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Starband Files for Chapter 11
PalmKiller writes "Well it looks like Starband is going into chapter 11. I got the email a few days ago. And just when I got CYGWIN with squid proxy working beautifully. With winproxy I rarely got any thoughput on my clients (20-50KBytes/sec or 160-360Kbits/sec), on squid I finally am getting 80-95KBytes/sec (640-760Kbits/sec continuously) and some faster bursts. Well, I guess I will ride her till she falls over and dies." Looks like Echostar's tactics have been successful. And we just did an article a few weeks ago on Starband's service, where most commenters weren't very happy.
More info on the Starband User's experience available here
Comic Book Guy: "There is no Groening in my store."
Chapter 11 is NOT going out of business.
Chapter 11 is filing for protection from creditors during restructuring.
Doesn't mean it's not headed that way, just that it's not there yet.
~Will
sig?
althought the parent is most likely a troll...
Starband is a satellite ISP.
Squid is a proxy cache server, for HTTP, FTP and some other protocols. http://www.squid-cache.org/ . It's quite flexible, and is great for reducing outgoing web traffic on a network, which speeds up web browsing - I've seen a 40% reduction in bandwidth used for web surfing at my work by using squid.
And for the other buzzwords, wingate is a windows based proxy program, and cygwin is a unix environment for windows, which allows unix programs to run unchanged on NT kernel based versions of windows.
BBK
There are a lot of things that are popping up for rural areas. My wife is from a small town in western Kansas called Plainville. There town having only 2500 people just got DSL and a town about fifty miles north of them called Phillipsburg now has wireless access within 20 miles of a certain grain silo (no joke). The company providing the server is Nex-Tech. Many of the cities that this company works with are in the 1000-3000 people range...and they don't suck either :)
Unstable Apps: Our Android Apps Don't Suck
When you consider that the basic setup and install is over $500, this is a fairly expensive way to go, but I guess if your desperate for bandwith in rural areas . . .
2002-06-02 12:46:12 Starband files Chapter 11 (articles,news)(rejected)
News for nerds, stuff that's at least two weeks old.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Major Shareholders:
EchoStar: Entered into marketing agreement with Starband and owns 30% of stock. Failed to perform on marketing agreement (which was to sell starband bundled with Dish Network collect the payments for a while, and then turn over the accounts to Starband in Feburary). Their failure to perform on this agreement has driven Starband into bandruptcy, because Starband does not know who to bill for their service, and thus, has basically zero revenue.
Echostar wants to kill Starband, because they are trying to buy Hughes, who owns DirectTV and has their own Satellite Internet product, which would make Echostar a lot more money than their arrangement with Starband does.
Echostar held several board seats at Starband, until they got interested in buying Hughes.
Other major shareholders:
Gilat - Provides the satellite network and services. Don't know if there is any sleezy goings on here.
Microsoft - Apparently pressured Starband into not allowing open source developers access to the protocols needed to build anything other than a Windows client for Starband. Starband is very Linux friendly, they even will provide the software you need to do Internet connection sharing, so that you can use Starband with non-MS computers, but they refuse to release the specs, for suspicious reasons.
Starband has nothing to lose by ditching the scum that makes up it's major shareholders.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
That's true for asynch serial lines, but not for other types, such as ethernet.