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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?
WTF.. the editor of Slashdot is on dialup?
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.
Features: Space age technology Really means your ping times will be comparable to that of the mars rover.
That the only guy on Slashdot with a 56k is the guy that started it
why he doesn't read his own site ;-)
-anonymous 56k user
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
It sounds from their site like the DirecWay is a two-way system. While in theory that might sound more convenient than the older downstream-only satellite systems that used 56k dial-up for upstream, I'd imagine the latency would be substantially worse, with two satellite hops in the round-trip. Is this the case in practice? Honestly, how much upstream bandwidth do you really need for casual use, given that you aren't going to be doing any serving or gaming on a sat link anyway? Is the subjective experience better or worse with this system?
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'm abusing my power as Slashdot editor to ask for experiences with this (or similiar) services.
I agree completely Taco. Notwithstanding the fact that many similar (do the research yourself) questions make their way to Ask Slashdot, at least I'd think you'd not set this to appear as a front-page story -- it would have been better (less abuse, on your part), I think, to just let it pop up only in the Ask Slashdot section.
Oh well.
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.
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)
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
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.
I believe the telcos are still obligated by regulations to provide ISDN no matter where you are.
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.
Find some slashdot fanboy in Ann Arbor, buy him a can 'o pringles, and set up a wireless link to you house.
/.'s acquisition, couldn't you find a house a little closer to civilization?
By the way, with assloads of money from
You can route interactive traffic out a dialup link to reduce latency, and all other traffic over the satelite link. See http://www.lartc.org .. Simply use netfilter to mark packets, and policy routing to pick which interface to NAT the traffic out of. Not for newbies, but I'm sure the editor of /. can handle it ;)
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
I think that you'll have a problem with VPN as well, due to the latency. I was using DirecPC, which was an asymmetric architecture with a phone line return. I saw an increase of about 500 msec in ping times using DirecPC over phone modem. For two-way satellite, the latency will probably be about 1 second. This kind of latency killed my VPN connectivity or at best made it unreliable. As an alternative, why don't you set up a neighborhood wireless cooperative sharing a T-1 line. See for example: http://www.magnoliaroad.net.
"Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room!" -- Dr. Strangelove
I assisted a friend of mine in setting up his DirecWay system about a year ago. I am not sure what the "professional installation costs" were, but they had no satellite service of any kind prior to the install. I know that at that time, you had to purchase all the hardware, which ran about $600.00.
Aside from that, the equipment at that time had to be plugged into a computer via. USB and setup via Windows only software. If you wanted any kind of routing done, it had to be done through Windows.
The hardware/software may have changed since then and they may now offer an ethernet port and a more OS friendly configuration.
Aside from those things, the speed was nice for web browsing and any other low impact services. I do recall using ssh and it seemed to work ok. The latency isn't as noticable as it would be playing a game.
That's my experience...
~.Evanrude
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.
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."
The data connection comes free with their Vision service, which in turn comes free with the larger plans. For about $150 or $200/month you can get enough minutes to keep your phone connected 24/7.
I was rather impressed with the service on a recent road trip (the first time I tried it). If you're in range of a cell phone tower, it might be worth trying as a remote ISP. It's not that fast for the price, but it is completely mobile -- you get the same data service from anywhere in their coverage area.
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
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.
I looked into it since I love my satellite television!
Maybe I was missing something, but it sounded like the equipment startup cost was something in the range of $500-$600... with little to no subsidizing. Looking at their website now, they still have that ($599) at $59.99/mo with no activation fee. It also looks like they're offering a subsidized $99/mo with a $99 activation. So... $600-$99/$40 ~= 12.5 months to make it work buying the equipment up front. Looks like there's a 15 month contract even with the equipment purchased... odd.
So... satellite definitely has latency. Satellite definitely has problems with severe weather (but it has to be really severe). But if it's your only option, it does provide decent downstream speeds.
Have you considered wireless of some form or another? Commerical 802.11b gear with big antennas on either end should easily be able to do 5 miles if you have line of site. Another alternative is to bring a dedicated line (T1, etc.) out to you and become a Wireless ISP youself by coop splitting the bandwidth costs between your neighbors...
Hope that helps!
--Darren
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
My aunt and uncle have a satellite on their RV. Normally based in Texas, they came to visit me in the Seattle, WA area. They noticed that their service was poorer up here. They had more dropped packets and greater overall latency. I suspect the primary reason involved the angle at which the signal had to reach the satelite - the farther north you are, the more atmosphere the signal must pass through. Does anyone have specific experience from around the same latitude as Ann Arbor (just guessing, from around the 40-45th parallel)?
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.
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.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
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 ?
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'
Taco,
:-)
Have you tried looking up Catalyst Wireless here in Ann Arbor? They have (or had) an antenna on the 777 building at Eisenhower & State, so if you're within a few miles of that you should be able to get a 512Kbps connections.
If that doesn't work, a T1 will cost you about $125-250 per month plus internet access, or about $400 per month if you don't abuse it.
It's deductible, of course.
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.
Rob, I too live just outside Ann Arbor in Saline. In my area there is no DSL or cable either.
A guy in my neighborhood has a T1 to his house and sells service off it for $35/month, using Motorola's Canopy. he can get up to a 10 mile radius, so it's possible that you're within range.
As a result, you get 1.5Mbps (shared) upstream AND downstream, which is better than most cable service. It's been very reliable, and cheaper than cable too.
Anyone who's interested, drop me a note and I can give you the info.
Chikli Consulting LLC - http://agileshrugged.com
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).
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
If I recall, he bought a regular desktop PC and put Linux on it. I think he put a proxy server on it to help cut down on the traffic. I know he got a domain and put up SMTP/POP to provide email for his neighbors. I don't think he is doing any port 80 traffic.
Great ideas often receive violent opposition from mediocre minds. - Albert Einstein
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.
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.
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.
I have a Direcway 2-way satellite connection, and I've been pretty satisfied with it as a whole. I don't have any experience with the newer systems (mine is ~1.25 years old), but I thought I'd share anyway.
To answer the first question I ever had: yes, the latency is horrible. I get roughly 700-850ms to the backbone. I do a lot of support from home, and I do it via the corporate VPN when I'm on the satellite. Because of the excessive handshaking, my connection actually responds worse than my 28Kbps connections directly to the customer's network. For more intense bitstreams like PCAnywhere, MS TSC, or VNC connections, the satellite holds its own, but only until I open a console window, and then we're back to major suck.
Web surfing tends to be better than my 33Kbps modem connection when I take advantage of the "Web accelerator" that Direcway provides - for pages with lots of graphics anyway. Still, I dislike the interminable 3-4 second delay between click and action. Furthermore, the speed I enjoy now is the result of much research and T&E with configuration settings. Out of the box, things didn't go quite that well.
I got the $100USD installation fee waived when I bought my equipment, so that wasn't an issue for me. Too bad the FCC wouldn't allow me to do my own installation, because that's what I ended up doing. The guy they sent out here was clueless with regard to satellite setup. The only thing he got right was setting the pole in concrete. He finally left the first day without ever getting anything done (other than the pole). That night (after dark even), I sighted in the dish, installed the software, and got to the point where I needed only to enter the activation code (which I didn't have). The next day, the sat man brought a couple that he was "training" to help him out. He was a little perturbed that all the work was already done, but he told them to remove the dish and begin as if they were starting from scratch?!! It took them all day long to get a poor signal, but it was just enough for them to be able to activate, so they left it at that. Once they left, I took a few minutes to get my signal strength back up and voila! In all the time I've had the system, there have been no additional costs above the advertised price (think mine is $50USD/mo).
I don't notice much difference in peak and non-peak usage, but with a nominal ping of 850ms, an additional 200ms is chump change anyway. The traffic cap is annoying sometimes (too lazy to patch?). I haven't paid much attention to it, but it feels like I've got about a 450Mb bucket to draw from which gets replentished at about 120Mb an hour (more late at night when I'm on :) . When you run out, expect dial-up speeds for 3-4 hours as punishment for hoarding all that precious bandwidth all to yourself. My standard workload is 20-50Mb/hr, and I surf for much less.
So, in conclusion, I keep the satellite because work pays for it. My wife and I enjoy playing Starcraft online with our friends. She'll use the sat connection, and I'll dialup (silly UDP port restriction for Starcraft prevents us from both using the sat). The lag is bad, but we still get reasonible quality games if we set the Extra High Latency option. For other games that I play alone, I use dial-up for most everything with the occasional exception for mudding.
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!!!!!
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!" -$
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.
...he should put up a standard TV antenna on a 100 foot tower, so he can pick up 2 channels full of static.
Oh, but wait, he could just stream real-time video or download DVDs off of his 56k dialup. Is that the alternative you are suggesting?
Geez, some people need to think before they get on their moral soapbox. Some other people need to think before they mod that crap up too.
Dan East
Better known as 318230.
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
I have a cottage in Northern Canada and get 650kps with 65% signal quality because I am receiving through trees. It has never gone down except in EXTREMELY hard rains (trees were coming down). I can stream shoutcast all day and the latency is bearable for VOIP being 500msec on average. I work with real time stock quotes and spend the whole summer up there...
...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!
I too live in the middle of nowhere in the mountains of Southern California. I doubt even wireless internet will reach here anytime soon, so I have to use DirecWay. Here are some important points from my experiences:
(1) Avoid Hughes as an ISP. We used them for awhile. Very flaky reliability, especially downloading large files. Downloads were about 10K-30K per second when they did work. Uploading large files, supposedly possible at about 4K-5K per second was just impossible. Forget streaming audio or video. Want support? Go to AA or something, 'cause you won't get much with them.
(2) Use a good ISP like Ground Control. Get the Business Edition. This runs about $100 a month, but you get a static IP address and it is very reliable. Downloads from good servers can come through at speeds up to 150K/second or more. Uploads almost always work, even though they are still at around 5K/second. Streaming audio and video works, sometimes. Plus, their support is pretty good.
(3) Realize that you have a daily limit on bandwidth. You can probably pay more to get more, but the Business Edition gives you something like 350 MB/day, with a 'trickle recharge' of something like 5K/second or about 18MB an hour on your limit. That means, that whatever you take off your daily limit, every second gives you an additional 5K. If you exceed this limit you get FAPd (Fair Access Policy) which means you get reduced to about modem speeds for 12 hours.
(4) Non Business Edition subscribers get only 200 MB/day (I think) and are FAPd for 24 hours upon breaching the limit.
(5) Expect the proxy to go down on occasion. Surfing with the proxy enabled is MUCH faster than without, but you may find that sometimes your connection appears to stop working. Disabling the proxy often will fix that. Also, try to 'restart' the DIRECWAY Webcast service as this will often fix the proxy problem. Sometimes you'll just need to reboot, and sometimes it's just them.
(6) Have your dish adjusted properly. Figuring out how to this this yourself can save you a lot of money (but I think you have to be licensed, officially). Pay particular attention not just to your signal level, but also your 'Isolation' level. The DirecWay dish doesn't just get adjusted on two axis, but also 'rotates' to adjust the polarization relative to the transponder on the satellite. If your polarization is not isolated enough, your signal gets 'stepped on' by other signals (and you probably do some stepping yourself). The connection may still work, but may become more flaky. Since there are now some 8 thousand mobile DirecWay satellite dishes which adjust themselves - all from varying locations at varying times of the day with variable success at isolating their signals, and because there are countless satellite techs who don't polarize the dishes correctly to isolate their signals, you may have great access one day and all of a sudden it starts to slow down and get flaky the next. Checking your isolation value may show that someone else is stepping on you, at which point you'd re-adjust your own dish again to isolate it better.
(7) If you adjust your own dish, do pay attention to stay behind the dish if you ever want to have children again. The transmitter is very powerful and can potentially do bad things to your body. If you set it up yourself, don't put it someplace where kids or other people will be exposed close up to the transmitter. If you plan on carrying around the dish with you on vacation (yes, some people do this in their RVs) and you don't have a mobile license, realize that you are breaking the law, possibly irradiating innocent civilians, and anyway the DirecWay people know where you are within about 20 miles, and they are supposedly disabling accounts of those people who move the dishes around with them.
(8) Don't be disappointed. THIS IS NOT BROADBAND! In comparison, it really sucks. But it doesn't suck as much as dialup!
Remember Linux (and I believe FreeBSD and OpenBSD) support routing by port number and by protocol flags. That means you can (with a little care) make sure your ssh goes via the modem while your file sucking operations go via the satellite.
All you really need then is something to check file sizes against the bandwidth cap and fax orders for very large files from a CD vendor automatically 8)
"This file will take 2 days to download
[Cancel] [Continue] [Fedex]"
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
It's hard to find this out, but the standard direcway service nat's you. You do not have a publically routable ip address, let alone a static one. Upgrading to a commercial package can get you a static ip. The nat boxes also tend to kill long running connections (i.e. if you leave ssh running logged in somewhere).
The standard satellite modem (for lack of better name) doesn't work well in linux. Hughes has a patent on the LZJH compression algorithm. DirecWay forces you to use IP compression for port 80 connections with the LZJH compression algorithm. So linux drivers have trouble with web traffic.
The latency is awful. During peak hours (afternoon on) ping times get up to 2 seconds. I've never seen them below 700 ms. Some web pages that open a lot of connections to download small items feel slower over the satellite link than over dial up.
Finally Hughes has a fair access policy the details of which they won't share. As far as anyone can tell they're using token bucket qos with a bucket of about 150 megs and and a fill rate of 56kbps. What this means is that if you doenloaded nonstop all day you'd get 56kbps. You're just allowed to save up some of your bandwidth and use it all at once, so the connection feels faster.
Weather has lousy effects on connection quality. Heavy cloud cover can mess it up occaisionally. Mostly though the problem is rain storms. A good thunder storm can knock out the connection completely until it passes. The DirecWay service is much more suceptible to weather related problems than satellite tv is.
Essentially it's ok for large downloads (although be sure to find someone's script to tune the linux ip stack settings, or large downloads will stall partway through.) Most stuff is painful over it. We keep a dial up account with a local isp for ssh , and times the link isn't working. I'm a very unhappy customer. I didn't believe a lot of the complaints I read about DirecWay because the complaints were so negative they didn't sound believable. 4 hours after we had the installation completed I discovered that by and large the complaints are all true.
God does not play dice - Einstein
Not only does God play dice, he sometimes throws them where they
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!)
You can get Multilink routers for next to nothing on Ebay. I have priced nearly everything as far as rural broadband in the 48th worst state in the union for broadband penetration - Vermont. I am currently using 2 USR 56k modems and a Webramp 350e (Ramp Networks is out of business) all purchased on Ebay. Alternately I have built a working router for this using Win98SE so I'm sure YOU can kludge together a Linux-flavored one.
:-) but is terrible for sniping with a Covert Ops :-( Think flamethrower rather than pistol...
I often have a downlink of 50.666kb x2 and an uplink of 33.6kb x 2. I can even use it to play WolfET on occassion, though it isn't great -- ~200ms pings at best which isn't terrible for a Field Ops calling in airstrikes
I can only download about a single gB per day under the best of circumstances but my ISP has no FAP about it.
Yes, it's 2 phone lines. Yes I pay the full local usage cap each month. But even with my Multilink ISP account ($30/mo) it is less than a single phone line plus $99 DirecWay fee (if you pay for the hardware over year). I have done spreadsheet after spreadsheet on the comparisons and I feel the dual modems are the way to go.
I'm thinking about it, therefore I might be.
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
Hi!
I'm in rural America, and I've used a variety of methods for Internet access over the years: a 56K frame-relay circuit, ISDN, a fractional T-1 circuit, and now DirecWay. Some thoughts:
There is little comparison. The "two-way" DirecWay service is high-speed download, and essentially 56K upload. If you're doing a lot of uploading (particularly of graphics) that's a bad thing. If you're uploading text, it isn't that noticeable. On the other hand, you definitely will notice the latency. It's annoying.
On the other hand, DirecWay is dramatically cheaper. You can buy the "modem" up front and pay $59/month, or capitalize the "modem" over 15 months for a total charge of $99/month; after 15 months your rate drops to $59/month. I viewed the cost of the device as equivalent to buying a router--its a capital expense. I can tell you with a broad smile on my face that $59/month is a LOT cheaper than the $450/month I was paying for a fractional T-1. (I dropped the T because I'm no longer doing offsite development for clients--I took a full-time position, so I don't have as much need for the bandwidth.)
We learned this the hard way: DirecWay and DirecTV actually broadcast from different satellites. The way they provide service from both is to aim the dish at a compromise position. The result is poor signal strength from either TV or Internet. Our satellite guy came out last week, saying that DirecWay had emailed all of their installers to install a separate TV dish. It makes your roof more cluttered ("I heard you went to work for client," said a neighbor. "Was it the NSA?") but it will definitely settle the question of who is the biggest geek on the block.
Once you're past that initial latency hit, download speed is remarkable. While there were benefits to having the T-1 circuit, I'm 28,000 feet from the CO, so packet loss was a persistent problem. Internet radio is better, and watching broadband TV is MUCH better.
Overall, we're very happy with it.
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.
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.
Hey, are you this guy?