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

Robert Heller heller at deepsoft.com
Mon Jan 12 13:27:59 EST 2009


At Mon, 12 Jan 2009 10:33:21 -0500 "Jeremy Dunn" <jeremy.j.dunn at gmail.com> wrote:

> 
>    ** Be sure to fill out the survey/skills inventory in the member's area.
>    ** If you did, we all thank you.
> 
> 
> I have not had this service, but several of my neighbors have had it.  I 
> investigated it when only dial-up was available and did not find it suitable 
> for my purposes.  It depends on your needs.
> 
> The speeds are ok, but the main limitation is latency, the time it takes for 
> the signal to travel to the satellite and back.  4 earth-to-orbit trips each 
> time = more than 100,000 miles = 2/3 of second.  Basically, it's sluggish. 
> If you're typing on a remote-desktop system, very annoying to not see 
> keyboard echo for nearly 1 second after a key is pressed.
> 
> It works well when you're transmitting large blocks of data; so-so when 
> transmitting lots of small blocks of data; and doesn't do well when trying 
> to work on remote systems.

Right:

	VPN: poor/impossible
	Video Conferencing: poor/impossible
	VOIP: not recomended (works for *some* people sometimes)
	Second Life: the Second Life site specificly recomendeds
			*against* a satellite connection

	General web surfing works 'ok' (some sites are worse than
others -- depends on content -- lots of 'small' media means lots of
small connections, where the latency will get you).  Bulk file
transfers (uploads/downloads) work well, so long as you don't use up
the fair use limit. E-Mail works well, except with the latency hitting
you when you click 'Get New Mail' / 'Send' -- once the connection for
the transfer has been made things are fast enough. Slogin also works
(no worse than slogin over dialup) -- yes, sometimes 'choppy' with
keyboard echo type delays (this would probably depend on what sort of
connection / remote session set up one is using -- I have used ssh to
open a remote xterm on a Linux server from a Linux desktop / laptop
machine).

	Note: the top-end speed is about 1.5MegBytes down, somewhat less
up.  Cable modem speeds start higher (3MByte?).  A full T1 is
1.5MegBytes (up and down).

> 
> Good:
> * downloading large files
> * web-surfing image-dense sites, movies, etc.

Depends.  If the site has a few large images, it is ok.   If the site
has *lots* of small images, it can be *worse* than dialup - opening a
connection for *each* (small) image incurrs a latency penalty and these
add up.  If the site is 'brain damaged': eg no height/width fields with
the <img> tags and/or missing Content-Length: headers, it can be really
bad (*worse* than dial-up).  www.cwmars.org is a partitularly *bad* site
in this reguard.  The web design crew & server admins there have done a
really bad job, IMHO.

> * sending or receiving email with large attachments
> 
> Not much better than dialup, due to latency:
> * web-surfing mostly-text sites

If the pages are *large*, it is faster.

> * sending or receiving emails of average size, without large attachments
> 
> Poor:
> * remote-desktop
> * VPN
> 
> The satellite dish must be positioned very precisely by a professional 
> installer.  One friend had an outage due to very high winds in winter, which 
> required waiting until weather conditions permitted a technician to climb 
> onto her roof and repoint the dish.  Generally, roof installations are to be 
> avoided; but laws require that the antenna be positioned at least 4' off the 
> ground since it has a transmitter.  Many people have the antenna installed 
> on their eaves.  Must have a clear line-of-sight to southern sky.
> 
> If cable really did come so close to your house, you might consider asking 
> your neighbors if they'd share their signal via WiFi or point-to-point 
> wireless connection.  Having said this, they'd probably want to read the 
> fine print in their contract, which might prohibit such usage.
> 
> - Jeremy
> 
> 
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "B. Melville" <bmelville.pgs at verizon.net>
> To: <hidden-discuss at lists.hidden-tech.net>
> Sent: Friday, January 09, 2009 9:47 PM
> Subject: [Hidden-tech] Does anybody have HughesNet or DirecTV satellite 
> webaccess?
> 
> 
> >   ** Be sure to fill out the survey/skills inventory in the member's area.
> >   ** If you did, we all thank you.
> >
> >
> > 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?
> > _______________________________________________
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> > Hidden-discuss at lists.hidden-tech.net
> >
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>                                        

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Robert Heller             -- Get the Deepwoods Software FireFox Toolbar!
Deepwoods Software        -- Linux Installation and Administration
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heller at deepsoft.com       -- Contract Programming: C/C++, Tcl/Tk
                                               


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