means you also have to have a dial-up ISP, or pay extra to use the dial-up system provided by DirecPC.
I live so far out in the sticks this is like a dream come true. We don't even get decent dial-up out here. 9.6Kbps is what I get on a good day - and this is right from the telco demarc. It certainly isn't inside wiring causing the slowness! What really sucks is this... divide that 9.6 Kbps connection by 6 computers. Don't think that just because someone lives in the middle of nowhere that they don't use technology. This "country bumpkin" has two Redhat boxen, one Solaris/Sparc box, one Win 2000 Pro box, one Mac G4 box, and my pride and joy, an IBM AS/400E. Country bumpkin my ass...
Sprint Broadband Direct is not available in all areas of the continental US. If you live out in the middle of nowhere like I do, Sprint Broadband Direct is not an option. However, even from the middle of nowhere I can see the southern sky, thus I can get Starband.
- A.P.
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* CmdrTaco is an idiot.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Pro: Loads of bandwidth, great mobility.
Con: High latency, unnecessarily tied to Windows, unnecessarily tied to Radio Shack, unnecessarily tied to Dish Network.
I'll pass.
At least WildBlue, at least thus far in its development, is slated to support all major platforms (including MacOS and Linux) and isn't tied to a particular retail chain or satellite TV network. Latency is still a problem, but it's about the only one left.
But all the same, I'd rather have a cable modem or DSL. Too bad neither one is in my area yet (unless you count IDSL, which I don't). Guess I'll have to wait...
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On a high latency network, services such as fpt and http would work amazingly. You'd be suprized by the number of countries serving their web sites via satellites. eg Dhivehinet in Maldives and so on. It's true, this would suck for quake and other online games. But a 400 ms is good enough even for telnetting. I've admined boxes hosted on satellite feeds for months (two way). True the latency shows, but it's not that big a deal.
Even with broadband applications (phone stuff). You only notice a slight gap in transmission (it's like those old cnn show's where the guy on the field hears the anchor a full second after he stops speaking).
Enjoy.
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Or maybe I'm not a karma whore.
Dish Network was at the technology building at the minnesota state fair pimpin' this thing. They let me play with it. It totally sucked.
I was lucky if I got downloads much faster than a 33.6 modem, and the latency to the first hop was around 800ms. Total piece of crap when I tested it. Maybe they had it aimed wrong or something. The guy told me the satellite is at an altitude of 20,000 miles in a geosyncronous orbit. I guess that would explain the latency.
If they improved the speed on it from when I tested it, it might be worth it if you're in total BFE.
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Yeah, i work at rat shack, we have the demo service available here, and well, when it gets going the downloads are awesome, but frequent downtime, too much latency, and the rediculous start off costs make me hate it. i mean, come on, who is going to buy a computer (a compaq, to top it all off) just to get two way satellite? ive noticed that the transfer cuts off in the middle way too often (like, when i read this article, the html stopped right in the middle of the comment.
My manager has their service very fast about 2 to 3 meg and very low pings. Stuff like this is the future.
You didn't give any numbers for what you claim are "very low pings," but there's a pretty darn hard-to-avoid minimum ping.
Your signal's gotta go up to a satellite and back down to a receiving dish. It gets routed and handled, then your reply goes up to the satellite and back down to your own dish.
So, four times the bird's altitude, times the speed of light, gives you what MINIMUM ping delay? I don't have the numbers, but I expect someone here does.
[
How many acres of land do i need to fit the dish? And will i become a military target if i install it?
I am !amused.
Nice to hear there are more options for rural folk. Look already has two-way internet, with speeds comparable to DSL atleast up here in Canada so they may be the first satellite service with two-way internet but they aren't the first wireless one, I don't know if a similar service is avaliable anywhere else.
Now if I could only get this working in my car!
And of course no, 0, that would be zip support for anything but Winders. Um, This sucks now for something that will be really cool once they get out to the rest of the world check out Air Switch . My manager has their service very fast about 2 to 3 meg and very low pings. Stuff like this is the future.
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
This summer I had the bad luck of working tech support for DirecPC -- a Satellite ISP service. Their 2way sat service has been up and working for some time and they have been beta testing it for about 3 months. See DirecPC Homepage For more info.
What I can tell you is that while DirecPC has been talking about this for QUITE some time, GILAT HAS been delivering this 2 way for some time now.
If you are bored and like to hear DPC people rant try alt.satellite.direcpc.
In Cincinnati, Main Street Ventures just opened their doors for business under great fanfare. Their goal is to be part of an inner city renovation where the Over-the-Rhine neighborhood is seeing many of its historically significant buildings reworked into trendy yuppie lofts.
At the opening, they had a ceremonial golden plug to be pulled apart when Main Street's new wireless service made the area officially "unplugged." This tented event for a few hundred spectators and camera crews took place in The Salvation Army's 12th street parking lot, with representative from Lucent and Microsoft, and Ohio's Governer Bob Taft.
They sure know how to inspire my distrust. ;-)
I think I agree. My internet company, InternetCDS gives you the choice of DSL or wireless, if you can't get DSL, you get wireless. They also promise 256kb both ways, however 90% of the time (and I kid you not..) it's under 100ms but gets to my IP and hits 1000ms. Not only that, if you get two way wireless, for the love of god CHECK AND SEE HOW YOUR ISP UTILIZES THEIR LINKS. Do they have time share? Do they put 50 people on a satalitte that's only designed for 20 users? Can one user take all the bandwidth? Please please, ask these questions and double check BEFORE YOU GET INTO THIS KIND OF THING. However, if it's all setup PROPERLY, it's quite a nice solution.. :\
I've got a good friend who can't wait to get this. I just emailed him the ./ link but inserted that cable and dsl give better bandwidth with lower latency. Sucker.
I'm gonna avoid like the plague, this kind of service(?) which is closely related to Microshaft, Compaq, and RadioShack. The first two will never get anymore of my money. RadioShack is a good friend of mine.
I don't want an internet service which is subject to the weatherman's cloudcover prediction, or solarflares. My cable company has worked hard enough to keep their service up when the wind blows.
So, given that we'll be on a phased array, geosynchronous satellite network (this really sounds cool), the communication is lagged by the high latency. Wasn't broadband created so we can have fast transfers without the high latency? Surely they can do better than 500/150 kbps. I get 1500/300 kpbs with my cable service which is 3x/2x as fast with probably less cost and one tenth the latency.
I'm gonna skip this thing. I can already see it coming down with Iridium. Or M$ will sell it off to keep their financials in the black.
It's just that it's not that commonly used. I installed a bidirectional, mobile satellite internet link 2 years ago, with T-1 speeds. Granted, not the cheapest thing to do, but it was still there. And it sucked, at least for web surfing, which was why we installed it. Unfortunately, we didn't have much of a choice since we needed a mobile solution, and Ricochet wasn't up to speed yet.
Typically, satellite data streams have about a half second latency. That means you send out a ping to your next hop, and it's at least 500ms before you get the response. Now when you're doing a stream of data in, this isn't so bad. You have a half second latency when you're setting up the connection, but then you have a nice even data delivery. However, for things like web surfing where you're setting up lots of connections (up to 30 or 40 per page sometimes), it's unbearable.
Satellite internet connections are useful if you're in a remote area and can't get anything else. But if you have anything else, even IDSL, you're going to find it a better choice for things like web surfing and gaming.
-Todd
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"The details of my life are quite inconsequential..."
Why not just use AOL?! 2k up and down is all anyone really needs. 2000 bytes is alot.
Sure, wireless brings forth a whole new series of security concerns. And that means encryption has its part. But it does nothing to address insecure hosts on persistant broadband connections.
What do you want to bet that the new satalite service providers will do the same as their xDSL and cable competitors and ignore this problem. But hey... they have encryption.
The higher the frequency allocated for the service, the tighter the spot beams with a given dish diameter, which means you can end up with the geographic equivalent of a dynamically distributed cellular communication system deployed via a single satellite with the main drawback being that you are sharing a single point of failure as well as a bandwidth bottleneck. However, at these high frequencies satellites can be parked much closer to each other in the same orbital so the bottleneck and failure vulnerability can be minimized by requiring a bit more complicated ground station to allow a fixed dish to rapidly switch between co-located satellites.
The rain problem is serious, but can be minimized, at least on the downward leg, by increasing the energy storage capacity of the satellite to power through the weather. IIRC the upward leg has a bit more of a problem with heavy weather because, although power is quite available on the ground, the scattering occurs far from the satellite (clouds are only a few miles in altitude whereas the satellites are about 20 thousand miles away). On the upward leg it is a bit more problematic due to the fact that arc very tightly which further increases the density of communication via demultiplexed (parallel) communication channels.
The delay time introduced by going up and back is less than typical human reaction time (about a quarter second) so its just fine for most practical uses -- even interactive ones other than games where people are pushing human reaction times to the sub 100ms ranges.
Starband is probably in these high frequency ranges since they do have a bit of difficulty with heavy weather, although I haven't been able to locate their FCC filing online to see exactly how high the frequency actually is.
Seastead this.
While the article doesn't come out and say it, I'm guessing there will be serious total bandwidth limitations- since there are no tracking antennas, and since this is referred to as part of a satellite TV service, it must be from (and probably to) a satellite in geosync orbit. All traffic is probably going to just one satellite. Once a lot of people sign up for this- popularity will kill it- since I'm sure that they can sign people up to long term contracts faster than they can put more transponders up.
Plus there is the fact that anything beamed to you is probably also being beamed to everyone in a multiple state area around you. I sure hope they have some *strong* encryption built in. They ought to be doing something better than DES, no?
I hate to say it, but the microsoft backed Teledesic system is a much better system (many satellites in low earth orbit- kinda like a cellular system) the satellites are closer and cover smaller areas, so the amount of bandwidth/satellite is much smaller.
Hardly anyone wants to sell you a simple net connection anymore. What's with all the useless addons? ISPs are always trying to be their own portal when they can't top Yahoo. Best Buy tries to get you on MSN when you buy a refrigerator.
Now to get satellite net access you have to buy a whole new PC, and it's still $60 a month?
Dammit, give me some hardware and tell me what I should set the IP and DNS to, and charge me less!
but a ping latency of about 400ms so gamers are out of the question.
:).
.118 (approx) seconds now multiply by 2, we have to go both ways. we have .236 seconds (approx).
I rember when i thought light (186,000 miles/second) was fast haha. Now 400ms a second isn't round trip time for light from nowheresville -> Satellite -> Backbone router but the handicap makes up for a damn sizeable chunk
Let's investigate.
For example, if the mission requires a geostationary orbit, which can be achieved only at a distance of about 35,000 km (22,000 mi) above Earth.
I got this from MSN Encarta. MSN... like their operating systems, probably can't be trusted
Lets do some calculations(my favorite). For light to get to the satellite it takes
Now a handicap of 236ms before you get on the net leaves a little to be desired. Like, Damn I wish light were faster.
Time is Change