Satellite Internet Service for Macs?

Untimely Ripp'd asks: "Satellite broadband has been available to PC users for half a decade, and still is not trivially available to Mac users. It can be done, but it's always an unsupported hack, or it requires buying expensive extra hardware and software. I cannot understand why Hughes and the other providers would refuse to spend the relatively few dollars necessary to develop a couple of device drivers and glue libraries. Time after time, the vendors have said, 'it's coming,' but it never does, and the promise eventually goes away. (Earthlink's FAQ page no longer says that Mac software is being developed, for example). I'm not gung-ho on conspiracy theories, but the only explanation I can figure is that they're either being paid or bullied. Does anyone know of any serious tech hurdle that would make it cost more than $100K or so to develop the necessary software?" this article mentions one-way Mac service coming online from OWC in a future expansion, along with nationwide service. A comment from that story does mention a simple solution, but why is it that Satellite service, even one way satellite service, depends on Windows-only software? What other solutions have Mac users resorted to when they wanted their Macs connected?

Comments

Again?

[Clue4All]

I'm not gung-ho on conspiracy theories, but the only explanation I can figure is that they're either being paid or bullied.

How many times can we go over this same point? It's the same for Linux and Mac, it's just not economically viable to develop software for something used by less than 5% of the computing masses. It doesn't pay, plain and simple, and companies aren't going to waste money developing with little to no returns. I await next week's Ask Slashdot with the same question.

Re:Again?

[Otter]

Also, while Mac users may be ~5% of the total, they're a vanishingly small percentage of the construction supervisors, petrologists and logging bosses who need a satellite link. This troll is essentially correct, even if he can't spell Shih-Tzu.

Re:Again?

[freaq]

There's a lot more that goes into it.

i should hope not. how much work is it to add

, macintosh, and linux

to your print ads, and two links to your downloads page? if you're selling cds instead of offering downloads, is it _that_ much more expense to say to your presser, "here's a new cd image for you to print"? if it is, allah preserve you when you have to do a point release.

and if, after porting your app, re-making your manual requires much more than substituting some screen shots, replacing 'ctrl' with 'cmd' and replacing 'alt' with 'meta' or 'option'... there's a good chance your software isn't worth the time it takes to download over a dedicated oc3.

in a similar vein, aren't extra support costs a result of more paying customers? unless you're giving support to folk who haven't bought your product, in which case the trolls in accounting might want your hide.

i freely admit, i'm not a marketer. maybe apple has bundled a free and superior alternative to your software with their os. maybe yellowdog has also. would it take more than an hour to find this out? what principle am i missing here? marketers, feel free to correct my myopia.

Re:Again?

[Graymalkin]

Your arguement makes perfect sense and I have to say I agree. However I think the problem on the developer side doesn't lie with the fact supporting Macs would only get you .1% of 5% of the market but instead with the fact Hughes/EchoStar/everyone else screwed up originally in their implementation. The soon to be released DW4020 (maybe it is released already) is how the sat providers SHOULD have originally rolled out their connection equipment.

Using USB based equipment in my ever so humble opinion was a major screwup on their part. Besides the obscene price tag of the equipment and installation (far more than my DirecTV system cost me) the USB satellite modem was a huge turn off. It is far more inefficient to fsck with the Windows networking set up than to do it in your own little box in a self contained manner. A satellite modem with an ethernet port is a much better idea, yet again in my opinion. For starters support is rather trivial, instead of needing to rely on Windows to work properly which is a lot to ask, they only need to really maintain their own software. All the network stack customizations and proxying tricks to let the network run on a high latency connection would be relatively simple to maintain on something like VxWorks or some other embedded system. All the end user would need is an ethernet port which in available on a huge percentage of systems, including every Mac made since the iMac.

At the time I was looking at DirectWay about when I was looking for boradband and was picking up a DirecTV system anyways the only satellite modem options were USB. Had I been able to plug it into my Ethernet hub I probably would have bought the service. For a long time I lived out of reach of both cable and DSL and my telephone line choked data down at a staggering 24kbit/s. Now I have a cable modem plugged into my router which is plugged into my hub. I think there's plenty of Linux/Mac/Whatever users who also would have signed up for their service a long time ago and thus been locked into satellite instead of opting for cable or DSL. I think Hughes dropped the ball with DirectWay, it had a major opening even in metropolitan areas before the massive cable internet rollouts of the past two years. Not only could they have likely increased their customer base but they could have also lowered their costs by not relying on Windows hacks in order to get their systems to work right.

Re:Again?

[ek_adam]

How about the people in rural locations who don't have any other options available?

My father lives in northern Maine. He has a 56k modem, that can barely get 24k on his phone line. No cable available. Positively no DSL, he's about 15 miles from the central office.

Reasonably priced satellite service would be great.

It's not about the cost to *develop* the software

[mbessey]

The main barrier to providing a service like this for the Mac, or for Linux, Solaris, BeOS, or whatever, isn't the cost to develop the software, it's the cost of supporting users on another platform.

Every time someone calls with a question, it costs the company money. The quicker you can answer their question and get them off the phone, the better. This means minimizing the number of different systems your support folks have to be trained for.

-Mark

The real cost is maintenance

[iiioxx]

It's not the initial development of drivers and an application interface that is such the expense for the ISP. It is the ongoing support of an additional platform. By adding Mac support for your product, you've just doubled your ongoing testing and debug workload. It is also an additional platform for which they will have to provide user support. They either have to train their existing help desk staff to resolve both Windows and Mac problems, or they have to hire a special "Mac staff" and create a separate help desk to support that userbase.

In the realm of mass market computing, the majority rules. Most companies can't afford to expend the budget to gain a small fraction of a platform that only makes up 5% of the industry as a whole. Remember, it's not like EVERY Mac user will start using the product just because they support the Mac. So, why would a company spend even 2% of their R&D budget to get 1% of a 5% market (if they're lucky).

I think the answer is pretty obvious

[strictnein]

It is market share plain and simple.

First off, you have the very small market share that Mac users represent. About 1-3% (right?)

Then you have to factor in what percentage of the Mac users live in or near major metropolitan areas. I would argue that number is probably near 90% of the total Mac users (a number I am pulling out of my ass, but I just don't think there are a ton of Mac users in the rural US, which is where the Sat. companies are focusing).

So, you have a possible market that makes up maybe .1 - .3% of the total computer users in the US.
Hell, even if my numbers are a little bit off, the total market share for Mac users in rural areas can't be more than 1% of all internet users.

So, if the software costs $100k to write, and then another $5k - $10k / year (/month?) to support, plus retraining all (or many) of your support/install personel to use the Macs, is it really worth it?

I personally don't think I would do it if I ran the company.

But whatever... hmmm... the linux router seems to having problems... wonder if throwing it out the window will solve it

Technical issues

[rochlin]

I think it's worth mentioning a couple technical points that have been overlooked by people considering using a PC as a bridge between the satellite receiver and the Mac.

I set up a PC system (with win2k) purely as a bridge. The satellite reciever uses USB (this is from Pegasus-DirecPC-Hughes - now acquired by Earthlink). Pegasus and DirecPC provide proprietary Windows only drivers to deal with the USB network-satellite connection. That's issue #1. That means using Linux or (as suggested in the "comment" link in the oringal post) a simple router won't fly.

Issue 2: Optimizing the Window size for the ethernet connections --
The fact is, the TCP/IP conneciton to the satellite (high bandwidth - extremely high latency) needs different rwin settings to optimize the connection than the simple pc->mac LAN connection. So far as I can figure, Windows lets you choose one setting for all NICs (in this case the USB satellite connection is a NIC).

Issue 3 - you need some kind of 3rd party NAT/Bridge software like Sygate to share the connection with the Mac. The built in (to Win2k, 98) Internet connection software won't work because it can't bridge different subnets. The USB conneciton is on a different subnet vs. a regular NIC. I don't think it can be configured otherwise. WinXP might fix that.

Bottom line: You need a PC with Windows to share the satellite with the Mac and even then the Mac will have inferior service vs. the directly connected PC. So a satellite service supporting Macs would be nice :)

Re:Technical issues

[redgekko]

I've shared several DIRECWAY systems out to Macs using ICS on 98se and 2000, but not without problems with the "acceleration" software that is the client side of the crc spoofing tech used to compensate for latency. I haven't tried XP yet.

Basically, sustained downloads perform great on both server and clients, but individual images on webpages seem to only load one at a time, as if only one socket connection is being made at a time to the server to download them. Running multiple simutaneous sustained downloads also seem to suffer, but not as bad has normal http page element traffic.

If anyone knows what causes this or how to solve the problem without 3rd party software (SatServ seems to work great), I would greatly appreciate it!

No different than any other non-cross-platformies

[MatrixCubed]

Laziness and lack of research. Same reason why stuff isn't ported to other platforms (Linux mainly)... because the marketers don't understand there IS a market across user platforms (Windows, Linux, Macintosh) for most software and hardware.

It likely boils down to a small group of Mac non-users legislating that "there is not enough of a market to compensate for its expenditure".

Re:Why would Mac users need fast internet anyway?

[rxchurch]

I use my mac to come home and make music and edit video after a long week of smacking around linux/sunos/microsloth/ios machines around.

When I come home, i don't really feel like spending half my night recompiling the latest kernel.

I just want to make music and video.
After I eat my sushi, of course.

Don't forget path packet size discovery...

[raehl]

Or whatever the hell you really call it.

The satelite drivers are written to keep the high-bandwidth pipe full (i.e. you can put a lot of data in the air before it gets to the satalite and back.) Since various networks that carry TCP/IP (Etehrnet, ATM, etc) are based on different optimal packet sizes, so oyu generally probe your connection to figure out the what link is going to split your packets into the smallest size and then just send packets of that size.

I'd suspect that's why the Mac on a PC performs a lot worse than the PC in general - the ethernet packets that get sent to the PC probably get passed on as-is instead of reassembled into larger packets for the satalite link.

One huge packet with one header is obviously more efficient than one huge packet made up of lotsa smaller packets each with their own header.

Need custom stack, do it in hardware/firmware!

[aquarian]

A couple of people have posted saying a custom TCP/IP stack is needed. Well, then, do it in the sattelite receiver, in the hardware and firmware! Proprietary secrets would be safe within the box, and the damned thing would actually work! Plug and play- no drivers, no tech support calls. Give us our ethernet, dammit!

Betcha this would be cheaper than creating and supporting software, too. They have to make the receiver/modem box anyway- so stick a router chip in there, and be done with it.