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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?
What is the price of the sat service per month, exclusive of the equipment cost?
What would the cost be of buying a dry pair from the phone company and having them terminate a T1 at your house?
After all Rob, you could very easily write off the cost of a T1 at home as a business expense on your taxes, and worst case, I would think that even if the phone company won't terminate a data connection on it, your could route it to the cage and have it on the back end of the Slashdot router - just think, direct access to your servers from behind the firewall!
www.eFax.com are spammers
A few notes from this side of the fence.
Performance: obviously the latency, but you also need to know that it doesn't just kill games, web pages can be a problem. They have some fancy caching software that softens the blow so it is tolerable but in general lots of surfing isn't any faster than a 56k and the download cap is very annoying, you can hit it in 30 minutes and basically be offline for the rest of the day. I have a friend/fellow installer who has it and he can't get isos because it would use all his throughput and its not worth it. (He doesn't seem to understand how to throttle things)
Cost: Its expensive but if its the only thing available then its the cheapest option.
Installation: It is a dish that has to be mounted to your house and the installers are not highly paid (barely paid is more accurate) so don't expect them to do a good job. If you can wire your house for them and have everything ready then they will probably do a better job. I prefer pole mounts where you drop a steel pole in the ground and mount to it or some other mount that isn't attached ot the house. Digging a trench and sticking some conduit in it out to a wooden or metal pole will make a happy installer who might try to do a better job. These things are huge pains to point and get good signal but they also don't drop as much as direcTV since they are a bigger and more powerful dish.
DirecWay itself isn't very responsive to problems. They are no help at all if you aren't running windows and their software. Still, given the choice between DirecWay and a 56k modem, I'd probably pick DirecWay, at least if they were the same price...I (*shudder*) was only able to get AOL in my old place and that never got about a 28k connection so moving to here and finally having cable has been amazing. I visit people with DirecWay and its so slow by comparison. Still, get it if you can afford it and a modem isn't doing it for you.
That's a fairly profound statement, actually.
Those of us with broadband can become info junkies, endlessly clicking and staring at all the eye candy.
Those people stuck with dialup *can't* do the same (even with Lynx) and may be likely to spend more time doing something useful, like coding on Slash.
Of course, Rob is so busy running around in his Lear jet to LW confs and naked BOF's that the only one that really suffers is Ms. Taco (heh), home with the wash and litter.