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Satellite Internet Providers
pitchblende writes "Our company works in remote locations in Northern Canada. We have been experiencing major communications problems with our current satellite service. We use satellite systems that go for about $1000 apiece, with $100/month in fees. The service is 'shared' rather than dedicated, and our VOIP, etc, has been getting worse by the day lately. From what I can tell, dedicated systems go for $30k and up.
I hope someone(s) out there has some suggestions, recommendations?"
Come back down to lower Canada...
But I think a 'dedicated systemm' for satellite communication is going to cost a bit more than $30k. That price will barely get your shiny new satellite high enough to be seen from your neighbor's house.
Sorry about your luck, dial-up would probably be about the same though and a lot less money.
I'm not anti-social, I'm anti-idiot.
Try and set up a chain of repeating 12' satellite dish broadcasters retrofitted for 802.11G like the one they set the distance record with. It got like 125 miles, so 10 or 15 of them ought to get out to the middle of nowhere. Latency would probably blow, but it's still better than satellite.
People are like slinkies; useless but fun to watch when you push them down the stairs
VoIP over satellite? How's the latency?
"In a 32-bit world, you're a 2-bit user. You've got your own newsgroup, alt.total.loser." -Weird Al
That is the dirty little secret of the industry.
And if some punk on your satellite is doing p2p transfers all day, there is nothing you can do to stop it.
If you want a real dedicated connection, you will have to launch your own.
Not to be flippant, but there it is. There aren't that many satellite internet/phone providers.
Unless you have some coverage from inukshuk wireless, there isn't much you can do but suck it up.
That is the nature of the Internet satellite business. The quality-of-service is dependent of the traffic from other terminals, since it is a shared service.
The only solution to this problem is to try to secure some premium class traffic for sending VoIP and have the border gateway properly configured to mark VoIP packets accordingly. The rest of the traffic should be served as Best Effort, in order to save money.
Fear is the mind-killer.
You have to be kidding me... Satellite ping times are 500 ms+ for two-way, 250 ms+ for one-way. You can squeeze that down to 200 ms+ for one-way with some voodoo.
VoIP requires 200 ms or _less_ latency for quality. You could never expect to get quality VoIP via satellite. Give up. Sorry to say it, but really, just give up.
Are you dealing with the satelitte provider directly? i.e. infosat, telsat, etc?
Directly they won't do much in the way of service level agreements that have financial penalties associated with them. However, if you were to purchase network services from a communications supplier that was working along with your satellite provider, you may find they have more weight in getting you the service levels you are paying for (and contracted).
I suggest you give TELUS a call, and compare prices/service levels for service in your area.
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Esobofh - Currently drinking fresh mango juice.
I talked about this with a guy from Barrett Explore (aka Xplornet) on a flight between Toronto and Fredricton.
But the problem was that with most solutions like this, it is twisted pair up and satellite down, so the issue with VOIP quality is on the upstream.
Cost, quality and time are the 3 things to always consider and if you expect remote business grade quality running VOIP for $100 a month, you are not going to find it anywhere.
C
If a cellphone network is available for some of your locations then look into that.
I have wildblue, which could be similar to the system you are using (costs are similar). A couple of years ago it was a lot better but since it has been more loaded I am not always getting my bandwidth and the latency has gone up.
Two years ago VOIP was somewhat usable now I am very lucky if I can use it. Any SSL has always been painful.
My situation has changed since I provisioned the sat. I am now running a small business from my home and when I move I will probably go back on the grid. If I don't move I might try putting up an antenna and routing some of my data over a cellular network.
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What latency? It works great to me!
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
Hey, did you know you can get a dedicated satellite for 30k?!?
Quickly now, somebody post a reply to me to let everyone know you can get a satellite for 30k. Because that hasn't been said already.
Stop Living/Working in Canada?
Depending on where you are, Enerconnex offers some kind of service to remote locations though its primary target is oil and gas in northern Alberta. I don't know if that particular company can help you. It is a division of Northwestel.
You might also want to contact Northwestel directly but seeing as it is a government-sanctioned monopoly with a government-sanctioned profit margin, I wouldn't expect much help. It's probably cheaper to blast your own satellite into orbit that to get service from it.
Also, Northwestel should read Bell as Bell wholly owns Northwestel.
Satellite is pretty much the only system that you can get from another company, at least in the Yukon. Northwest Territories and Nunavut may have different telecos that don't suck so hard. I'm strongly considering getting satellite for my own personal internet just because I loathe Northwestel and its business practices.
try to set a new record for wifi?
Skycasters has speeds in which commit data can be transferred and they have Platinum Service Plan will be optimized for VoIP
All plans include 1 publicly routable static IP address.
http://www.skycasters.com/broadband-satellite-compare/compare.html
Have you tried WiFi? I heard it's the new "wireless" thing...
Satellite internet service has latency issues that will NEVER go away. It's the speed of light that is the limiting factor. I'm surprised you were able to use VoIP at all, honestly.
You simply aren't going to get good performance out of a satellite internet service. It might be acceptable for simply web-browsing and e-mail, but for a business? Forget it. It's strictly a "we have no other choice" option.
You're screwed, basically. If you want a good internet connection, you need something that is based on a good ol' cable, whether it be copper or fiber. If you don't have those available, then you need to build them. If you are really in the boondocks of Canada, then expect to pay millions to lay your own fiber.
WAN optimization, works rather well. We have several offices connected via VSAT links (shared bandwidth like yourself) and VOIP and everything works fine. The Riverbed averages about 90% compression across all traffic.
(a href="http://www.tredent.com/news/fhi-deploys-riverbed-steelhead-appliances-after-testing-cisco-packeteer-and-juniper/">Go here you want to read our "success" story.
Ever feel like you are driving the getaway car?
Astronomical.
I believe Hughes has an unpublished quota for bandwidth usage. If you go over a set level of data transfered they throttle your DNS requests.
You should run a few hundred miles of ethernet cable down to Pennsylvania. I'll let you plug into my linksys router.
If there are voice circuits nearby, your best bet is probably a T1 or a T3. You don't share it with your neighbors, you get great SLA support, and its latency should be a non-issue. T1s have been around long enough that they can handle some pretty rugged conditions. Not the cheapest solution, but cheaper than a satellite.
never underestimate the bandwidth of a DeHaviland BEAVER full of cd and DVD's...
If SETI will let you borrow one of their satellites for a while.
So I got a problem with such and such issue and would like a front page tech support post please.. Come on, since when did slashdot become the expert exchange?
It must be aliens interrupting our communications systems to prevent the new x-files movie from being released.
Or maybe they have just loaded to many customers onto one satellite.
My first thought was "Wow, your bandwidth is precious and you waste it on posting to Ask Slashdot?" Sure, there could be someone here with extensive knowledge and experience with network infrastructure that communicates with satellites. Regardless, it is still like asking someone who just stayed at a Holiday Inn last night (or that just read a magazine article about it, if you haven't seen the Holiday Inn commercials).
There is going to be way to many worthless posts here to filter through. I hope the mod system helps you out a bit. Perhaps even modding down this post....
-fragbait
In order to avoid satellite providers altogether, a number of areas in southern Alberta have made the switch to terrestrial wireless systems. These systems typically operate in the 900 MHz or 2.4 GHz band, and provide each client with a highly directional radio frequency line of sight (it works through trees and bush) to the provider tower, which can be several kilometers away. These systems are very reliable, and boast latency and bandwidth similar to modern cable networks. Most providers do have a bandwidth cap in place, but they are not nearly as absurd as satellite provider caps. Best of all, they cost a fraction of a satellite connection, and the equipment itself costs less than $100 at the client site.
With regards to specific technologies, check out the offerings of Motorola in their Canopy line of products. I'm sure there are many others, but I have experience with this one =)
You can get a dedicated satellite for 30 000$ CAD.
I don't think I'd be able to buy a dedicated satellite with a 30K resistor.
Get with some of your local ham radio geeks. Those guys are amazing. Granted, their radio bands and equipment are not approved or licensed for commercial use, but they can probably at least point you in the right direction. Once they get the equipment (which is way less than $30k) and license, they can toss packets all over the place for free. I don't know what the bandwidth or latency is like on their systems, but I do know that when it comes to getting information from point A to point B, they get pretty creative. Certainly they can help you come up with something that will fit your needs (for a nominal fee). Worth a shot!
-- Stu
/. ID under 2,000. I feel old now.
I read your title line as "Skycasters has speeds in which we can vommit data in".
I think you should print out all your data packets and send them via mail.
Mine wasn't "shared", but it still sucked pretty bad.
What is meant by 'shared'? How is any satellite system not a shared medium?
Perhaps I'm just not understanding some sat lingo here.
My blog
...sorry, that'll be me torrenting Inuit rock...
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
not unpublished. 450M/day
Don't get me wrong, it's probably great for browsing the web and email and stuff. I'd be really surprised if you could manage a decent VOIP connection or any gaming over that connection.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
We used NetKaster's commercial grade service at 75+degN. The farthest north it has been deployed according to their tech as of last summer. All satellite is shared, but we had good luck with VOIP and even some video conferencing when the weather cooperated. That far north you have to shoot through a lot of atmosphere to hit the bird. I would say if transport size is not an issue, go with two of their 1m dish systems and load balance. That should get you want you want.
"I'm just here to regulate funkyness." - James Gandolfini, as Winston in The Mexican
Try chipping the ice off it, that usually helps.
Its not your ISP causing the problems. Its The Thing. You are all doomed.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
If voice is all you need try this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carterfone
Har har har! And you probably wonder why you never get laid.
First of all satellite is going to be horrible on latency, the *BEST* that can be done is around 600ms (speed of light), and at best that is going to be horrible on VOIP and VPN. And with most for *ONLY* $100 per month you will have bandwidth usage limits (the consumer plans have low bandwidth limits 20-40GB/month for that kind of money), to not have bandwidth limits and not be shared it will cost quite a bit more.
You might want to investigate using a point-to-point connection of your own, back before the TCOM companies had connections everywhere large companies did their own microwave links, and I understand that the new point-to-point wireless stuff (not consumer grade-commercial stuff) can do at least 20-30 (or more) miles point-to-point, if you have a line of sight to something with TCOM access you should be able to do it, or you could setup a string of relays to do it.
The big question is how remote is it?
We are located in Canada and have a VOIP over satellite solution which we deploy to fishing Lodges. Unlike the VOIP from the large providers we have tuned the settings specially for the long satellite latency times and the service is surprisingly good. Though the latency times are obviously higher, it is quite reasonable to have a conversation with an average 800ms delay. We can provide references to existing customers if you desire. I believe my email address is available in my profile so please contact me if you are interested or post a reply here.
I know satellite is notoriously (laggy). Its latency will always be causing problems for VOIP. If you have the option to go with something else I would; however if you do not I would try exploring QOS options and traffic shaping this would allow the VOIP packets a ticket to the front of the line in router queues. We use VSAT technology for backups to our primary links.
I could affor it, if only it were USD rather than CAD!!!
How Far north? There are multiple companies that have been building Wireless high speed networks in both Northern Alberta (Rainbow Lake Area, High Level) and Northern BC (Chetwynd, Ft. St John, Ft Nelson). but if you are talking NWT, I got no idea, please give us as much information as possible!
That's mooosecrap. Launch costs alone are over 30k.
What?
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
I Had the same problem in the Caribbean. We ultimately just subscribed to the three different satellite services, and just had our network route the traffic accordingly. And yeah voip works fine over satellite. I don't know how it works so well, but it does work.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Ditch the satellite. Find a wireless internet service provider (we exist in northern canada). Set up your own point to point network if you have to. I use and recommend Motorola Canopy (http://www.motorola.com/business/v/index.jsp?vgnextoid=20e284c606de6110VgnVCM1000008406b00aRCRD) but there are lots of other equipment that VOIP will work with. All of it is better than satellite. By the sound of your costs, you can justify the expense. Depends on how remote you are I guess, but canopy goes a good 40 km point to point.
For dedicated services; equipment cost is very dependent on capacity and traffic structure. Our regular dedicated Internet capacity customers' baseline cost for equipment (for a 1024/256 asymmetrical dedicated Internet capacity) is around 15.000 USD and monthly service fee is around 2.500 Euro (~4.000 USD) per month. If you have a seriously big capacity need (10+ Mbits), by investing into special equipments (~40.000 USD and above) you can decrease unit service cost up to 50%.
Parent isn't redundant, even though he used incorrect punctuation. That was a question. What's the difference between "shared" and "dedicated" ? My assumption would be that he means a dedicated satellite. Which definitely costs more than $30,000. Unless by "shared" he means that they share the same dish.
I saw this story on the CBC the other day. The Liberals and NDP are trying to convince the govt. to spend the $4.2 billion raised from the cell phone spectrum auction on expanding broadband to rural areas. Don't hold your breath waiting for it though.
The only other advice I can offer you comes from The Wolf in Pulp Fiction, "Move out of the sticks, gentlemen".
Is leaving Canada an option?
How far apart are the sites you need to work from? Within a few hundred kilometers of one another or literally all over the place? If you can set up a high-powered WAP in some kind of central location that has high-speed, you might be able to figure something out by putting some kind of repeater using dish antennas way the hell up there on a balloon or something.
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
Satellite internet latency is too high for VOIP. Find another solution.
You could try Iridium or what every they are calling it now. I know that they use it as a backup system in the Antarctic.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Sounds like you bought a residential-grade system. Speaking from my experience with satellite providers and services. If you were sold on the premise that VoIP was supported on the residential service, then someone definitely took you for a good spin.
The residential-grade that's available in Canada, most have no promise or guarantee on supporting VoIP. Most upstream carriers never designed the residential-grade service to support VoIP, just DATA. Latency on these services is the pits, and you are correct.. you are on a shared node with other people which just adds to further problems. Trying to use some of the VoIP solutions out there for consumers on these systems, typically don't work or you'll experience a high amount of voice breakup and latency, especially if your surfing and talking at the same time.
You want a solution, simply move away from consumer-grade service, and move to a professional level, where the provider can guarantee VoIP. Or find a provider that can promise and guarantee VoIP on their residential service.
And remember, in the end.. Dealing with the schmuck who sold you the service, is trying to make the sale and get their money. Always ask for a demonstration or speak to the carrier directly to find out the truth in these matters.
I recommend using WAN accelerators to compress the IP traffic over the SAT tunnels and QOS to guaranty bandwidth for the VOIP sessions.
http://www.inmarsat.com/Services/Land/BGAN/default.aspx
I'm currently employed by a US-based VSAT provider and I'm the guy in charge of the IP sections and a good portion of the RF section too. Here's my advice and words of wisdom.
1) You'll get what you pay for. Satellite spectrum *is* expensive, so if you're only paying $100/mo for service, you're being oversubscribed to hell and back.
2) Consumer satellite providers mostly share bandwidth by TDM access. They have a large carrier from their earth station that runs all the time, but your transmitter bursts in a duty cycle set by the system controller at the earth station. Its great for downloads, but it sucks for VOIP.
3) The people who say "VOIP won't work over satellite" are dead wrong. It works just fine. We have many customers in the US and several in Europe that use VOIP just fine. However, they're on "dedicated bandwidth", so there's no TDMing. If they're buying 512kbps of bandwidth, they have 512kbps of bandwidth. But they also pay more for that.
4) I don't know exactly how much data and voice you need, but consider BGAN as a possible solution.
5) And, shameless plug, feel free to contact me and we can see what we can do for you.
If you are only remote from a town with broadband by a few tens of miles, why not take that $30k and build a couple of towers with WiFi or WiMax relays?
WiFi on cantennas gets some decent travel and even better on purpose built antennas. Two or three hops might add some latency, but I'm betting it won't be as bad as you are seeing now. See http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&output=googleabout&btnG=Search+our+site&q=WiFi%20distance for some examples of how to do it. Some of those records are impressive.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
UnaSAT is one of the best providers for VOIP over sat. connections and is affordable
the next inline is iDirect but they are very expensive
Outsource it! China and India have a bunch of sattelites that will beam your crap.
I use WildBlue. I get download speeds of about 1.2Mbps with a 17GB monthly BW at around $80/mo. Like others, I can't believe that you got VOIP to work at all. I typically experiend 1,600ms - 1,800 ms ping times. I tried Starband (echostar/hughes) with good success but about twice the price, slower download speeds and less BW.
Have you tried the iridium network?
I know it's expensive, but they have decent data rates, low latency (relatively... LEO instead of GEO) and their coverage up north (at both poles, actually) is actually really good, as all of their orbital planes intersect and you have more satellites overhead.
and you can avoid voip cause it's a voice network too.
Try http://www.tachyon.net/ Very fast and reliable (expensive) service.
Free Scotland!
Use CP/IP (RFC 1149 ).
You'll get great bandwidth, especially during migratgory seasons.
"Omnis tuus capsa sunt inesse nos"
Pick 2.
We operate over 50 sites North of 60, with our own uplink facility in Southern Canada. I can tell you satellite bandwidth is EXPENSIVE! Face it, it costs a lot of money to get those things floating around the planet and keep them up there.
There are a few options available to lower the cost, which tend to lead to the 3 options.
The one thing that Infosat does is use KU band. This is cheaper because is has a much greater suck factor. The main problem is the impact of rain-fade. This becomes especially significant in the high north becuase, being on the edge of the footprint (lower gain) and having much more atmosphere to pass through, plus lower elevation angles on the antenna lead to higher noise from terrestrial radiation. (we used infosat links for a number of years, and had the same problems you talk about) :)
The other option is to use C-Band. It has a better footprint in the north and rain fade is a fairly negligible factor. It is also significantly more expensive.
Telesat now has KA band as well, but I'm not that familiar with how it performs, or is priced. There are some issues with KA band, as well because it uses spot beams, so you cannot have a direct link between the East and West without a downlink in the middle somewhere.
Most providers that are offering a "cheap" solution will also provide shared bandwidth solutions. This works well up to a point, as it allows you to make use of extra space when other users aren't using it (commonly called "burst" speeds), but the main problems with this are that everyone tends to want to use it at the same time (more or less) and it is easy for the provider to oversubscribe the link. You may be able to talk to your provider about traffic shaping options to see if they can prioritize voip, although I suppose that is not a very PC remark these days
If you use the service mostly within the communities, there is a last mile broadband solution available for most places in the Northwest Territories and Nunavut (www.qiniq.com / www.airware.ca) using MCS (Clearwire).
the above is my personal opinion and does not necessarily reflect that of the little voices in my head
You said "locations". A postal Code or Lat Long would help.
Anyway, Just get a Rogers Portable internet modem for a $100 and a Parabolic Grid WiFi Antenna or better and point it to Fort McMurray, AB: Postal code T9H3L1 or your nearest Rogers antenna and Voila you've got high speed!
I managed a remote WAN in Rural Alaska and our network - installed and maintained by DRS, was excellent. There are also other technologies out there besides satellite and fixed wireless. However, I can't talk about them without violating an NDA :-)
Two things I can say having come out of the satellite industry as a network tech and admin in the US very recently.
Stay the hell away from Skycasters, and that goes double for OptiStreams.
All satellite providers very precisely align where there radio energy will land and conversely where they will get reception from.. every watt wasted costs loads of money. So all you can do is improve your reception and transmission. Buy a higher gain antenna and better align it to the provider satellite if its in geostationary or a tracking system. Going from 20dBi to 30dBi has a great impact on your maximum data rate.
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No matter how thin you slice it, its still baloney.
Well, according to This page, you could lease a single transponder for about $335k/mo (average across the listed rates).
I think for that much, it'd be cheaper to buy a few select pieces of land, put up a 100' tower on each. 100' towers at sea level will get you 28 miles. 100' tower on a 5000' mountain will get you 115 miles. If the sites happen to be so lucky that there's a 5,000' and 7,000' mountain to use, they could be used for 220 miles. :)
Rather than buying land and building towers, you can always lease tower space. But, if you put up towers, you can lease that space, should you be in a good area for it.
There's a whole lot of remote northern Canada, so it's hard to even guess at how many installations would be required.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
Some providers use LEO satellites. The latency is of course worse with stationary satellites.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
I am currently deployed to Iraq. Dues to the specialty of my job, my 3 man team rates our own VSAT uplink. The system we use is made by GCS and is their Cheetah model. Not 100% sure whose birds we use, but I believe Intelsat. This system in general works pretty good, auto acquire dish, integrated router, VOIP, etc. Since it is military, it also provides an uplink to SIPR, also with VOIP capability. The system works alright, but it has been known to be quite finicky, particularly with power sources. While the system is allegedly rated for a wide range, both AC and DC sources, in reality, it sometimes has a problem with generator AC power. Because of my remote location, generators are all there is for power, and anyone who has lived off of generators for an extended period of time can tell you that the power isn't always steady. In the past, power outages due to generator outages have killed the system, requiring one or more components to be replaced. Bandwidth is so so but it does do VOIP fine. Only other gripe I have with it is the management of it. Have to jump through a few hoops to connect to slashdot (something about non-work related . . .).
Before you can expect any serious answers you need to answer some questions:
How many sites?
What are your data requirements? Are you web surfing, doing email or using SCADA?
What are your voice requirements? How many minutes a month per site? To where?
What is your latitude?
Do you have to be portable?
As for soultions, have you considered Inmarsat's BGAN service, MSAT, VSAT and Iridium?
dialup only $9.99/month (some restrictions apply, see dealer for more details ... not available in some parts of canada)
I just sat through an hour long presentation where Verizon was trying to sell me on switching to their MPLS;
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2007/032107-verizon-business-mpls-vpn.html
One of their features is a PIP satellite MPLS connection which has much less jitter (latency) than Hughes, DircPC, and such. They said they have customers using this for Citrix, VPN, and Voice and these customers find it much better than traditional satellite. They also offered to us to have one of their disaster recovery mobile MPLS satellite vans pull up so we could hook a laptop and VoIP phone up and test for ourselves.
They also offer such services over EVDO (or will) if you get Verizon EVDO in that area of Canada.
I don't speak from experience, but you asked for options and this might just be one.
I'm in Toronto with bhell sympatico (the cap'n'throttle kings) for an ISP. You won't convince me that you've got it worse!
I've had to deal with this for a couple of Oil and Gas companies. The only none satellite alternative that we found was the Telus Raven system. If you add the optional yagi, they work to about 5 hours north of Fort St. John BC. The coverage does vary, but has been getting better regularly. The Ravens are an EVDO system that give your end user an IP with no configuration or drivers needed. Trouble shooting is very easy. If 1 light is out, it works. If anything more than 1 light is out, send it back for repair. Communications Group in Red Deer keeps them in stock.
I was under the impression that was one of WiMax's original target markets
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
Latency is something that happen when you t
Several areas in southern Alberta might be regretting that decision today. Yesterday a major storm did a number on several areas. I know wireless is knocked out in the community where my parents live. And likely will take a while to fix, since the building the transmitter on (the grain elevator... ha) was heavily damaged by the wind. Seeing as it's the only readily available tall building in the area, they will likely be without any internet at all for some time.
Agree! Check out some of the older Inmarsat services too. Call a service provider (Stratos is one - and they are in Newfoundland). They can also lease you dedicated satellite channels, rather than $/MB plans. You'll need to know your traffic to figure out the best deal. Good luck.
Networking to the far north has already been done, I got the T-Shirt...
http://jproc.ca/rrp/alert.html
Do you use per key services proxies?
High latency is "deadly" in combination with non negligible packet loss.
P.S. had used ISP offering via two sat links connection to most of the Internet "a few+ years ago".
Latency is usually considered the biggest issue with IP over satellite. The best latency you can possibly get is 550 msec round-trip. If you are working with 2 satellite-enabled sites, your best will be 1100 msec, as there isn't any method of routing packets on the satellite. Packets will have to be sent to the groundstation and be rerouted, re-encrypted and repackaged for transmission to the other endpoint.
The other big killer for satellite IP is the issue of jitter. If you are close to noise floor for receiving or transmitting, you will get a *lot* of jitter as you miss your timing slots or the SIT requests retransmission of the packets. You will also get jitter if you are close to the throttling limits that the provider has enforced in the background that will delay the transmission of frames as a crude QOS system.
Latency kills applications that use lots of small packets for data transmission, e.g. RPC, older implementations of remote desktop, certain VPN solutions. Jitter on the other hand kills things like VOIP that function best with an expected and consistent timing of packet arrival.
The usual method of IP over satellite that I saw in practice was the DVB-RCS protocol http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVB-RCS which in essence packages an encrypted datastream in the mjpeg frames that would be handled as part of a television feed. Knowing the limitations of exactly how the data is transported can go a long way towards explaining the reasons why some apps work great for some people and other apps plainly suck.
There is not a huge amount of bandwidth available on the transponders, and the cost of the use of a transponder and the associated equipment at a groundstation can be frightening.
The issue of pointing accuracy and available power is also critical with satellite IP. The receive strength is important, but not as critical as the pointing required for the transmission side of things. The usual method that we had for pointing was to contact teh upstream provider that had the oscilloscopes on the feed, setting a carrier wave on the satmodem, and changing the point until there was a power peak. Then the antenna was tightened up and comissioning was completed once the routing was set up.
Satellite is good if you work within its limitations. It'll give you good service if your equipment is correctly specified and performs to its spec. It's unfortunate that the cost is so high, but that's the cost of using a transponder on a commercial satellite.
- This sig deliberately left blank. Nothing to see, move along.
I bought a satellite internet system (modem + dish + mounting hardware) for under $3K shipped to Afghanistan in 2004, & did it again when my unit went to Iraq in 2005-2006.
Bandwidth for 1 mbps symmetric dedicated was about $4000/month though (the cost was split amongst about 130-150 people at any given time). Latency was about as good as you could expect, given the limitations of physics (ie, speed of light to & from a geosync sat).
Shared plans started around $300/month IIRC.
Bentley Walker in the UK http://www.bentley-walker.com/ was our provider. I don't know if they have anything available for Canada, but they were a pleasure to deal with in every way.
I'm not sure how much of this will carry over to you since my experience is VSAT on cruise ships. All our ships are on KU band instead of the BUD's because of the size of the ships. We've spent a lot of time talking to a lot of different providers and in the end, you get what you pay for. Our ships have between 128Kbps and 192Kbps. You can burst double that for a maximum of four hours a day. We have phones onboard with VOIP and it works fine. The satellite dishes (raydomes) cost about $60,000 because they are for marine use, have GPS in them and track the satellite as the ship moves. On top of that, we pay anywhere between $3000 to $5500 a month per ship for that dedicated bandwidth. Are their cheaper options? Yes but the bandwidth is not dedicated. We get enough complaints about speed from our guests and crew that we wouldn't think about going to a shared connection and VOIP works very well over our connection.
Use blimp(s) with wireless repaters. Also called Stratellite (tm).
Off course, you'd probably be the first one to really do it, but then, someone has to start!
This really strikes a chord with me, as I spent about 6 hours on the phone with InfoSat the other day trying to get our satellite connections functioning properly, in the remote part of Northwest canada that I'm currently located in. What ended up fixing it was when the tech tried 'upgrading our service', then suddenly all was better. My suggestion is just to keep riding them until they fix it. You're paying a lot of money for a reason, and you should be getting your money's worth. Also, if you're going through a subcontractor I highly recommend bypassing them and contacting the real provider directly, as that was the only way I could solve my problem.
I work from home most of the time (in Rual Enderby, BC) and started off using the DW6000 and Galaxy Broadband as my provider. This was all I could get at the time. Since then I switched 2 years ago to a local ISP in Enderby (a town of 2000 people) who got a govt grant and installed wireless repeaters (which work amazingly well, blows the doors off sat). The hardware is availabilt from the BC supplier tranzeo.com, the distances depend on what you buy, I have a unit that can go 50KM. The speed is like 4Mbit down and 1Mbit up. Awesome for VOIP and working from home. To contact me for more info snag my email from www.soft-haus.com
I hate both with a passion. I would consider it complete insanity to use one on top of the other. Literally, I would have to quit my job or have someone else deal with that system completely... whether it be supporting it or using it. Email over satellite would be my only option if I were you people.
Most of these posts concern the Fair Access Policy limits and latency but you are probably excessively familiar with it already. I'm discussing how to solve your problem with access.
The key phrase that catches my eye in your question is that you are in remote, Northern Canada. The beams you are able to receive are at such an oblique angle you should feel lucky to get any service. As you know the satellites are over the equator. The latitude at which you are located is likely so far north that the satellite signal has to travel through so many hundreds of miles of murky atmosphere before it has to travel another 22,500 miles to the satellite. You might consider yourself fortunate that it even works at all at such a high latitude.
Northern Russia has an even bigger problem and they solved it with highly-elliptical orbits, sometimes called "tundra" orbits, but that requires some expensive ground equipment to track the birds and it's not even 100% available. The Antarctic uses huge C-band dishes and they're not even available at all times of data due to even more atmosphere attenuating the signal.
While you do not specifically mention the provider or the satellite format you are probably using a Ku-band system like Starband or HughesNet. WildBlue, while actively marketing to Canada, has most of its spotbeams aimed at just north of the Canadian border and they're at really oblique angles at that. Since WildBlue uses Ka-band it's out of the question for these distances and will be unavailable when the weather is rainy.
To solve this problem you'll be looking at expensive, non-consumer solutions that work in the C-band. Though the signals were somewhat weaker in the past, the newer satellites serving up north have surprisingly powerful C-band beams and, being in the C-band, they aren't affected by raindrops like Ku-band and Ka-band are, so the low angle in your location wouldn't be such a huge problem.
The following outfits provide this kind of specialized internet service. I hope they are useful to you.
For this kind of money, and the way C-band works, you can find dedicated transponder segments (and even entire transponders) so you will have a dedicated link.
This firm provides custom satellite solutions:
http://www.bcsatellite.net/
These sites have VSAT terminals for C-band (they do exist in case you were wondering):
http://www.satcomresources.com/VsatTransceivers.jsp
http://www.anacominc.com/prod_xc.html
Finally, you can punt and use Inmarsat terminals. They're not optimal but they can give you data in a pinch.
Kriston
May have missed it in this thread but I have not seen any reference to "meteor burst" radio.
Definitely not good for much data but for basic signals (like "keep-alive" signals) this technology has worked for years. I work for a scientific field station and we hope to use this stuff in areas for limited data communications in areas that cannot "see" the southern horizon.
Meteorcomm is one firm that does this stuff. There may be others as well...I do not know. (I do not work for MeteorComm but have visited them and they seem to be good folks.)
http://www.meteorcomm.com/technologies/tech_burst.aspx
(from their website) "meteor burst communications system (MBCS) uses ionized meteor trails as a means of radio signal propagation. These trails exist in the 80 to 120 km region of the earthâ(TM)s atmosphere, and reflect the RF energy between two stations. The height of the trails allows over-the-horizon communication at distances up to 2000 km. However, because the ionized trails exist for only short periods of time (usually from a few milliseconds to a few seconds) communication is intermittent, and high-speed digital transmission techniques must be used to convey the information. The system is particularly well suited for long-range, low data rate applications for both messaging and data acquisition."
hope this helps this thread ....
Cisco VOIP's can require about 90kb/s which can seriously eat up bandwidth on a TDMA satelite. There are some callmanager protocols that will reduce bandwidth. Another option is to cut back on the number of phones you are using significantly, or rig some POT's. It would be cheaper for you to get some Sat Phones instead of taking the price jump to an FDMA satelite.
You might looking to packet radio. As in amateur ham radio. Packet radios have come a long way sence the late 80's early 90's. Some are doing 56K-1.2Mbit.
So you could build your own robust p2p packet radio systems. As always, range is relative to power output, geography, and antenna location.
Once the initial investment has been made, there is no additional monthly service fees to pay.
I have used satellite and VOIP extensively in the oilfield for remote locations. Spacenet offers a good service that is not over subscribed. It is certainly not DSL speeds or cost, but we have successfully run 2 phone lines, fax, and internet over the same connection with minimal issues.
And I have faced down exactly this issue: lousy bandwidth and latency on satellite Internet. There are a few alternatives that come in way less than the $30K you mentioned, but the availability very much depends on your location.
If you would like, you can email me at panaqqa [at sign] gmail [separator dot] com with more specifics and I'll let you know if my solution would work for you. FYI the best satellite I know of gives RELIABLE 2Mbps down/450kbps up.
Have you thought about trying to use a cellular signal? I can't really speak for canada's service, but I know people who use gprs modems and will get a decent speed and latency out of them.
I just hope it's not the company I work for giving you problems. I swear we'll get that CIR applied and working correctly.
Very informative
For $1000 of hardware, and $100 in monthly fees it sounds like you are using a KA system.
KA systems can work okay for VOIP, but there are several factors that can complicate things. First off, different VOIP providers work better than others, and there is no guarantee with any VOIP service as your KA provider can (and will) modify the traffic it allows by limiting/prioritizing ports. Also, KA providers limit your bandwidth size proportional to the amount of usage on your system. So if you have people streaming music, or using torrents your pipe will shrink and your VOIP will suffer.
Of course, due to the nature of KA being a shared bandwidth source bandwidth can be unpredictable, and sometimes unreliable.
I work for a company that is based out of Yellowknife NT, Canada. We are a private business that provides voice and data services via satellite to companies doing work in remote locations in Northern Canada.
We have had a lot of success with VOIP over satellite throughout the north. Of course our methods are trade secrets, but we would be happy to offer you a quote on a system to suit your companies needs...
Hams are not limited to 9600 baud by any kind of regulation. That's about as fast as you'll get on UHF with a single FM narrowband channel, but some of those crazy bastards working microwave frequencies have achieved digital data rates much higher than 9600 baud.
If only I could hobble on my broken leg to the Wal-Mart to get a skype card I'd have a job right now.
I'm part owner of a wireless broadband provider. We use Alvarion equipment to deliver high speed internet from a local mountain top in southern New Hampshire. Much better than satellite because the distance the signal has to travel is only 6 miles vs. 30k from a satellite, which has bad latency.
If you can get a leased line, look at splitting up the costs by then being a small community broadband provider, as one of my partners did prior to us merging with his company.
It could be that new hire in cubicle #2 downloading Hello Kitty Tea Party. Wait, I bet it's that guy who still doesn't get The Sixth Sense so he's downloading it again. I got my fingers crossed for him. You did not elaborate into how efficient your network is but rather just ask for a new company by insisting that the shared plan is to blame. I'd stick my head into the network and figure out why delay is increasing. If all else fails, I find that a reliable jitter is the best and letting the network traffic produce the jitter is not the best idea. Let me know if you want more information on this. Sorry, I can't answer your question because it is a satellite connection. I feel everyone's pain.
The entire Eastern seaboard to Cape Dyer and a major arc across to Alaska were linked, mostly by troposcatter, when I was last up there. Bandwidth wasn't huge but reliability was high. I understand some of the stations are now run for "research" by some alphabet government department.
I am writing this while traveling in the near North of Ontario.
My connection is via xplornet, a satellite provider while I am on this trip.
Latency really sucks. Everything has a lag to it, but most noticably SSH is unusuable at all.
Bandwidth seems to be OK, but at times, the transfer rate crawls to just BYTES per second.
I am glad this is only temprorary in my case, and I pity those who have to deal with an SSH connection over satellite.
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
I can't help you Canada, but can relay my experiences from Afghanistan.
512 down 128 up dedicated, 1.2 meter dish (I think, could easily be wrong on the dish), ended up running about $30,000 U.S. a year. About 2 people could fired up Vonage VOIP and get a decent connection, any more than than and things went bad. Ping times were 675-800ms when the link wasn't too saturated. We had upwards to 18 different people sharing the link, so it was often saturated, especially in the evenings.
We looked at several different companies, and found some 256 symmetric shared (duno where the sharing took place, ISP or satellite, or what) connections for a little cheaper, but when we tried those out, they were all but unusable.
Getting decent bandwidth and low latency to the ends of the earth isn't cheap, reliable, or effective. It wouldn't surprise me if the middle of nowhere northern Canada had an equally poor satellite footprint to Afghanistan.
http://www.engadget.com/2004/07/20/canons-canobeam-dt-130-get-your-wireless-laser-internet-on/
If you're paying $100/month for shared segment you are probably getting some crap service. I work with three different hubs (Telesat directly, a telesat reseller, and Hughes in the US) and even for a 64kbps symmetrical service I spend considerably more than $100. I generally see 600ms latency on these links. These are on iDirect iNFINITY 3000 series IDUs with 1.8M dishes. I believe 512kbps/512kbps service was something like $500/month (i'd have to dobule check).
Leasing space segment isn't worth it IMO unless you have a bunch of sites with very low bandwidth requirements. If you are doing VOIP and video conferencing this is not the case. Most providers can give you a CIR on a shared segment which will definitely help applications like VOIP and Video. But you get what you pay for. $100/month won't buy you much in the satellite world.
Although VOIP will not work reliably, VSAT is an excellent options when there are no others excpet dialup. I used www.starband.com for 6 years before moing to a location with broadband. Down speeds were awesome, up speeds OK, packet turnaround time sucks for VPN and any other packet-exchange protocol.
Starband uses a protocol accelerator (BST - Boosted Session Transport) that blasts loads of packets at once and then blasts the check sums. Allowing large data transfers to take advantage of the high speed burts that VSAT uses. I have, on occasion, had speeds up to 25 MB/S; I am not joking (that is MB/S not mb/S)! However, 1 to 4 megabits is normal.
Jamey
Jamey Kirby
If power was available, then wires would exist and a cable for data could be laid (or hung) cheap-like. If towers are 28 to 220 miles apart, where are we getting the juice from? Diesel? Last time I checked solar wasn't very effective in the northern latitudes because of solar penetration and weather. How long will a generator last to power said tower? How much fuel would it require? How much juice to push 220 miles through stinky weather? 25 watts ain't gonna likely cut it.
That said, if the right piece of real estate could be had to put the right pieces of hardware upon AND have service capabilities and backup power provided without herculean efforts this may work.
Said calculations are for line-of-sight frequencies over a theoretical horizon. With use of reflected frequencies and some ham radio capability a network could be set up, but I don't know the details, but service would still be spotty because the ionosphere "moves" changing where signals reflect to.
Using multiple systems of varying capacity may be the best approach. Or pay to have a cable placed.
See about running over the pole to Russia
Have fun, good luck
Phil
Laugh, it's good for you!
PASON is designed for rig sites and will work all over, I have used it in Northern AB and BC.
This isn't exactly what you are looking for but they do offer a satellite link with their services that can support VOIP. Not sure if you can use them for data only though and not the rest of the rig system
http://www.pason.com/WEB/html/products/idms.html
Microwave backhaul can be very cost effective and very scalable in terms of the bandwidth you need, even when you must pay installation costs. In some cases these can be shared or avoided if a MW provider believes they can attract other customers onto the same infrastructure. Of course you don't mention if the remote locations are 'fixed' or 'roaming'.. to some degree portable MW tx/rx can solve roaming problems as well.
I have been living in the Canadian North for 42 years now. We first had dialup with reduced rates to Yellowknife until Bell offered their DirecPC which piggybacked download on E1 then E2. After that, several organizations along with the Feds put together a 'broadband' wireless system in order to give each community better and cheaper service then dialup. As has already been commented, costs are considerably higher then you southern user. Telsat came up with their Ka system which operates around 20Ghz giving more bandwidth then earlier Ku. They put F2 into orbit about 3 years ago and started offering their service directly(Anikast),and through 2nd party ISP's, like Netkaster, Xplornet, etc. I have been installing both the Netkaster and Anikast systems for over 2 years now. Original systems were $500-750 complete with installation extra. Four packages are provided starting with 500 Kbps, 1 Mbps, 1.5 Mbps, and 2.0 Mpbs. Downloads are usually 1/4 upload speeds. Up until last May, 2007, the service was quite good. Unfortunately, Telesat decided to 'Improve' the service and it has sucked big time since then. From where I am, it looked like they took some of our bandwidth in order to satisfy their southern customers, figuring us Northern customer wouldn't notice. Sound familiar-Concast, Bell, etc. Of course they denied all of this but results and experiences says otherwise. Unfortunately, HughesNet, a Ku 2-way satellite service is not being offered on any satellites that we can use up here, so the Ka is it. VOIP does work but Skype works better. Costs are not bad considering what else is available. The 500 Kbps is going for $55-65 CDN up to $150-$200 for the 2Mbps service. For those requiring more bandwidth, they could use several units tied together with a Load Balancing router. As for outages, we have 4 beams covering the Canadian north with most going through Vancouver hub. It has been very reliable with far fewer outages then the other provider. It takes real heavy precipitation to kill satellite signal and even that it not for long. Equipment failure does happen but is so infrequent that I might have to fix 5-8 in a year of the 75-80 units now installed in my community. I saw that Japan launched their own BroadBand satellite that is capable of 50 Mbps, so the potential is there, but so is the higher cost. No free lunch up here, but at least we can surf the net anywhere you have a power source(approx 100watts), and depending on your location to the 4 beams, work as far north as 80 degrees(Eureka). Just my 2 cents worth, or maybe 5 cents worth due inflation.
From their website http://isosat.net/ IsoTropic Networks, Inc. (IsoTropic) is a global solutions based provider of VSAT satellite communications systems. IsoTropic is widely recognized as the âoeNew Gold Standardâ that can integrate satellite and terrestrial technologies in a seamless fashion to provide customers with reliable, robust communications solutions. Currently operating on 8 satellites, IsoTropic covers 95% of the world. When communications have to be there, anywhere, right now, IsoTropic delivers.
They specialize in satellite communication links (specifically VOIP) in difficult to reach places worldwide. Small company - excellent services out of Calgary, Alberta http://www.immersecoms.com/home.htm
I've recently been talking to some folks about their satellite VoIP usage in N. Canada and they're using Asterisk to aggregate their VoIP traffic for savings. This of course doesn't improve latency, but it does allow you significant improvement on bandwidth efficiency.
A G.711 ULAW 10ms RTP stream (typical "toll-quality") is around 82-85kbps, about 16kbps of which is the IP headers surrounding each packet and around 64kbps is the "speech" part of the data. That's a lot of data, so typically calls are compressed using something like G.729, so that the "speech" part drops to ~9kbps. But the IP overhead for those more efficient streams is the same as with G.711: 16kbps. The total bandwidth of a G.729 stream is now ~24kbps, but two thirds of the traffic is IP header. This is Bad. Adding more simultaneous channels of speech over the same link just gums up the bandwidth with IP headers and relatively little is used for the speech (important) part of the transmissions.
If you've got an Asterisk system somewhere at each 'end' of a sat link, you can use IAX2 trunking to stuff multiple channels of "speech" parts into a single set of IP headers. You still use 16kbps of IP headers, but each incremental G.729 channel only takes up 9kbps more data on the pipe instead of 24kbps.
For a comparison of various codecs using IAX2 trunking, see the study I did a long time ago here:
http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/view/Asterisk+bandwidth+iax2?view_comment_id=56165
John Todd /. account)
Asterisk Open Source Community Director
jtodd@digium.com
(who is too lazy to re-sign up for his
http://www.getnetnow.net/
I work for the company that developed the solution that will be sold over there in the near future (this year). We have similar customers in Europe (SES Astra e.g.)
The service is cheap (around 40euro/month in europe) for a _real broadband experience_ (I work in the testing department, trust me, it's true). Also VoIP is no problem. It uses DVB-S2 with extensive IP acceleration tricks te reduce latency. VoIP quality is ensured with special traffic classes.
The price can be low due to efficient dynamic scheduling of the return link.
It has to do with the way satellite works, and in particular, collisions with other subscribers on your return VoIP traffic. In most cases, you're running over a TDMA (time devision multiple access) or RA (RAndom Access) return channel. This means you burst your return traffic to the bird with no clue who else is talking at the moment. Think ethernet hub, but with 700ms latency. You can hold more subscribers in this manner per satellite with less overhead. If you get a collision, it re-transmits, but this service level is entirely inadequarte for voice as you need guranteed return traffic. Latency is not an issue, as long as packet loss and jitter are ok. Latency only gives you annoying delay, which you must deal with.
Now, to get voice to work you need some provider who will offer some type of call admission control who will dedicate a time-slot to your return channel sufficient for the bandwdith of the call. Then it will work great. Unfortuantely, even 64kbps of dedicated return channel spectrum is expensive. Your only hopes to find this economically is some system which flags, classifies, and provides dedicated bandwidth on deamnd for the duration of a call, and then releases it to other subscribers when you hang up. I mean really, dedicated bandwidth specturm (khz), which then is bandwidth is expensive for a megabit, expect to pay $10,000/mo (now I'm sure they pay less in quantity and have fewer capital costs). For a 50kbit VoIP dedicate return channel that's around $400/mo. Just think of the oversubscription level necessary to sell that to you @ $100/mo. With normal intrnet usage only, 80 people on a T-1 sized line is entirely possible. Or VoIP usage if it only holds that channel upon during the duration of the call is quite economical too.
This is all assuming the outbound (hub to you) is not just oversubscribed, but that should never have loss outside of oversubscription. The return will always have loss, even if it's not oversubscribed under TDMA/RA, just less loss.
After 266 comments... There are satellite specific products that may help you. However you may want to consider adding WAN Optimization to your satellite communications. While several providers offer TCP acceleration, the combination of QOS and TCP Accel might help you straighten out your VOIP and reduce the cost (i.e. the amount of data that you are billed for going over the sat link) There are a number of WAN OPT solutions that may be able to help you with your VOIP over satellite. I work for one (natch). My company Expand Networks has had a reasonable amount of success at running VOIP over Satellite in many remote locations. However a lot depends on your Sat Modem, the specific mix of traffic, bandwidth etc. Here are a few links to some whitepapers. http://www.expand.com/Industries/Index.aspx?URL=/Industries/Government.aspx http://www.expand.com/Industries/Government/Index.aspx?URL=/Industries/Government/Mobile-Military-Communications.aspx The guy you want to talk to though at Expand is Eric Olson, he is head of the technical team there and would give you a straight answer on what to expect. He has placed over 9000 accelerators for the US Govt worldwide. Hit the Expand website and place a call. Another issue to be alert to since you mention that you are running VOIP to remote locations is whether the WAN OPT solution is running a diskless solution or a hard drive if you worry about running out to the far reaches of canada to replace a crashed hard drive. Let me know if I can help. Stewart
.
Less expensive, I think not:
Calls to Iridium phones are notoriously expensive, ranging from US$3 to US$14 per minute. It is possible to call with charges reversed by first dialing a number in Arizona; the call is charged to the receiver at the standard rate for satellite to landline calls, but the caller only pays for the call to Arizona. Since Iridium will not sell prepaid cards or even its subscription call service directly, it is hard to obtain the exact price of making a call. There are numerous distributors that will activate Iridium phones and sell pre-paid vouchers and SIM cards. Regardless of the price, each pre-paid card or monthly plan comes with a number of minutes. These minutes are the "basic rate" to landlines. For a 500 minute annual plan the cost of the "basic rates" fluctuates around US$1.50/min.
Iridium operates at only 2.2 to 3.8 kilobaud, which requires very aggressive voice compression and decompression algorithms. Latency can range from 800 to 3500 milliseconds. Iridium
If he has the broadband link, why not use it? The low latency connection is a fantasy. Save the Iridium minutes for when you really need them and not the-keeping-in-touch call to your sister in Toronto.
I actually work at BusinessCom (www.bcsatellite.net) All what everybody else said is pretty much true. Solution: try to find an iDirect-based service network operator that can setup custom QoS for you. That is, prioritize your VoIP traffic over everything else. Additionally, make sure you purchase some small quota of dedicated CIR bandwidth, and you'll have a crystal clear VoIP over satellite.