Anybody use a satellite to access the 'net?

[Shy Tall Guy]

If you hadn't noticed I haven't been around since last Sunday when my dialup ISP disallowed online access because I had exceeded 200 hours for the month. Given that I had only accessed the net for 18 days (4 days I was away from home) and I average about 8 hours a day (I often leave it on), that kind of pissed me off, but not having logged my time, and they having no log for the month, just total time, there was little I could do. Plus they had been screwing up their email and had recently lost some of my email.

So I got a wild hair up my ass and bit the bullet. I went out and bought a 2-way system from a Starband dealer without comparing it with DirectWay (DirectTV/DirectPC). Even though it was an expensive impulse buy ($750 for equipment and install, and $70 a month with a 1 year comittment), I am happy as it seems to work well (I am getting about 1 Mbps download speed). It appears that I got one of the good satellites and clusters/subclusters, while others have had widely varying results depending on what sat./cluster they are assigned.

Now I am almost completely wireless; cell phone and no landline, no cable (DirecTV) and now sat. 'net access.

Anybody else have Sat. 'net access?

 

[callableborg]

satallite

Do not have such service myself but would be interested in checking it out. Have cable now which is an excellent service EXCEPT.

Once or twice a week, at random intervals, I loose internet connection completely for several hours. ???

Very annoying. Do you know whether this service is available in Canada?

I'm going to show one of my kids your post later and get back to you.

Thanks for post.

 

[Shy Tall Guy]

Re: satallite

Originally posted by callableborg Very annoying. Do you know whether this service is available in Canada?[/B]

No I don't know. I do know that being in Canada is not a physical/location issue as much as it is a legal/licensing issue. Where most people are in Canada, along the border with the US, you wouldn't have a problem seeing one or the other of the satellites (one to the west, one to the south), but satellite companies such as DirecTV don't offer their service in Canada. So it would just depend.

I'm going to show one of my kids your post later and get back to you.

I would only recommend this to people who have no other option - which I didn't. If you have cable or DSL available I would recommend going with that instead; from what I understand from other users/customers, the service you get from Starband is highly variable depending on which satellite/cluster/subcluster they put you on, and the equipment is expensive (the numbers I quote were US dollars), as is the monthly charge.

 

[April]

I've considered it many times. However, being in Europe, the basics are the same, but the details are different. If that made any sense. LOL Just can't justify the money yet. And it's not widely available. Something about it being offered by the same company that offers dialup and DSL. Hmm. *insert sceptical face* Would be cool to have though.

 

[Spinaroonie]

I'v done some reading up on it, and investigated it.

Most of the people who I have talked to who have had it said that they MUCH prefered a modem over satellite. Also, StarBand is in some dire financial straights at the moment. The Latency is high and the network isn't efficient.

 

[Saint Peter]

The DTV gear I looked at would download only. Good for checking the weather and bad for everything else.

 

[Shy Tall Guy]

I'v done some reading up on it, and investigated it.

Most of the people who I have talked to who have had it said that they MUCH prefered a modem over satellite.

There are some very dissatisfied people as I noted in a previous post - your results may vary and it seems that I may have been lucky in getting a good slot (I think some of it also has to do with getting a good installer and having a good site as signal quality probably has some effect on throughput).

However, many of those people who are disatisified seem to be highly subjective (calling SB customers "losers", etc.) with very little objective to their complaints. I have not read any objective comparison that rates a dialup 56k modem as better than a SB or DW sat. connection for download, and most rate them at worst as about the same or better for upload. I haven't been able to really test the upload yet, but most of my traffic is downloading so it really doesn't matter; according to my stat box, in the last 20 hours I uploaded 15MB and downloaded about 195MB.

I have noticed what seems to be a bit slower response today, but then it is Saturday and there are probably more people surfing than on a weekday. Still, it is plenty fast (tests show about 800k bps to 2M bps depending on the size of the download) and this makes surfing so much more enjoyable - I am spending a considerable amount of time now on the Amateur pics board downloading pics which come up as fast as I can click on them. Same with Planet Manu. ASSTR.org ftp downloads are much slower than other downloads, but faster than before, and a lot more dependable (on dialup, if I tried to download more than half a dozen stories, it would hang - now I can dowanload dozens with no probs).

Also, StarBand is in some dire financial straights at the moment.

SB just recently filed chapter 11 which doesn't mean they are going bankrupt, but they are reorganizing debt, which may give them some breathing room - or it may not - I wouldn't know without having someone besides Arthur Anderson go through their books. Had I properly researched them I probably would have not gone with Starband due to the complaints and their financial problems, I would have gone to someone like DirectWay instead. So far though, I am happy - ask me again in a couple of years when I have amortized the cost of the equipment - if they continue to stay in business and continue to give me good throughput.

The Latency is high and the network isn't efficient.

Latency is high compared to anything else, but the throughput more than makes up for it when compared to dialup. The software and hardware helps reduce the effects of latency such that it is much less noticeable. It definitely isn't good for online games or real-time type control where latency is a hassle, but those are not concerns to me as I don't play online games. AIM works fine - about the same as before. The only problem I have had is with the ZoneAlarm firewall, and I have that mostly figured out now.

As I said before - given a choice, I would prefer DSL or cable, but those are not available to me and a lot of other people, whereas a sat. connection is.

 

[Shy Tall Guy]

The DTV gear I looked at would download only. Good for checking the weather and bad for everything else.

I also have the DPC dish. I bought it about a year ago and never got it setup because I couldn't find the correct drivers for W2K and then never got a round tuit again. It is a "one-way" sat. system in that it uses a dialup line and conventional modem for upload to the 'net, thereby giving you a claimed 400k bps download speed - which would be just fine as most people's traffic patterns for surfing are about a 10:1 ratio of download to upload.

You can't (or shouldn't) host a web site locally (it is better to host online anyway), or use it for sharing files, etc. - but for normal surfing it would be just fine. The problem is that you would then pay $50-$60 for the sat. service, plus another $15-$20 for the phone line, making it at least as expensive as the "2-way" system for month to month costs (although much less expensive for the equipment).

DPC/DirectWay/Hughes does make and sell a 2-way system that competes with Starband, although you will be hard put to find any info on their site about throughput - they are probably studiously avoiding any claims.

 

[Calamity Jane]

I've thought about it a lot. My dial up connection is 19200 on a good day, so anything would be better than what I have. Cable isn't an option, and won't be for at least 5 years.

The only problems I've heard that people have with it is when they're playing online games. There's a lag, and it's not smooth.

 

[Shy Tall Guy]

Originally posted by pagancowgirl The only problems I've heard that people have with it is when they're playing online games. There's a lag, and it's not smooth. [/B]

There are other problems:

1) You do need a clear sky shot to whatever satellite the provider has. I believe both Starband and DirecWay have satellites in the southern hemisphere, and SB also has one that is to the west and south. Make sure you can actually get a good signal. If you can get DirecTV like I can, then you are probably okay, otherwise you will have to have a site survey done.

2) At least with SB, it reportedly makes a big diff which "channel" you are assigned. Apparently I was lucky and got a good channel, others were not. If you are willing to accept that your results may vary greatly depending on the vagaries of what they assign you, and that it may not be 800k bps but be 200k bps instead, and you are willing to pay $70 a month for that, plus $500-$600 for the equipment, plus at least $200 for installation (some installs can easily run twice that - I put in my own post and concrete, but many installs attach to the house instead and that is often less expensive), then okay.

3) You can't really do web hosting or file sharing like you can with even a dialup. If the provider sees you doing it, and they will, they will throttle you back, or even cut you off. I currently have a static IP, but there is no guarantee that will always be there. You also can't hook up a hardware router directly to the system, you have to have a computer hooked up to the modem first. Networking/sharing of the modem is possible, but not officially supported - if you have a problem with that then you are on your own. VPNs, telnet, remote access are problematic - although there are now apps that are supposed to work with the sat. connection.

4) Some people apparently have problems with secure sites, SSL, and instant messaging. I haven't, but others say they have.

Latency is subjectively no worse than a dialup connection as far as being "smooth", especially a poor dialup connection like yours. Response times are much better as far as downloading a web page goes, but not as good as DSL or cable (although those sometimes have problems too).

 

[Spinaroonie]

4) Some people apparently have problems with secure sites, SSL, and instant messaging. I haven't, but others say they have.

That you know of.

Becareful. You are vulrerable to scanners, like on a cordless phone or cellular phone. It is perfect legal to intercept transmission since it's legally broadcasting.

 

[Dana]

I think I need to buy Evidence Eliminator !

 

[Shy Tall Guy]

Becareful. You are vulrerable to scanners, like on a cordless phone or cellular phone. It is perfect legal to intercept transmission since it's legally broadcasting.

Please!

Be careful listening to people who know not what they speak of and remember that I have a EE degree and some years of experience in wireless data communication - especially secure data comms.

Satellite internet providers such as Starband and DirecPC operate in the Ku and Ka frequency bands (respectively). Ku is approx. 12-18 gHz, and Ka is approx. 27-40 gHz. Cell phones, depending on whether they are TDMA, CDMA, GSM or analog, and who the provider is, operate at frequencies usually below 2 gHz. My old boss is one of the people that goes around doing site surveys to decide where cell antennas are placed.

Cordless phones operate at frequencies of 2.4 gHz and below, depending on how old the phone is.

Theoretically a radio scanner could pickup my transmissions, but if you know of a consumer scanner that operates in the Ka band or even the Ku band, please let me know. If you know of a professional grade Ka/Ku band scanner that is affordable, say for under $1000 please let me know.

You could use a RADAR detector to detect my transmissions, but you would only be detecting them, not listening to them, much less demodulating them, then decoding, then decompress (using a proprietary algorithm), then decrypting - all steps you would have to do before you could figure out what my computer was sending via the dish - and even then it wouldn't make much sense - most of the time (this post, or an email I sent, for instance would make sense) as most would just be control messages that I sent an HTTP request.

You would have to be fairly close too as the beamwidth from my dish is not that wide. To the east, west and north you wouldn't even know my dish existed unless you were on my property. If you were within 100 yards on the south side, just maybe.

The really sensitive stuff, if you consider porn sensitive, (except for emails and posts I send, and when I log on to my bank account) would be what I am receiving, and that is transmitted to a broad swath of the US - but you would really need a sat. dish like mine to rx it, then you would have to have a special hacked modem to rx anything that is meant for anybody else, then you would have to figure out which packets go to which user (in real time), then go through the dcoding, decompression and decryption process, and you would still only see one side of the conversation.

All of this ignores what I was talking about in the first place; secure web sites, such as logging on to my bank account. Such web sites use SSL security, which is separate from anything my sat. dish does t osecure its comms. SSL is meant to keep anybody listening in, say on a packet sniffer on a network, from actually seeing what you sending or recieving while in the secure portion of that site. The problems I was referring to are that some people seem to have problems with the SSL protocols with their sat. connection. I was saying that I have no such problems; I can log into my bank account just fine.

All of this worrying about sat. security is rather silly; it would be a lot easier for someone to tap my phone line at the street telephone pole, or to setup a computer monitor scanner to see what is on my monitor screen, than it would be intercept and understand what was going through my sat. dish. When I was working in secure comms, our clients (whom I cannot identify) required us to use Tempest grade computer systems so no on could intercept what was happening on our computers.

It would be even easier for them to write some kind of virus that would download onto my computer and then retransmit everything I do/say/etc. back to them via the 'net - a lot easier.

Do not believe everything you hear on the 'net - most people who post don't know what the fuck they are talking about. Whoever told you that I am vulnerable to scanners, cordless or cell phones, was talking out their ass.