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2-Way Satellite Internet Now Available In Canada
ehud42 writes: "According to this article, 2-way satellite service is available in Canada. Canada is pushing to have high speed internet access available to all Canadians by the year 2004. However, it appears it's available already! CEO Leslie Klien of C-Com is hoping the government will spend less on telco's stringing wires across the tundra and instead give it customers so they can buy his services."
- A.P.
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Forget Napster. Why not really break the law?
"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?"
I thought that TCP "spoofing" eliminated some of the slowdown...of course you are right that "interactive" things above layer 3 are a problem.
Under "normal" conditions, a byte is 8 bits. But sending data a long distance through wires or air requires some special handling. Thus, there is a "stop" and "start" bit appended to each byte.
1 + 8 + 1 = 10.
And there you have your 10 bit byte. =)
-andy
FYI, the system can be easily modded to run an ethernet interface for non-MS/non USB capable clients. SB themselves don't promote it, but there are a large number of sites on the Net that explain the mod in great detail.
There is nothing so pathetic as seeing a beautiful young theory roughed up by a tough gang of facts.
Even though its nice to have the service available, I reckon I will be waiting around 5 years just for the prices to come down. These sort of costs are only justifiable by mining or oil companies out in the middle of nowhere, but who still need data links. For them it is definetly cheaper to get a satellite connection than to set up telephone cables to somewhere 400km from anywhere.
Also in 5 years the technology will probably have improved enough for making it interesting for home or small business use.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Surely you mean Kim Campbell, back when big Bri retired, right?
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Yes, for young online gamers, latency is an issue.
I don't see this as something that's 'holding back' the satellite internet industry... landline services like cable & dsl tend to be cheaper and easier to install as well, which is a MUCH larger factor.
For everyone else, it's not a big deal, and given the number of rural locations with no high speed and not the best quality dialup, I'd say this is a fantastic solution.
It's *expensive*. VERY expensive. And takes time.
What do you think.. our whole country is TUNDRA?
that's 320Kbps/120Kbps, btw. ANd most people will keep it for more than a year.
This is great. The only thing keeping me from moving out of the city was the unavailability of half decent internet access. Now that this is here.. I can live at the lake.
So you think this is not a good deal? This is for people *outside the city* where you can't get *any* high speed access. It's a *great* deal.
As a Canadian who lives where you will never be cable modem or DSL access, I feel the pain.
You can already get 1-way Satellite in Canada via Expressvu (see expressvu.ca) - the same place I get my TV signal from. They will likely have the 2-way system sometime soon, since the American equivalent is in trial in the US.
Hopefully the prices will be a bit more reasonable. I don't mind paying more than the $40/mo. that cablemodem and DSL people pay in the city, but $200+ a month for a residential service is just too expensive.
I hope we get this service soon, since satellite down and modem up is too expensive and slow. Expressvu, you listening? :)
Do you even know anything about perl? -- AC Replying to Tom Christiansen post.
Dish Size Price
0.74m $ 849.95
1.2m $ 2,249.95
1.8m $ 2,749.95
Seats Monthly Seat License Email Account
1 Seat $ 149.95 Included 1
Activation Fee: $ 49.95 Yearly Industry Canada
Licensing fee: $ 70
http://www.storm.ca/~inetvu/content/CanResi2waydir .pdf
Ok, so it's a lot more expensive than DSL/cable.
Big deal. We city folk spend a hell of a lot more on our apartments/houses than rural folk. The farther away you are from the city, the less you have to spend on your property. The difference more than makes up for the expensive Internet access.
No, it was something she said at a speech given to the Vancouver chapter of the Canadian Information Processing Society.
According to Judy Elder, head of Microsoft Canada's Consumer Division, Canada generates more porn search requests than any other English-speaking country in the world. And that's total searches, not per capita. This is not a troll, nor is it a joke (although it's damn funny).
Maybe that's why we're leaders in the telecom business, and have better internet access options--we have the demand.
> The system provides download speeds 16 times faster than a regular phone line
... and...
> Miles himself lives in the countryside and his Internet access at home is the basic, slow dial-up service. He recently downloaded a big file that took more than two hours, tying up his phone line and his patience.
> He downloaded the same size of file using the satellite system in 20 seconds.
So that's 120*60/20 = 360!
Somehow 16X faster became > 360X faster!
This guy's taking math lessons from Gore.
All opinions expressed herein are not my own; I haven't had free will since last year when aliens ate my brain.
A 400/128 kbps "line" for a remote area isn't a terrible deal, despite the high price. However, one of the main things holding back satellite internet connections, besides lack of a decent upload solution, is terrible latency. There's no mention of what one can expect in any of the links above, anyone have any ideas or suggestions/solutions?
Interested in open source engine management for your Subaru?
The system provides download speeds 16 times faster than a regular phone line and sends information five times faster.
Does the typical home user even need speeds so fast or is everyone just rushing to see who can do what first. Sounds nice to have this service but it seems a bit pricey.
$1,500 after tax for the equipment, plus $150 per month service fee. Businesses pay $2,500 for equipment and $190 a month in service fees.
One of the things I always wondered about is what happens when a company goes under say like PSINet, what happens to the pre purchased bandwidth they didn't use, is there a clearinghouse for it as there is for phone time? Anyone know?
Want Root?
I work at a Radioshack and we have had advertisements running since October for a 2 way satellite service. The service being offered is the Microsoft network and it's got a large download which I forget but only 128kb up. Some customers who were existing DirectPC customers were able to get it already, but I understand they had a lot of problems with the rollout and right now you can't get it. It didn't scale well over 2000 customers apparently.If you talk to your local Radioshack guy you might be able to get in on it though, worth a shot. (assuming you would even want this...)
Sigs are awesome huh?
"You could probably save money by getting about 4 phone lines and isp accounts and combining the bandwidth."
OK, let's figure this out. We'll use my parent's farm as an example.
First of all, we need more than 4 phone lines: because they are out in the boonies, their maximum connect rate with a 56K modem is 24kbps. So rather than 4 phone lines, we need about 16 to reach 400kbps. 16x$25 / month gives me $400 / month.
Installation costs? SaskTel might actually have 16 pairs running to the farm. Once you start digging up the ground, you might as well run enough pairs. What does it cost to run cable, especially in rocky terrain, for short distances? I'll use $50,000 per mile. That's off the top of my head, but I think it's about right. And we need about a mile to reach the trunk.
And it's the nature of telephone companies: whether or not they have to dig new lines or not, that's about what they'd charge. They only charged about $2,000 to hook us up originally, reasonably priced access for everyone is a condition of their monopoly. They'd jump at the price to get their full sunk cost back.
$150 for high speed internet is cheap. As an example, my parents used to pay $70 a month just to get real-time agriculture commodity price information delivered via satellite to the farm.
$150 a month for high speed internet makes living in the country an option for people like me, who depend on quality internet access to do their work. You save the money elsewhere: you can buy a nice house for $20K. When my brother bought a house, he bought it on a line of credit: it was cheaper to pay the extra interest than to pay the mortgage fees.
Bryan
From the linked page (for the goatse paranoid: http://www.c-comsat.com/content/2waydir.htm):
Operating Systems Windows 98 SE Windows ME Windows 2000
The struggle continues.
TomatoMan
-- http://frobnosticate.com
> 40KB download? 12KB upload? $150 a month? Yeah right... That is rediculous.
Where did you get those bandwidth figures? Here are some from their FAQ:
The speed at which data will flow from the Internet to your PC will average 400kbps. The speed at which data will flow from your PC to the Internet (e.g., when sending an email) will average 128kbps.
While you're using a capital B, and may be meaning kilobytes per second rather than kilobits, they still don't match the FAQ's bandwidth stats, and I think a 10x-20x downstream improvement over a typical dial-up in a remote location is more than a "glorified modem."
On the other hand, their actual pricing sheet says that they may, at their discretion, limit your bandwidth as described in their Terms and Conditions, which they don't seem to make publicly available on their web site.
The Sun!
For a millenia we have lived under its warm glow, and free nutrients! Finally we will be rid of this menace as we block it from the sky with millions of low orbit satellites.
Excellent.
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This
Here's the math:
:-) - 186,000 miles/sec.
/blah/foo.txt" is suicide over satellite.
Speed of light (generally unbreakable
Distance to geosynchronous orbit - 22,250 miles
22,250 / 186,000 = 120 ms each way
Assuming the server is built into the transmitting satellite (ie: The internet is perfect):
Open port at server = 120 ms (up)
Acknowledgement from server = 120 ms (down)
Now, if we're using UDP, there's no more latency (unless your client supports cleaning up after lost packets, which will slow it down horribly, and you WILL lose packets. This is radio communications)
If this were TCP, now you get this:
Server sends a couple of packets
You acknowledge those packets.
Server waits for your reply before sending more. (+ x ms, depending on your TCP windows)
Anything much more interactive then "Send me
Let's consider a POP (mail) link.
Open port, wait for acknowledgement (+240 ms)
Send user, wait for reply (+240 ms)
Send pass, wait for reply (+240 ms)
Send list, wait for reply (+240 ms)
Send retr, wait for reply (+240 ms * no. of messages)
Send quit, wait for reply (+240 ms)
Total time spent doing NOTHING for downloading three emails: 2 seconds. And that's being NICE. Servers aren't that responsive, and neither is the internet. Expect checking empty mailboxes to take 5 seconds. Which isn't much, but grates on your nerves like the local pop radio station announcer.
FTP is similar, and so are most interactive protocols. Every letter typed on a telnet/ssh session takes at least 240 ms to show up. If you don't type the next letter until the one you typed just shows up, you effectively have a 50 baud modem. Telex was faster (I think).
I'm not too great with this stuff, so if you are better at it than me, please correct any mistakes.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
This isn't going to be the solution for those of us living in big centers where we hae our choice of DSL and cable. This is for rural areaa, some of whom still dial in over radio! Yes, northern Saskatchewan still uses some Radio for phone communications. So, this is a huge step forward. Lets face it, A town of This is "the last mile". Its the most difficult thing in connecting to the Internet. Here's an answer. Give it some time to drop in price. I know when DSL started around here, it was over $100/month, not the $45 it is now.
You are aware that it's 150 CANADIAN dollars, right? And you're not being fair, you should ammortize that dish cost over 3-5 years, which (with a $1500 dish) brings it all back down to $175 CDN, or $100 USD per year. Isn't that what ADSL costs in the UK?
And 128 kbps is the normal upload cap on ADSL here in Canada anyways.
But for gamers, the half second ping would be attrocious. You'd have to keep a modem account just to play games. Oh well, guess we have to wait for Satelite service from LEO or medium earth orbit (although we'd need tracking dishes, which would be more expensive, upfront and maintenance...). Good news is that there is lots of room up there in the medium orbits so it could be cheaper that way, and it's closer so the power levels can be lower.
Service: 150x12=$1800/year
Dish: $850-2750, they recommend the "right one"
Yearly licensing free: $70
Activation: $50
Hrm.. so if you keep the service for a year, that runs you about $230 - $390 per month for a glorified modem speedwise. You could probably save money by getting about 4 phone lines and isp accounts and combining the bandwidth. I guess a government is the only organization that would consider something like this.
Uninnovate - Only the finest in engineering.
.... Those prices are "Canuck Bucks". So like, $1500 CDN = 5 US litterally pennies & dimes for yankees!
Hammy hamster, socialized medicine, SCTV, they always get it first. Now they have 2 way satellite internet, and a woman president, Jeanne Chretien!
This whole plan to get all Canadians using satellite connections is being aided by Americans that play Counter-Strike and want to ensure that Canadians have 300+ pings. Canadians fooled into thinking that their high speed downloads will also mean low latency will be unable to cope with their skyrocketing ping-times. They'll switch to Everquest. Just wait and see.
iluvpr0n.
I can get
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
My only concern would be how secure is this wireless connection. I recently read an article about people who can intercept info from outside buildings with wireless LAN's. Even if the info I am sending is encrypted, i don't necessariy want people intercepting it. I am not saying the wired internet is the safest, but with this satellite technology be even that safe?
Many people have trashed this option for not being as cost-effective as cable or ADSL. True, for most people, it isn't anywhere near as cost-effective...for MOST people. For many people, particularly in Canada's sparsely populated north, cable and ADSL (and sometimes even dialup) simply aren't options. I spend my summers on a six-acre island on Lake Muskoka, Ontario. We get power and telephone from hideously expensive underwater lines that were laid connecting the island to a nearer, slightly larger island, which, in turn, paid a hideously large amount to lay its own lines, which connect it to the mainland. Not suprisingly, cable and ADSL aren't an option. Dialup isn't either. Dialup requires that I dial the nearest ISP and pay long distance charges to connect to it through what appears to be about 10^n hops back to the central server somewhere in the Orion Nebula. Satellite Internet, therefore, is a fabulous option for me, even at this price. It's not the be-all and end-all of Internet access, but it'll certainly help bridge the "digital divide" whereby people in remote areas were the last, if they ever did, to get dialup, adsl and cable, respectively.
I'd like to see somebody implement one of those flying radio stations with some serious bandwidth. That should provide pretty good performance, and would probably end up being cheaper, as you don't need a booster rocket to get your equipment up, and don't have to design the equipment to withstand radiation that hasn't been tempered by our atmosphere.
GreyPoopon
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GreyPoopon
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Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?