Dish

Anything using a satellite is painful to use because of the high latency. Everyone I know who has one has immediately migrated to any terrestrial service that became available.

Can't say for sure about Hughesnet, but I cruise a fair amount and thus use their satellites. They are SLOOOOWWW, not quite dial up, but not all that far either. The latency is a bear,too. Now how much of that is real, how much secondary to the fact that the cruise ship is a moving target (something you wouldn't have to deal with obviously) and how much is built-in to the system by the cruiselines to take full advantage of 50 cents/minute, I can't say.

Where I live it's either dial-up or satellite. I tried dial-up and canceled the service after one week (painfully slow).

I have been with HUGHES.NET for about 9 months now and find it adequate for day to day Internet activities. Secure sites tend to be somewhat slower than other sites but it beats dial-up.

The commercials for HUGHES.NET are deceptive as the speed will never be as fast as a DSL or Cable broadband connection.

Actual speed falls below DSL and fluctuates depending on time of day. I typically see 500 Kbps during off-peak hours and about 100 Kbps during peak hours.

There are also caps on downloads. The cap depends on the service plan you choose and can cause problems if you download a lot.

I recommend you read the forum messages at

before locking into any contracts.

I have several customers using DirecWay (HughesNet) and one just signed up for WildBlue. Every one of these uses satellite because of the lack of other suitable alternatives. I'll be moving one customer to a rather messy combination of DSL, copper, and FTTF (fiber through the forest) because of the problems with satellite. This customer is a stock broker and cannot afford to have the system down or slow. Most common complaints are incredible slowness at time, total dropouts during bad weather, and very slow uploads. Encrypted pages also run very slowly. VoIP is useless due to the latency. I suggest you look into alternatives if they are available. If you can get DSL, cable, or wireless internet, at where you're moving, do it.

Speaking of alternatives and DirecWay, one of my non-paying customers (I get free dinners and ocassional firewood) has about 15 computers and 6 houses on a single shared DirecWay satellite link. The only reason this works is that everyone cooperated to keep the system up and to not exceed the FAP (fair access policy). They've been talking about dragging in a cable or wireless link for a year and it appears that it's going to be done this summer. Satellite just doesn't have the capacity to handle heavy traffic.

What about cellular? My cingular connection just went from GPRS to EGPRS recently. That might be a bump up to the 150Kbps region. In some areas (areas that probably have other alternatives anyway) there are higher speed options.

Just south of where I am now, 24k dialup was it. A friend is on starnet, and one group of families is sharing a T-1. The cellular coverage was good in that area, so that would now be faster than dialup.

The friend who is on starnet is near the top of a hill, and I thought he might be able to make some cooperative wifi arrangement with someone else that could get DSL from the nearby town, but he never pursued that because of the tall trees on his property.

On Tue, 3 Apr 2007 00:09:06 +0000 (UTC), snipped-for-privacy@29.usenet.us.com wrote in :

200+ Kbps with good signal and a good device.

HSDPA: 500+ Kbps

Somebody put me on to Wildblue. It's half the equipment cost and just $49 a month for 500kbs download and 128 upload max. They don't mention download limits, must be in the fine print I haven't seen yet.

Only if you must, but I can say, our service is good. We have 8 pcs sharing a business account ($100 mo) and with the bigger dish/2 watt radio, up to 1.5 Mbps DL, it's pretty good! We actually get 800-1200 most all the time. Latency is noticable, but not like dial up. It takes a moment but then the page pours in. Except secure, as was said. It's not treated the same way and is slow. Banking for example. Downloads on our system are great, that's where it shines, but watch your FAP. Study the accounts carefully before choosing, especially each one's FAP and recover rate.

If you are sure you are using it for a while, consider the bigger dish and radio. In the long run, it can make a difference in signal quality and your choices for service plans. Only the bigger dish can do bizness plans.

Installation is critical. It will make or break your experience. Find somebody in your area that has proven success. Find the guy that has a good relationship with the main office, knows his stuff. This is way more complex than TV dishes. Check to see if a Hughes reseller, like Ground Control makes sense for you. The added level of service may be worth it. Make sure you have your installer on your side and take care that he has time to get you a good set-up. I asked him to optmize our uploads (weakest part) and he spent hours trying combinations of polarization and alignment until he got it dialed in. That's what you want.

somebody said, it's quite difficult to turn a profit in the satellite internet biz. Bandwidth via rocketships is still very expensive. Hughes is the only one that turns a profit and them just recently. It's easy for startups to promise a lot and then as contracts are signed, the money gets tight, they cram more people onto the same transponders - the "contention ratio" is a big factor in your promised "up-to" vs actual.

So I wouldn't let the cheap Wildblue gear sway you. You want the best connection you can get within reason, that's what matters.

I did hear that WildBlue may improve with their next generation tech. Hughes seems to have interesting new tech in the works too. The Hughesnet gear is better, their modem is very good. They got it right. Wildblue's modem is said to be minimal, just short of crippled.

Also Wildblue has, to me, a more problematic FAP policy. It can leave you stuck at dial-up speeds for days, not just hours. Though they say it depends on how you use the internet which FAP is better... Just be sure to understand FAP very well and read the satellite forums to educate yourself. Do be aware that mostly people with complaints go there. The people with working systems are busy using their internet.

VOIP. I can get computer to computer voip to work. With a delay, it's like a walkie talkie, not duplex. Best to plan on voip not working with Satellite. Though the $40 extra dedicated VOIP they sell may be better, I've seen it working more or less...

Cheers, Steve

Steve

But it still uses a satellite. I would consider it only if no terrestrial ISPs were available.

AMEN

Depending on your location, a cellular connection may be a reasonable alternative. When we are in Verizon "Broadband" (EVDO) areas, we get

400-800 kbps download and 80-100 kbps upload speeds. Where they have rolled out Rev. A service, Rev. A-compatible devices are getting much faster upload speeds and marginally faster download speeds. Some areas are getting well over 1 mbps download speeds reliably.

Service is $60/month if you have a Verizon voice plan. (Sprint offers the same service and prices.) With Verizon (and I assume Sprint), you can try it for something like 15 days at no risk. If you don't like it, you can return the hardware and cancel the contract. You can use either a cell phone or a PC Card/ExpressCard/USB device.

Like a satellite connection, though, a cellular connection has substantial latency (less so with Rev. A). As a result, web surfing is MUCH slower than the nominal download speed would imply. While a file may easily download at the maximum speed, a web page with several dozen objects can load almost as slowly as a dialup connection.

One other caveat. Verizon has a 5 GB per month limit on their "Unlimited BroadbandAccess" plan. Sprint does not.

Hope that helps.

On Fri, 06 Apr 2007 07:33:12 -0500, Dave Rudisill wrote in :

Latency should be low enough, especially when used with the latest HTTP protocols, for web access to be pretty snappy, just as it is here in the San Francisco Bay Area over AT&T/Cingular HSDPA, an experience close to cable or DSL, much snappier than dial-up. (I'm using it as I write this.) While HSDPA is better than EV-DO (even Rev A), the difference shouldn't be that big a deal. Perhaps there's an issue with the EV-DO device, local service, or backhaul.

I think it's a safe bet that Sprint (and AT&T/Cingular) also will be monitoring and "discouraging" heavy (ab)users.