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.

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

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 :)