[Hidden-tech] Does anybody have HughesNet or DirecTV satellite web access?

[Robert Heller]

At Fri, 09 Jan 2009 21:47:19 -0500 "B. Melville" <bmelville.pgs at verizon.net> wrote:

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> Out here in dial-up country, these services look very attractive. 
> However, I wonder if they are as fast as they say. HughesNet has 6 
> levels of service, and the cheapest level doesn't look that much 
> faster than dial-up. I don't know how the speed of their cheapest 2 
> levels compares to the speed of cable (which stopped 3 houses before 
> us).
> 
> Another concern is reliability. Our DirecTV service sometimes cuts 
> out in bad weather. I assume that the same would be true for 
> satellite web access.
> 
> Does anybody have experience with either of these services?

The Wendell Free Library has HughesNet.  It works alright.  There is a
high latency, so that can effectively slow things down -- a page with
lots of graphics (and/or pages which fail to provide content-length
and/or image side values), can be somewhat slow because of this.  There
is a "fair-use" limitation -- if you download more than a certain amount
in a given 24-hour period, you are penalized for the next 24-hours.  At
the high end, this limit is about 1 cd's worth.

The Levertt Coop has Wildblue.  It is much the same (latency, etc.).

One other consideration: the satelites are somewhat low on the horizon,
so if you have tall trees (very common in this area), you may have to
cut them down to be able to use the service.  (I think Wildblue's
satelite is lower than HughesNet).


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