A Portable Satellite ISP in the Middle East?

charyou-tree asks: "I'm a US Navy doctor deployed with the Marines in Afghanistan. I and many Marines have brought along our own laptop computers, but hooking up non-government machines to the network here is prohibited. Consequently, we're all stuck waiting in long lines for 15 minute blocks of time on a few designated 'morale' computers to send email home. What I'd like to do is set up a bidirectional satellite connection (like what DIRECWAY offers in the US), and then have individual computers hooked up over 802.11 - completely bypassing the Army network and its restrictions. In the sense that I'll be providing network access to other people I'll be an ISP, but I'm not interested in turning a profit on this. What other hardware and service provider options are there?" "The absolute requirements are:

1) Needs function in Afghanistan and Iraq (since we expect to go there next)
2) Needs be reasonably portable
3) Needs be end-user installable
4) Some way to throttle bandwidth to individual users so one guy can't bog the whole thing down.

So far I've only found one bit of hardware (the Hughes Personal Earth Station) but no service providers; what else, besides 802.11 cards and an access point do I need? "

Comments

Look into amatuer radio?

[ForestGrump]

Those guys are able to get a signal around the world...maybe you could get that and talk to your family instead...

Re:Why not two seperate services?

[charyou-tree]

Because the hardware is going to cost $2000+ at a minimum ... and it'd be foolish not to look at the possibility of taking it with us.

Re:Two options: VIASAT or DIRECWAY

[erpbridge]

4: Throttling:

I almost want to say use something like Netlimiter (netlimiter.com) to use for your bandwidth limiter on each computer. Have them each set a limit on the Global download/upload speeds, and that'll take care of all sorts of traffic (including BitTorrent, Kazaa, Web, and any other application running locally on your computer.)

It's only for Windows, though... and not usable as a bandwidth shaper for a single computer sharing the connection out (I know, I've tried).

As to dish pointing:
Got a compass? I've only pointed a normal TV dish (both Dish Network and DirecTV), which required signals from 2 sats simultaneous.

Usually what I needed then was to get the compass for the azimuth, and get in the general area of the signal (within about 5-10 degrees.) The altitude (height of the sat in the sky): Well, the DirecTV dish had altitude markings on it, the Dish one didn't.

So, it was pretty much move slowly up and down, wiggle back and forth, wait five seconds between each adjustment, until you could find the signal. Once you were on the fringe of the signal, then you start narrowing down onto it (my first time was using the Dish Network one, and it took a good 45 minutes to close in on the signal.)

Then, with the dish that required tuning in 2 birds, you don't deal with just left-right and up-down, but you also deal with rotating the dish (so the dish is pointing up at an angle) to tune in the second bird while keeping the first bird in sight. Sometimes a real pain in the neck, because you'll lose the first signal and have to reacquire it before you can go on. Again, the dish bracket may have markings, may not.

From what I've heard about providers like DirecWay, and usually goes for any sattelite Internet provider... you have to be pointed at a single sattelite, but have to be straight on the signal, not just at a fringe.

A bit of advice, but take this with some very large grains of salt: ask a contractor if someone could let you/show you point a normal TV dish for practice someday after hours, first a normal one sattelite one, then a two sattelite one... or maybe see if there is a very friendly local who uses sattelite, and will let you on the roof to see the settings of their dish (and maybe play around adjusting it to learn how it affects the signal.)

Watch out for the one with the local, as you might get someone mad at you if you screw up and can't get it pointed right again.