Internet via Satellite

Hagar

Has anybody got experience of internet via satellite?

I live in Roscommon. There is no broadband of any type anywhere in the county. What a bummer. At the moment I am on the UTV 180 hour package which is decent enough but I have never got over 31.2k

I already have a sat dish to spare. Motorised 1m with a decent LNB.

Grateful for any ideas, even amusing bad ones.

spongebob

Silvermead.co.uk
Cpsat.co.uk
Netsystem.com

all are cheapish 1 way Sat , you use your UTV for uploads, and pay another €30 or €40 a month.

Pure 2 way sats are €125 a month or more and may have lower caps than one ways, one ways are often better.

Search for threads on the above and on Digiweb and Mediasat who do 2 way sats. Digiweb will not let you use your own kit unlike the 1 way sat providers , the 2 way providers normally charge €1,250 for installs or thereabouts.

with sats , Cap means Cap

M

Hagar

Thanks. I will check out the links.

muffen

I had satellite back in Sweden in 1998. I was getting 6MBit DL speeds, It was advertised at 512kbit, but there was never enough customers for any cap to be put in place, I was only limited by the upload from my modem.

Anyways, I think satellite is great for downloading stuff, but for anything else, its completly crap. You cannot play games, and a 56k modem loads normal webpages faster.

naitkris

Originally posted by muffen
I had satellite back in Sweden in 1998.

hejsan muffen! fint att det finns andra Svenskar (eller som har levat i Sverige) på boards.ie!

Originally posted by muffen
Anyways, I think satellite is great for downloading stuff, but for anything else, its completly crap. You cannot play games, and a 56k modem loads normal webpages faster.

playing games via 56k modem is a lot better then playing via the fastest satellite connection you can get at the moment as the pings are too high. one must remember it is the pings not the data transfer amount that is key, i.e. how quick you can run the 100 metres (fast ping) rather than how far you can run in the marathon (bigger transfer amounts).

i'm on 56k and though its not great for gaming online, satellite as it is at the moment wouldn't be an upgrade, but a downgrade in terms of online gaming performance.

muffen

hejsan muffen! fint att det finns andra Svenskar (eller som har levat i Sverige) på boards.ie!

Japp, känner 4 stycken ... delar huset med två av dom

Visste inte att det fanns ett nordiskt forum, måste ta en titt på det sen

playing games via 56k modem is a lot better then playing via the fastest satellite connection you can get

Yeah, they need to move those damn things closer to earth, so the ping goes down

naitkris

Originally posted by muffen
Japp, känner 4 stycken ... delar huset med två av dom

kul, hur kom ni alla att vara i Irland?

Originally posted by muffen
Visste inte att det fanns ett nordiskt forum, måste ta en titt på det sen

ja, fast den är bara en liten forum just nu.

Originally posted by muffen
Yeah, they need to move those damn things closer to earth, so the ping goes down

true, i suppose with time as with all technology, the pings will get better, though I doubt they'll ever be on a par with broadband of the future as you just cant beat fixed line connections no more than 10 or so km's away for speed. travelling thousands of km's into space will always be slower.

Originally posted by Hagar
At the moment I am on the UTV 180 hour package which is decent enough but I have never got over 31.2k

are you on a 56k modem? if you are then you should be getting 48Kbps if not 50.6Kbps. check your dial-up settings. it makes a good bit of difference the extra 15Kbps or so in terms of browsing speed. though i guess you may be on a 33.6k modem which if it is, then you should be able to buy a 56k internal modem for about 20 euro i think.

tuxy

hes probably on a dacs line if so thats the best speed he can get

John R

I use netsystem at the moment. Recently it has worked pretty well, but in the past it was rather poor especially during the daytime due to over-subscription. They have added a second transponder recently and the service has gotten much better over the last few months.

As people have said it is of no use for games but downloading and browsing are good. While it is true that pages will load faster on dial-up that is only the case with small pages, anything with lots of images and content will load much quicker. Netsystem and all of the other similar services work much better with windows xp than previous windows versions.
It is also fine for other services such as ftp and p2p (I use both kazaa and winmx without any problems)

AFAIK they have two packages, the one I have is €30 per month for 300-350kb/s with a download cap of 6gb per month. They do enforce the cap, if you go over it the account gets locked until the end of the month. I think they usually have a free sat card on offer, check the website for details.


I am not reccomending Netsystem over other sat operators as I have not used any others, I advise you to check them out carefully before signing up as they require a minimum term commitment.

http://www.netsystemusers.com is a website that re-sells netsystem but it has a good forum for subscribers or potential subscribers.

The main problem that all these services seem to have is a capacity problem, they start out great, offering high bandwith with large or no caps but then get over subscribed and speeds drop and they impose caps.

spongebob

Originally posted by tuxx
hes probably on a dacs line if so thats the best speed he can get

I noted the 31k speeds myself . He is probably on a Carrier Line all right. While Carrier lines/pairgains significantly degrade 56k downloads I would point out that the maximum upload speed for a 56k modem, on a perfect line, is 28.8k with V.90 and 33.6k with V.92. He should consider himself lucky, I know of pairgained lines that operate at 16.8k .

(/me wishes he could say all that in Sverige!)

M

vigos

Has anyone used Casablanca? I've heard its free.

http://satatonce.csp.it/english/index.php