Micromagic One Way Satellite Broadband

thebman

After the Broadband anywhere ad thread I saw here, I went to the website for a laugh after seeing they said they used to resell SkyDSL because I have SkyDSL.

Anyway turns out they are reselling SkyDSL one way broadband aswell as providing two way. However the costs they are adding are evil:

http://micromagic.biz/Broadband/1way.htm

What speed is the connection?

The fastest download speed will therefore be 24 Mbit/s. However, this is a contended service, so the actual speed will depend on how busy the service is. To regulate this, SkyDSL have devised a very fair system of bandwidth sharing. Within any monthly subscription period:

From experience, most of our customers rarely exceed the first 500MByte volume in any month period.
What does it cost?

We supply a self installation kit, comprising:

dish and wall mount
universal LNB
cable
PCI DVB-S satellite receiver

The cost for the kit is €300.00 (inc VAT) for standard PCI Card, if you have no room for a PCI card then a USB box is available for an extra charge. Also you may want to avail of a larger or motorised dish.

Subscription to the service starts at €12 / month (inc VAT)

(Note you are responsible for any costs associated with the dial-up connection).

The contract duration is initially 6 months, with 1 month rolling notice period thereafter.

If you do not wish to carry out the installation yourself then your local satellite TV installer will generally charge around €150 to install and align the dish for you. We cover installations in Ireland and Europe, however, additional travel charges from the South West of Ireland do apply.

Note the 300 Euro price for the kit. We have SkyDSL and the kit was free. Paid 50 Euro for shipping and that was it.

http://www.teles-skydsl.com/order.php?func=tariff_summary

¹ No ADSL availability? Get satellite broadband from skyDSL with the skyDSL Basic tariff: € 9.90 per month starting from the second month, incl. 500 MB data volume in first gear with up to 2000 kbps. Set-up fee € 0. Hardware: PCI-card € 39, USB-box € 89. When the included volume is exceeded, a surcharge of 1.5ct / MB applies. Higher bandwidth up to 4000 kbps optionally available in second gear for an additional fee of 1.5 ct/MB. A flatrate is available as an upgrade. All upgrades for the skyDSL Basic tariff are free of charge during the first month. Depending on your chosen payment method, bank fees between 0,60€ and 0,80€ are due for each transaction (in Spain up to 2,75€). All prices include VAT. Minimum contract term 6 months with automatic renewal for another 6 months unless cancelled with one month’s notice. Post & package depends on content of the package. In order to transmit data, a connection to the Internet is required which may result in additional costs. skyDSL offers a satellite broadband flatrate for anybody without ADSL availability!

² Looking for an ADSL tariff? Check out the skyDSL basic tariff with flat rate upgrade. All upgrades for the skyDSL Basic tariff are free of charge during the first month. When the included volume is exceeded, a surcharge of 1.5ct / MB applies. An additional fee of 1.5p / MB also applies for use of the second gear, also when in combination with the 24000 kbps - upgrade. All prices include VAT. Minimum contract term of upgrades: 1 month with automatic renewal for another month unless cancelled with 1 month’s notice. Upgrades can only be purchased in conjunction with the skyDSL Basic tariff, for which the respective terms & conditions apply. ADSL tariff versus skyDSL: the skyDSL Basic tariff with volume upgrade or flat rate!

Looking for a great ADSL tariff including an ADSL flat rate? TELES sky DSL offers you a broadband internet access via satellite. The ADSL flat rate upgrade is available for all ADSL tariff s. Compare the ADSL tariff and flat rate upgrade with other ISP and internet access provider.

Also they are charging 12 Euro a month and SkyDSL charge 9.90 for the same package.

Just thought I'd post it, he did say that they had stopped reselling it but the webpage is still up and I've been with SkyDSL for 5 months and this has always been the pricing so they were just ripping people off badly. Initially I thought that they would include the installation cost but I don't think it does after reading the last part of the question in the FAQ.

I also looked at the two way satellite broadband package which is 100 Euro a month but they don't have the cost of installation on the website and reserve the right to change any quoted price if they incur problems during installation according to the website.

netwhizkid

What Skydsl Package are you on Brim4Brim??

Sorry if I may have asked you this before I am on the €16.90 package (no longer available on the site anyway) with 1GB (1000MB) Data included. But I think they have a package out now that would give me 3GB (3000MB) Data for €9.90 which would end up saving me money plus giving me more data to download.

thebman

netwhizkid wrote:

What Skydsl Package are you on Brim4Brim??

Sorry if I may have asked you this before I am on the €16.90 package (no longer available on the site anyway) with 1GB (1000MB) Data included. But I think they have a package out now that would give me 3GB (3000MB) Data for €9.90 which would end up saving me money plus giving me more data to download.

I'm on the same as you at the moment. I noticed that. I'll have to look into it. 1GB is just good enough for drivers and the odd song or two.

watty

You need really 5G to 12G

Altreab

watty wrote:

You need really 5G to 12G

5G to 12G and 4G still hasnt arrived here yet? *tongue planted firmly in cheek*

5Gigs is the absolute minimum you need especially if your using P2P for downloading music. Really 20Gigs is more like it. If you have a few people who are YouTube fans then expect that 10Gigs download limit to disappear VERY quickly.!!
Even a 1 Meg connection will eat throught a 10Gig allowance as quickly as 27 hours solid downloading.

watty

I find that net MP3's are rubbish quality. Esp the kind you buy (poor bit rate, DRM etc. I even swapped a blown up controller card on someones HDD so they could retrieve the 100s of euro worth of downloads. Which they had to re-authorise online afterward). I prefer internet shopping trolly and snail mail delivery of the CDs / DVDs. Better quality and even may work out cheaper due to lack of DRM problems. Even ordering from Austrailia is not much slower than UK/Channel Is. etc. I never buy NTSC region as the quality is 30% lower (480lines +3:2 pull down artifacts cf 576lines and no artifacts).

I use Satellite for Live TV and DVDs for "VOD /IPTV" The net has a long long way to go before it is a sensible medium for video live or download (12Mbps speed and 500GByte cap and managed QOS for streaming video, minimum IMO).

Lets get universal Internet for "reasonable" use sorted first before worrying about Uber Downloaders.
Anyone doing 27 hrs solid downloading should consider getting their brain wired permentantly to Net and donating the rest of the body.

Altreab

watty wrote:

I find that net MP3's are rubbish quality. Esp the kind you buy (poor bit rate, DRM etc. I even swapped a blown up controller card on someones HDD so they could retrieve the 100s of euro worth of downloads. Which they had to re-authorise online afterward). I prefer internet shopping trolly and snail mail delivery of the CDs / DVDs. Better quality and even may work out cheaper due to lack of DRM problems. Even ordering from Austrailia is not much slower than UK/Channel Is. etc. I never buy NTSC region as the quality is 30% lower (480lines +3:2 pull down artifacts cf 576lines and no artifacts).

I use Satellite for Live TV and DVDs for "VOD /IPTV" The net has a long long way to go before it is a sensible medium for video live or download (12Mbps speed and 500GByte cap and managed QOS for streaming video, minimum IMO).

Lets get universal Internet for "reasonable" use sorted first before worrying about Uber Downloaders.
Anyone doing 27 hrs solid downloading should consider getting their brain wired permentantly to Net and donating the rest of the body.

I agree totally on the sound quality of downloaded music. Its lousy. Ditto NTSC quality.
Agreeded again on getting universal Internet for "reasonable" use sorted. But if a house has a couple of teenagers online then a 10Gig bandwidth will go very very quickly. 27 solid hours is less than an hour a day and with the huge increase of sites like YouTube Myspace and even webcams its easy enough to be online for 1 hour a day at max. Also many people do their large downloads at night to minimise the inconvenience caused by the downloading while they are online with email ect

watty

I did have 5 teenagers, but 3 are now consuming BW elsewhere. (Each & Wife has own PC /laptop) 15GByte was I think worst. I think I will have all of them back with "extras" this next while on/off till new year!

thebman

10GB would be more than enough for me if I could get real broadband as I'd spent a lot of time playing HL2 online mostly with one of my mates from college. I hate that he has broadband and I don't.

I sent on the site for the possible mast location to Ice broadband that they asked for when I contacted them (posted in another thread here). I doubt it'll do anything though.

Last Mile are available in my area but from the reviews I've read of them, I'm better off with 56K and SkyDSL. Same price, faster downloads and probably better ping times too Ice aren't supposed to be much better but hey at least if there is competition, there might be incentive for decent service or at maybe encourage some other better operator to move into the area.

BBandBlackHole

I just signed up to their Basic plus flatrate tariff. Its a 2MB 1 way service for €20 per month (first month free). Im just not sure yet what exactly the flatrate fee is as they arent so clear on FAQ or T&C's.
Anyway re the installation, its was painfully simple. Yesterday I was at wits end as couldnt get a blip of signal.
So today called a few installers, eventually found one claiming ot have the equipment to locate Eurobird3, but couldnt sit still and decided to make one more trip up the ladder. I pointed the PC speaker out the window using the free audio indicator software included. I swung the dish back to its default position to start again and suddenly heard 96%! WOW! The nudged it about a millimeter and heard 100%. Just downlaoded a 95MB file in less than 5 mins! This is amazing. Considering the whole thing only cost me the shipping charge of €48. Dish, Cable, LNB, Brackets, Software, Manual even a little dinky compass. Man these guys are fantastic and live up to the stereotypical German reputation. Everything was organised and straightforward.

I have only two questions.
1. Is it possible when downloading large files can I sucessfully disconnect my Modem (Since theoretically Im not sending any data). I tried but it disconnected the download too :-(
2. With the software came DigitalTV SkyDSL PCI. It has a huge list of TV and Radio channels but none display anything. Anyone know anything about these and if its possible to get any of them? I tried changing the Satellite selection from Astra and Hotbird to Eurobird but nothing worked so far.

Anyway, besides all that Im today a pig in ...... after 4 years of modem hell.

watty

You need to move the dish as well as change the satellite in SW to get loads of TV & Radio, then no down;load.

netwhizkid

BBandBlackHole wrote:

I just signed up to their Basic plus flatrate tariff. Its a 2MB 1 way service for €20 per month (first month free). Im just not sure yet what exactly the flatrate fee is as they arent so clear on FAQ or T&C's.
Anyway re the installation, its was painfully simple. Yesterday I was at wits end as couldnt get a blip of signal.
So today called a few installers, eventually found one claiming ot have the equipment to locate Eurobird3, but couldnt sit still and decided to make one more trip up the ladder. I pointed the PC speaker out the window using the free audio indicator software included. I swung the dish back to its default position to start again and suddenly heard 96%! WOW! The nudged it about a millimeter and heard 100%. Just downlaoded a 95MB file in less than 5 mins! This is amazing. Considering the whole thing only cost me the shipping charge of €48. Dish, Cable, LNB, Brackets, Software, Manual even a little dinky compass. Man these guys are fantastic and live up to the stereotypical German reputation. Everything was organised and straightforward.

I have only two questions.
1. Is it possible when downloading large files can I sucessfully disconnect my Modem (Since theoretically Im not sending any data). I tried but it disconnected the download too :-(
2. With the software came DigitalTV SkyDSL PCI. It has a huge list of TV and Radio channels but none display anything. Anyone know anything about these and if its possible to get any of them? I tried changing the Satellite selection from Astra and Hotbird to Eurobird but nothing worked so far.

Anyway, besides all that Im today a pig in ...... after 4 years of modem hell.

Good to hear you got it working, from what I gather from your post you are on EuroBird Three? Surprising you got it as I read it was hard to pick up. Anyway you can download large files offline with what is called skyrfd but is limited to a crappy 60MB which would download while you wait. see here

Yes the SkyDSL PCI will receive TV and will also record them, I have watched TV off Astra 28°East (same satellite as Sky Digital use) off Eurobird 13°East and Hispasat 30°West and of course off Telecom 2D/Atlantic Bird 2 at 8°West.

You can use the frequencies here to watch TV on it if you are aligned to Eurobird 3 @ 33°East.

See here if you are aligned to Telecom 2D/Atlantic Bird 2 at 8°West.

To add the channels open up the Digital TV and click on the binoculars icon as shown in this screenshot.

You will then need to configure the Channel Scan hit remove all (you may have to highlight the channels shown first) then select your chosen Satellite in the configure utility. Screenshot

This screenshot will guide you into the Manual Tuning part. (it took me ages to find that at the start)

Then you can tune in the frequencies as on the Lyngsat site shown above in the Manual Tuning see this Screenshot

Alternatively you can use the automatic scan utility as shown in this screenshot. This will automatically tune in all the channels on that chosen Satellite, make sure to set the chosen Satellite to Either Eurobird 3 @ 33°East or Telecom 2D/Atlantic Bird 2 at 8°West, whichever applies in you case. The channels with a # infront of the name are encrypted and cannot be viewed, the SkyDSL PCI card is a FTA (Free-to-Air) Receiver only.

BBandBlackHole

Thx NetWhz & Watty, NetWhz looks like Ill need to come back to your instructions as need to get some work done. But big thx - will try later.

Yip Eurobird3 is what Im on.

One last question (as mentioned before skyDSL arent so hot on the way they pitch the information and finer details of each tariff).

I mentioned im on Basic+upgrade flat tariff which will cost me €29.80 p/m
So when I go into ''skyDSL Cost Control centre'' I see my default preset limit is set to €100 and Ive already used €11 leaving €89. Im trying to figure out what my 29.80 gets me and where this additional charge kicks in. ANyone know?
Im not being lazy as have tried their support but despite them being responsive and helpful, I find their responses a little garbled and difficult to follow, possibly a language/translation thing. Tarifs Anyone?
Thx again guys!

fdiddy

can i also use this service to get analogue satellite?i am currently looking for a analogue connection because my current dish has given up due to rust.and i also need some broadband for my business.i know this is one way satellite but for €20 a month unlimited download it seems a very good price.what is the service like?thanks in advance.

netwhizkid

BBandBlackHole wrote:

Thx NetWhz & Watty, NetWhz looks like Ill need to come back to your instructions as need to get some work done. But big thx - will try later.

Yip Eurobird3 is what Im on.

One last question (as mentioned before skyDSL arent so hot on the way they pitch the information and finer details of each tariff).

I mentioned im on Basic+upgrade flat tariff which will cost me €29.80 p/m
So when I go into ''skyDSL Cost Control centre'' I see my default preset limit is set to €100 and Ive already used €11 leaving €89. Im trying to figure out what my 29.80 gets me and where this additional charge kicks in. ANyone know?
Im not being lazy as have tried their support but despite them being responsive and helpful, I find their responses a little garbled and difficult to follow, possibly a language/translation thing. Tarifs Anyone?
Thx again guys!

They bloody well are not so hot indeed, I myself am on Basic+Volume Upgrade 3,000 MB costing €19.80 a month. I have my preset limit set at €1 having changed it from €100 myself.

I don't know where the €11 came in as you are on flat rate and have all you can eat in terms of megabytes unlike myself who am limited to 3,000MB. I would suggest you limit the preset limit as I did myself.

Also if you were accidentally on pay-as-you-go data which is basictarrif with its 500MB data limit and you exceed that 500mb limit the mini-satellite icon in the task bar will change colour from Green to Yellow (see the attachment) and you'd be charged 1.5¢ per MB you'd download over that limit. Also on the Basic+upgrade flat tariff your SkyRFD (offline upgrade I mentioned in my earlier post) has an increased data limit from 60MB to 1,000MB.

I suggest you keep an eye on it as your first bill will probably be for the postage of the equipment and your next bill would be €29.80+ €11 which is €40.80 and that is a bit ridiculous as you still have to pay for the Dial-up to your ISP.

Hope this helps, their tariff descriptions are terrible I must agree.

fdiddy wrote:

can i also use this service to get analogue satellite?i am currently looking for a analogue connection because my current dish has given up due to rust.and i also need some broadband for my business.i know this is one way satellite but for €20 a month unlimited download it seems a very good price.what is the service like?thanks in advance.

I am not sure if the fta satellites tuner in the SkyDSL PCI card could handle Analogue signals, or could any digital receiver for that matter, analogue is a grey area for me to be honest. There are no Analogue stations broadcast on either Eurobird 3 @ 33°East or on Telecom 2D/Atlantic Bird 2 at 8°West and for to operate SkyDSL and an Analogue receiver of the Same Dish you need a Dual LNB and to motorise the Dish providing you have a clear sight of the Arc of the Sky.

The Only Analogue signals broadcast I know are broadcast on Astra 19°East see here and most of what is broadcast in in German except for CNBC and Eurosport both of which are available on Digital Satellite although they are encrypted on Digital Satellite I think.

The service is good providing you align the dish properly and you have a good quality PC with Pentium 4 and running XP, (I assume it will be Vista Compatible too) it is €29.80 for unlimited data not €20 plus you must also factor in the cost of Dial-up/ISDN/GPRS or whatever is used for the uplink.

fdiddy

thanks for the reply.my current isp package is from esat bt 180 hr dial up package that cost 26 euros a month,so i would be talking about 60 euros a month.is there any more pitfalls that i should be aware of before i purchase skydsl?

thebman

One more thing to be careful of.

That cost control thing resets itself to the default 100 Euro each month and you have to set it back to 1 Euro each month (0 is an option oddly enough).

Just keep an eye out on your taskbar icon, when it goes yellow from green, you are paying for it and should just stop using it.

watty

brim4brim wrote:

One more thing to be careful of.

That cost control thing resets itself to the default 100 Euro each month and you have to set it back to 1 Euro each month (0 is an option oddly enough).

Just keep an eye out on your taskbar icon, when it goes yellow from green, you are paying for it and should just stop using it.

You really don't want 1 way sat at over 80Euro as 99 Euro is price of cheapest two way which doesn't need phone line at all.

watty

fdiddy wrote:

can i also use this service to get analogue satellite?i am currently looking for a analogue connection because my current dish has given up due to rust.and i also need some broadband for my business.i know this is one way satellite but for €20 a month unlimited download it seems a very good price.what is the service like?thanks in advance.

Why Analogue?

You can buy a Digital Satellite receiver from 70 Euro and it has Analogue TV out. PC PCI satellite card for Digital reception with Analogue TV out is expensive (but works on P90!) and is not good for data.

A Sat PCI card is not true broadband, not even two way internet. All can do TV or Data, but not usually usefully at same time.

An 80cm dish is not expensive on its own either.

fdiddy

watty wrote:

You really don't want 1 way sat at over 80Euro as 99 Euro is price of cheapest two way which doesn't need phone line at all.

but i will have to pay for installation if i want 2 way satellite,is there any provider that have free equipment or are they all a rip off?

netwhizkid

fdiddy wrote:

but i will have to pay for installation if i want 2 way satellite,is there any provider that have free equipment or are they all a rip off?

There was specualtion back in September that a new 2 way satellite internet service was to be launched called Astra2Connect and more importantly it was going to be cheap. There was a thread on it here . I have heard nothing about it since, but read somewhere that it the first quarter of 07 was pinned as a launch date. If a person was going committing to 2-way satellite which is usually around €99per month and close to a €1,000 to install it would be worth seeing if this would come to the market first.

fdiddy wrote:

thanks for the reply.my current isp package is from esat bt 180 hr dial up package that cost 26 euros a month,so i would be talking about 60 euros a month.is there any more pitfalls that i should be aware of before i purchase skydsl?

I have the same Dial-up package also, I have not had too many problems with SkyDSL, My biggest problem was aligning the Dish nearly two years ago and after then the other big problem I had with it was after formatting the PC last April to get it working again but I managed that too.

Before you buy It, check to see if there is any hope of non-satellite broadband, check out Vodafone and Three to see if they offer HSDPA 3G Broadband.

Now that SkyDSL is cheaper than when I got it in 2005 it is worth getting it as if Fianna Fail are re-elected to the Dail god only knows when broadband will ever arrive if at all. I did not envisage using SkyDSL in 2007 when I signed up to be very honest, it is now either SkyDSL or No-internet for me as Dial-up is the biggest waste of money on its own.

thebman

watty wrote:

You really don't want 1 way sat at over 80Euro as 99 Euro is price of cheapest two way which doesn't need phone line at all.

Well for 30 Euro a month (last I checked) it is supposed to be unlimited downloads so if he's on an unlimited package then I guess the cost control doesn't take effect.

All I Know is we were on the 16 Euro package which only gave 1GB a month and I had to set it each month.

They've changed the packages to include more bandwidth now I think.

But around 30 euro a month should give you unlimited SkyDSL and then add your 56K service to the price.

I don't know anything about 2 way satellite, it was really expensive when we got SkyDSL.

BBandBlackHole

Thx Guys, Ive shot a new request off to their support asking specifically what this additional charge is since I have the all you can surf pack. Ill let you all know when done.

watty

netwhizkid wrote:

There was specualtion back in September that a new 2 way satellite internet service was to be launched called Astra2Connect and more importantly it was going to be cheap. There was a thread on it here . I have heard nothing about it since, but read somewhere that it the first quarter of 07 was pinned as a launch date. If a person was going committing to 2-way satellite which is usually around €99per month and close to a €1,000 to install it would be worth seeing if this would come to the market first.

I heard it is launching in East Europe / North Africa / Middle East first and beam may not reach here, unless later it is launched on Sat beams that are good here.

netwhizkid

brim4brim & BBandBlackHole what sort was the Dish that SkyDSL supplied? was it an 80cms and what colour was it?

A friend of mine is thinking of getting it now as it has clear there will be no broadband where I live until 2010 at the earliest, and at the time I had to buy my own dish and am not sure about SkyDSL and the dishes the provide.

BBandBlackHole

Ahh I 'think' Im beginning to get it.
Here are the two responses I got from their support:

The flatrate costs 19.90 Euro per month.
The flatrate is not time based, but data volume based.
This implies that no additional expenses accrue for download activities.
Keep in mind that there is always a usage surcharge in gear 2 of 1.5 ct/MB.

Additional charges incur everyt time when you switch to gear 2.
This is not a data volume surcharge, but in general whenever you shift to gear 2 1.5 ct/MB arise.

There are no additional charges for data volume when you have taken out a flatrate upgrade

SO Im thinking, my problem is I have been swtiching to 2nd gear when downloading therefore if I stay in Gear1 this shouldnt happen? Does this make sense to you guys?

netwhizkid

BBandBlackHole wrote:

Ahh I 'think' Im beginning to get it.
Here are the two responses I got from their support:

The flatrate costs 19.90 Euro per month.
The flatrate is not time based, but data volume based.
This implies that no additional expenses accrue for download activities.
Keep in mind that there is always a usage surcharge in gear 2 of 1.5 ct/MB.

Additional charges incur everyt time when you switch to gear 2.
This is not a data volume surcharge, but in general whenever you shift to gear 2 1.5 ct/MB arise.

There are no additional charges for data volume when you have taken out a flatrate upgrade

SO Im thinking, my problem is I have been swtiching to 2nd gear when downloading therefore if I stay in Gear1 this shouldnt happen? Does this make sense to you guys?

Yes that pretty much sums it up, stay in gear one (Surfing Priority 1) the whole time and you won't get charged the surcharge, switching to (Download Priority 2) which will change the Satellite icon from Green to Yellow will incur the 1.5¢/MB and increase the speed to 4MB/sec rather than the usual 1MB/sec but I couldn't see the sense in that unless a person was in a rush to make a train or something. I wish there was a way to turn off having the Option of "Download Priority 2" incase it got used by mistake eg. another computer user, spouse kids etc.

I am running skyinternet version 7.5.1501 which I installed yesterday after upgrading to version 8.0 but I didn't like the way it put a SkyDSL option in the Dial-up options which seemed like some sort of quasi ISDN connection. Anyway I uninstalled that and re-installed version 7.5 which updated itself off the web and gave me the "Surfing" and "Download" Priorities for the first time ever.

Before with their old packages you could subscribe to a 16MB/sec constant download with unlimited data. But this can't be done anymore.

The nearest thing is adding "24,000 kbps upgrade" this is another upgrade to the basic tariff which along with alongside unlimited Data would cost €39.70 a month for constant downloads at 4MB/sec in Gear one and 24MB/sec in Gear Two with the 1.5¢/MB surcharge on the 24MB/sec. I doubt if few people would use it in Gear Two though unless the item being downloaded was small which would make the speed/time difference negligible anyway.

BBandBlackHole

My only other issue I find (version 8.0.1654 of their software) is there is no quick way to see data transfer rates. Sometimes I wonder if its gone back down to almost dialup levels but cant tell since there is no data transfer icon to mouse-over. Ive done into the statistics tab on the Data Application dialog but its not much use. Newwhiz do you have any tips on this?

I use Internet Download Accelorator for large downloads which when downloading does clearly show the speed, but when surfing I dont see and quick and dirty solution to at-a-glance data transfer rates. Anyone?

thebman

netwhizkid wrote:

brim4brim & BBandBlackHole what sort was the Dish that SkyDSL supplied? was it an 80cms and what colour was it?

A friend of mine is thinking of getting it now as it has clear there will be no broadband where I live until 2010 at the earliest, and at the time I had to buy my own dish and am not sure about SkyDSL and the dishes the provide.

Can't remember what size the dish was but it was bigger than a Sky Digital (digital tv company) dish.

We didn't bother using it though, we used an old Sky Digital as we had cancelled Sky Digital subscription and we got full coverage in midlands with it pointing at Telecoms 2D.

Originally pointed it at Eurostar, got coverage but it fell in and out and an email to tech support got a reply the next day telling us we should have pointed it at telecoms 2D. It is easy enough to setup yourself if you are any good at that kind of thing and they supplied compass and everything for it. You should get a sat finder (a cheap one will do as the SkyDSL software will tell you where the satellite is (Latitude & Longitude) and you can see the signal strength on your Pc (it has an option to read this out to you so you can hear it from your roof if you turn your speakers up). If their not comfortable doing that then might want to get someone out to align it for you.

I found support to be excellent for SkyDSL and they explained that the reason we were loosing coverage on Eurostar was that they were migrating to another satellite and because we weren't supposed to be pointing at Eurostar we weren't notified. The person said they could change it in the db so we were pointing toward Eurostar or we could change the satellite position so we were pointing toward Telecoms 3D which is what we did as we got a better quality signal from it overall.

Should note that SkyDSL is good for downloads and works for P2P (slow upload as it is 56K obviously) but I didn't find it increased web page loading times except very image heavy ones because of latency because it is satellite broadband afterall so it takes a while to get going when you click a link basically. In fact when using normal websites like boards.ie, I sometimes checked to see was I actually using the SkyDSL connection because it didn't seem fast at all for it.

thebman

BBandBlackHole wrote:

My only other issue I find (version 8.0.1654 of their software) is there is no quick way to see data transfer rates. Sometimes I wonder if its gone back down to almost dialup levels but cant tell since there is no data transfer icon to mouse-over. Ive done into the statistics tab on the Data Application dialog but its not much use. Newwhiz do you have any tips on this?

I use Internet Download Accelorator for large downloads which when downloading does clearly show the speed, but when surfing I dont see and quick and dirty solution to at-a-glance data transfer rates. Anyone?

Opera web browser displays this info when browsing at bottom of screen (you can change it in options, I don't know if it is enabled default as I know use FF).

You might be able to get an extension for FF to do it or it might have it built in and I don't know about it.

When using it for web browsing it starts off slow to initiate the loading and then starts loading at fairly low speeds and starts to accelerate to full speed but the page is usually loaded before that happens is probably the best way to describe it.

netwhizkid

BBandBlackHole wrote:

My only other issue I find (version 8.0.1654 of their software) is there is no quick way to see data transfer rates. Sometimes I wonder if its gone back down to almost dialup levels but cant tell since there is no data transfer icon to mouse-over. Ive done into the statistics tab on the Data Application dialog but its not much use. Newwhiz do you have any tips on this?

I use Internet Download Accelorator for large downloads which when downloading does clearly show the speed, but when surfing I dont see and quick and dirty solution to at-a-glance data transfer rates. Anyone?

I check the "local area connection" which is my 2nd set of small tvs in the taskbar, my first is Dial-up the 2nd is SkyDSL, I simply right-click and press status so it gives me a good indication of the speeds. See my screenshot

If downloading a file on FireFox it gives a good indication of the speeds too. usually a file downloads at about 120kbps average depending on the geographic location of the server too. www.speedtest.ie gives a good indication too, I generally run about 5 tests and average it, but I don't do this only maybe once a week. I will do some checking to see if I can come up with a firefox plugin that might do what you are asking.

brim4brim wrote:

Can't remember what size the dish was but it was bigger than a Sky Digital (digital tv company) dish.

We didn't bother using it though, we used an old Sky Digital as we had cancelled Sky Digital subscription and we got full coverage in midlands with it pointing at Telecoms 2D.

Originally pointed it at Eurostar, got coverage but it fell in and out and an email to tech support got a reply the next day telling us we should have pointed it at telecoms 2D. It is easy enough to setup yourself if you are any good at that kind of thing and they supplied compass and everything for it. You should get a sat finder (a cheap one will do as the SkyDSL software will tell you where the satellite is (Latitude & Longitude) and you can see the signal strength on your Pc (it has an option to read this out to you so you can hear it from your roof if you turn your speakers up). If their not comfortable doing that then might want to get someone out to align it for you.

I found support to be excellent for SkyDSL and they explained that the reason we were loosing coverage on Eurostar was that they were migrating to another satellite and because we weren't supposed to be pointing at Eurostar we weren't notified. The person said they could change it in the db so we were pointing toward Eurostar or we could change the satellite position so we were pointing toward Telecoms 3D which is what we did as we got a better quality signal from it overall.

Should note that SkyDSL is good for downloads and works for P2P (slow upload as it is 56K obviously) but I didn't find it increased web page loading times except very image heavy ones because of latency because it is satellite broadband afterall so it takes a while to get going when you click a link basically. In fact when using normal websites like boards.ie, I sometimes checked to see was I actually using the SkyDSL connection because it didn't seem fast at all for it.

What P2P do you use Brim4Brim? I use it with Limewire, but have all the uploading suspended otherwise it would cripple my Dial-up upload.

It works good for most websites but I wouldn't use boards.ie as an analogy as this place could be crawling even if you had one gigabyte fibre (victim of its own success). It was up & down all Today.

Cool interesting to hear a 60cms Sky Digital TV dish would do, didn't know that.

thebman

Well we've cancelled SkyDSL now (chancing our arm with LastMile broadband for browsing and light downloading). I used Limewire with it when I had it.

Your right that boards isn't the best example at the moment. A better example would be if your loading Microsoft.com with its huge, pointless image, it loads faster.

With the Sky Dish we lost coverage in bad weather but satellite is effected by weather anyway, ours was just gone completely in bad weather.

cgarvey

Moved from IoffL (Broadband might be better, but then IoffL don't think satellite internet is quite broadband. Satellite seems to be just deal with TV)

BBandBlackHole

Im a littel miffed with skyDSL. Despite being on the 'all you can eat' tariff for unlimited downloads, after a few hundred MB downloads their nasty fair usage policy has kicked on. So instead of the standard 210kb per sec download in Gear1, they drop me to 20 kbs. Of course they tell me if I switch to Gear 2 now restriction applies - yip of course it doesnt at 1.5cent per MB.
There's always a catch. Upgrade flat tariff isnt truly unlimited as I have found.:mad:

The Predator

Thats nothing BBandBlackHole, I only have it 2 weeks and my dial up download speed is faster than the skydsl download speed averaging 800B/s, what a joke, I feel completely ripped, Is there any way of getting out of a 12 month contract?