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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 The big news is that based on this 'new evidence' the FCC has rescinded their revocation of Echostar's license.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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
How about some hardcore 802.11b. All you need is a coffee can and an old satellite dish.
Hardcore 802.11b
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.
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.
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
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!
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.
I think his concern is that a USB only connection would require a driver, and hence possibly be tied to supported Windows versions.
I've used a USB->Ethernet adapter on my OpenBSD laptop which was recognized instantly as a CUEx device. No configuration (other than the usual ifconfig stuff) was needed.
Trolling is a art,
...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.
That's great.
What do you do when the modem has a USB connection? There are no adapters that will take a USB signal and change it to an ethernet signal for your NIC.
What you're talking about is just a USB NIC.
...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.
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?
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.
I only have a three-word reply:
"4,000 milisecond latency."
Just ask India, because that's all they have.
My
Limekiller
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.
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.
Why? To push him over the edge?
Overrated / Underrated : Moderation
I'm using DirecPC at home. It's the one way version where the upstream goes through the phone line. I was able to setup a proxy server to get my home lan online. But I don't think you can just directly hook it into a router.
_______________________________
"I'm not Conceited...I'm just a realist..."
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)
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...
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?
That's a NIC that attaches to your PC via USB instead of the typical PCI slot.
They don't go the other way. Period.
- 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
When did /. stop allowing HTML entities in text??
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
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?
--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.
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.
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....
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.
On the other hand (as always) while I've got it up and running no probs (other than DL'ing one file) on every MDK distro since 8.0 (didn't try any previous), Red Hat, SuSE and Slackware weren't interested. I know you're meant to be able to, but when I have a distro that gets it going easily, why bother? Life's too short. It was, incidentally, easier than doing it on windows as well. (XP and 98)
While this by no means disproves the common "USB won't work in Linux" problems, it does show things are happening. It would be a shame though if all the other distros lost out because they didn't provide functionality that's been present for years in MDK's line-up.
Oddly enough, after the installation, I have trouble with the OS believing there is a network connection, but that doesn't stop it accessing the internet.. just denies ther's a connection present.
This idea was invented by Shampoo.
This idea was invented by Shampoo.
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.
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
I'm running right now with a Ricochet wireless modem plugged in via USB. No problems under Linux here, once I figured out how to make it appear as a serial device (/dev/ttyUSB0).
Be who you are...and be it in style!
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.
So you get your provider to come back and re-align the dish. Why is this different from any other consumer product with a maintenance contract?
I recentely setup Direcway (the DirectTV service) for my parents and was very impressed.
You get one dish with a transmit and receive line feeding into do decoders in the house. DirectTV only supports Windows and MS Internet Connection Sharing.
The download speeds are very high (as high as 2MB/s) but are capped. When your bandwidth usage exceeds the cap, they start capping your transfer rates and eventually turn off access for a couple of hours.
I had success setting up a proxy server, which works effectively up to about 5 users, at which point the slow upload speeds make usage difficult.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
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
TCP doesn't send an ACK for every packet.
Try this link for more info
Cheers