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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?
The thing about satellite internet is that there is no reason to ever get it unless you have no other options. It is more expensive than DSL or cable, yet slower. And the higher latency as you mentioned. But it sounds like your kinda situation is the semi-niche market satellite internet aims at. As far as installion goes, since you already have a dish on your roof, any half-competent installer will be able to do the job in a half-hour.
Moderation Totals: Flamebait=2, Troll=1, Redundant=1, Insightful=6, Overrated=1, Underrated=1, Total=12. (not mine)
One of the advantages of the "Internet Lifestyle" is that it lets you do your work from more and more remote places.
One of the disadvantages of the "Internet Lifestyle" is that it lets you do your work from more and more remote places.
Places where broadband isn't available.
You might be surprised just how many geek gods are on dialup because they are geek gods. If they just lived in Altoona (or Ann Arbor) and delivered pizzas they could get cable service, but they can live anywhere they want and still work, so they go someplace nice.
Personally I like mountains and oceans, but dragging a few thousand miles of coax behind you is a bitch. The bounce to the bird is irrelevant for downloads and uploads (you only experience the lag once), but a bitch for real time interaction.
The geekiest people may well be the people with the worst internet service.
KFG
I think you would be surprised how many developers have 56k at home. I have looked into DirecWay also; as I happen to live just between two cities. DSL might come in a year or two, but I doubt cable will be available for the next five years.
The truth is that I don't need more than 56k. I work long hours, and our netadmin is cool at my employer. He doesn't mind if I d/l legal music or non-business ISO's. I can get pretty much whatever I want; his only rule is that we don't use any P2P programs and blocks the standard ports. And you know what, when I get home late at night or have the weekend off, I don't really want to sit in front of my computer very much. I'd rather talk to my fiance or go outside or do ANYTHING different from what I do 60 hrs/week.
I understand the great beauty of an always-on connection, and if broadband were cheaply available, I'd take it. My point is just that many of us here love computers and programming, but we get so much of it during the work week that we really don't care much about having broadband at home.
Having a good dev laptop also helps assuage the need for broadband.
You forgot to add that the satellite transmitters these little boogers have are regulated by the FCC to be extremely weak. That adds to the latency.
Also what bearing does the speed of light have on microwave receivers/transmitters?
At the risk of suggestion something you've thought of already, have you looked into wireless providers that might be offering WiFi? Sprint PCS started offering WiFi on a limited basis to areas their phones cover. If you have PCS coverage, you might have WiFi. Just an idea
John
Then there's something wrong with the system. This is not typical. I have Dish Network and see outages only when there is a terrifically bad thunderstorm going on. As grandparent says, way less outage than cable.
Super-heterodyne detectors do a frequency conversion of a signal into a single frequency. The converter uses a VFO (variable frequency oscillator) which can emit RF noise.
They do this because when you're building an RF amplifier for a radio, it's easier to make one that works at a single frequency than one that works over the entire range of a radio signal (TV signals range from the VHF to the UHF bands - a very wide variation). The signal is converted with the VFO and a mixer to a single constant frequency, then it's passed on to subsequent stages in the radio.
This is America, damnit. Speak Spanish!
And that's a bonus. Before last week I'd get 28.8K, sometimes 26.4K. After 7 years of this you get used to it. Hell, after a month you get used to it. The only thing you really notice it on is BIG files, for regular eveyrday work stuff the difference with small mostly text based things is barely noticable. Browser caching helps a lot too, if I click preview on this page right here the difference between dialup and a T1 is less than a second. I can live with that.
I had 128K ISFN when I lived in Toronto in the early 90's, but I live where I do by choice, cripplingly low bandwidth and all.
If you saw the view from my (home) office window you'd understand. And the people are way different here than in any big sh^H^Hcity.
The only thing I get tired of is explaining to people: "No, there serevrs aren't here and are not on a dialup. It's actually possible to work on them when you're not sitting at the console".
Need Mercedes parts ?
You know, people make the statement that taco is out of touch with the slashdot community, and I dont think anything illustrates this point as much as the fact that he's on dialup.
I've got a better illustration. How about this:
I already use DirecTV?
I've vowed not to ever subscribe to DirecTV, because of DirecTV's policy of suing purchasers of smart card programming hardware, regardless of whether or not that hardware was used to intercept DirecTV's transmissions.
That's pure harassment and barratry by a company that knows that even if it loses it can ruin its victims by running up their costs to defend themselves.
And I know about this abuse of process and restraint of trade because I read about it, and the EFF's fight against it, on Slashdot: here and here and here.
But is CmdrTaco taking a stand? Hell no! At the same time the EFF files an amicus brief with the 11th Circuit appeal of DirecTV's suit, CmdrTaco is paying DirectTV $25.00 a month (or whatever the subscription fee is) to sit back and watch reruns of Die Hard II.
And people wonder why "Your Rights Online" keep getting trampled under by Big Corporations and Big Brother -- because even a so-called "geek leader" prefers sitting on his ass as a comfortable couch potato to standing up for a principle.
Really Taco, I expected better from you. Stand up for something -- show some leadership -- and ditch your DirecTV in the most public way you can.
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
The service is horrible. You do get a gigantic gain in download speed, and a slight increase in upload speed. (12 kb a second.) You can't host a server on directway.
The latency was so unbearable that I would get disconnected from AIM numerous times. Chatrooms did not work at all.
Also, look at where your directv dish is pointed. If it's narrowly passing a tree, then forget about dway. They usually get you a directway dish with an added directv module.
Since they have to aim one dish to get two signals, you get mediocre quality in both. During the spring and summer, sometimes this will become unusable. If this wasn't bad enough, the setup was a pain, and sometimes the modem locks up for no reason.
Unless you absolutely, positively need high speed downloading, stick with dialup.
Do *try* to recall that broadband isn't available everywhere. No, the right answer is not "move someplace else". There are huge numbers of people in suburban and rural parts of the USA where the choices are $100-a-month DirecWay (if you can get it. I couldn't due to "lay of the land" issues) or crappy dialup.
-- I wanna decide who lives and who dies - Crow T. Robot, MST3K
By the same token if you have the $$$ you can get cable anywhere you can get a T1.
.Stop!
Well, perhaps you might be surprised that a good many geek gods don't have $$$ because they've been doing geeky things instead of amassing $$$.
I'm not a geek god. Maybe a Roshi. A grey ponytail. Larry can have fun playing with his Ferrari and Marchetti, but I'd slit my skinny geeky wrists before I'd do what he did to get them. I have just as much fun with my Schwinn and homemade scrounged bits and plastic sheeting hang glider.
Or maybe a boat.
Do you have a globe handy? You are a geek aren't you? Ah, well, they don't make geeks like they used to I guess. In my day. . . , well, nevermind.
You've at least seen a globe. So picture that globe in your mind, rotate it up a bit. A bit more, Now to the left, more, more. . .
You are now looking at a globe that for all practical purposes is painted blue.
Who is the local telco and will they run a T1 line there? Will they run another 100 miles away tomorrow?
You are looking at the ground. Lift your head and broaden your horizon. It's a big world and it ain't all wired, or even wirable.
Once upon a time, out in that patch of pure blue on the globe, a women alone in a small sailboat got into trouble. The only other person with any hope of coming to her aid was a man in another small sailboat. He was asleep at the time.
How was he notified of the situation?
Email.
The big world gets smaller all the time. It is possible in some way to get connected from anywhere (although if you have to carry that way on your back over mountains it might be better to just forget about it).
But that way will often have to eschew wires.
KFG
Howdy, Your satalite link will be way better for large file transfers. Your modem link will be way better for interactive sessions. The particular dis-advantage of each will drive you crazy. You might be able to contract with both services and plan to use the link which will best suit your puprose of the moment/session.
One of the nice things about sites like Google and Slashdot is that they load rather quickly. Slashdot is not yet plagued by things like countless useless animations, excessive graphics and flash. I can't help but feel that is has a lot to do with the fact that Taco is viewing the site over a dialup connection.
If he moves to high-speed access I fear that it will only be a short while before new web "features" start taking over the site and it becomes as slow as all the rest.
I have always maintained that web developers should be forced to use their sites over bad dial-up connections so that they keep things compact and don't overload the site with bloated images and useless animation like so many do. There is nothing worse than being stuck behind a hotel PBX and having to work or access web sites via a 19200 dial-up connection.
Gee Bob, I really don't apreciate you sending me the HTML email with that ugly stationary theme and the 1 meg image in your sig!!! That inane "Wassup" message took ten figging minutes to download!!!!!
the telco does not have a DLSAM for ISDN installed in my slick.
Well it would be kind of hard for them to have a DSLAM for ISDN, since no such thing exists! DSLAM stands for Digital Subscriber Line Access Multiplexor. ISDN != DSL.
If you actually give DirecTV money, I suggest you get familiar with their 100,000 lawsuit/letter compaign against purchasers of completely legal ISO programmers.
"In Germany, they first came for the communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Catholic. Then they came for me -- and by that time there was nobody left to speak up." -Martin Niemoller
Nobody is suggesting you do anything other than stop giving them your money. Especially as you can get DISH and have the same capabilities.
...has become more and more about finding places with cheaper and cheaper rent, because you can no longer make enough money to live in a real city with real internet access!
well, everybody has their hobby horse. i'll bet if i look at your credit card statements, i'll see a raft of purchases from amazon.com, one of the more morally corrupt net establishments. probably, some payouts or receipts from ebay, too. ditto for that group. you probably have a closet full of clothes made in china because they're cheap and you aren't too concerned about how they got that way.
i once went two years without a phone because i had a tiff with the phone company. all that did was make it hard for people to reach me. it's more important to pick your fights and win them than it is to go around thumping your chest and proclaiming your own "purity." i don't give a damn whether you're pure if you're a jerk -- i don't want to know you and neither does anyone else.
that's why, for example, the quakers are a religious body known the world over, even though they comprise a tiny fraction of the christian population. and that's why the eff doesn't pick up every case that comes along. they won't waste effort on a case they don't think they can win. there are plenty of moral causes that invite attention -- go to GreenPeace if you can't think of any. DirecTV isn't even on my radar.
just because you own a keyboard doesn't mean you're required to type on it.
mp
"The secret to strong security: less reliance on secrets." -- Whitfield Diffie
we have had direcway in our real estate office for about a year now and it is ok. I have a cable connection at home, so I usually compare it to the adelphia connection. Cable seems more responsive when surfing the web, but on downloads sometimes it goes faster then the adelphia. Things to keep in mind. Mount the dish good. Sometimes ice or rain can take ours out and we just have to wait until it can connect again. The new satelite modem should fix the messy internet connection sharing issues (we deal with it ok) The latentcy seems to affects other programs too, like streaming video or some instant messaging. Sometimes these things bog down. If I want to watch a CNET video at work I have to put it on 56k to get a non-rebuffering video. Excessive use during the day doesn't seem to affect us, but then again I can't tell that my cable connection gets overloaded durring the day either, so I'm probably not a good judge of that. Upload is slower then download. I wouldn't want to host anything on it, unless it was serving a few users at a time and it wasn't an intense job.