My girlfriend got StarBand during their pilot program. She lives outside Woodstock, NY. I spend weekends up there and have logged quite a bit of time behind her Sat. connection, and was also there taking part in the installation.
Personally, I can't imagine I could ever get serious work done over StarBand as it currently is. It's been flakey: I'd say she's had about 95% availability (it's been completely out for the last four days and now she's waiting for a technician to be dispatched), though I _believe_ the outages have been mostly associated with her dish and/or the PC+Software from StarBand.
My main issues however are with the Latency, Networking other machines through it, and the proxy/performance-enhancing software they install. Latency is as others keep saying, pretty bad. You click a link in a Web page, and sit there for a couple seconds before the browser even begins to show signs of receiving data. Next, though we did manage to network several other computers using a Hub and Apple's Airport, StarBand supplies their systems with some software which provides very limited proxy support, but also attempts to boost the speeds and decrease the latency. Unfortunately, that proxy has configurations for pop/smtp servers, nntp, http, ftp and a single "free port". So her and I having our mail accounts on separate servers, have to go in and change the POP setting in that software, then restart the software to switch between email accounts. Next, while I've managed to route that free proxy port to one of my unix machines for telnet, telnet is basically unusable. Really unusable! And you can basically forget about ever running any kind of daemon process and letting the outside world connect to it. Before anyone rails on me that StarBand isn't for hosting servers, let me point out I'm not talking about that. I just mean if you were doing some App Server work for a client and wanted to let them connect to your mobile development box to see the work, forget it. Consider that even modem connections offer this. I've read other users' comments regarding replacing their proxy with WinProxy, et al. But I've very reluctant to try this since it's her connection to the world and I don't want to be responsible for foobaring it.
In summary, I had great hopes for this service when I learned she was getting it, cause I too would like to escape the high-priced metropolitan areas and get my little ranch in the Catskills or somewhere, but I've realized now that's not gonna happen with StarBand, and probably not with any two-way satellite connection.
I've been ecstatically happy since getting DSL through SNET back in April of this year. Having waited so long for affordable broadband, I decided to spend the extra $$ and take the 6Mbs/386Kbs package. But I DID NOT elect SNET/ASI as my internet provider, and am thankful every day for that choice.
I had already had prior to getting DSL, a dedicated dial-up with Netplex out of Hartford (www.ntplx.net), and had a few static IPs as part of that deal. So I went with Netplex as my DSL internet provider, kept the same IPs, and they were very helpful in getting my router configured. I can't speak highly enough about Netplex. They're competent and have a lot of bandwidth at their disposal.
I've had one outage in all this time, and it only lasted about an hour. I regularly see 200+K/sec in downloading large files, and have stacked up multiple downloads for a combined total of around 500K/sec (as reported by the browser's status bar).
For me, it's been the best thing since puberty.
As an aside for those who are still frustrated by DSL or not being able to get DSL: my girlfriend just bought a house in Woodstock, NY, and there were no (affordable) broadband options available to her there. But last week we got a Gilat2Home two-way satellite dish installed for Internet access. So far, it's working well enough, and is considerably faster than a modem. The downside is it's very limited when you go to network multiple machines together. Their system currently uses one IP for Tx, and a different IP for Rx (the Rx IP is an internal address of the form 192.168.x.x). Networking other machines can only work through a proxy running on the Gilat-supplied Dell PC, and you're limited to mail, http, ftp, and a single wildcard port you can configure as you want. In summary, it's better than a modem, and at about $70/mo, not bad if you can't get DSL , Cable or Wireless, but in a multi-machine network, it still sucks rocks.
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My girlfriend got StarBand during their pilot program. She lives outside Woodstock, NY. I spend weekends up there and have logged quite a bit of time behind her Sat. connection, and was also there taking part in the installation.
Personally, I can't imagine I could ever get serious work done over StarBand as it currently is. It's been flakey: I'd say she's had about 95% availability (it's been completely out for the last four days and now she's waiting for a technician to be dispatched), though I _believe_ the outages have been mostly associated with her dish and/or the PC+Software from StarBand.
My main issues however are with the Latency, Networking other machines through it, and the proxy/performance-enhancing software they install. Latency is as others keep saying, pretty bad. You click a link in a Web page, and sit there for a couple seconds before the browser even begins to show signs of receiving data. Next, though we did manage to network several other computers using a Hub and Apple's Airport, StarBand supplies their systems with some software which provides very limited proxy support, but also attempts to boost the speeds and decrease the latency. Unfortunately, that proxy has configurations for pop/smtp servers, nntp, http, ftp and a single "free port". So her and I having our mail accounts on separate servers, have to go in and change the POP setting in that software, then restart the software to switch between email accounts. Next, while I've managed to route that free proxy port to one of my unix machines for telnet, telnet is basically unusable. Really unusable! And you can basically forget about ever running any kind of daemon process and letting the outside world connect to it. Before anyone rails on me that StarBand isn't for hosting servers, let me point out I'm not talking about that. I just mean if you were doing some App Server work for a client and wanted to let them connect to your mobile development box to see the work, forget it. Consider that even modem connections offer this. I've read other users' comments regarding replacing their proxy with WinProxy, et al. But I've very reluctant to try this since it's her connection to the world and I don't want to be responsible for foobaring it.
In summary, I had great hopes for this service when I learned she was getting it, cause I too would like to escape the high-priced metropolitan areas and get my little ranch in the Catskills or somewhere, but I've realized now that's not gonna happen with StarBand, and probably not with any two-way satellite connection.
I had already had prior to getting DSL, a dedicated dial-up with Netplex out of Hartford (www.ntplx.net), and had a few static IPs as part of that deal. So I went with Netplex as my DSL internet provider, kept the same IPs, and they were very helpful in getting my router configured. I can't speak highly enough about Netplex. They're competent and have a lot of bandwidth at their disposal.
I've had one outage in all this time, and it only lasted about an hour. I regularly see 200+K/sec in downloading large files, and have stacked up multiple downloads for a combined total of around 500K/sec (as reported by the browser's status bar).
For me, it's been the best thing since puberty.
As an aside for those who are still frustrated by DSL or not being able to get DSL: my girlfriend just bought a house in Woodstock, NY, and there were no (affordable) broadband options available to her there. But last week we got a Gilat2Home two-way satellite dish installed for Internet access. So far, it's working well enough, and is considerably faster than a modem. The downside is it's very limited when you go to network multiple machines together. Their system currently uses one IP for Tx, and a different IP for Rx (the Rx IP is an internal address of the form 192.168.x.x). Networking other machines can only work through a proxy running on the Gilat-supplied Dell PC, and you're limited to mail, http, ftp, and a single wildcard port you can configure as you want. In summary, it's better than a modem, and at about $70/mo, not bad if you can't get DSL , Cable or Wireless, but in a multi-machine network, it still sucks rocks.
-wayne