Vanity: Need advice on satellite internet connections

Starwind | 7/22/02 | Starwind

[Starwind]

My mother wants to get on the internet (she might even become a freeper) but wants a high speed connection.

Problem is, she lives on a farm in Southeast Nebraska 5+ miles from any 'town' so cable modems, DSL, ISDN are out. She has satellite TV and some satellite companies do offer internet connections.

Can anyone recommend a satellite provider with high quality. I understand weather can yet be a problem and I don't know who has reliable equipment, service, etc.

She lives in Richardson county, about 30 miles equidistant from Kansas-Missouri borders.

I appreciate any descriptions of experience with satellite internet connections good or bad - please comment on weather and seasons if possible.

[mvpel]

Huh? Dish/StarBand was getting ready to buy out DirecTV, last I heard. Bankruptcy?

[EBUCK]

Dish is suposed to be in merger talks with echo-star I think.

EBUCK

[New Horizon]

Starband Story Here...

[LibWhacker]

Check this forum out. They talk about nothing but satellite there (pros, cons, costs, weather, etc.). Near the top of the page is Google's big list of satellite providers, among other things. Good luck.

[HAL9000]

The current generation of satellite internet service providers may be okay for some folks. Your mother may find it is a satisfactory service.

For people who need fast response time, or need to download large amounts of data, it's not a very good solution. The satellite is out 44,000 miles, so there is a significant delay. The capacity is limited - there is more bandwidth in a bundle of fiber-optic cable than all of the satellites combined.

The worst thing is that the satellite companies have some hard limits on how much you can download. If you exceed that limit, you get "FAPed" (Fair Access Policy), which reduces your connection to dial-up speed for several hours. The FAP rules are vague, so you can't really tell when it will take effect or end.

The best place to research this is at these newsgroups - alt.satellite.direcpc and alt.satellite.starband.

Judging from the messages, most of the customers seem dissatisfied.

Things may improve when newer satellite systems are launched, like the lower-orbit Teledesic system. Unfortunately, they are a few years away.

You might want to research whether a terrestrial-based wireless system is planned for her area, perhaps using 3G, OFDM or Wi-Fi protocols. For example, see IPWireless.

Also, check DSLReports for other possible options.

I think satellite will be a great way to get broadband Internet in Africa or Afghanistan. But this is America, and wireline is the way it ought to be done here. Write a letter to you Congressman and tell him/her that it's time to make broadband the national standard for our communications infrastructure.

[Starwind]

I have had no real problems with Starband except that the modem went out a couple of months ago and I had to argue till I was blue in the face with them that it was STILL under warranty because I hadn't had it for a year yet.

You see, when I signed up in March 2001 it was for the "Starband 180" equipment, which worked pretty well and allowed me to use the broadband router that I had from when I used DSL at my previous address.

Then, in September of last year they "forced" people to upgrade to the Starband 360 modem. It was okay on the surface because the upgrade was free (except they did charge you for shipping).

The downside was that the modem's compression software was now on the connected PC instead of as firmware on the modem, and bye-bye to my nice broadband router. It meant I could no longer host email and stuff (for reasons which I won't go into at this time).

But it worked okay, and once I got ICS set up on my Windows 2000 box, it did allow me to share the connection throughout my LAN, just not as spiffily as before (and, since the 360 didn't support Linux, my Linux box has been cut off from the 'Net ever since).

Anyway, so it worked fine from September 2001 till April 2002, when the Starband 360 modem just quit.

I tried everything with the tech support folks, but to no avail. Finally tech support said "we'll have to swap out the modem. Sorry."

So I waited for two weeks, no modem. I called them back and that's when the hassle began: They kept claiming I had to pay $500 for the new modem!!!

It took a couple more weeks, but I finally wore them down with my argument that I had NOT had the Starband 360 for a year--they were trying to claim that my warranty period was from the first installation of the 180!

Anyway, once they sent me a new modem--and didn't charge me for it--things are back on track.

But as soon as DSL or Cable Modem are available at my address--probably later this year--I'm ditching the Starband.

In summary, it is a great solution if you have no other broadband alternatives, but it cannot compete with DSL or Cable.

153 posted on 7/27/02 9:45 AM Pacific by Illbay (to Starwind on a different thread)

[Starwind]

Thanks very much for your information.

I took the liberty of transfering your post here where it is more on topic.

Could you comment please on what kind of download/upload response you get and complications from weather?

Could you also comment on something called the Fair Access Policy? (see HAL9000's comment in post #25)

The worst thing is that the satellite companies have some hard limits on how much you can download. If you exceed that limit, you get "FAPed" (Fair Access Policy), which reduces your connection to dial-up speed for several hours. The FAP rules are vague, so you can't really tell when it will take effect or end.

What has been your experience with FAP?

[Illbay]

Downloads are pretty close to ADSL; uploads are not speedy at all.

I have not had any experience with anything I'd call a "deliberate speed slowdown." I suspect this is yet another Internet Legend.

I rarely have downtimes due to weather unless it's a sever thunderstorm right in the line of sight.

I used to have "enhanced ADSL" (meaning I had fixed IPs) and NEVER remembered experiencing ANY downtime, but I heard from others who had the DHCP-type ADSL, and they said they were down about once a week, sometimes for a day.

Cable modem, I have no experience with such downtime, so I can't compare.

[Starwind]

I have not had any experience with anything I'd call a "deliberate speed slowdown." I suspect this is yet another Internet Legend.

So how much 'downloading' do you typically do? multi-MB product downloads? 100 kb pdf files?, large jpegs?, etc?

[Starwind]

Would you consider going to this bandwidth test site and tell me what speed it measures for your connection?

[Illbay]

I use mine for business purposes, and I use it a lot (which is one reason I'm on FR so much, because I spend pretty much all day at the 'puter). I'm not sure how much on average, but I do download a lot.

[Illbay]

2.4 megabits per second

Your raw speed was 2402404.27 bits per second which is the same as:

Communications 2.4 megabits per second

How communication devices are rated. Kilo means 1,000 and mega means 1,000,000. Examples include 56k modem and 10Mbit Ethernet

Storage 293.3 kilobytes per second
The way data is measured on your hard drive and how file sharing and FTP programs measure transfer speeds. Kilo is 1,024 and mega is 1,048,576.

1MB file download 3.5 seconds
The time it would take you to download a 1 megabyte file at this speed.

Rating

Compared to all connection types worldwide, yours is fantastic

[Starwind]

HAL9000

Illbay gets good results from Starband (see posts from #25 on)

Not trying to start a dispute, but did you use Starband? You didn't comment on which satellite service you did use.

[HAL9000]

Not trying to start a dispute, but did you use Starband? You didn't comment on which satellite service you did use.

Most of the information I've gotten about satellite Internet came from reading customer forums. My actual experience with it is very limited.

I tried a Starband demo at Radio Shack (which has since dropped it). It seemed slower than a dial-up connection, but the salesperson explained that the demo used a different satellite than the live service.

On the "FAP" issue, I should have said that was a policy of Hughes (DirecPC, Earthlink, Pegasus, etc.), and not Starband - although the Starband TOS does give them the right to impose a similar policy.