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? > > _______________________________________________ > > Hidden-discuss mailing list - home page: http://www.hidden-tech.net > > Hidden-discuss at lists.hidden-tech.net > > > > You are receiving this because you are on the Hidden-Tech Discussion list. > > If you would like to change your list preferences, Go to the Members > > page on the Hidden Tech Web site. > > http://www.hidden-tech.net/members > > _______________________________________________ > Hidden-discuss mailing list - home page: http://www.hidden-tech.net > Hidden-discuss at lists.hidden-tech.net > > You are receiving this because you are on the Hidden-Tech Discussion list. > If you would like to change your list preferences, Go to the Members > page on the Hidden Tech Web site. > http://www.hidden-tech.net/members > > -- Robert Heller -- Get the Deepwoods Software FireFox Toolbar! 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