Broadband from Satellite

robert muldoon

I posted a thread some time ago stating that there was no hope of getting broadband in my area for some time, maybe never!!. I got a reply from a company 'Leinster Broadband' who stated that they install satellite broadband. I replied to them that I might be interested, but i never heard from them again.I have a Sky dish, can this be used to get broadband and how much does it cost?

spongebob

Did they PM you or did they reply to your post, in principle it is possible to use a SKY dish alright but there are a few caveats to this.

M

Spud_Gun

There are issues with latency and satellite BB, so its not ideal if you are planing on playing online games. Otherwise you should be fine. I would imagine that you could only use some Sky BB package to avail of the dish. Do they provide such a service?

BigMoose

http://www.cpsat.co.uk/

This lot use a satellite in the same direction as the Sky orientation so you can use your existing dish. There are other services around that use satellites in completely different locations so the Sky dish is of no use for these...

I have not tried this lot although my parents in law are considering it as to quote Ericom "you have no hope of ever getting BB as you are too far away from the exchange"... Or words to that effect.

Robxxx7

As long as you have a DVB card for your PC and a quad LNB for your SAT dish, then give CPSAT a go, they can set you up with a trial, so you can see how you get on..

Dr. Dre

Personally I would recommend a 1 Metre dish, you should be able to pick them up dead cheap - IRC I paid €150 for a 1 metre dish, a brand new LNB and installation/alignment.

robert muldoon

Could someone pls give a contacyt Nr of a firm I coiuld talk to about satellit broadband
Tks

crawler

www.digiweb.ie - ask for Colm - Mention here too - Number is 1800 28 58 28

spongebob

None of the services Digiweb sell are visible to a dish pointing at the Sky sat though......and poor Robert will have a canary when he hears the price of the Digiweb 2 way sat ( or any other 2 way sat for that matter)

If 64k isdn (at most) cannot do his uplink leg then he is looking at 2 ways sats which cost a fortune.

One way sats come in 2 flavours .....keeping it simple here.

1. Those in the same part of the sky as SKY Astra such as Netsystem and Cpsat ...there is another one too ISTR . One dish can do TV and Sat BB then.

2. Those in another part of the sky (second dish needed and may as well get a 1m for the quality of signal ) such as Europeonline and others.

M

crawler

I Love Muck's view on Satellite

Does any one think there is a business case for adapting the Sky disk with a LNB etc for Broadband......I dont think anyone really does it as a busienss as such.....?? Just a thought!

neXus9

What's the cap though on cental point?

What does Data Volume Priority Limit1 and 2 mean?

Kazu

has anyone tryed www.europeonline.com

spongebob

Originally posted by crawler
I Love Muck's view on Satellite

Does any one think there is a business case for adapting the Sky disk with a LNB etc for Broadband......I dont think anyone really does it as a busienss as such.....?? Just a thought!

The problem occurs at the 64k + uplink requirement.

A one way sat with a reasonable cap costs as little as €10 a month and a decent (ish) one about €50 a month and a single ISDN channel of 64k does the uplink. You can get 128k up with Eircom FRIACO as the billing system will allow you use your allwoance at twice the speed. A sneaky h00r could get 1 x FRIACO per DDI so you could get

1 x One Way sat = €50 a month total
2. x FRIACO packages = €60 a month total
3. 1 x ISDN rental = €40 a month total

€150 a month including VAT , and a twin LNB on the SKY dish you already have ( about 20% of all Irish households Crawler with a higher figure beyond the ADSL areas in the countryside ) . 512/64 k

That costs the same as a 2 way sat and the latency is more than halved by virtue of the fact you are using ISDN and the funky compression / acceleration is always done by the VSAT people on THEIR uplink = your downlink.

Digiweb will charge you €1000 for Equipment and €420 for installation of Skystar 2 Way 512k/128k with 2Gb Cap and then €108 a month and analogue line rental of €24 so thats €132 per month and the equipment cost and installation.

I can re-engineer an existing SKY dish and get a DVB card for me PC for €100 or so (Twin LNB/Cable/DVB Card) and labour not included. My €150 proposed package above will include 8Gb (priority 2) and 0.8Gb priority one from UK35 from CPSAT per month. It will generally be as fast or faster and the installation charge is minimal over the first year.

Apart from the €100 worth of kit there is an €100 upgrade to ISDN.

THERE IS NO REFUND FOR 2 WAY SAT KIT that does not work to your satisfaction, or a shoddy install for that matter. You cannot self install because the uplink has to be spot on.

THERE IS NO SECOND HAND MARKET FOR 2 WAY SAT KIT that you get off a mate , you will be charged a full setup fee for it.

If my scheme fails you can flog the DVB card for €50 and run a second receiver off the new LNB you put in anyway and downgrade to PSTN for €25 .

It is well worth trying for someone coming new to SAT BB, if you need a 2 way sat you can explain why. If you cannot explain it you do not need it.

In fact it may be possible to P2P on the one way where you can not on the 2 way because of large scale port blocking.

M

BigMoose

Cheers for that Muck! Interesting post. I have done the maths for the inlaws and concluded much the same - except they cant get ISDN (for up) according to Eircom:mad:

The bummer is that europeonline is far cheaper than anything I've found that broadcasts from the Sky orientation so that would mean 2nd dish and installation costs to coexist with TV. Plus europeonline have far quicker speeds for the cheaper price but a smaller cap. I wrote to ask them about what happens when you go over this limit and never got a reply:dunno: Anyone experienced this?

Eurorunner

@bigmoose: I am just coming to the end of my first month with Europe online. I shelled out €99 for the 12 months as i already had the pci card and dish. It has made some difference - although anyone who is used of / or has access to anything better than dialup wouldnt be impressed. The first week, i was getting download speeds of 50KB/sec - in the last few days this was down to 20-30KB/sec - however, at this speed its still worthwhile for the money when your only other option is dialup and d/l speeds of 7KB/sec.

I deliberately went heavy on the downloading yesterday - with 4 days left in my first months sub - once i hit the cap, that was it - no more service. However, in this instance you can just revert to regular dialup. It is possible to buy 2GB more of downloading but i wont shell out what they're asking for this.
Despite the above, i think it is still worthwhile - i will have to be very careful in choosing what to download - and leave the bulk of it till the latter end of the month so that it doesnt affect the ability to surf at sat b'band speed. But at least i can now download a few things every month whereas on dialup, this would be impossible.

BigMoose

Thanks for your very helpful reply. Have you tried using their data centre for downloads? Am I right in thinking you get unlimited use of that? But I'm guessing it rarely has the thing you particularly want to download at any given time... Still for the inlaws web browsing, OS and Virus updates it should prove a useful service.

Eurorunner

I would still recommend it to anyone stuck on dialup - who has no access whatsoever to a proper pipe to download stuff. In my case, i dont actually need too many gigs of a d/l allowance to d/l what i need (Its amazing when your on a unlimited bb connection how much useless unnecessary shíte you end up d/l'ing....). 1GB is stingy but i suppose they want to make it pay...

Remember, you dont have to sign up for a year like i did. You can sign up on a monthly basis, giving them something like a months notice ie. you could try it and get out from under the contract within two months if it doesnt float ur boat.


Ref. EON data centre : really, that was never a selling point for me - how could they possibly provide content that everyone would find useful. I have a motorised sat setup so i have more video stream than i care to watch. As for ..other data, well, their selection wouldnt interest me;)

neXus9

I was looking at satellite broadband and I was wondering, if you have to upload using a dialup connection, are you consistently having to pay dial up costs even if you aren't uploading because you need to have an open line.

(If you leave the net on all day, are you faced with a massive dial up bill?).



Thanks:D

Eurorunner

@neXus9 - this is not an 'always on' sort of deal. Its a combo of dialup internet (for the uplink) and sat broadband (for the down link) - you pay for both.

So basically your still on the flat rate dialup deal your probably on at the moment and need to keep within the monthly time allowance in order to keep the costs reasonable.

neXus9

dammit.:(

What about two way satellite? Is there any one meg satellite packages for the budget of 60 euros that you don't have to use the dial up for?

But if I leave the phoneline unplugged for normal surfing, then that's ok, isn't it?

Ripwave

Originally posted by neXus9
I was looking at satellite broadband and I was wondering, if you have to upload using a dialup connection, are you consistently having to pay dial up costs even if you aren't uploading because you need to have an open line.

(If you leave the net on all day, are you faced with a massive dial up bill?).

If you're browsing, you have to send the page request out, so you have to be dialled up. If you're downloading something large, though, you can start the download, then hang up once it has starte. It will continue to download even when you are off the line.

Broadbandseeker

robert muldoon wrote:

I posted a thread some time ago stating that there was no hope of getting broadband in my area for some time, maybe never!!. I got a reply from a company 'Leinster Broadband' who stated that they install satellite broadband. I replied to them that I might be interested, but i never heard from them again.I have a Sky dish, can this be used to get broadband and how much does it cost?

Leinster Broadband is supposed to be the recommended suppler for the Dunlavin area. I asked for there broadband service for two separate business 3 months ago. Despite calling and e mailing dozens of times I am still waiting on them to provide the service. Most of the time the office is on answering machine, and if you do get somebody on the phone you are promised action by the next day, but nothing arrives. Has anybody else had difficulties with these cowboys. The worry is of course if you do eventually get there service, what will they do if you have a breakdown etc. ?

Sponge Bob

There are far far too many complete cowboys in the VSAT BB sector , promising everything and disappearing with the money. They come and go all the time.

The only long termers who have not 'gone' are Armstrong and Digiweb and Educom and Mediasat.

netwhizkid

Check out Skydsl I am using them for a year and a half and find it quite good but am optimistic about DSL so I am keeping it until my local exchange arrives anyway. It is the cheapest of the Sat Providers I could find then, but you still have dial-up to pay for.

Benzino

i know it has been said before in the thread (allthough posted in 2004!!) but is broadband by sat any good for playing games online..even if it is a fast connection like 2MB??? cause i'm dieding for broadband but just like most people in ireland..i can't get it.

I wouldn't mine but the governament approved broadband in my local area a year ago and still nothing has happened!!!

netwhizkid

Benzino wrote:

i know it has been said before in the thread (allthough posted in 2004!!) but is broadband by sat any good for playing games online..even if it is a fast connection like 2MB??? cause i'm dieding for broadband but just like most people in ireland..i can't get it.

I wouldn't mine but the governament approved broadband in my local area a year ago and still nothing has happened!!!

Nope, not a hope, the ping levels with Satellite are much too high ranging from around 500ms to over a second, there is nothing that can be done as the satellite is so many thousands of miles of up and the laws of physics dictate that the waves can only travel so fast thus the delay in a fraction of a second, it also renders it practically useless for P2P, Voip and VPN etc.

Type Ping www.boards.ie into "Run" in the start menu and it will give you your ping speed. My dial-up is nearly twice "Faster" that the satellite in terms of Ping anyway.