Slashdot Mirror
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 The big news is that based on this 'new evidence' the FCC has rescinded their revocation of Echostar's license.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?"
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.
Most of the satellite access is 2-way now with a satellite uplink.
It's not a solution for places that have cable or dsl, but for a LARGE portion of the country geographically that has no cable or dsl access, it's still better than dial-up.
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.
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.
but one of the things that worries me is that it requires special software (supposedly).
It does, at least with Starband and the 360 model modems. I'm assuming the DirecWay are the same type of setup. It needs to munge up your whole TCP/IP stack, or else you get really shitty throughput. Not going to work on an unsupported OS.
Of course, you can use a pentium 166 as a Win2k router running tiny personal firewall, and then at least you don't have to use Windows on a real computer.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
I think his concern is that a USB only connection would require a driver, and hence possibly be tied to supported Windows versions.
However, a CAT 5 connection would be able to be used with just about any OS you like, or with a hardware firewall or router.
Yeah, but with Starband, your upstream bandwith is about 64Kilobits/sec over the satellite, so it's not much better than dialup.
As to the "cloudy" comment, the thing works unless it is getting ready to storm or is already storming basically. Generally during a heavy rainstorm is the only time it goes out.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
This as far as I'm aware is because they cannot see the geosynchronous satellites that we in the normal parts of the world can. So only at certain times of the day or night do the satellites become visable and then they are very low in the sky so reception is not the best.
As far as I know anyway...
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 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.
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!
Keep in mind that the people who are such a remote area that they can't get DSL/cable (like me) are on super-long phone loops so we can get 28.8 on a good day if we're lucky. 64K upstream is a big deal.
"I'm interested to get a DirecWay [direcway.com] system, but one of the things that worries me is that it requires special software (supposedly)."
I've had both the DirecWay 1-way system and the 2-way system. In both cases, the hardware and software are both proprietary and work only with Windows (which is by far its biggest failing). The satellite modem is USB, and will not work with standard networking hardware. This means that there is absolutely no way to connect it to Linux. It must run through a Windows computer. You can use Windows' truly pathetic Internet Connection Sharing to share the connection with any other machine through standard networking hardware, but it is quite painful in its unreliability.
Its saving graces are (in no particular order):
1) It's always on if Windows hasn't crashed.
2) Downloads are much faster than dialup (at least 400kbs -- kbs, not KBs).
3) If you would otherwise have to purchase multiple dialup accounts for your household to allow multiple users decent Internet speeds (sharing a dialup modem among three people is not decent speed), then the long term costs can be substantially less (after the initial hardware purchase has been amortized).
4) If you can use satellite TV, then you can use satellite Internet.
It's primary losing fuckups:
1) It is proprietary from head to toe, and they (so far) refuse to support anything but Windows.
2) Upload speeds (despite the satellite transmitter) are no better than dialup.
3) DirecWay's business admins are complete incompetent clusterfucks. If you MUST go with 2-way satellite, try Earthlink BEFORE you buy any equipment. Earthlink currently will not allow DirecWay hardware to transfer to Earthlink's service, despite the hardware being identical. I had very good experiences with Earthlink when I was on dialup, though, and would switch away from DirecWay in an instant if I could transfer my hardware.
4) Getting started is damned expensive. The initial hardware is roughly $700, and you must agree to a 1-year commitment (which is about $70 a month, and is in addition to the hardware). Only after that first year can you go month to month.
5) Since you have to use Windows as the "server", and Windows drops packets like rabbits breed, it can be a painful experience. It's better than sharing a dialup modem, but it's still painful.
You realize that's illegal, right? If you have something like that on your roof, you can be arrested and FINED and have all your related radio stuff confiscated if/when the FCC finds you -- and they DO drive around. There is a legal limit of the strength of the signal leaving an 802.11 device. By putting a very directional antenna (dish/pringles can), you effectively increase the radiated energy to what may be unsafe (and definately illegal) levels. They don't measure at the input to the antenna, but the radiated signal from the antenna. Anyhow, making your own antennas to radiate RF energy can be illegal to begin with. If you REALLY want to play with stuff like this, look into licensing yourself somehow with the FCC. The easiest way to start is a Technician class Amateur Radio license. It's a simple electronics theory and basic rules test which takes no less than 15 minutes (I did mine in 5). You get full privledges above 6 meters. That means that you can use many times more power to play with. You can move on from there to doing intercontinental datacomms using the HF bands which is a lot more fun and challenging than 802.11 will ever be.
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
I only have a three-word reply:
"4,000 milisecond latency."
Just ask India, because that's all they have.
My
Limekiller
I installed a Starband system at a very remote location in Wyoming for a former employer - dialup was only capable of 33.6 at best, and the phone service itself was spotty.
Snow, heavy rain, fog, and sunspots (!) all affect the reception of this piece.
I've done a couple more since then, and have been able to plug directly into a Linux box. Take the little plate off next to the USB port on the satellite modem - and boom, there's the Ethernet jack. Do DHCP on that interface, and you're in good shape.
"If there's hope, it lies in the proles..."
It's a one-and-a-half-way-link.
Whole lot of bandwidth down, roughly modem speed back towards the satellite. That, combined with a massive ping makes it acceptable for website browsing or receiving media streams, but no good for 2-way videophone, reaction-based games, or serving anything.
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
- 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.
I use Starband in a remote place without DSL/cable. I've used SSH connections from time to time, but found them slow and not something I would want to do on a regular basis.
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.