[TriLUG] OT - Satellite ISP

[Ron Joffe]

My Folks are using the DirectPC solution. I would say if you have any choice 
other then Satelite I would go that way. The number of reasons are plenty, In 
their case that is the only solution they have (Other then moving elsewhere).

The issues we have:

1. As far as I am awareyou must have a winders PC as the main host. The 
authentication and logon software is part of the application. The "modem" is 
USB connected to the PC via propretery drivers.

2. The connection latency is a real pain. Forget about using any type of vpn, 
telnet is painfull to use. Remote admin tools like VNC are useless.

3. The uptime is horrible. We have had many problems with weather. And in the 
last few months we have been having problems which seem to be on the ISP side 
of things.

4. Web site issues. There are a number of sites that just will not work with 
this connection. We are not sure if the issue is filtering by the ISP, or if 
things such as shttp just require too much back and forth coomunications. 
Either way if we disconnect from the satelite and use plain old dial up we 
seem to get those sites to work just fine.


As I stated above there are some issues, on the other hand if all you are 
doing is surfing then the satelite is a bit faster. Sometimes plain old 
dialup "feels" faster, but that is more dependent on the design of the web 
page.

Download speeds (for things like ftp) seems to be about as advertised 400k/s 
or so.

The real killer is the latency. If you are trying to get to a page that has 
links to a bunch of other pages (like advertisers, etc) then the page just 
absolutely crawles.

Just my 2 cents.

Ron



On Monday 19 April 2004 11:52, Marty Ferguson wrote:
> Is anyone on this list subscribing to a or knowledgeable of any
> satellite-based ISPs?
> I am going to start shopping around, and would like any feedback possible.
>
> I'll be using my linux box as the interface, so the only equipment I'll
> need is the
> bridge, transceiver, and dish.
>
> Thanks,
> Marty
>
>
> export AT=@
> mailto:marty.ferguson$AT\pobox.com