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!
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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!
"If you can't do it in 48K, it's not worth doing"