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Another Stab At Internet Access By Satellite
dpilgrim writes "As someone who probably won't live long enough to see DSL or cable Internet reach my rural neighborhood, I follow the 'Satellite Wars' pretty closely. Looks like Echostar is claiming once again they have a viable high-speed Internet access satellite under construction. Really. They do. According to this AP story, they have pictures and all. The big news is that based on this 'new evidence' the FCC has rescinded their revocation of Echostar's license. Yes, this submission came to you 44,000 miles over Starband's satellite link, and Starband is an Echostar partner. Wonder how long that relationship will last?"
Maybe they will have a real network connection and not usb.
Maybe I'm mistaken, but isn't this still mostly a one-way solution? All the people I know that have used satellite internet get decent downstream speeds (when it's not cloudy anyways) but are still forced to rely on a regular dialup connection for their upstream.
Has the technology been developed to make this a true broadband solution like cable/dsl is now? If so, I'm sure many rural types would be interested in jumping on that bandwagon...since they really have no other option.
If you can't beat them, arrange to have them beaten. -George Carlin
Too much latency 4 me
Why would I pay for satellite access when I can get cable access for the same price
You wouldn't. You would use satellite if you lived in a rural area with no cable/dsl access... just like the guy who submitted the article.
I am a DirecWay user, after having moved out of the range of DSL. AT&T Broadband doesn't offer Cable Modem service in my town. I can honestly say DirecWay sucks, but its just slightly better than dialup, so I guess I can justify its ridiculous cost. The second DSL is available in my area, I'm switching back.
I had to do a few homework assignments about satalite networks in college and the physics seem to make this a waste of time. It takes too long for the signal to get up and down and back. Customers will likely just stick with the fast and reliable land based lines.
While on the subject, can anyone comment on what their experience is with satellite based internet connections? How fast, what sort of latencies, downtime, weather impact etc.
I'm interested to get a DirecWay system, but one of the things that worries me is that it requires special software (supposedly).
The point is that not everyone can get normal broadband (my parents fall into this category). Satellite, however, is available almost everywhere if you've got the hardware to use it.
If you can't beat them, arrange to have them beaten. -George Carlin
The problem is, in the middle of nowhere, your only choice is probably satellite. I live in a fairly metropolitan area, and I can only get Cable Modem to my house. My local bell has decided they don't want to invest in putting in DSL.
Because there are people who don't live in the city. I grew up in the country, didn't even have dialup available until about 7 years ago.
Now, I live in a town of about 14k (plus a university with 10k undergrads) and I'm lucky enough to have two options. Verizon DSL and wireless through a local provider. But I still remember playing Quake on a 56k from Idaho. Can you say UltraHPB?
I thought cable was invented to give people in rural areas access to television... so why wouldn't the same apply to internet access?
evil adrian
He states in his submission that he lives in a rural area.
This is probably the only viable alternative.
As below, so above and beyond, I imagine drawn beyond the lines of reason. Push the envelope. Watch it bend.
You will have to wait until they eiter find a way to increase the speed of light, or launch a system of many low-orbiting satellites that provides affordable Internet access.
A system with geostatonary satellites and light travelling at the speed it does now will not work. Never. Not even when Echostar, New Skies, Eutelsat or Astra announce it.
2-way service does exist. The latency is approx. 800ms minimum, and the download is around 400kbps (for most connections you don't pay thousands for)
Sure modem access has lower latency, but some of the people who use sattellite use it because they have no phone lines in the area. Yes, places like this exist in the US.
I think that they now offer a two-way solution, but it isn't much faster than 56k. Although it doesn't tie of your phone line.
Cable internet requires more infrastructure than cable TV. A lot of folks with cable TV will never get cable internet, 'cause the cable co's aren't willing to deliver at a loss.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
I would, except yours is just giving it away.
You wonder why there are so few hits from African countries? Because the only reliable link is over satellite, which usually connects to a European ISP. Yes indeed, this message is brought to you over PanAmSat connect to the Irish Web-Sat ISP from the oil-rich country of Nigeria.
My upstream is 64kbytes/sec, downstream is 2Mbits. Unless it rains a tropical storm, in which case the connection ceases to exist.
For the interested, check out http://www.directonpc.com.
Because there is somethings called rural areas where cable and DSL providers don't find it profitable to upgrade their equipment for fast internet access (phone and cable centrals need to be improved.)
Look a monkey!
But what about the alien threat that was presented in the Hollywood blockbusted Independence Day? Since alien's run MacOS-compatible systems and communicate using a protocol extactly similiar to our TCP/IP, this system, if put into place, would give them the last piece of the puzzle needed to blow up the White House! I urge Echostar to think of the children for Christ's sake!
Down in Antarctica, the only internet access available is by satellite -- and it's so impossibly slow that when that woman down there got breast cancer, they barely could get the doctor's recommendations and instructions for a biopsy over the satellite, since it only worked every few hours at best and the transfer rate was something akin (no exaggeration!) to 300Bps.
In fact, it's so bad that some groups are actually considering running a digital fiber line all the way to the south pole.
Why? Because of this simple reason, this probably doesn't apply to you. Believe it or not there are many of us out there that can't get cable or dsl where we live - imagine that. Satellite access is for folks like myself (and the submitter) who have this problem -
True satellite access isn't useful for gaming and other such things due to high latency issues but it's better than dialup, IMO. Especially since they now offer 2-way satellite access at relatively good speeds so that you don't need a line for dialing up to do uploads.
Lucky for me they now offer a wireless point to point in my rural area that offers high speeds with low latency (under 5ms) but they have a monopoly in the area and are charging an arm and a leg for relatively low speeds - $60/month for 256k and $90/month for 512k (this is for residential, businesses have more options).
Again, not ideal but I'll gladly pay their unfortunately high costs because I want high speed bad enough and they're the only other game in town that meets my needs (besides dialup or satellite).
Are you bovilexic? Moo!
It depends, many believe that many companies use a modem uplink, but check out:
http://www.highspeedanywhere.com
They have a bi-directional offering.
Yeah I was thinking that right after I posted... not just signal amplifiers, need all the routing equipment etc. My bad folks.
evil adrian
It is postings like this that make me want to have a moderator option for
-1 retard
i thought cable was invented so that people who couldn't get good reception could have channels piped in.
Paraphrased from Homer J Hickam's book, "Rocket Boys" (republished as "October Sky"):
"In 1954, the company even provided one of the first cable television systems in the United States as a free service."
he said in the book that they were nestled so deep in the mountains they couldn't get a decent signal, so the company mounted a huge antenna and fed it into all the houses.
Free Webmail
How about some hardcore 802.11b. All you need is a coffee can and an old satellite dish.
Hardcore 802.11b
actually, I think the reverse is true:
give people access to good, clear TV in a city where tall buildings and other radio signals interfered. The density of city dwellers makes this feasible. For these reasons, a rural person was not likely to get cable.
Besides, with nothing but trees and flatland, a TV signal could travel quite some distance to deliver clear images.
I live in rural Norway and have looked at the possibility for satellite and found TiscaliSat (should be avaiable in most countries), but the prices are high. Setting up the sat costs $2000+ and the monthly fee is $200+. I don't forsee satellite as a viable artenative for private consumers, maybe for small corporations (with need for fast connection in rural areas?)
Look a monkey!
You can't use sat access for gaming because the ping is so ridiculously high.
Doesn't matter, those warez games you download won't work without valid cd-key anyway.
You live in an area where satellite is your only option for high speed internet connectivity
Certain amount of uber-geek coolness
Uh... can't think of any others.
Cons:
Round trip ping times are extreme and completely unusable for online gaming
Capped and throttled bandwidth - sure, they promise you X bits per second, but that's assuming that not all of the other customers are currently using the system - and if you use too much bandwidth, they'll either cut your speed, charge you more money, or just drop you for lower bandwidth customers
Initial setup costs and fees. I had DirecPC for a while, and it cost me $300 for the initial equipment and that did not include installation. I had to buy a dish installation kit ($30) a hammer-drill to drill holes in a brick chimney ($50, probably not needed by most people), silicone sealant, coaxial cable, drilling holes into the house to run cable, etc.
Service was $50 per month for "unlimited" usage between 6:00 pm and 6:00 am on weekdays and 24 hrs on weekends. But only as long as I stayed under some arbitrary (and classified) download limits, if I exceeded what they thought was an appropriate amount they would cut my speed in half until my average daily throughput fell back into their range. How exactly can you sell something as unlimited and then start setting limits without revealing what those limits are? The short answer is, you can't. That would explain why they (DirecPC) were the target of a class action lawsuit that forced them to reveal their arbitrary limits and to reword all their marketing materials to no longer promise unlimited access. The $50 per month did not include a dial-up account which was necessary to be able to use the service, so I had to continue paying $18 per month for my local ISP so I could dial up and be able to access the internet and, if I wanted to be able to talk on the phone while on the net, I had to pay for a second phone line.
I now have DSL with a set speed, there is no slow down to other users, there are no arbitrary limits or thresholds (except on their crummy news servers which I don't use anyways), I have 24/7 access without the loss of a phone line and I only pay $49.99 per month. It's hard to beat that.
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing -- Emo Phillips
If you're in the boonies without DSL (first choice), cable (second choice), then access via satellite makes sense. I've seen upstream between 30kbps and 100kbps and downstream averages >1Mbps. If you play games then latency will be an issue. It takes a while to send data to and fro orbit.
I'm glad to see competition; it keeps us sharp and it's good for the end user. With the merger dead, EchoStar is going to have some serious hurdles to overcome. When Ka band service comes online, SpaceWay is going to up the ante considerably with its "switch in the sky" broadband. I doubt that EchoStar will be able to compete significantly in this arena for some time. Hughes is going to be a difficult nut for those folks to crack.
While not great for gaming, most folks are very happy with two-way satellite internet access.
Even if you do have cable, DSL, or a frac-T1 satellite internet access provides a great backup in the event your primary access goes down.
People don't get satellite based internet service because it's better than DSL/cable- it's not. Like everyone has said, the latency is horrible. They get it because they live out in the boonies and don't have access to DSL or cable. Satellite based 'net is better than dial-up, which is often the only other option.
Did a quick google search and came up with this article:
, 00 .asp
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,81284
Which says that 68% of homes have access to broadband. (I assume that means DSL and cable modems). As someone else so eloquently put before, "satellite latency sucks".
So that means that satellite is targeting the remaining 32%... minus those that have trees or mountains obstructing the southwest sky... lets see, rural folks that don't have trees... i smell a money maker
You mean from the cable company I have that charges 25 bucks for 23 channels?
http://www.rense.com/general28/ptocss.htm
Gotta love google.
It's strange that they won't offer cable internet connections in many rural towns, but the government would want to run a fiber line to the south pole.
a"As someone who probably won't live long enough to see DSL or cable Internet reach my rural neighborhood..."
Someone call Katz! We've got a suicidal geek on our hands.
The basic problem with satellite-based Internet access is physically unsolvable: even though speeds are in the multimegabit range, the latency is unacceptable for chatty applications. The time it takes a radio signal to get from an uplink dish, to the satellite, and back to a downlink dish, is in the multi hundred millisecond range -- and it can't be sped up without, to paraphrase our old friend Scotty, changing the laws of physics.
... usually not a problem either. But web pages? It's going to feel a bit sluggish, as those pages take a second or two to start loading, even if they do load fast once they start. You can completely forget about using telnet or SSH. If you remember what netlag was like when the Internet was still using a lot of 56k and 19.2k connections -- that's what it's like with satellite.
Good bandwidth combined with crappy latency is just fine if all you're doing is downloading. A transfer that takes 30 seconds still takes 30 seconds, so who cares if it started and ended one second later? E-mail
I'm glad to see that there are more options opening up, but the latency of satellite Internet is something that cannot be fixed.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
It was rural first. My grandfather used to sit on the Cable Co-op board for his community (the "metro" area had 4000 people) back in early 1980's. Sure, they had clear-sight with no big buildings, but when you are 200 mi away from the second-closest signal that unobstructed view didn't help much.
Sounds like your setup is improperly crosspoled.
We have Starband here at work. I hate it. Ping times average around 1.5 seconds. It is hell to work in SSH or even FTP anything. Things time-out all the time and it disconnects if a bird lands on the dish. As soon as we can get DSL we are switching. I don't even use it anymore. I forced them to get a dial up account so I can do my work. I was spending a 3rd of my time waiting for things to upload. I pick dial-up any day over sattelite.
...or more specifically transfers, when do I get my money? I mean I got your email and everything and I'm more than willing to help you get your, I mean our, money out of the country.
I am a Satellite Dish installer, Both Dish, Directv, Starband and Direcway. As posted numurous times the latency SUCKs with either.(I use cable for internet) The only thing it is better than dialup is if you do a lot of large downloads. It can have fairly fast speeds, I usually see between 400-1000kbps. But there are more problems than just that. Direcway is worse but both seem to create lots of computer problems that aren't covered by there wtty. We have stopped selling Direcway because almost every customer will call in w/in the 1st couple months with problems. Installation of any number of software programs can mess up the system (ie antivirus, Norton anything, etc..) We roll out and verify that the Sat system is fine and tell the customer they need to see a computer tech.(we supply some techs for them to contact) The customer always gets mad, its just ugly. Youd be better of with a 33.6 for gameing. I recommend not to get one.
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
...if companies have to seek for a license before they can show a functional prototype of the satellite...that's just absurd.. or maybe I have just followed this badly - but this is the impression I have got.
While I'm glad for the guy in the middle of nowhere now that he finally has some way to access the Internet, I do not envy anyone who has to use satellite for their Internet connection. The laws of physics dictate that you will get a minimum of 500 milliseconds ping time to anywhere on the net. Packets must travel 22k miles from the planet to the satellite, then 22k miles back down to your ISP. That's already about 240 milliseconds. Then add the transit time from your ISP to the destination site; for the sake of argument, say it's instantaneous and adds no transit time. Then add in the return trip of 240 milliseconds, for a total of 480 milliseconds. This represents the absolute minimum round-trip time for data sent via satellite. Of course, in the real world, it will be somewhat longer than that, but it depends on your ISP and the rest of the hops between you and the destination.
In terms of realtime games, this sucks bigtime. In terms of web browsing, it can also be quite annoying. A friend of mine had to dump his satellite connection because the latency made web browsing unpleasant and he was at a serious disadvantage in online gaming. That's not to say that throughput is bad, however. It can be quite good, but because of the latency it's probably best suited for non-interactive stuff like transmitting large data files, email, etc.
If I lived in the boondocks, I probably wouldn't hesitate to get satellite. Otherwise I would stay away!
Ah, the lies we are told. I remember when I was young, they used to say things like that. And they told us that because we were paying for a service, there'd be no need for commercials (seriously, they used to say that with a straight face).
Kidding aside, what they meant was that small towns that were hidden in valleys and so forth and couldn't get reception over the air would be able to use cable to get the signal to houses in the town. No one ever seriously considered running 8 miles worth of cable to get to *one* rural farm house. They were just going to run it in town only. That's why if you drive around in the country here you'll see lots of folks with satellite dishes. A lot of them even have the big 6 foot models. I looked into those, and at the time they would sell you descramblers on a per channel basis. Only want Disney? Then pay 4 bucks for the Disney channel and you won't have to get 20 home shopping networks thrown in. Nice deal, but I think those days are gone.
I live in a small town in Vermont (pop 971) and have both Cable and DSL access available (I got DSL because it was available first). The reason? We have a small independent telco that has been very aggressive in rolling out broadband. They own all their own equipment, so there's no CLEC/Bell crap.
Also our state public service board takes its job seriously...
The Federal Communications Commission in June revoked EchoStar's license for using the high-speed Ka-band frequency because it said the satellite TV company missed construction milestones.
;)
EchoStar immediately appealed and submitted a photograph of a satellite under construction with the high-speed capability.
Gee, maybe all Saddam has to provide is photographic evidence and an appeal to overcome US objections to missing disarmament deadlines?
No, they charge $40 for 123 channels where there isn't anything good on 118 channels. I used to not have cable (how did I live??) and there was as much good tv with old rabbit ears as there was on 400 channels of digital cable and 123 regular cable channels.
In Kansas, there are many rural places that have no cable period. I live on the edge of a small town, but Cox will not run cable the extra 6 blocks to make it to my house. If they did, I could have TV and internet. As it is, Satellite is the only option. Luckily, I have my home made wireless connection to a cable modem further into town that takes care of the internet access part.
Trying is the First Step to Failing --Homer Simpson
I work with a guy that has satellite 'net access and the only issue he's had with it is the upstream latency, which is why they do not suggest it for real-time gaming. Other than that he's pleased with it, but I've never actually sat in front of his machine.
As for my own personal satellite experience, I worked with a business that used satellite internet access and it was horribly slow. The only thing I could figure out was that the provider sucked and it's not a usual satellite internet issue seeing as how my friend and others are happy with it.
Please don't tell me you fuck lone housewifes while you install dishes??? Their husbands are out working somewhere and you take the advantage of the situation????
I only have a three-word reply:
"4,000 milisecond latency."
Just ask India, because that's all they have.
My
Limekiller
Two way has been a reality for quite a while and sucks hard. Uplink speeds are generally slower than you'd get with a modem.
Only get satellite if you have absolutely no other choice (and that includes smoke signals). I had DirecPC in early 1997. Used it right up through 1999, though the last 6 months I basically only kept it around so I could pick at it like the scab on a wound that wouldn't heal. My roommates and I preferred to share my 24/7 56k dialup connection because it worked every time. Sure, it would take a while to download a big file but you could schedule that download to run i the middle of the night and know it would be done on schedule.
I once tried to download a set of linux ISOs with DirecPC. Spent several nights babysitting it. I could only run it from 6pm to 6am without getting charged for "prime time" use so I'd start it up when I got home, monitor it all evening, then shut it down around midnight. After the first night, I decided to spend a few bucks and order it from cheapbytes. I was still spending my evenings downloading when the CDs arrived in the mail.
DirecPC sucks. Starband is worse. Earthlink is just re-packaged DirecPC. Even the independant resellers have significant restrictions. Stay the hell away from satellite if you have any other choice!
I live on the outskirt of a town with 30,000 people and a university. I am 2.5 miles from the university. I cannot get any cable service, neither television nor internet.
It makes a big difference -- Do you have a dish that points to one spot in the sky, or do you link to a series of sats as they pass overhead? In other words, will this work while you're mobile, or do you have to be in a fixed spot? And is the coverage global or regional? Will it reach Alaska and Hawaii or are they too far off-center?
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
For things like BitchX on IRC from a shell account or remotely administering a server?
Also, can you use a NAT box like a Linksys router to provide access to a home LAN with these systems?
Why would I pay for satellite access when I can get cable access
You're a fucking idiot. Read the FIRST LINE of the posting: "As someone who probably won't live long enough to see DSL or cable Internet reach my rural neighborhood,...".
Cable isn't available in many rural areas. We're happy you and your dad have cable. Really, we are. This is not a story about YOU. Hard to believe?
So move out of the sticks. Got plenty of broadband access in my midwestern suburban town. Unless you're a farmer why the fuck would you want to live in a rural area anyway? And if you are a farmer, you don't need broadband, go milk the cows and fuck your wife (or daughter depending on if you live in Kentucky).
I suspect you're the same kind of person who asks:
"Why are there people starving in Afrcia? Why can't they just get a job and shop at Costco like me and my dad?"
I have one word for you rural people...Wireless. I too was without cable/DSL due to our mountaintop home, then as I was picking up the phone to order a satellite link I accidently heard of a wireless service that had just popped up. Works like a charm even though we're miles away from the transmitter. Look for this stuff to pop up in your neighborhood. It's 802.11a technology. Latency? I think a whopping 50ms.
Because I have satellite internet here... it's full duplex 1.5Mbps. Yes, the latency is high, 420ms for the satellite hop, but other than that, and the occasional solar outage, which is entirely predictable, it works just fine. Realtime gaming is out, of course, but surfing is fine. You do notice the latency, but it's not enough to annoy you.
And you totally missed the point.. satellite internet is always going to have high latency, yes, but the coverage is excellent.. it's ideal for places that don't have land based lines.
Obviously if a high speed landline is available, you won't choose satellite.
Your mobile home gets very cold at night, doesn't it? It's affecting your thinking. Tell you dad to turn up the space heater or spoon you a little tighter.
Otherwise the FCC has no lawful (I didn't say practical or attempted) jurisdiction.
quit trying to start a flame war he just pointed out he could not get any other type of access
One way to ease the latency of satellite networks is to use low earth orbit (LEO) satellites.
Teledesic plans to do just that (if they ever get off the ground).
Any one else know of other LEO internet startups?
I like to build things and wire stuff together.
I have had my direcway (don't ask me where the t in direct went) dish for about a month now and it works pretty well. I get an average of 700Kb down (have seen 1.1Mb) butt only 40Kb up.
The ping times to DAoC stay around 800ms, but my wife and I have been playing without too much problem.
I am also in the SWG beta, but I can't really comment on that.
Jorgie
Can you put a clear plastic cover over it? Or would that not be transparent to the signal?
All I know is my jaw about fell off when I learned he could get DSL out where everyone is like 90 years old, and its a 45 minute drive to get to the nearest McDonalds.
I'm Rick James with mod points biatch!
Echostar's going it alone, and that's been known for a while. They broke up their relationship with Starband earlier this year, then went to court over who owned the customer database.
There's more to life than gaming. On an average business day I bet your average large corporation firewall adds more latency than satellite when everyone is refreshing their home pages on cnn.com or weatherchannel.com. Much of the day reading /. can be a serious pain, quite apart from the marginal posts. For the people that can't get anything else, 1-second delays ain't nothing.
Because some of us live in *such* a rural area that the cableopolies can't make a profit running their wires to us, so it's satellite or slow dial-up (where "slow" = 24,4 on a GOOD day)
because we were paying for a service, there'd be no need for commercials
The cable company now claims: "The commercials pay for the copyrighted works; the subscription pays for bringing them to you."
Will I retire or break 10K?
Dunno, never thought about it. Damn thing is way up high ontop of a silo. My work is in a barn that has been converted into an office building. Really interesting but we are miles from civilization. I'll mention the idea to the boss.
Now try the best.
No, I don't work for them. No, I don't use their service anymore (I got WiFi based 'net now). Yes, they support Linux (they even developed a custom, in-house applicaiton for it). No, they don't do any of that leaky-bucket BS that infuriates anyone using most of the competing services. Yes, they sell to anyone who can receive their signal in any country. [Canadians note: If you get their service and want to remain within the law, avoid surfing any sites within Canada].
The coolest part is that it's Ku-Band and it uses standard DVB. This means you can get the dish to receive it for next to nothing, and you can use _any_ DVB card you like.
Oh, and I wrote a (crappy) mini-HOWTO for Linux that you can check on their forums (sorry, they're locked to the public).
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
Since no other broadband option was available I use Direcway. Here are my current stats:
t tp://www.broadbandreports.com/faq/satellite
Pinging aol.com [64.12.149.24] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 64.12.149.24: bytes=32 time=761ms TTL=50
Reply from 64.12.149.24: bytes=32 time=738ms TTL=50
Reply from 64.12.149.24: bytes=32 time=738ms TTL=50
Reply from 64.12.149.24: bytes=32 time=818ms TTL=50
Ping statistics for 64.12.149.24:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 738ms, Maximum = 818ms, Average = 763ms
For more info on Sat. internet try:
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/sat
and
h
the transfer rate was something akin (no exaggeration!) to 300Bps.
:)
I guess they'll have to survive by watching good old VHS tapes or DVD then...
I did and it couldn't even find the mouse (a Microsoft mouse at that).
Suppose you shouldn't need that for a firewall/router but it wouldn't supprise me if you did.
Where's Universal Service when we need it?
Since alien's run MacOS-compatible systems and communicate using a protocol extactly similiar to our TCP/IP
Not necessarily. It's possible for a software developer to use a Mac to emulate the aliens' computer well enough to get a virus working. It's also possible for such a developer to write a custom protocol stack in Open Transport.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Just out of curiosity, how much power does the satellite transmitter require?
Wow, only 4 stupid 'spam' jokes. Are you capable of comprehending that there is much more to a country than the ONE thing you heard about it? You all just proved how uncultured you truly are.
I never thought I'd say this, but apparently I now live in "the sticks". My wife and I bought a new house over the summer, in a smaller village, away from the city where we work ( about 20 miles ).
I gave up my road runner internet access to do this. Fortunately ( so I thought ) the local phone company "out there" is Verizon.... I smell DSL!!!
Wrong.
Largest DSL provider in the Milky Way??? Sure. Only... just not where I moved to. Now, understand - it's NOT because I'm too far from the station. I can see it ( through the trees ).
Next call to the local cable company - does the local cable company offer anything? Abso-friggin-lootly not. Nothing. Nada. "Broadband? Sir, we offer our new VHF package with one HBO channel. Broadband? Internet - Never heard of it."
I have Dish Network for my television service ( must watch college football - Go Blue!
Nonetheless, I've been relegated to my dial-up connection, that connects, believe it or not, at 53k.
Now... what I REALLY want to know is why I hear SO MUCH HYPE about making broadband available to EVERYONE but it's all just TALK.
You see, there's a fundamental flaw here. For example, Earthlink offers high-speed cable access to their customers..... in Time-Warner serviced areas. Huh? Wait a minute. Time-Warner customers already HAVE access. Time-Warner owns Road Runner. So, what they're saying is, I can get Earthlink internet access over my Road Runner line? HELLO - WHAT ABOUT ME??? Why is Earthlink competing with Time-Warner for their own lines when there are poor saps like me stuck "in the boonies" with a local cable company but no cable internet access??? They could corner the friggin' market if they'd tap that. Instead, they'd rather offer access where there's already access. Earthlink isn't the only bone-headed provider. There are others but for the sake of brevity, I'll leave it at just them. I just don't get it.
If you do what you always did, you get what you always got.
This may be offtopic, but I dont receive cable tv because I live on a rural area, too far away and not worth the effort for they to deploy cable, Ive heard. I have to get a satellite dish to receive channels, so the idea of getting a satellite internet access isnt so farfetched for me either, for the same reasons.
- Satellite internet is not "useless" nor is it "Untolerable for websurfing" or "useless for ssh or telnet".
- There is a latency due to the speed of light. It is not 800ms minimum as some people are claiming. In my case about 420ms round trip. This is not quite like latency on really congested internet connections, where latency tends to fluctuate.. it's just a steady, unchanging 420ms added to everything.
- Latency will be higher at higher lattitudes; I'm at about 10 degrees north.
- TCP has no fundamental issues with this extra latency; in fact it deals with it JUST FINE. What TCP *does* have an issue with is the data link layer losing packets for reasons OTHER than congestion. That means if your satellite gear is crappy, small dish, weak signal, and you are losing a percentage of traffic due to noise, TCP will become almost useless (it will keep backing off thinking it's reducing congestion) On the other hand, with adequately powered gear, and a dish with the proper gain, this is NOT a problem whatsoever.
- The TCP hacks that consumer satellite services use are NOT fundamentally necessary for satellite internet; they are a result of cheap gear and small dishes that are provided for home use.
- The reason satellite is harder from higher lattitudes is because satellites are lower on the horizon, you have to go through more atmosphere to see them, they are farther away, and you are on the edge of the footprint where signal is weakest.
- Not all internet connections use landline; major isps in smaller countries have satellite backup for their landline connections. If a satellite connection can carry an entire country's internet traffic, it's hardly "useless"
- Weather can affect radio reception, but again, this depends largely on the power levels involved, and the gain of the dish used. The difference between a 2 foot dish on your balcony, and a 15 foot dish on the roof is huge.
- Full duplex connections are entirely possible, and need not be asymetric... but they require a good transmitter on the ground. Home connections will be asymetric, because nobody wants to fork out for high power gear at home.
- Satellite internet need not be proprietary. This is an artifact of tryign to bring cheap gear for home use. I have seen satellite gear in use that has standard ports; either ethernet, or v.35 for hookup to a good old cisco router.
Now I'm not saying that these current consumer satellite internet services are good... they may very well suck.. but let's be clear on what pros/cons are a result of the fact that they are usign satellite, and which ones are the results of stupid decisions by the providers.
As time goes on, a matter of 2 or 3 years at most, high-speed internet access will be avaialble to even remote rural users using a combination of solar powered high-gain Wi-Fi and mesh-networks. With the recent release of 802.11g gear from Linksys, and a massive and immeninent proliferation of wi-fi built-in chips, its only a matter of time. Certainly before you die.
Planet P - Liberation Through Technology.
www.enthea.org
I believe the tech is good old KU band satellite.
Who the provider is I can't say.. but it's an isp leasing bandwidth from a satellite, one channel per customer, to provide the link. It's not some mega service like Starband or whoever.
My point is only that satellite does not have to be so bad; it's the current mass market satellite providers who are making it bad.
When did /. stop allowing HTML entities in text??
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
It has to be "Mylar", that would work... or a radome
I'm surprised they can't get better access over the Iridium network (or whatever it's calling itself this week.) Don't those satellites converge on the poles?
Vermont ranks 48th in the nation as far as broadband. Read this report The Digital Economy - Broadband Telecommunications
... oh dear ...
I am also a Vermonter and live not too far from you BUT I can get no high speed services other than a dish. How come you get them and I don't? You are in a major tourist town and near the interstate -- the infra-structure already existed. I am 5 miles from my telco and if it isn't raining my phone line can handle 36kbps. I am using 2 modems and doing modem bonding to get 72kbps when the weather is right. Sometimes with 2 modems I get less than 48kbps...
Why, if VT is in New England and NE has some of the BEST states for Broadband, does broadband suck in this state? Too rural. Density gets intensity from the internet. If you live within a few miles of I-89 or a few choice hubs like B-town or Mont-peculiar then you are set. The rest of the state connects to the internet by smoke signal...
I've researched this thing to death. When I lived in downtown Burlington I had cable and before cable existed I had ISDN. Verizon is down-marketing ISDN so even that is hard to get where I am -- when I had it installed 4 years ago it was a free installation and the monthly fees were okay. Now it is over $250 just to get the line checked -- this is a non-refundable deposit. If the line sucks you just threw $250 into the wood stove. If a repeater is needed then _I_ have to pay for it (a few thou) and the telco owns it. Yeah, right.
I have asked people who have StarBand in VT and the reports are all the same: when it works it is awesome for DLing and surfing (latency issues as all have noted). But pray it doesn't rain, snow, cloud up, get windy, etc. because then it just goes away. And we know the weather in Vermont is always wonderful, right? Look out your window
Even the local StarBand installer told me to wait a while because it just wasn't ready for dependable use (that was over a year ago, though).
Oddly, my dad used to work for WCVT. I still know guys who work there!
I'm thinking about it, therefore I might be.
--this is a good idea methinks. I never thought about before, but you are right!Like you I remember EXACTLY back when cable company's were granted their exclusive monopolies. They sure DID promise that cable tv would be commercial free. I remember the debates in the town council were I was living at the time, they stated as such. I don't live there now, but I bet this happened all over the US.
There's a lawsuit angle potential there I think, to break their monopolies now. Perhaps some massive punitive fines and rebates to customers as well. Their current contracts might be abrogated or declared void if it can be proven they failed to live up to their promises when they got their licenses. Hmmm. There is zero reason any more to allow them to control turf as a monopoly. Yes, expensive to rollout new cable,(or fiber?) but in some areas, it might be feasible. And anyplace the company can be successfully sued, perhaps they get auctioned off, cheap intact cable system for pennies on the dollar to some new startup? Who knows but the possibilities are there.
Ahem, that's "fuck your wife (or daughter, depending on whether you live in Kentucky)."
Who knows, but all of my telecommuncations bills seem to have a "Universal Service Fee" each month. Maybe it's time we all stood up and got our money's worth!
Sheesh. I am *amazed* at the amount of disinformation most of these people are posting. Yes, I know it's slashdot, but WOW. Feel free to e-mail me with any other questions if you want.
I am qualified to answer this question because my mom has Starband internet, and I often end up doing things on her computer for her. (She runs RedHat linux and windows dual-boot)
For IRC, it'll be fine if you use low-scroll rooms. but if they are fast, it'll probably be a bit hard to follow.
For command-line apps and whatnot, it's a tad annoying, since everything you do has a 1/2 delay at least. If you are used to typing without immediate feedback, it's OK.
For X apps, or VNC, it's pretty nasty. If you just have a quick change or something to do, it's doable, but you won't be wanting to do much at all over that connection.
If you consider remotely administering a server to be connecting with VNC or whatever windows has as it's new remote desktop thing, then you are going to be dissapointed for any task that takes more than about a dozen mouse clicks.
Nathan Brazil?
--I've read at least a hundred articles on this satellite thing and your's was THE most helpful workaround I've seen. REMOVE THE LITTLE PLATE. I AM going to remember that. The *&*&*^% satellite bozos got a lot of nerve. You need to get modded to five like immediately. And someone who posts at mac central(anyone reading this) should stick this over there as well.
I had Starband and the latency KILLED me. It is basically unusable for interactive sessions (telnet,ssh,etc). The numbers they throw out are "best possible" but that often comes down to how well your dish gets alligned when they install it. Lazy install person == more latency.
IMHO it's only worth the money if you only use it for Web surfing and have no other choices.
In Canada, LincSat has two-way high-speed internet connections.
The "Univerisal Service Fee" is on your bill because your phone providers want you to know they're being taxed by a law that they don't particularly like.
The Universal Service rules requires that the incumbent telephone provider must provide the same price for a basic POTS (Plain-old telephone service) line to everybody in their service area. That means, if you live atop a mountain with a 10 mile driveway that leads to the top, they've got to get a phone line to you and when they do it costs the same as the person who lives next door to the phone company's switching center. The get the money to pay for the money-losing lines from the Universial Service Fund... that tax that all the easy-to-serve customers pay to fund the money-losing lines to the hard-to-serve customers.
But there is no USF for high-speed Internet... at least not yet....
We don't need any more immigrants in the USA. Thank you.
I'm not sure about the situation down there now, but back in 1996, I used to traceroute and finger their machines occasionally for fun and I never had much of a problem reaching them. IIRC, the last hop ping times were in the 800-2000ms range. I'm not sure about the bandwidth but I seriously doubt it was as low as 300Bps.
They used to have a machine, mcmvax.mcmurdo.gov, that you could finger. It felt kind of funny, you know, screwing around with a machine all the way down there.
I wish I got 24k baud! I live so far out in the boonies I just signed up for DOSC (Data Over String and Cans). I'm lucky to get 300 baud when the missus isn't drying laundry on my line.
This idea was invented by Shampoo.
I'm glad I am not alone in this matter. I live in a very rural area too. When I tell people I live in New York (state) and can't get cable, they look at me like I don't know what I'm talking about. Believe it or not, much of New York is wilderness. The big city is just crammed down in the corner. I'm sure those of you who are from Northern California know what I'm talking about. I live five miles from the closest cable connection. Our phone lines give us 28.8k on a good day, but usually 19k or 14.4k. Still the only national ISP I am able to find that give us a local number is MSN. Parts of New York are thirty or more miles from a cell phone signal, even an old analog one. I think the only place that is more wilderness than the Adirondack Mountains this side of the Mississippi is northern Maine.
But some of us choose to live in these remote locations simply because we prefer the simplicity. It has nothing to do with being usophisticated (as one other poster implied. Don't try to tell me there are less rednecks living in the cities!). But at the same time, we want a fast connection to the world. It makes living in the boonies easier.
We installed our two-way DirecWay system this sping. It is way more expensive than cable, way slower, but it's still leaps and bounds better than dialup.
Why not a phase aray and low earth orbit satilite system? It might cut down on the launch costs and your ping time. Aim, we don't need no stinking aim, it points itself. Go get it!
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Completely forgetting about telnet is not a bad idea. But SSH? Even over satellite, it's really quite reliable.
I work for a company that provides internet access to REALLY rural schools. Bush Alaska. It's hard to get more rural than that.
I oversee the maintenance of over 140 servers across the state (at least one per site) and have to both use SSH and a web interface on a regular basis. Not just to monitor the server status, but also to UPDATE the damn things (software packages of over 20 MB on occasion).
Unless the weather at the site is crap (or has been, and has knocked the dish off axis a bit) I hardly ever have trouble with keeping a reliable SSH connection. Waiting for the web interface to load takes a bit more time over the satellite link is a noticible delay, but it doesn't render my job impossible. Not even unenjoyable. We used to use NT 4 and PC Anywhere. That was unenjoyable, but not impossible.
Yeah, we use a proxy (Squid) at the sites to make browsing a bit more responsive (it is a noticeable difference), but that doesn't affect messengers (MSN, Yahoo, AIM) or video conferencing (distance learning, or one teacher at one site teaching classes at several sites, WITH INTERACTION).
Sure, satellite sucks in comparison to terrestrial bandwidth delivery, but it's not the tar pit that so many people here claim it to be.
I live in a rural part of the bay area right now (Santa Cruz Mountains). No DSL or cable is available and they are not likely to be offered any time soon.
I gave DirectWay a try, but the latency is absolutely horrid. I get about 150ms latency on my modem (which isn't very good), but with DirectWay I was getting 1s -- even as high as 2s on a bad day. The best I have heard anyone get is around 800ms.
There is no way to do much better than that with geosynchronous satellites. For a satellite to be geosynchronous it needs to be about 23,000 miles up. Thus a ping has to go from me to the satellite, from the satellite to the ground station, from the ground station to the satellite, and from the satellite to me. That's approximately 92,000 miles. The speed of light in a vacuum is approximately 670,000,000 mph. That comes out to about 500ms. Since we aren't dealing with a vacuum and there is overhead, we aren't even going to see anything like that. A good modem connection can get around 100ms, which is 5 times better than the ideal for satellite or about 10 times better than what I was getting.
I really was hoping the low orbit satellite systems would take off, because that would have significantly cut down the latency. Unfortunately, all those systems seem to have gone bankrupt or been canceled.
For anyone doing anything that requires good latency (ssh, games, etc.) satellite internet is going to be slower than a modem.
This message is encrypted with Quad ROT-13 to protect the author's copyright under the DMCA.
Same here, I am a Starband user. The connection is two way. Up and down through the satellite. The DL speed gets up to about a Meg/sec, UL speed runs about 50-100K. It's fine as long as it doesn't rain (like it is right now). In far northeast Alabama (aka.. redneck) DSL and Cable access are far off. (BellSouth said "never", Comcast said "in a few years"). The 360 Modem (satellite TX/RX unit with a USB and 10 base port) is trouble free. I want to stick the feed horn on a large, second-hand C band dish to cut through the rain fade. When there are no other choices then satellite is the only way to go. BTW, gaming is damed near impossible and the system hates NAT forwarding (VPN for work). I have a Sun Blade indirectly attached to the network via a junky 486 as a firewall.
Tisha Hayes
Having worked at a Cable Internet provider up here in Cananda for a time, I have some insight. The first problem is that most old cable systems are amplified unidirectionally, which means the system would have to be massively rebuilt for 2-way traffic. Second of all, modems are much more succeptible to line noise/ingress, which means a lot of extra work making sure noise is minimized and all connections are terminated (to avoid picking up off-air signals, "ghosting" images on the data stream if you will.) One solution used here to reduce noise is to replace the trunks with fiber, and only use coax in the neighbourhoods. The third infrastructure issue is of course the actual ip routers, backbones etc. which is a significant expense.
Jeremy
First off, no, you don't need a modem to upload -- that's the old version of the system. It's been replaced by a kinder, gentler version of internet Hell.
Since July I've been working for a DISH dealer to get the new version of DISH's internet service working. It kinda-sorta works ok for a single winDoze pc, but they don't support *nix or Macs at all. And the multi-computer solution 1) is a pain in the wazoo to set up and 2) fails frequently. Oh, the hours I've wasted troubleshooting this garbage. Download speeds register pretty high at www.dslreports.com, but it doesn't feel very fast on even a well-equipped PIII.
The multi-user version costs more and *requires* a custom version of WinProxy. It will NOT work with hardware routers/NATs because of proprietary code that encodes/decodes signals (another set of executables that are win32 only). As far as I can tell, the only purpose of this software is to limit the number of users (prevent piracy) and not to "speed up the connection" as the manual states.
Dealers can make a tidy profit on those not fortunate enough to get local DSL or cable service; but for $70/month, you'd expect faster speeds. I'd rather spend the money on lapdances, because you at least know beforehand you'll be getting teased.
I saw the DirectTV solution in place at one of my other clients. It's also pretty madcap, requires 2 router boxes & 2 dishes (one for sending, one for receiving). Also it cannot be shared through a hardware router (NAT) because their system only supports a single connection.
I live a couple miles from downtown Spokane, Washington (2nd largest city in the state; about 1/3 the population of Seattle) and there's no DSL or cable modem available for me or any of my neighbors. Qwest stops offering DSL about 3000 feet from my house, and AT&T Broadband has been promising that cable Internet will come "in a few months" for the past two years.
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
Too bad that with my phone lines, I get 14.4 connection. no cable/dsl (although i hear at&t is getting cable ready for Jan 1st... probobly not in my neighborhood...). And I ordered DirecWay, but the installer wouldn't install because of the trees *even though we have dish network!* So look at me mom! A fucking toaster could give me the ping of death...
--pSyCo www.consolevision.com www.xemulation.com
I know, because I work on the hub technology development.
Its been live for about 6 months, over 1000 customers according to what I've been told.
There has been a large canadian corporation which has been taking tenders for providing access over the US/Canada for over a year now. They just keep asking and then doing nothing.
Whether they are waiting for the technology to be proven or whether they just ran out of money, I don't know, but if they are interested, they are moving like a snail...
But the reality is that it will be probably high costed (relatively) at first. But a lot of the customers are resellers of access, so I believe theres money in getting a terminal and localised isp'ing some customers.
I work for OpenSky and can tell you that we have an amazing system that has been available for a while. We support Linux (as long as you have a DVB card that has Linux drivers) and are planning a MacOS X client and support as well. For the time being it's one-way (asymetric) but our clients are happy (we offer up to 2mbps down) and will be using open standards in the future as well. Just to let you know, all our engineers and platform is done on Linux ;-) We like Open standards and will be adopting as much openness as possible.
For the time being we are Europe, North Africa, and Middleast and with yesterday's launch of W5 (covered on Slashdot too http://slashdot.org/articles/02/11/21/0055233.shtm l?tid=160 )we are going to be looking at other markets.
Just to say it, OpenSky is not only internet, but also *real* streaming channels (no buffering or anything... real TV channels through the DVB card) and also Push that can transmit any data (movies on demand, software, etc). The best thing about Streaming and Push is that you do NOT need an UP channel. You just need a receiver.
Slashdot submissions should not be accepted if it inlcudes any measurements in the redneck unit systems, i.e., miles, inches, feet, etc.
You should look into the non-line of sight wireless broadband that NextNet is producing.
I have a satellite connection and it runs fine for web browsing, but you have to set it up correctly.
Windows by default sets simultanious connections to 3, so every time you browse a web page it can only get three items at a time. With no latency that isn't a problem, but on a satellite it's pretty grim.
So you up the connections to 25 (your sat. sofware should do this, but if your browing on a network pc which isn't the gateway then it obviously doesn't). Now instead of a multiple fetch-display-fetch cycle on each page you usually get the whole page in one go.
This does make for odd broadband. Instead of going to a page and it coming back bit by bit you open the page, there's a short latency, then bam - everything arrives back - but the net effect is no slower than 'normal' broadband.
There's other refinments you can make on tcp packet size and other parmeters, but connections is the main one.
I must say you got a lot of fishes with that one. I admire you L1T3 TROLLing 5K1lls YO. YOu MaD crazY.
Bob
B is byte, b is bit.
I can see stupid people posting as AC's, but what are we going to do when moderators don't know what a Byte is (this comment is +2 right now)?
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
In the UK, we've had satellite broadband for a while, with the Shetland Islands (very very remote) having access to it. In fact the scottish government and northern Ireland Assemblies give a credit against the cost of installation, and IT IS BI-DIRECTIONAL!!!, its also rather fast If your in the UK, you can't get cable or adsl, then try this, though it is from BT openworld Link here, so don't expect it to stay reliable or provide any form of customer support: never try have an arguement with them about postfix, they think its those yellow sticky notes!
...about two-way satellite Internet is that it can be mobile. I have one of these and it's pretty cool--you can surf from anywhere: http://www.furfly.net/winnebago/
With the Directway commerical plans the upload is still pretty slow but the downlink can exceed T1 speed. But, like cable modem, you're sharing the connection with large numbers of people and during peak hours the connection slows down.
I always wondered how someone could get decent speed on these things?
Everytime you receive a packet, you have to send an ACK back. Of course, this is a small packet and can make it easily through dial-up, but couldn't that be a bottleneck? Could download speed be affected in such a way? Let's say you can't keep up with sending ACKs, then the sender will re-transmit and this will cause more bandwith for nothing, causing slow downs as well.... Any thoughts?
BTW, I was told that you get pretty bad ping latency, so online gaming isn't to your advantage...
-- Leeeter than leet
We don't have cable either. Satellite is currently the only choice. I was thinking about how the latency would be. Would VPN even be possible?
That is a good optimization, of course, but you still have the .5 second latency for round-trip packets. That means a TCP SYN sequence takes about a second, and then you can start pushing data. That takes at least another second or so. But, if you do lots of concurrent connections, it will indeed reduce the total wait for the entire page load.
And games will still suck.
It's very true that it doesn't work for games, and video conferencing isn't much good either (although I've heard there is a few tricks that can be pulled that can make this acceptable). One particular pain from my viewpoint is that neither VNC or pcAnywhere runs well either.
:-)
However on average, if you optimise as suggested, web browsing is no worse than conventional broadband. P2P, internet radio, file downloading, ftp and virtually everything else I can think of works fine at excellent speeds. That's 98% of what I do on the net.
In fact, with my sat connection I have considerably more bandwidth (512kb uncontended, 2Mb burst) than ADSL users. Not that that's an option in the middle of the Scottish Highlands where I live
Hey, I might actually consider dumping both my cable and DSL for satellite if I got a chance to live in the highlands. At least in summer. Sounds worth it to me.
I have starband and the latency sucks. Telnet/SSH is painful at best. VPN - Dialup speeds AT BEST, and that is only for certain VPNs.
Waving away a cloud of smoke, I look up, and am blinded by a bright, white
light. It's God. No, not Richard Stallman, or Linus Torvalds, but God. In
a booming voice, He says: "THIS IS A SIGN. USE LINUX, THE FREE UNIX SYSTEM
FOR THE 386.
-- Matt Welsh
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