Is Starband's Satellite Internet Service Palatable? 259
George Thomas asks: "Since Centurytel bought out my local teleco, my internet access has been limited to about 14k compared to the 48k I previously enjoyed. I am interested in reader experiences and/or comments about internet access by satelite dish, specifically Dish Networks, because they offer 128k up and 350k down. I live in a rural area and cable is not a viable option. I am currently running Red Hat 7.2 on an old Supermicro LX series dual PII MB. I have USB ports native to the board, but don't have a clue whether they will work with the USB modem supplied with the hardware package. Also I can boot to Windows95 with LiLo, but my copy of Windows doesn't support USB. I can replace the MB if necessary, but would rather not if I can avoid doing that. Any help will be gratefully appreciated." Of course, Dish Network used to be a reseller for Starband. Now, it appears that things have flip-flopped and Starband is now offering 'upgrades' for Dish Network service. So are any of you Slashdot readers current Starband customers? If so, please share your thoughts on the service.
Not for gaming... (Score:5, Informative)
If you want to surf the net or read email you're fine. Try anything which requires a low ping time and you're hosed.
YMMV but I steered clear. (Then again I can still at least manage a 45k connection.)
Re:Not for gaming... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Not for gaming... (Score:2)
Three parts to a TCP handshake, that's 300ms.
Unless TCP-PEP does something about this? If it does, please share.
The TOS bits aren't going to do any good once it hits the open Internet - most routers at peering points ignore the QoS bits because there isn't any incentive for peers to provide better quality of service to a competitors customers.
End-to-end QoS over the public internet is technically feasible by utilizing TOS bits, but won't happen unless there's a financial incentive involved.
Not that this should be a surprise to anyone. Greed is what drives the Internet now, thanks to corporations.
Re:Not for gaming... (Score:2)
That's really different from the way most products that claim to optimize TCP for modem connections work. I wonder why it hasn't caught on there?
Is there a link for this spec? I'd like to read it - this is really cool stuff.
Agreed - intranetwork control over the TOS bits will work. I'd like to see it work end-to-end, but that would just encourage degradation of
Not Only "Not for gaming..." (Score:2, Informative)
"View" Tuesday, October 2, 2001 [jerrypournelle.com]
I am now willing to believe that Microsoft and Earthlink and the Hughes satellite people all worked together to create the most frustrating system possible, guaranteed to drive everyone insane.
There is no other explanation of why this imbecility works the way it does. Clearly no one really tried to make this work and did any testing. Why should they?
The MSN home page, for instance, is designed for maximum problems with high latency systems: it wants about 50 requests for little files, and since there is a delay for each one, it takes literally about 4 minutes to download the MSN home page. Updates are just as bad. I suppose there is going to be some magical fix for all this when things are adequately cached, but I wouldn't count on it.
I have no choice but to sit there and wait for Microsoft to deliver its stupid home page with all the stupid little files, but once I get my updates I can be certain I will not go THERE again. Ye gods!
All right. Once it works it works fine. But ye flipping gods , the contortions I have to go through to get it going.
I don't know if the problems are hardware or software so I am going to get an Intel D815 system to install this on and try again.
Re:Not Only "Not for gaming..." (Score:2, Funny)
Don't bother (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Don't bother (Score:2)
Re:Don't bother (Score:2)
Re:Don't bother (Score:2)
This will be the exact opposite. A page of text will appear instantly, but each keystroke will take a second to turn around.
So, think the OPPOSITE of a 2400 baud modem.
Re:Don't bother (Score:2)
Re:Don't bother (Score:2)
During "normal" hours it can be a royal pain sometimes with minute+ response times. The "always on" can be uncommunicative for hours at a time. Things are generally very useable from 1AM to 7AM with a second or 2 response.
At the moment (5:40 CDT), the satellite is behaving itself, about second or 2 response, 3.3 Kbyte/sec download ftp transfer (from a 13Kbyte/sec capped DSL), usually 4 to 5 Kbyte/sec upload (during better times), I think I've seen some 80+ Kbyte/sec downloads, wee hours of course.
Re:Don't bother (Score:1)
USB Compatibility (Score:1, Informative)
Re:USB Compatibility (Score:1, Informative)
Actually, USB 1.1 (or as you call it, 1.0) is completely compatible with 2.0. Any 2.0 device can plug into a 1.1 USB port and work perfectly - just at the 1.1 speed and not the faster speed that goes along with 2.0
Re:USB Compatibility (Score:1)
The exactly value varies, but seems it's somewhat 40-60% slower on Linux.
Tech Support (Score:1, Funny)
microsoft only (Score:3, Informative)
Sort of... (Score:2)
Over Usage? (Score:2, Interesting)
Anyone wanna verify this?
---
Go ahead, hit me, no ones looking.
Re:Over Usage? (Score:1)
My speed tests out at a little over 500kbps, but when throttles, it drops to 90-100kbps.
And for games? Forget it. UO and DAoC work fine, but anything relying on ping is gonna suck.
Re:Over Usage? yes! (Score:1)
Fair Access Policy... aka "leaky bucket" (Score:5, Informative)
Basically, a Satellite connection is essentially a 56k connection that's burstable to 350k. OK, it's not really that simple.
You have a water bucket, and you can get water out of it at 350k, but water is only trickling in at 56k. After the bucket is empty, you're only getting data as fast as the bucket is being refilled. If you wait 8 or 9 hours, your bucket is full again. If you use Satellite return, instead of phone-line return stream, your upstream bandwidth also counts toward your FAP.
DirecWay I think has a 180MB "bucket" during peak times. I've also seen DirecWay users, with properly tweaked connections, getting 1.5 megabit or greater download speeds (meaning that FAP will approach quickly!) rather than only 350k.
Go to www.broadbandreports.com and visit the satellite forums. People are constantly posting their current speeds, settings, etc, as well as their thoughts on the service.
Ethernet works too, according to Starband (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Ethernet works too, according to Starband (Score:1)
The Ethernet option's bound to have the same speed limitations.
Re:Ethernet works too, according to Starband (Score:4, Informative)
Here's a best case scenario WRT latency:
Pinging x with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from x: bytes=32 time=681ms TTL=111
Reply from x: bytes=32 time=671ms TTL=111
Reply from x: bytes=32 time=701ms TTL=111
Reply from x: bytes=32 time=641ms TTL=111
Its very important to remember this doesn't affect download so much as its really a pretty fat pipe. They also use something called BST or NetGain, which improves TCP connections by eliminating some of the reconnection and handshaking overhead. Unfortunately, they only provide a windows version of NetGain (called "deterministic network enhancer" in network properites
Only FTP and HTTP traffic are routed over this BST tunnel, and socks proxies no longer work.
The standard modem, model 360, has an ethernet jack and it is supported, but again, without NetGain its useless.
I'm happy with my service having received what I expected. I generally use it to download source and bins from work, or other updates from the web. The always on connection is another plus.
48Kbps to 14Kbps? (Score:2)
Re:48Kbps to 14Kbps? (Score:1)
check the tarrifs, call the public utility board (Score:2, Informative)
As to answer 'what changed', I can envision one situation that would cause that to happen, even though it would make no sense. Perhaps the new company dropped their PRI's and set up some modem bank or some such. I can't imagine why, but v.90 modems pretty much can only go above 28.8 when they are analog only on one side. If you connection goes analog, digitial, and finally analog on the ISP's end, the best you will ever get is 28.8 - period.
Also check to see if the local telco dude did sometime to effect the lines in the neighborhood. It's best not to call, but wait until you see the van ot ask the guy personally. I've found that they're usally no further than one hour away from getting stoned. If you have good timing and play your cards right, and a bag of Herbal Essence, you can usally get anything you want and it'll be done faster, better and cheaper.
By the way, when did this turn into supportdot?
Re:check the tarrifs, call the public utility boar (Score:2)
The whole "56k" thing is just an inventive trick. It works only because the ISP end is digital. That means the ISP hardware is transmitting pure digital crap to your modem in the form of discrete PCM codes which it knows will equal a specific analog value at the receiving modem -- and within some tolerance, it's consistant. It doesn't work in the other direction because the analog end cannot be sure of the exact PCM code to which it's analog output will coorespond and the conversion is highly inconsistant.
Starband experiance (Score:5, Informative)
Large downloads usually max out at 60kb/s with uploads being in the 5-10kb/s range. Web browsing feels much slower, with waits of a couple seconds before the page even starts to load.
The USB modem is huge, around the size of a flatbed scanner. (this was a year ago, maybe it's smaller now)
Weather also plays a factor.. clouds hurt and rain basically kills the connection.
Re:Starband experiance (Score:2)
This means it maxes at full bandwidth. Which is quite good.
Because if you have 520 ms latency which is the standard for SAT you cannot get more than this speed. TCP window cannot grow more. It is inherent feature of the protocol. Look into TCP/IP design and implementation for discussion related to bandwidth x delay product and the RFCs on SACK and windowing options
Re:Starband experiance (Score:3, Informative)
Ah, grasshopper, satellite services may tweak TCP protocol to achieve better throughput, see RFC 1106 [isi.edu], RFC 2488 [nasa.gov], RFC 2760 [nasa.gov], and there are also proprietary [internet-2.org.il] solutions as well.
Re:Starband experiance (Score:2)
If a machine actually starts using these it can go beyond. Most don't. And let's don't even mention windows which does not grow the window properly as per the RFCs and can barely climb to 30-40Kbytes.
In other words, if you are using the link for general purpose traffic which is the question asked here (office on starband) that is what you get 50kbytes. Been there, done that.
Re:Starband experiance (Score:2)
Re:Starband experiance (rain) (Score:1, Informative)
get rid of the USB (Score:4, Informative)
Re:get rid of the USB (Score:5, Informative)
Don Roberts
roberts@refactory.com
The Simplest Consultant That Could Possibly Work
Re:get rid of the USB (Score:5, Funny)
*waves hand* This is not the daughterboard you're looking for.
b&
ethernet option (Score:4, Interesting)
Arg: USB modems (Score:1)
As an owner of a Netgear RT314, I firmly believe in this cheap-o internet gateway routers that hide in the corner using very little power or attention. None of them that I've seen have USB ports though.
Finally, driver support for USB modems seems crap and restrictive, and still relatively immature. Ethernet modems enjoy true plug and play, and very mature drivers in most operating systems. I can only think of one thing worse than a USB modem: a PCI one.
Re:Arg: USB modems (Score:3, Funny)
As opposed to a pain in the side or front arse? First it was new math, now it's new anatomy...
starband under linux (Score:1, Informative)
Clear line of sight to the southwest (Score:3, Informative)
Latency can be an issue if you need fast ping times - expect no better than 200ms, best-case. But of course for web-browsing, email, and file downloads, it's fine. I now just have dish for TV though, because I qualify for 1Mbit synch. DSL. But Dish would certainly be a good choice in a rural setting.
Re:Impossible. (Score:2)
However, this turns out not to be true. Starband satellites are at 101 and 129 degrees West longitude. Referred to US geography, these longitudes correspond to the middle of Texas, and to a point in the Pacific ocean about 600 miles West of Los Angeles.
Starban -DISCONNECTED- .... d (Score:1)
Re:Starban -DISCONNECTED- .... d (Score:2, Funny)
We have a client who uses Starband... (Score:3, Informative)
As far as speed is concerned, his downloads are pretty fast but getting a download started is laggy. He does not do any gaming either.
Jerry Pournelle (www.byte.com) has a satellite connection and writes frequently about his experiences in a column. I recommend that you check the archives to see whether he has some advice that fits your situation.
As with most broadband modems... (Score:4, Informative)
As with most broadband modems this has an ethernet port, which generally connect directly to your ethernet card. Don't use USB. Use LILO to boot to windows, get it set up in your USB-less version of windows, then steal the settings (which most likely is a simple DHCP setup). It's far easier for them to put the smarts into the modem and configure windows as little as possible than it is to field tech support and keep configuration programs and drivers up to date on all versions of windows. You will likely find that the USB driver is a simple USB ethernet driver anyway, and you may even be able to find generic linux drivers for whatever chipset it's using - but you may have to 'research' the innards of the modem to determine the chipset since they probably don't advertise it in the USB strings.
Therefore you'll most likely find that it'll be easy to set up in windows, easy to set up in linux, and easy to set up with a gateway.
Make sure you find a service provider that has a money back gurantee or free month or something, though, just in case.
Please note the gratuitious use of "likely" and "may" in this post. I've not used them.
-Adam
Re:As with most broadband modems... (Score:1)
I would spend some time researchin wether anybody else has got sat withing with linux though as most of these products are so tailiored to windows they dont work easily with anything else.
USB in Windows (Score:2)
READ THE FINE PRINT! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:READ THE FINE PRINT! (Score:1, Informative)
Now Dish owns the service and customer service blows with supreme crapfullness. The system sucks so bad that Dish is selling the business unit now (to Starband I think.)
Try out wireless DSL. I live in the sticks but it works great. Someone in your area probably offers it. I am a greedy power user demanding mucho P2P, Gaming, and bandwidth... I love it and it's $10.00 cheaper than Crapband. Crapband does filter P2P... I got a level 25 tech support guy to admit it before they went public with the knowledge. Shameful.
P.S. My signal was at 95%, and the installer was capable. He actually called and apologized to me when he saw that I cancelled my Crapband service.
Re:READ THE FINE PRINT! (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Get a clue. (Score:2)
Now that is seriously funny! Mod the parent up.
Re:Get a clue. (Score:2)
If it's not scottish, its crap!
Re:READ THE FINE PRINT! (Score:2)
Comments from a current SB customer (Score:3, Informative)
My Starband PC is a G333 Gateway PC running Windoze 2000. SB's software will not work with Linux. The old 180 modem that I had (before forced upgrade to 360 modem) you could hack for an ethernet connection. I loved this, as I was able to use Linux as the gateway. No more.
I've got 3 WinME's, One Mac, 2 W2K, and One Linux box all networked together and using Starband.
I am in the same boat as you - in the stix, with no hope of cable or DSL. Starband was my only option over dialup. Given that, Starband ain't bad. I would not go by their rated speed. I'll get 100kb download speeds, and since I never upload, I can't state what that would be. If you don't mind the occasional outages due to snow, fog, or heavy rain it's not a bad deal. I know that some complain about slower speeds on occasion, but given the alternative it does not bother me much.
Perhaps, perhaps... (Score:4, Informative)
The service goes down fairly often.
This was my experience at the beginning, but it seems to be doing much better. Now it only goes down when there's a big, nasty, thick storm (i.e. - when the satellite tv is down as well). This is okay, and it's not too often that it's down now. At first, however, they were just putting their service down for days at the time with no warning, no discounts (20 days out of 30 that we had internet access, and we paid the full amount. Sheesh.
Broken images
I don't know if this has to do with my D-Link network switch or what (the old one had a corrupt table inside it on one of the PROMs, screwed up our network. I have a strong feeling this is the case again). All I know is most of the time I have 20-75% of webpages with broken images. I have to right click, h for show images (Internet Exploder), just to see the images. Again, YMMV.
Now, as for linux connectivity, I don't really see why it should be that hard. Maybe the USB side would only work with Windows, and maybe they only support Windows, but the newer version of their hardware (and I think the only one you can get, now) has both USB and ethernet (RJ-45). It should be a plug-and-play affair on any sort of router, but I can't vouch for this.
Hope I've been of some help,
Re:Perhaps, perhaps... (Score:1)
Starband is poop (Score:5, Informative)
2) It will work if you plug it directly into your switch, apparently (The modem has an Ethernet port in the back, as well). HOWEVER...the software (Internet Page Accelerator) that keeps file from being chewed in Win95/98/2K is really needed. Graphics on sites get eaten in transit, and it's just ugly. We used their suggested proxy package (WinProxy [ositis.com]) to allow our mostly-mac network to connect using the IPA on the proxy machine, and it worked, (downloads 30-40k on average) with a fair number of errors (page won't load, hit reload, it's fine, that type of thing).
3) Starband technical support is totally, totally useless -- even if you're using the systems they recommend and support. They keep buying JD Powers & Associates ratings every year, but it's horrible.
4) Upload over the proxy was stupid. We had 40-60% of our larger ftp and mail chewed in transit, and rendered useless. And, it was a total bitch to get it working right -- it just "started" working one time, after using the same settings for over a week.
I wouldn't recommend it unless you have no other option, and need fast download speeds.
On a side note, I don't think the submitter did much looking into the task at hand before the article was posted. There is a *wealth* of information out there on this topic. Try Starband Users, [starbandusers.com] for starts. And, Macworld has a very comprehensive article [macworld.com] that outlines some of the problems I mentioned above, which I would assume also apply (partially, anyways) to a Linux setup.
USB and Win95 (Score:2, Informative)
Starband woes (Score:2, Informative)
A company that I do work for got the Starband service a year ago when they were still shipping their 180 model modems, and at that time it worked quite well. Then Starband switched everyone over to their 360 model modems, and the service went downhill from there when the new modem was installed. My technical evaluation of the model 360 modems is that they suck, and that makes the Starband connection suck.
With all that said, if you can stand the high lag times (a 'good' ping return is around 700ms, but more often 1400ms and higher), and if nothing else is available in your area then it's ok because it beats the crap out of using a modem on a phone line with multiple D/A conversions.
Proprietary Protocols? (Score:4, Funny)
PLEASE NOTE: Networking the StarBand service via a router or other hardware device connected directly to the StarBand satellite modem is expressly forbidden. A Windows-based PC running the StarBand software must be the interface with the StarBand satellite modem as it converts Internet requests into a protocol optimized for satellite-based Internet connectivity. Circumventing this optimization software creates excessive and unauthorized traffic on the StarBand network and may result in a measurable decrease in transmission speed or complete service outage.
What? Windows knows how to slow down my Internet connection? Imagine. I take "converts...into a protocol optimized" to mean that the Starband software is sitting there in the background going, "A packet? What's this? He wants a download? HA! I'll just stick this in a buffer for 5 minutes and then send it on. That'll keep his pr0n addiction in check."
I....think I'll stay with modem, thanks. (as painful as it might be, at least I get low-latency, if slow, pr0n.)
Re:Proprietary Protocols? (Score:5, Informative)
Most commonly used network protocols do not consider the minimum 500ms latency involved in communicating via geosynchronous satellite. The signal goes up to the satellite, down to the hub center, out to the Internet, back to the hub center, back up to the satellite, and back down to your dish; light and radio signals can only move so fast.
We "solved" the problem by supplying turnkey Linux servers with TCP proxy software (vendor will remain unnamed, lest I get zapped for disclosure beyond public company documents) and all outgoing traffic was routed through this. It would hijack the TCP connections and use some kind of satellite-specific protocol when talking to our data center. It broke some of the strict semantics of TCP, going to a NAK-based protocol and increasing the window size. By clustering ACKs, using forward error correction, and increasing window size it allowed higher throughput on TCP connections and made terminal sessions just about tolerable, the local echo would start working in
Our optimizing software did NOTHING for UDP, but we hijacked FTP connections and tossed them through a proxy cache hierarchy. I'm sure this software has probably improved since then, and might have the capability to hijack well-known UDP-based protocols and process them the same way--substituting a satellite-efficient protocol in the middle.
If they're selling this product mostly to Windows folks, they've decided to support this optimizing software on Windows only. It might be a poor technical choice, but I assure you that "connection optimizing software" isn't a figment of their imagination.
Was it Mentat? (Score:2)
They are one of the few I know of who provide a linux router with a tcp acceleration layer. (IP/SkyX they call it)
Linux and USB (Score:1)
I'm ok with it (Score:2, Interesting)
Having said all of that, you need to realize the following facts:
- You can't beat physics. The signal has to travel 45,000 miles. Your ping times will never be below 600ms. Therefore, this cannot be used for real-time, reaction-based gaming.
- Heavy rain kills the connection.
- PtP stuff seems to only work marginally (I have had some success with it, but also, I haven't experimented extensively).
- The 360 modem (the only option) does have both USB and ethernet connection, HOWEVER all of its acceleration is done by Windows drivers and the modem must be DIRECTLY CONNECTED to the windows box. If you want to home network, you have to install a second network card and use the windoze box as your gateway. Therefore, linux boxes can be on your network, but you have to have a windoze box to drive the modem.
Hope this help.
Don Roberts
roberts@refactory.com
The Simplest Consultant That Could Possibly Work
Directly Connected? (Score:2)
There is no way for the computer or modem to tell if it is directly connected, or connected via several switches/bridges/etc.
Re:Directly Connected? (Score:2)
Sure you can connect in another way, but it would defeat all performance advantages of having the fat satellite pipe.
Re:Directly Connected? (Score:2)
By the way... the inherent incompatability of that method over satellite is bunk.
I maintain several satellite interent connections (500+ms pings) and we utilize no such software or techniques.
Of course, we're not using starband.. we're using much larger dishes with more power on commercial grade services.
THe software has to do with how starband is structured, not satellite in general.
Jerry Pournelle (Score:2)
The main problem is latency. If you are downloading iso's it's great. 0.5 seconds to initiate the download, then it just comes roaring in. A site with lots of graphics, frames, and associated files that have to be downloaded individually sucks because there's that high latency on every file.
My dad uses it. (Score:1)
DSLReports (Score:1)
Wait a second... (Score:2)
Hang on here...
I know that this might not be the most slashdot-correct thing to say but you would replace your mobo before upgrading to a version of Windows that supports USB? In all seriousness, Windows 2K doesn't suck much at all. Just don't make a habit of it.
If you don't want to *buy* a copy, then I guess you could always use your Tivo to *steal* a copy.
Starband Vs. other options (Score:2, Informative)
IMHO, Starband is the better of the two "2-way satellite" flavors. If you want it for pure download speed, you will be happy. The claims they make on speeds are pretty on target. Ping times, however are the Achilles heel of 2-way satellit. The problem comes from there geosynchronous orbit. The satellites are 28,000 miles above the earth. For the signal to go up to the satellite, down to noc, noc to sat, sat to you is a 600 ms baseline round trip. Light only goes so fast. So if you plan on doing any online gaming, forget it.
Not to bad mouth Direcway, but there speeds are...lacking. Nuf said.
I have a telco return satellite for two reasons.
1. Money. Instead of $79 (or whatever the current promo is)per month, I pay $40/month.
2. The ping times are still, high, but I can routinely get into the upper 300 ms range.
Also, a few more things. The 2-way satellite upstreams are very slow. Don't expect to run a server. Look for anywhere from 30-50 KBps. Those speeds are also kind of misleading, as the software that comes with the satellite runs an acceleration program jsut for port 80 traffic. So if you want to do FTP, expect slower speeds.
To sum up, these satellite are not very mature yet. They do work, but are aimed at the web browsing home user. I personally like the telco return variety, but if you want a connection that doesn't tie up a phone line, don't play games (like Quake, etc),and you want to add satellite tv on for a slight additional charge, go for the Starband. I know a lot of people that love it.
Wait a little longer gamers! (Score:2)
Bandwidth throttling. If I pay 600 bucks for equipment and install and another 70 bucks per month, I want *premium* service. No hassles, no throttling, no nothing. Pipe, Pure Pipe.
Latency Not just for gamers, if you want to video or voice conference, it's terrible. Not a chance. No voIP, no nothing.
There is a company called Skynet that is on a LEO system. Low Earth Orbit. meaning less latency, and a truckload more of bandwidth. It's vapor so far, since the fiber on earth is not utilized much, but wait a couple years and it'll rock. [skynet.com]
The biggest caveat is that Skynet is supported by Bill Gates. You can look at this as a plus or a minus. The minus is that Microsoft has its finger in every pie. The plus is that Microsoft has a inherent interest in getting broadband to everyone, if only to stuff those bloated apps down the pipe.
Starband stinks. Use ISDN
Re:Wait a little longer gamers! (Score:2)
Sorry, y'all ain't getting MY money...
Re:Wait a little longer gamers! (Score:2)
DIRECWAY works... (Score:5, Informative)
I don't have the Dish system but I do have a Hughes DIRECWAY [direcway.com] system on my motorhome [motosat.com] with a MotoSat [motosat.com] Datastorm [motosat.com] mount.
It works very well, but you have to keep in mind there is some latency as the signal has to travel up to the satellite in the Clarke belt and back down both ways in addition to the latency in the ground network. I have the business service with a static IP address and have seen as much as 2 Mbit/sec download. But the upload is slow--usually around 64 kbit/sec and sometimes as high as 100 kbit/sec but never any higher. It would suck for gaming.
The "modems" require a USB connection and a PC running Windows--you have to use the DIRECWAY software/drivers and it only works on Windows. I run Windows 2000 on the satellite access machine and it works well. Other folks are on XP and 98 but a variety of problems do crop up on the "consumer" versions of Windows I hear.
To let other operating systems access the satellite network you can use Windows' Internet Connection Sharing (ICS). I'm using this and share the connection via Ethernet to an Apple Airport base station and allow my Macs and Linux machines access the network via the wireless connection. It works very well.
BTW, last I heard, EchoStar (the parent of Dish and Starband) were getting out of the Internet access business and leaving DIRECWAY as the sole comsumer satellite Internet provider as part of their yet-to-be-approved takeover of Hughes Electronics (parent of DIRECTV and DIRECWAY).
YMMV.
My Review of Starband... (Score:5, Informative)
The Pros of Starband:
Fast internet for those without hope of DSL or Cable.
I've seen downloads of 300K/sec. K not k!
AIM and other programs do work through the proxy server, provided you specify the correct ports. The proxy server is actually faster than the netgear router was too.
The Cons:
High ping times 600-1200 ms. No Games for you!
Filesharing is limited. Some things do work, but they have bandwidth police I'm told.
I don't fully trust the company after they made their modem only work with winproxy. That bothered me a little bit. They essentially have a monopoly at this time, and they know it. Our router is now a paperweight.
You must have win98 or 2k. I won't ever upgrade to Me or XP, so I don't know or care about them. No official Linux support as of yet. I doubt there will be for some time. It *might* work, but I haven't had time to meddle with it. Their mission control software is somewhat usless and windows only. I tried installing it to run a proxy server off of a
windows 95 box and it didn't work.
The mixed blessings:
The hardware setup fee is a hefty initial cost, but the money we saved from canceling our extra phone lines paid for it quickly.
The bottom line:
We are saving time and money because of this service. It is worth it if you use the internet a lot and live in a rural area beyond DSL or cable. If you can get DSL or cable get it, otherwise starband is a decent option.
Latency is not just bad for gaming (Score:5, Informative)
Not only that, many modern webpages are riddled with many small images. Depending on how your browser parllelizes image requests, the latency can even affect your browsing experience too.
Why starband? (Score:3, Informative)
Also, unlike most other satellite internet services, Nebulink is upfront with their limitations. You'll get 8 gigs transfer maximum for $55 US/month at whatever speed is available on their satellite, whereas most other satellite services randomly throttle your speed. Not to mention the hardware costs are generally significantly lower (used take-away BUD $FREE, DVB adapter $199).
Your return trip times (read: web browsing) on Nebulink are faster since a modem uplink is lower latency than a satellite uplink.
I'm not advertising (well, maybe I am indirectly), I'm just a satisfied customer who wrote an onofficial (and badly in need of fixing) how-to!
Thoughts. (Score:3, Insightful)
Solutions: This is satellite folks. It's radio. There is a wealth of knowledge out there about how to get new amplifiers/bigger dish/etc. I'm not suggesting you go outside any legal limits, or try to overpower things... but as with all satellite stuff.. if you are having trouble getting through weather, or with weak signal, you need to amplify and/or get a bigger dish.
Speed vs. latency (Score:2)
If you need the connection for file transfer (FTP, Gnutella, etc.) you'll be fine because you're doing big streaming transfers -- it doesn't really make a difference if your multi-megabyte download starts and ends half a second later than it would using a terrestrial connection. Email is no problem because it happens in the background. Web pages will be a little sluggish because you have to wait for all the HTTP transactions to complete. If you do any amount of interactive work, though -- such as telnet or SSH, where you're sending and receiving one character at a time while you type -- the lag will be absolutely unbearable.
802.11b Waikato Wi-Fi Project (Score:2)
They're getting 12km hops using solar powered relay stations.
You don't need many neighbors cooperating with you to hop all the way to a T3 or better with this.
broken windows? (Score:2)
I think you mean your computer doesn't support USB, I know of no version of win9x and up that don't support or atleast can't be made to support usb.
Re:broken windows? (Score:2)
Re:broken windows? (Score:2)
Re:Viable? (Score:1)
Re:Viable? (Score:2)
The telco is required by law to run any cabling you need to wherever you want it, at their cost. I was talking to a guy who had an ISDN line run out to his house (in the middle of nowhere)..it took the phone company over six months to do it, but they did do it and at their cost. Apparently the phone company took too long running the cable and he also got 6 months of free service.
Re:Viable? (Score:2)
It sounds to me like he already has phone service, though, so that isn't his problem. If he lives far enough out of town that cable isn't an option, then there are certainly repeaters between him and the telco CO, which, since DSL is non-repeatable, means DSL isn't an option either. If there are no repeaters then he's on a fiber loop, and DSL doesn't work over fiber, only copper. To my knowledge, no amount of money will solve that basic problem.
ISDN should be available, but it sounds like his real problem is the ISP, so it's questionable wether ISDN would fix that.
BTW, a note on the cost listed above: The prices are higher now. The telco engineer we worked with pulled strings and pushed things through to get us in before the price hike. If we'd applied a week later we would have had to pay a lot more.
Re:Viable? (Score:2, Interesting)
I would suggest biting the bullet and buying a Windows 2000/XP machine. It may cost money, but your time should be worth more than fiddling to get a decade old OS to work with new equipment.
Re:Viable? (Score:2)
Re:Viable? (Score:2)
OEM Service Release 2.1 4.03.1212-1214* 8/24/96-8/27/97
In the case of OSR 2.1 and OSR 2.5, only files updated to provide support for the Win32 Driver Model (WDM) and Universal Serial Bus (USB) may have this version stamp (the remainder maintain the same version stamps as the corresponding OSR2 files).
OEM Service Release 2.1 4.03.1212-1214* 8/24/96-8/27/97
So where's this 1994 for stuff of yours?
Re:Viable? (Score:1)
Re:Viable? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm curious about how cable is not a "viable" option
Cable TV itself, much less broadband internet access, just may not be available. In a rural area, this problem is exacerbated by the high costs incurred by a cable company just to set up basic cable TV service. I have many friends in rural areas who have to use satellite just to watch TV because cable TV service isn't available. Unlike with the phone companies, which have to provide phone service to all parts of the USA, there is no such requirement for cable TV providers. Hence, it doesn't look like this problem will "eventually" be solved in the short term.
Re:Viable? (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Viable? (Score:2, Informative)
a. DirecPC is Two-Way (DirecWay service), so long as your willing to pay the huge amounts of money the equipment costs, and the outrageous monthly cost, along with having to deal with there restictive Fair-Access-Policy. (if you download at a constant speed for a decent amount of time your bandwidth is automatically cut, then cut again, then cut again, till your stuck at 56k like speeds.)
b. Why would you need DSL to go out? Thats not even an option. You need a DIALUP connection for that side. Only in rare cases can you use a fast net connection for the upload side. (called UDP return channel).
Re:Starband (Score:2)
I wonder, has anyone tried running the driver under WINE? Seems like a good first step. (I checked the site, no word on Linux.)