I want to use an 802.11n router in a rural area from the mian house to an office. But they don't have cable in this area. What are some of the best ways to get high-speed over satellite these days? Seems liek DirectPC or whatever it is called only runs about 1Mbps and forces you to buy a $600 receiver unit, sign a contract, and might have poor upload speeds. Any advise?
- JB
Three possibilities come to mind. One is a business class wireless link, which is popular in growing rural areas.
Another is extending the reach of a nearby cable or DSL link, by buying a subscription for someone who has access to the high speed network, that is within a manageable WiFi view of your location.
A third would be cellular/GPRS/CDMA/EVDO/something. These reach as far as a cellular signal and offer speeds from fast dialup to slow DSL, depending on vendor and location.
You should get a better price than $600, but yeah, you don't get upload speeds to speak of. There's also WildBlue and others. Speeds tend to be comparable.
Cellular, from every supplier I can use in Canada, can sometimes give you the speed but you pay through the nose for anything over some maximum byte-count.
Believe it or not, I have an EVDO card, but it just craps out a lot in the country.
- JB
The Cingular data package is $0.01 per KB, either pay-as-you-go, or over the limit on a monthly MB package. There is no rollover on unused KB, so the only sensible thing, if this access is used much at all, is to go with an unlimited plan. With Cingular, that ranges from $19.95 to $59.95, depending on what kind of device you tell them you are attaching.
None of the cell companies in Canada, last time I looked had an unlimited plan. One had a plan with a 1GB cap, everybody else was lower. After that, it's per MB. I don't know about you, but I can't run a business on
1GB of monthly bandwidth :-) Oh, for the good old days when 33.6kbps was enough :-)I live in a very rural area and have to use DirecPC. I thought about the cell phone thing but again the rural area thing is going to bite you because you may not have much of a signal for the cell phone to bind enough channels for broadband access. I used to use DirectPC with a land line but then I put security camers and needed 24 hour access so I upgraded to two way access.
Download is very fast, faster than our T3 at work. Upload seems very slow and you can't play online games because of latency. See my live camera feed at and it will give you an idea of the upload speed.
I live in a very rural area and have to use DirecPC. I thought about the cell phone thing but again the rural area thing is going to bite you because you may not have much of a signal for the cell phone to bind enough channels for broadband access. I used to use DirectPC with a land line but then I put security camers and needed 24 hour access so I upgraded to two way access.
Download is very fast, faster than our T3 at work. Upload seems very slow and you can't play online games because of latency. See my live camera feed at and it will give you an idea of the upload speed.
That's not how it works.
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