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Experiences with DirecWay Satellite Internet
Since moving outside Ann Arbor almost 2 years ago, I've had only a 56k modem to tether my home to the net. Cable, DSL and ISDN are impossible in my location. DirecWay now offers the DW6000, which appears to be an operating system agnostic router for satellite internet access. I already use DirecTV, so this might work well.
I'm aware of the game crippling latency, but that's not a huge deal to me. The monthly price seems reasonable, but is there a catch? I'm abusing my power as Slashdot editor to ask for experiences with this (or similiar) services.
Does it bog down during the day? Not work with common hardware? Hidden costs? Does it cost a fortune for the required professional installation? Is ssh completely unusable?
a remote co-worker has it up in prince edward's island and it seems to work pretty well for her
And, no, I should not have used the goddamn Preview mode first.
The only thing I would be worried about is if weather affected it as it does Direct TV.
Everyone I know with Direct TV is basically screwed when any amount of rain or snow is falling.
The main problem I found was installing a linksys router I had behind the DW6000.
The DW modem acts as a outer/firewall too. It will assign IPs and the only thing you need is a switch to connect multiple computers to it.
The problem is you can't really configure the modem/router. So you can't disable the router feature for example. If you want that kind of control, you'll need the pro version which is quite pricy (although it gives you a static IP).
Here's a forum I found that addresses the DW6000 and linksys router problems.
It is not enough to have a good mind. The main thing is to use it well. - Rene Descartes (1637)
I'm not familiar with DirecWay service, but I have done quite a bit of remote work using SSH over satellite. It's rather painful, but it is usable. I usually get about 1/2 second of latency and it is irritating, but you can still get stuff done if you have to.
If you're expecting to do hours upon hours of work this way though, I imagine it will drive you nuts.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
They have a policy which basically allows you to download at high speeds up to a point (600MB or so I think), after which you are throttled to sub-56K speeds for 18-24 hours. This was the main reason for me cancelling the service. The limit is slightly higher if you sign up for 'Commercial' service.
SmashTech - No smashing of tech involved
Is this the same type of setup used in tricked out semi tractors? I've had a few people (automobile accident assessors, etc.) ask me what they should get so that they may have internet access that's truly mobile. Satellite is the easy answer, but beyond that all I could say was, "Uh, figure out what truck drivers use."
I had it when i was living in tuba city, arizona. expect lag to be awful, when pages need several requests to the server to load properly, it will take a *long* time to load. once you start downloading something, that goes by quickly though. alos, since the uplink is on the east coast, if they experience bad weather, you will experience zero internet, even when it's sunny for you. useful service i guess if you want to up your max download speed, but i would definately reccommend a dialup backup service for when it craps out.
My girlfriend has this service at her house, and my experience with it is that the latencies are very noticeable. Web sites certainly load faster than dial up, but not as quickly as the slow (400K) DSL service I have at my house. I have not run ssh over it, but running xterms over my employers VPN service is fairly painful. In fact, the standard Nortel VPN service did not work at all as it timed out - the IT guys had to put me on a beta Cisco server. We have also had a couple of outages over the last 2 months, where the whole service went down for a few hours, and their tech support acknowledged a system wide problem. This service is only worth it if your only alternative is dial up.
We had a Remote Worker that was in or near the spokane area, he had to Admin our Network here in Seattle during a Family Crisis. He was able to complete his work without any shortcomings, time of did not matter, it worked well for the remote admin work that needed to be done. And as you already stated this type of setup is not for gaming, but Admin stuff it works. SSH, PHP, Remote Admin, all worked without any problems.
If firefighters fight fire and crime fighters fight crime, what do Freedom fighters fight?
Distance to geostationary satellite: 22,000 miles (44,000 total round trip)
Speed of Light: 186,000 miles/second
Total delay: 44/186 = 0.23 sec = 0.46 for response a two way conversation
Unacceptable
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
recently i moved to a small town about an hour north of denver. No cable here, and dsl wasnt availible until last month (slightly off topic rant: qwest you suck balls). Surprisingly all the neighbors had microwave based internet access. For about $50 a month, they get 1mbps up and down, with 10 gigs a traffic per month. You may want to see if that is availible in your neck of the woods.
Lawyers, MBA's, RIAA? A jedi fears not these things!
It's not bad considering the only alternative is dialup. The latencies are noticed in things other than games, web browsing has a noticeable lag between the link click and the page loading. But the page comes down almost complete in one big burst, so the total time for page load probably averages out close to DSL, you just notice the gap more on the satellite. Our version has a USB connection that hooks the modem to the computer and appears as a USB Ethernet connection. We had to run W2k Server to share this connection out using Routing and Remote Access, but that works pretty well. I'm not sure about the newer hardware, we've been on satellite close to 2.5 years.
It doesn't matter, the upstream to the satellite isn't much faster than dial-up.
Only benefit it not paying for another phone line.
I have starband, I use a regular dial-in modem in addition to it. Dial-in modem is the default route on my box, and I set up proxies to a proxy server connected to the satellite for web and ftp downloads.
That way I can ssh out without horrible latency, but still download at the faster satellite download speeds.
To his other questions, rain fade is real. If you have a strong enough signal normally, you won't drop service unless it's really coming down outside. Installation for starband ran about $700 or so.
Directway is slower than Starband, but if you want the OS agnostic modem, you currently have to get the small business package, which is $120 per month. Standard service still uses the 360 windows-only modem, but it's $60 per month.
In the future, there will be robots. I mean in the future, there will be a "telecommuter" account type that will assumedly allow people to get the hardware-based 480 modem without paying so much per month.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
They keep a moving average of your bandwidth utilization. Exceeding the unspecified caps results in your downstream bandwidth being halved, (ie 100%->50%->25%->12.5%) and eventually cut off.
My parents used this with the previous generation hardware, downloading a Java SDK & Eclipse runtime (say 100MB) resulted in a noticeable decrease in bandwidth.
It is also way to slow for me to use ssh interactively.
Here's some snippets of the AUP, from http://legal.direcway.com/index.html#agree:
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
Fair Access Policy. Learn them, love them, leave them. Here is one war story.
There are sites dedicated to the incredible level of FAP abuse that is piled on customers.
Here is a place for you to study.
This may be more relevant to your needs, here.
I went through several storms and was surfing the net quite well, while airports and road were closed.
The only problem I had was when snow got in the actual dish, then I had to get it out. I only had to do that once though. Most of the time the wind blows the snow away.
It is not enough to have a good mind. The main thing is to use it well. - Rene Descartes (1637)
I'm in the same boat, no DSL or Cable. I tried DirecWay dial return service. The latency is pretty horrible (500ms and up) making things like ssh excruciatingly painful. The 2 way DirecWay sat is supposedly even slower in temrs of latency, since you pay the 22,000 mile up-and-down penalty twice. Web browsing as well can be slow due to this latency, since multiple requests get made per page load. You can fiddle with the settings on your browser and packet sizes etc to help this, but to me browsing felt slower than on a reliable 56k line. Things that require bigger downloads like flash animations are faster, though. If it's bandwidth you are after, then you have to worry about FAP - the Fair Access Policy. This limits your BW usage by throttling you down once you exceed some magic threshold for some period of time. If you web browse only, you may not see it but if you download stuff, you'll probably hit it. I also had problems due to trees. DirecTV is an order of magnitude less finicky than DirecWay in terms of positioning, and I struggled to get a good signal when my DirecTV was just fine. Could have been by location though. If you get the Dual dish, you will have to play fancy games with dish rotation to pull in both internet and TV. I'd recommend pro installation unless you really enjoy mucking with setting up dishes, etc.
I've had the misfortune to use satellite internet. Here's a quick summary on how it behaves:
- ssh sessions or terminal server are unusable so if you do any remote access of any machines, forget it.
- web browsing is about the speed of a dialup unless you're looking at pages that are one huge chunk of html with no images. Most pages these days are lots of little images which totally lags on satellite. Note that you may reduce the pain with caching proxies and/or HTTP keepalive/pipelining but it's a lot of work, and at least one of your daily reads will not improve with this.
Anyways, unless you're out in the middle of the jungle, I'd just stick with cheap dialup. You can save your money up and build a long range wifi link.
I've been using it for about 4 months now.
:)
It pretty much sucks, but until there's a better option, it's usually better than dial-up.
You'll probably find a more informed discussion at broadbandreports.com forums. Also check out their Satellite FAQ
SSH sessions are pretty bad. However, in pinches they are possible by "typing blind". ie. typing your slew of commands and waiting for them to appear/happen. Can be a bit dangerous.
Reliability is pretty bad. We have regular snow and rain storms which usually knocks it out of service.
Speeds, http download is alright, although there is always a slight delay before things happen due to latency. Other download speeds suck, especially anything is encrypted. Upload speed is as slow as if not slower than modem.
But, we don't have any other options at the moment (come on airships!)
BTW our setup two way direcway using a dedicated w2k box with crappy internet connection sharing.
My brother lives out in the boonies and I'll relay what he's told me about his satellite.
1. Latency is horrible. He gets a 1000ms ping to anywhere, so that's a 1 second delay after he clicks anything before the remote server he's hitting even gets his attention.
2. Download caps. I think he's limited to a few gigs a month, maybe one.
3. Bandwidth throttling. This is time dependent as in time of day also. If you download too fast during certain hours of the day (internet prime time if you will), you get throttled waaaay down to a few KB/sec for hours.
4. Complicated software that's windows only. Everytime he calls me for tech support, I cringe. It's always an XP problem and always hard to troubleshoot. I've been wanting to get him on linux for years but with the satellite it's just not an option. He has the 2 usb boxes setup for his connection, maybe this new router would help.
5. Awful browsing. Since the latency is so high, some servers timeout before you can get a page from them. I had him install Opera awhile back (the lightning fast caching helps alot when navigating sites on a high latency connection) and he loves it, uses it exclusively. Without Opera, surfing the web is painful.
6. Unplayable online games. With that kind of ping, you can't play anything online, except maybe Yahoo Java Chess or something where reflexes don't count. Flash games may be playable too, not sure.
It basically sucks for anything but leeching big files, and for that it sucks too thanks to throttling and bandwidth limits. It's hard to believe that in this day and age people in remote locations have to suffer with crap like this. Then again, bandwidth isn't a god-given right...but it should be.
I live about an hour out of Minneapolis, and for a long time satellite was the only option we had other than dial-up. We used the direcway two-way satellite system for about two months, and I gotta tell you, it was a truly horrific experience. For starters, there's the speed. Not only is the ping terrible (quarter to half a second), but the speed was only double or triple what we were getting over our free 56k modem connection. Now, for some people that modest speed increase is worth $100 per month, and I was willing to tough it out at least until the one-year contract expired and I could quit without paying the $600 early contract cancellation fee. That was until the damned thing simply stopped working. It was pretty intermittant to start off, being down for a few hours every day, but one day it just died. I called tech support to try and figure it out, and that was when I learned about download caps. I'm pretty sure you won't find anything about this in any of their literature, but if you download more than 200 megabytes over any 4 hour period, they severely restrict your bandwidth. If you manage to download more than 250 megabytes over any 5 hour period, they simply cut you off for a few days. So basically, you're paying $100 a month for bandwidth that you're not allowed to use. So, I found myself with no service for a few days. Then for a week. I called tech support back, and they told me there was no reason why my connection shouldn't work. I spent 12 hours on the phone with tech support over the course of 3 days until I finally decided to just cancel my "service." After all of that I still had to pay the $600, just to cancel my service that I wasn't getting.
By the way, I also have DirecTV, which works fine, so that shouldn't be any indicator for how well the satellite internet will work.
A few years ago I got StarBand at my house due to the same rural limitations you suffer. We ended up using our 2 dialup connections along with the satellite and eventually just got rid of the satellite. It was terribly slow during peak hours (anything not midnight to 8am). During the off hours we could get download speeds of up to 2megabits/sec. Secure webpages just didn't work. I don't know if that was due to restrictions by StarBand or not. (to boost performance, they limited a lot of things you could do) The ~800ms latency made things like Telnet and SSH almost unusable. E-mail via Outlook also didn't work as it would time out too quickly. IMHO, it isn't worth the grief, unless you keep your dialup connection and use them simultaneously. With a proxyserver we were able to do the undoable-over-satellite via dialup.
Free iPod -- http://free.pawireless.org/
Water is a conductor*, so when the water coats the face of the dish it alters the focus of the dish by altering the shape the RF "sees". Screw the focus of the dish up, and you go from many tens of decibels of gain to as low as 0 dBi.
Keep the dish dry, and the focus stays sharp, and the only effect the rain has is a minor attenuation in the path from the bird to the dish.
(*Pure water is an insulator, of course, but given dirt in the air and on the dish and you will have enough ions in the water to make it a reasonably good conductor - enough to alter the dish's focus.)
www.eFax.com are spammers
"Q: What is the difference between the DW6000 modem and the DW4000 modem? A: The DW6000 is the next-generation DIRECWAY system modem with a sleek new design. It makes connecting to the Internet easier by incorporating DIRECWAY software inside the DW6000 unit. So there's no DIRECWAY software to load on your computer or upgrades to download. The DW6000 automatically updates itself via the satellite. Also, the DW6000 modem houses both the transmit and receive components in one compact unit, unlike the DW4000 that has separate transmit and receive modems stacked together and linked by a 24-pin serial cord.
It also uses a simple Ethernet connection to connect your computer to your DIRECWAY service. Once your satellite dish is installed and connected to the DW6000, all you need to do is connect your computer by using the provided Ethernet cable and you're high-speed surfing (see 'Can I run DIRECWAY on a small network?' for networking capability requirements).
Q: Is the DW6000 faster than the DW4000? No. Both the DW6000 and the DW4000 modems deliver the same DIRECWAY high-speed service experience. The DW6000 modem allows you to connect to Windows- and Macintosh-based operating systems, has no software to load on your computer, and makes networking your DIRECWAY high-speed connection to multiple home computers easier (see 'Can I run DIRECWAY on a small network?' for more information on home networking).
Q: Should I upgrade to the DW6000 from my current DW4000? A: Upgrading from a DW4000 modem to the next-generation DW6000 modem is a good idea if you would like to network more than one home computer or laptop to your DIRECWAY high-speed connection. By networking more than one computer, your family will be able to access your DIRECWAY high-speed Internet connection from any computer on the network and will not have to wait in line in order to get online.
Please understand that all computers on this network will be sharing a single connection. Simultaneous use of high bandwidth applications by multiple users may result in degradation of speed and is subject to the Fair Access Policy. Actual speeds may vary. Speed and uninterrupted use of service are not guaranteed."
I am doing exactly that-- I have a cage with a T1 from the cage to my house. I am also supplying access for a local community WISP, so my costs are covered. I ran into some problems because my location is outside the LATA of the co-lo facility. So even though it is only 10 miles away, I would have to pay a very high local loop cost.
Then I got in touch with some folks at BTN, they got me set up with a MPLS connection. It is somewhat similar to a frame relay connection, in that it is not distance sensitive. My advantage is that BTN has a connection at my co-lo, so everything fit nicely into place.
So see if you can get a frame relay or MPLS T1, with a little research there might be a very cost effective solution. YMMV
A true geek is always connected. The price of cellular internet has come down, and the speeds are going up, to the point where its feasible for full time use.
s /b roadband/index.jsp
Links:
http://www.verizonwireless.com/b2c/mobileoption
http://www.broadbandreports.com/faq/5668
http://www.patents.com/pcs/
I live in the middle of no where in the foothills of the Rockies having moved here from a city with great DSL. The dialup modem went out the window almost immediately. It drove me crazy. You really can never go back after you have broadband.
You do want the new Direcway 6000 modem. The old 4000 modems use a USB connection to a mandatory Windows box. The shared internet connection from Windows is slow and bites in general. MS really sucks at doing simple networking stuff. I imagine Direcway only sell the 6000 now though it might be a little pricier. We got rebates to trade in the 400 and agreed to another years service but it still cost $200-300 dollars.
The new 6000 modem is just a gateway you plug in to your Ethernet LAN. Direcway automaticly upgrades it. I wager its a Linux box but I don't know for sure. You set it up and control it via any browser. It works great from my Linux laptop though they only advertise Windows and Mac. It uses DHCP.
You do want to keep the cable run from the dish to the modem as short as possible to improve the signal stength like any dish. Ours coax is real short and we get about 95% signal strength which is the best the installer has seen.
If you get a lot of snow and wind is blowing it in the dish it does fill with snow, the signal craters and you have to sweep it, but thats true of satellite TV too.
They do have a fair use policy and will throttle you if you use it heavily. Trying to download a 300 MB ISO image it throttles at 200 MB, last time I tried, and you drop to modem speeds until the next day. So you need to stop the download and restart where you left off the next day. They have a place you can check your usage and where you stand. I think they throttle you monthly too if you abuse it though I haven't noticed that.
The performance is better off peak hours. As its gotten more popular the performance has suffered some during peak hours.
Uplink is not blazing though I send 500-600K attachments on email, they do take a while to upload.
Latency is certainly a problem. You notice it the worst on web pages that have a 100 little images and URL's embedded in them. Even then I still take it over a 56K anyday.
I play Everquest on it and its certainly playable though you have to learn to work around the latency which runs from as low as 200 ms up to 700 ms, usually around 500 ms. It was much worse on the old 4000 modem and the shared connection with Windows. You notice it when you try to chase down stuff since they are a 1/2 second from where you think they are so you have to lead them but keep them in view of your camera. Its best to play a caster with snare or root or have a pet to work around this. It takes a while to zone due to the latency.
The latency would probably make shooters unplayable though I haven't tried any.
One down side is I think you are putting money in the pocket of Rupert Murdoch and FOX since they bought DirectTV last year and I think DirecWay went with them. So if you dont like Fox politics...
My sister has the competitor, Starband which is the other satellite option in the U.S. I think it has to run through a Windows machine, at least last time I checked.
@de_machina
Yes, it does take pretty inclement weather to truly block the signal. But if it gets very cold in your area when it rains or snows, ice can form in the dish, and that will ruin your party.
If you can get away with it, think about not putting it on your roof. I live in NW Indiana and the only weather that would throw it out during the weather were the big spring thunderstorms with the cloud tops over 40,000 feet up. Snow never affected it, nor did ice/snow frozen on the dish.
However, when I got a lot of snow/ice frozen on it, once it started melting, the liquid water running through the snow matrix could take it out for an entire day until the snow melted off all the way. Because of trees in my neighborhood, I had to put it on the roof, and there was no way I was going up there with heavy snow that was melting.
If you have the $$$ there is nothing stopping you from getting a T1. You can get a T1 just about anywhere. The local telco may not like it, but they have to provide it.
Well, starband is 600ms or so standard ping, with varying amounts of packets hitting 1200 and 1800ms, because it's collision based and some packets need retries.
There's no bandwidth limits with Starband at least. And they provide a full usenet server, with a lot of binary groups even. Once I leeched 4GB from their news server in two days, just to see if they would let me. That was when I first signed up, I don't download huge amounts anymore, just normal stuff like JVMs and Linux updates and etc.
Anyway, they are still issuing their windows-based modem standard, but they have a hardware modem coming out, that they are playing games with, making it available only for business accounts currently. And the modem costs about $600 (even if you are upgrading), in addition to paying twice as much per month.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
There is a large WISP in MI called Speednet
I know they cover most of Saginaw->Mackinac area but I am not sure how far south they go. There is a *really* sucky webpage available here that shows WISPs in MI.
I have a few family members that use Speednet and they are really happy with them.
SP
"It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong." - Voltaire
I have setup a few for friends/customers that are barely lucky enough to have phone service. Downloading files, surfing (using their proxy), pulling audio/video streams are all fine. ANYTHING that is interactive pretty much is broken due to ping times of anywhere from 600-1200ms. SSH/Telnet, games, chat (mostly) and VNC/RDP are all essentially unusable. I've also been unsuccessful setting up FTP at the customer side.
Using their proxy is required to get acceptable performance out of any TCP based protocol, unfortunately they only proxy a few applications and SSL isn't one of them (can't due to the nature of the protocol and how they proxy to get around multiple TCP setups). SSL is SLOWWWWW.
Summarized: HTTP/FTP/MAIL all are great compared to dialup - anything else is slightly/noticably worse.
LIke you I live in an area with few broadband options, basically satallite or none. I have been using direcway for over 2 years. Initially as a one way subscriber and currently as a two way subscriber using the direcway 6000. I am very happy with the service. I don't recommend downloading large files. There is a cap on downloading band width, under Direcways limit downloading the latest linux iso is basically impossible. The lag makes online gaming an non issue, unless your playing spades.. I think the cost is a little high considering equipment costs and monthly fees. Proffessional installation is required for the two way systems due to the danger of getting your hand or head in the way of a high power broadcast up to the satallite. In general i am happy, customer support has been sent to India(like our mars mission), but response to issues is usually pleasant and productive. My home is networked cheaply using a couple of netgear switches, but I haven't used Linux to hit the web yet. I am a linux newbie and unsure of any security risks, but I was assured it would work with the 6000; albeit officially unsupported.
Jeoin
In the real world, you'll get ping times in the 550-600ms range. It's not at terrible as you'd think, but like I said in a previous post, it makes using a terminal quite painful. It's usable, but really unpleasant.
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If you have decent cellular/PCS reception in the area, there are other terrestrial options that you might consider. The good people at Verison have a PCI card that gives you always on internet connection via their cellular netwok. Speeds and latency are pretty good. I saw download speeds at 300+Kb/s sustained and upload around 80Kb/s. Latency was around a 300ms on the hight end, and I used it to manage my box via SSH without issues. One consideration is that this option is geared toward a Windows enviroment and I do not know about linux support for it as it uses a propietry dialer client to connect. I've used Sprint's PCS service much the same; however, only with a PCMCIA card. I do not know if they have a PCI version of the card. Speeds/Latency were about the same and the same disclaimer applies concerning this being a Windows solution. Costs on these packages were $80/month for "unlimited" access (read contract for limitations on "unlimited"). Hope this helps! MrKnisely
No, a true geek would build their own rocket and launch their own communications satelite into a geo sync LEO
A true geek would know that geosynchronus and low-earth orbits are two different things. Unless you want to load it with propellant constantly, which you really don't.
Heavy snow and ice DO bother the DirecWay system. This is because water absorbes microwaves (this is how a microwave oven works), so the precipitation does effect it. I have not had much problem with rain, except in *real heavy* rain.
Did I mention I will never purchase a DirecWay system again?
just my 2 cents.
--- Boox
I'm in Europe - Scottish Highlands - and have been running on satellite for 18 months. I'm using the earlier DirecWay DW4000 system - marketed under a different company reseller here (Bridge Broadband), but still the same thing underneath.
I've found satellite excellent. It's got pluses and minuses compared to 'normal' broadband, but so long as you understand what you're dealing with then it's a really good choice. In fact if I moved back to an area with cable broadband I'd be very tempted to take this dish with me and stick to satellite.
Good things
* Generally there's no problem with contention ratios. I'm contracted for a 512Kb pipe and that's what I get whenever I demand it. Having hear horror stories of cable broadband being slower than dialup because of the contentiion ratios piled on (20:1 +) it's nice to have a fat'ish pipe to yourself. This is probably the single best thing about satellite. (OK, I know there must be contention management somewhere, but I've never seen it).
* Cost. Although upfront costs are high, and running costs not cheap, you do have all that pipe to do what you will with. I've got cable laid to my three neighbours, who I charge 'normal broadband' rates to, so the ongoing cost works out the same, if not slightly cheaper, than cable broadband. Some vendors don't let you do this while others smile benignly on it so check.
* Easy upgrade - if you need more bandwidth the Hughes system can generally give it to you with little or no kit changes. 512Kb is enough for me, but it's nice to know that could increase several times.
* Reliable - reliability seems excellent. True there's the occassional glitch like any system, but because everybody is going through the same earth station problems tends to effect everyone at once so they really pull their finger out. I've found with systems based on local exchanges that if something goes down because only a few'ish local people are effected it can take days to fix.
Bad things
* Ping times are unavoidably long. Around 900ms for most destinations as against 250ms for cable. However this is less of a problem than you'd expect for most things. Web browsers can be tweaked to grab more items in parallel - so total page load time is no different, and downloads/streaming media etc it doesn't matter if you're just a second or so later once it starts. However most games are out and video-conferencing is doubtful (I'm told the system can be optomised to make it possible though but not tried)
* You can get outages in very heavy rain under very thick cloud. This is pretty rare but does happen - but generally it's obvious what the problem is so having a beer for half an hour until the heavy rain passes is a fine solution. Also occassionally had problems in blizzards from a build up of snow on the transmitter.
* Some services occassionaly don't like satellite. For example I quite often find ftp upload is much slower than expected. This may have something to do with the way satellite doesn't transmit/recieve a continous stream of IP packets but collects them together to transmit as larger 'frames'.
Bottom line. Unless you find the ping time problem a killer issue then satellite is a really good rural solution. Like all engineering it helps if you have some understanding and 'machine
sympathy'
A friend of mine live just out of reach from cable-modem/DSL. He's five miles away from my house (cable modem).
.iso sets very often.
In the last month, he's spent more time connecting to my wireless net or going to Starbucks for T-Mobile's wireless net, than at home.
The melting snow is a bitch on the connection (Spokane, WA).
SSH is painful for any interactive work. Latency is a pain and games are shot. Bandwidth caps mean you aren't going to be grabbing 3-disk
While it can take a bit to disrupt the DOWNWARD signal, it is much easier to screw your UPLINK signal to the point it doesn't work. Thus, TV is less affected than internet connections.
However, if you have no other option, it beats dialup. It depends, though. Are you far enough out that the phone lines are crap and you are getting 14.4-28.8 dial in? Or are you just in a good area but without DSL/cable?
If the latter, look for an ISP that will allow you to bond two dialup links. Get two phone lines and two modems and get them to bond into one link. Also check out ISDN, though it may be expensive.
-Charles
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
DirecWay now offers the DW6000, which appears to be an operating system agnostic router for satellite internet access.
It is agnostic, so you shouldn't have any problems running Linux, OS X, BeOS, Windows, whatever. Instead of 2 units+software it's all integrated into the same system, a box that's about 2x as big as a cable router would be but with cool blue LEDs. Ethernet port in the back, you can set up DHCP on the router or disable it if you prefer (so you can use something else or just use static, whatever).
I already use DirecTV, so this might work well.
You won't get any kind of discount. However, you *may* be able to buy a kit (ask whether you need a kit A, B, or C) to consolidate your programming on the DirecWay dish. If you have local channels or already have a dual or multisat dish, then you're going to need to keep your DirecTV dish for TV. If you can manage to use the DirecWay dish for TV as well, then you'll be less susceptible to rain-fade.
I'm aware of the game crippling latency, but that's not a huge deal to me. The monthly price seems reasonable, but is there a catch?
Yeah, a couple of big fat catches. Tech support is absolutely abysmally bad. The worst tech support I've experienced in 22 years in the IT industry. In addition, you're limited to 165MB of bandwidth per day - if you exceed that then you'll be throttled way the hell down until your quota is built back up.
I'm abusing my power as Slashdot editor to ask for experiences with this (or similiar) services. Does it bog down during the day? Not work with common hardware? Hidden costs?
That's okay - if I wasn't posting this anonymously I'd be in a heap of trouble. Hidden costs would be if you need a tech to come back out to troubleshoot your system. For surfing it's pretty damned quick (lots of caching going on via back-end). Not had it bog down except when bandwidth was exceeded.
However, sometimes there will be trouble with a transponder on a bird which will knock a bunch of people off for days (unless you want to repoint your dish, have the NOC okay your move to another bird - long, long hassle). Of course, rain-fade or very heavy overcast will kick you offline.
Does it cost a fortune for the required professional installation?
No, you have to be a certified installer to put the thing in. But the cost of the install is supposed to be included in the cost of the system, though (depending on market, etc) you may pay $199 for a standard install. If you need a wallfish or have a long run of cable (couple of hundred feet) then you'll have to pay extra.
Is ssh completely unusable?
I don't know - you'll have to adjust your latency thresholds so your apps don't time you out before you get a response from the server you're trying to download from (FTP). Haven't tried SSH over one of these.
Everything said and done, DirecWay is a damned sight better than rural dialup ever will be. Most of the time, you'll love the system. Odds are you won't experience many problems; however, when you do they'll be a royal pain to get fixed. So, keep dialup as a fall-back.
You'll find surfing and emailing to rule. Not so much with anything else, though. Oh, if you need a static IP, expect to pay another $30 a month. Also, if you have an older DirecWay system, you can probably upgrade to the DW6000 for $100 ('cause it's so much easier to troubleshoot).
I'm posting this up here because I think that taco REALLY needs to see this.
/. would probably have to find a new editor.
I had direcWay for just under a year, and after 3 months, I hated it, with a passion.
First, there's a 100MB/hour cap that they wont tell you about untill you hit it.
Second, it's not as reliable as they want you to think it is. in a year I had less than 80% uptime.
Third: their DNS server fails to include many `offensive' sites. if you want to go there, gotta find a 3rd party DNS server.
Fourth: support is worthless. I averaged fourty minutes a call, just so they could tell Me their DNS machine was rebooting. (yes, ONLY one DNS server)
fifth: it requires a USB connection to the modems (or at least, it did when I got mine) and that limited my max throughput to 1.2Mbit. When you think about it, that's not too bad, considering the 100MB/hour cap...
sixth: their modem control software is buggy. P-3 800, Win2k-fresh install, and the direcWay software, it locked up at LEAST once a day. Nothing else on the box, and the box was load/stability tested when it was rebuilt.
seven: they cant find their ass with both hands, a map, two guide dogs, a tour guide, and a case of montezuma's revenge.
We wanted to upgrade to Hi-Def TV because we bought a new bigscreen, and the direcTV people took three weeks to get a technician out here. He took one look at the direcWay dish, and admited that he didn't have a frigin clue to how this was suposed to work.
we called them back, told them about the problem, and they promised us a technician that knew how to set up hi-def with direcway. a week later, the same doofus came back.
after five days on the phone with their supervisors supervisors, we cann'ed them. Much happier on our Hi-Def Dish Network System, and for the broadband, we went with Aire Networks
I know they don't cover you out there, taco, but I hope for your sake that there is something similar. after 3 months with direcWay,
My personal experiences...
.js file, or whatever, comes in with a 2 second lag. For complex sites (which is MOST commercial sites with https connections) it can be pretty slow. I simply use Mozilla's "block images from this server" trick most of the time.
Latency sucks. I'm actively looking for an alternate (I can't get DSL, I can't get wireless, I can't get two-way cable). But I will say that DirecWay is MUCH better than a modem - in most cases.
Latency is not so much a problem for browsing, surprisingly, because if you're used to a modem, you wait longer by far for content to arrive. With the DirecWay software running (on a 3000/4000 box), or with the 6000 system, the thing is smart enough to ask for all the subitems on a page at once, so once the stuff starts arriving, it gets there pretty fast.
The real problem with latency, surprisingly, is EMAIL. As you know, it's a challenge/reply system, where it's necessarily linear - you can't multitask it. So every step takes 2 seconds - which means for checking about five POP3 mailboxes with a dozen saved messages each, and downloading a dozen new messages, can take upwards of 3 or 4 minutes. I usually hit my email button, walk away, and come back later. And when I'm home, I just leave it running all the time. Not worrying about dialing up is sweet.
Same thing with FTP - if you manage a web site, like I do, it can be REALLY painful working with FTP, since the linear nature of THAT transaction is also very slow with high latency connections. Uploading or downloading a hundred small files totalling 100K takes well near forever (10-20 minutes), even though you could do it over ethernet in a second or two.
Finally, browsing any secure site is very slow - since the system doesn't do its magic compression / multi-request with https. So there's really no browsing acceleration there. So each image, or
Uploading anything is REALLY REALLY REALLY SLOW. You're better off uploading over a modem - no kidding. I usually see 2.8k upload speeds. Much worse than I used to see with a modem with decent software compresssion. And that's WITH DrTCP optimizations applied. Since I market software and must download 10Mb installers to my web site regularly, I've learned to just start them at bedtime, and check it in the morning to be sure it finished.
Downloading large files is amazing - nothing to complain about - 10 Mb downloads are painless and I don't even think twice about requesting them anymore, even via email.
I personally haven't yet hit the FAP limit once. So I have no complaints about the capping. Of course, I'm not downloading full Linux installs or anything - just an occasional 10 or 20Mb demo installer for some software. And I don't traffic in MP3s or other multimedia.
Installation was quite easy - I have a friend who's an installer, and he gave me the mount and cable ahead of time, so I ran my own cable and did the mount the way I like it (lots of roofing tar, extra heavy lag bolts, etc.) I couldn't do the dish install because of the FCC requirements, but after my own pre-installation, my friend was able to get the dish mounted and pointed within about 10 minutes. No problem. Be sure to account for TWO RG6QS cables - not just one - to carry both the send and receive modems.
I have had some difficulty with the "commissioning" - where the receiver downloads the adapter keys - when I turn the thing off for a week while I'm out of town, it typically takes an hour or two before it's up and running again. That can be very irritating while it's resolved.
As with other posters, I've only had a few instances of rain fade, and usually very brief.
I've never had a real problem with tech support - they're usually slow to answer the phone but once I get a person we usually have the problem resolved fairly quickly. There was one exception where the guy must have been from Pakistan, couldn't really speak English, and obviously didn't want to hear what I had to say, was just reading a scrip
--Brandon / Split Infinity Music
I have some users in Coca (Francisco de Orellana), Ecuador. Coca is in eastern Ecuador right in the middle of the jungle (check it out on the map). We have a satellite setup for about 10 users, the bandwidth we are allocated is 128x64kbps. For all that bandwidth we paid $3000 for dish, receiver and setup; we pay $400 a month for this access. The latency is painfully slow however I have found a way to speed things up a bit. I installed a Mini-PC (like those Shuttle XPC's) with Windows 2000. I setup DNS caching along with ISA to do web caching. The experiences amongst the users has improved greatly. Downloads are reasonable and I do some bandwidth access-control/throttling using an old Netscreen-5 firewall (thank you e-bay!), so the big-boss-man always has priority with his access. This is just my experience in this part of the world.
I did a lot of research with Direct as I needed to provide internet access for a client of mine in a remote location. The problem with satellite is that you cannot do VPN at speeds that are beyond dialup. That the pages do not say VPN anywhere indicates to me that you still can't do VPN at broadband speeds and this might be a problem. Otherwise, others that I have talked to using satellite for internet access say it is fine - no major glitches.
read the fine print you get a very short burst of high speed then the fair access policy comes in to play. they then slow down to 56k or less
Well, here is my opinion and we have been used four seperate satellite setups for about two years now. For normal web browsing the DirectWay Satellite system is not much better than dial-up and in some cases much worse. The more individual files that the website has the slower the response time is from the satellite. We installed several on the outskirts of three cities to provide a link to our remote offices were broadband was not an option.
First off, talk with the technical engineers because the sales people forget to mention that some traffic like ICMP and others are automatically placed at the bottom of the satellite systems queue. This is why you will see things like a 400ms+ ping time. What we learned is that if you use your link for downloading files it is great. Once the connection is established it goes beautifully. The problem with game playing or even intense web browsing is that you are always transmitting data and files that may be small but the fact that it requires multiple file transfers is the bad part. When you think about it, how many files does your web browser download when you go to a website core html, pics, flash, audio, etc? The more individual files on a site really causes problems for the system's performance. Like I said though when we used it we did data batching scenario and would compress large quantities of data into a single file and then FTP it to a drop box for pick up in our corporate office at regular batch intervals. In this type of scenario we got great performance with a several hundred K/sec file transfer rate.
If you want to deploy any type of remote desktop software you better make it VNC with best compression or forget it. Even the use of VNC will turn out to be a lesson in humility and frustration.
In my opinion the system really stinks for anything other than large file downloads. It just does not seem to be very versatile.
"Help me Obi-/.-Kenobi,your my only hope!" -$
This is one place where the solid dish is a disadvantage. If the dish was a mesh (coarse enough to let water fall through rather than being held in the holes by surface tension) this might not be such a problem.
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
Only computer nerds call it a "T1". Had you asked for a "DS1" they would know exactly what you were talking about.
That's why I love Opera so much, Disable Images by default then with a click of a button (two clicks, actually) they load for you.
In truth, this is the only feature stopping me from switching to Mozilla (Although I do like Opera's tabbed browsing much more than Moz's)
its better than dial-up, but it has some rather crippling restrictions. Its fast for dloading, but you have about a 100 mb limit every hour or so (the so-called "Fair Use" policy) and then they cut you off. Also the thing you mentioned about lag :( Another thing, with snow like we have here in VA (read: not very much; usually about 2-5 in), there's about a 10% chance that the net stops working after a fresh snowfall (usually for anywhere from 5 hrs-2 days; you have backup dialup provided).
:(
:)
Something that happened last year: We had snow. It started to melt. Big chunks slid off the metal roof. They took the coaxial cable with it. The upside was that the repairman was included free in the deal.
File sharing especially invokes the "Fair Use" policy, you must either set low bandwith limits or just have it on for an hour at a time. The prob with that method is losing your place in someone's queue
Web surfing is about the same speed as dial-up because of the lag time.
Where sat. really shines is dloading; it's too bad that it has the restriction... Earthlink is my ISP; they of course use DIRECWAY. At the time Earthlink offered the exact same package as DIRECWAY for about $10 less a month.
It's kinda amusing EARTHlink offering sat. net...
Read my blog: HansMast.com
If you have cellular service in your area you can get a CDMA2000-based pcmcia card that will provide upto 144kbps upload and download. If your Cellular Service Provider is Verizon, in the very near future you could get upto 1Mbps speeds on the service. This 1x EV-DO (1Mbps) is already available in some parts of the US I believe.
The card costs about $150, and the service is about $80 per month for unlimited data. Voice can be shared on the same link. I have tried this service from Verizon, Sprint and Cingular. Verizon and Sprint have the best speeds, while Verizon has the best coverage, atleast in the North-east where I live.
First of all, make sure you are not "powered by" anyone. Earthlink and AOL resell the service and most people quickly want to get out of that situation. Earthlink and AOL have really bad support and slower downloads speeds then DirectWay directly.
It is 128kbps up and 400kbps down peak (For reference a T1 is 1540kbps up and down). It's expensive. I didn't realize it was $100/month for the first year and $60/month after that, but it is a two way Satellite system and those are still expensive. Most users seem to get better than 400kbps down, but somewhere around 30-80kbps up. With the one-way (dial-up systems) most users get 18-28kbps up due to the overhead in their protocol.
No phone line is required with the two-way system. There are one-way and two-way services offered.
This is something I wrote when I had the system and using it over SSH:
"I am typing this e-mail over our new DirectWay system, and it is extremely painful. It is far worse than dial-up. Every character I type takes
about one second to appear. I have to count the number of backspaces I want, number of arrow keys, etc.
C:\>ping [My ssh box hosted at Hurricane Electric]
Pinging [My ssh box] [1.2.3.4] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 1.2.3.4: bytes=32 time=1012ms TTL=242
Reply from 1.2.3.4: bytes=32 time=861ms TTL=242
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Ping statistics for 1.2.3.4:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 2, Lost = 2 (50% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 861ms, Maximum = 1012ms, Average = 468ms
Ignore the average, Microsoft apparently counts dropped packets as 0ms.
I seem to be getting about 900ms ping times on average to most fast sites. We are getting about 750ms on average to the first hop.
The speeds vary a lot. When I did a speed test earlier I got 252kbps down/18kbps up. Right now I am getting a lot better:
CA server:
Test running.........
**Speed 827(down)/25(up) kbps **
(At least 16 times faster than a 56k modem)
LA server:
Test running.........
** Speed 653(down)/51(up) kbps **
(At least 13 times faster than a 56k modem)
(For comparison to what I got when I was on cable modem:
2002-03-05 23:03:40 Speed test (la) 780/124 kbps
2002-03-05 22:58:28 Speed test (wc) 772/109 kbps )
I also did the toast.net speed test and got a bit worse results, you can
see them here:
My toast results
I disabled their proxy server to speed up Web browsing, but their software comes up with annoying pop-ups that tell me that I am not using their proxy. I will set it back when I am done. Speed tests do not work through proxies, so that is the main reason I disabled it.
It took me about 20 minutes to write this e-mail and the connection dropped once during writing it."
I use SSH so much that I went back to dial-up before the trial period ended. I get about 150ms over a 56K connection so SSH is about 6 times slower. Web browsing wasn't improved enough to make the service worth it. Some sites seemed slower even. I believe it was any HTTPS sites like checking my bank account were terrible.
DSL reports has a FAQ available. It is a good site to check out when looking at new ISPs.
DSL Reports Satellite FAQ
This message is encrypted with Quad ROT-13 to protect the author's copyright under the DMCA.
I had a similar problem. Bought a new house recently, in the middle of a minor city. Before signing the papers i checked with both DSL carriers and digital cable to insure availabilty.
both assured me that all was well.
deal signed, place dsl order and discover that their confirmation of service was based on the zip code. sure, i'm in the same zip code as all those tall buildings, but i am 17,000 feet from the CO.
UGH! same story with cable.
so, thinking i was clever i signed up for dirctwav. ponied up about a grand in equipment and installation costs. and had it installed.
let the horror begin!
first off, you have to have a windows (and now mac, so i have heard) machine to act as your modem. you have to run a user-land appliction to enable access to the radio. it is less than stable software.
second, you have to use ICS to share it. i initially tried ISS, thinking it'd be nice to have a firewall on my gateway, but ISS would not consistently use the radio modem. so, i had all kinds of crap bridged into my network.
third, the data satellite view is narrow. i mean NARROW. nothing more frustrating than having no data connectivity while your directtv signal strength is 98+, just because of a light wind. no matter how often it happens (which was a lot!) you dont get used to it.
did i mention that it takes a good 2 minutes to re-aquire a signal lock?
after months of lost connections, low bandwidth, and a two solid week stint of downtime (which they wouldnt reimburse me for) i stumbled across the last straw.
there is a limit to the "unlimited" use. Hit their threshold (which is never quantitaivly defined by their contract or customer service) and they slap you down to 32K. yes. less than half of dialup. for up to 8 hours!
i found this out after my aformentioned 2week downtime was fixed and was retreiving all my mail to my local servers. too much data, and i was limited.
i used my modem, found a local wireless provider, they cam on site that day and set me up with 1.5down/768up (+ static IP space) for half the price.
i called and cancelled directv. and gave them a piece of my mind.
if i hadnt found the wireless, i probably would have set up a double dialout solution, 100K would have been faster than i was ever able to get from directwav.
in short, its expensive and it sucks.
(i'll sell you the modem and dish, cheep!)
I have the DW4000 and am using a Win2K machine as a (poor) gateway (via ICS, which sucks rocks). I considered upgrading to their DW6000, and called their tech support to ask some questions about the capability of the DW6000. I recognized their canned responses and asked to speak to an engineer. Eventually their support personel became actively hostile and rude.
The last person I spoke with was a manager, who told me a few gems like:
Before you do business with DirecWay, do some googling:
Hi :)
:)
:) (yes including some things considered not possible on a such satellite system like VPN (you'll need to encrypt only payload for this, for technical reasons that I'll gladly explain if you want me to)
,HNS has been good to me :)
You can use SSH over the DW6000 and DW4020 , which are basically the same things, the DW6000 is a DW4020 that has been scaled down and integrated into
one Box.
I am using a DW4020 myself, I am in Europe so I do not know what grade of service you'll be getting in USA. But here we get up to 256Kbps/2Mbps , I personnally use the 128Kbps/2Mbps service right now on a DW4020 and I already have my DW6000 , just need to plug it in to replace my DW4020
Oh I use FreeBSD behind it and I do all my sysadmin work from it
Also to mention : I admin and install these systems and I know these babies quite well
You can contact me if you need to know more
You Americans are so lucky. The Universal Service Obligation in force in Australia mandates 2400baud (2.4kbits/sec) as the min data rate. And I wrote that twice in different ways so you don't think I can't read geek numbers. It's not a joke.
And Telstra are happy to remind you of this if you should ever dare to question them.
There was an enquiry about whether it should be raised to basic rate ISDN 64k but the enquiry decided that Telstra would have ISDN available to just about everyone eventually so why mandate it. Just let market forces provide it in due course. Of course You have to pay for time connected (to Telstra) for the ISDN line and Data downloaded (to your ISP) so its little wonder it didn't become successful. Recently they have really pushed ISDN as an ADSL alternative and as a sop on the pricing they provide no charge connection and call time to an ISP for AUD$16.50 per month. You still pay ISP charges.
But Telstra now uses availability of ISDN as an excuse for not extending ADSL coverage to new housing which is generally serviced by fibre through RIMs. Every new network extension in Australia in the last ten years has been a fibre line through a RIM using pair-gain technology (probably with line conditioning given the length of some of the fibre runs). How unADSL friendly can it get.
T1. Hah bloody hah.