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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 The big news is that based on this 'new evidence' the FCC has rescinded their revocation of Echostar's license.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 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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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?"
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.
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 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.
"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"
Yea like that's really likely. Whoever put that up has more chance of lightening hitting his dish than some FCC guy strolling through his neighborhood and thinking "hmmmm that dish lots funny, I wonder if its in spec?"
The FCC is too busy carting money to the bank from all the kickbacks they get to spend time driving around every residential neighborhood in America. I'd be shocked if there was even 1 FCC employee whose job it is to just drive around randomly looking for antennas. That would be a colossal waste of taxpayer money.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch