new digiweb tooway 20Mbps / 6Mbps

sibergoth

Lads,

i'm interested in the new offerings from digiweb using the 20/6 Mbps satellite link.

http://digiweb.ie/home/tooway/packages/index.php

expensive... but i don't have much in the way of choice here

(until the mythical 4G happens !!)


can anyone post a speedtest and pingtest result from an installation and give an idea on reliability and uptime etc ??

cheers !!

Cheerful Spring

sibergoth wrote: »

Lads,

i'm interested in the new offerings from digiweb using the 20/6 Mbps satellite link.

http://digiweb.ie/home/tooway/packages/index.php

expensive... but i don't have much in the way of choice here

(until the mythical 4G happens !!)


can anyone post a speedtest and pingtest result from an installation and give an idea on reliability and uptime etc ??

cheers !!

Its pretty impressive, they can provide 6mbps upload. Eircom can't offering anything above 1mbps with their current DSL packages!

There three things that would turn me off personally even looking into this.

1 Data allowance is way too low for me or anyone who's using the internet to stream videos (download) and play video games.

2 I have heard the latency is awful and pings are high when you're using satellite broadband. So pointless getting this if you game.

3 You have to pay a very high installation fee just to use it.

When Jitter high pings and high latency the internet will have issues opening some pages and streaming stuff. Other then that those speeds will be adequate for browsing and emailing and social networking.

sibergoth

i know there are limitations, that's why i would like to see pingtest and speedtest results.

bealtine

sibergoth wrote: »

i know there are limitations, that's why i would like to see pingtest and speedtest results.

ping on satellite is 600ms one way and can vary wildly.

sibergoth

that's brutal... forget Skype

Kensington

sibergoth wrote: »

that's brutal... forget Skype

Forget any sort of interactive application - Skype, VoIP, Remote Desktop, online gaming. The sheer distance the signal is required to travel means there is an inevitable delay.

sibergoth

true.. but it wouldn't matter for downloading files and general browsing..

i wish i had an alternative.. this 2.5Mbps ADSL is driving me mad

bealtine

sibergoth wrote: »

true.. but it wouldn't matter for downloading files and general browsing..

i wish i had an alternative.. this 2.5Mbps ADSL is driving me mad

Well if the page is in any way interactive or uses ads it can be very annoying waiting for the page to load, there are some tricks the providers pull but overall it really isn't any good for general browsing either.

To be honest even 1Mb DSL is far far better than any satellite offering.

luke111

i live in blacktrenchch co,kildare and use the broadband for online gaming ps3,xb360 does anybody know of a servise i could use,at the moment i have eircom but no good all i can get is just 2meg

bealtine

contrary to what the satellite pimps will say...crap 2Mb DSL is far far better than any satellite offering

Nody

luke111 wrote: »

i live in blacktrenchch co,kildare and use the broadband for online gaming ps3,xb360 does anybody know of a servise i could use,at the moment i have eircom but no good all i can get is just 2meg

You're very unlikely to find anything better (i.e. the alternatives are wireless in various forms or if you're lucky UPC).

ps200306

Satellite has an unjustified bad reputation. I'm going to start by saying I have no connection with Digiweb or Tooway because this is going to sound like an ad.

I also am in a rural location. I spent years waiting for Eircom to upgrade the local exchange for DSL, and when they finally did they wouldn't upgrade a kilometre of "party line" so that anybody on my road could get it. I spent three miserable years with the local fixed wireless cowboys. Their service basically never worked, they had no competent technical staff, and no apparent willingness or ability to even diagnose problems, let alone fix them. That unhappy relationship ended with a complaint to ComReg. I used cellular, which was surprisingly good, but had too many outages to be used reliably as "primary" internet.

So that left satellite. I had a very early version of Tooway -- the Ku-band offering. If you want to see expensive and slow -- it was €1,500 installation and €120/month for 0.5 Mbps! However, after my fiasco with fixed wireless, I went back to Digiweb two years ago when the Ka-band product was launched. €250 installation and €60/month for 8 Mbps was a big step up from the previous offering, and was the same price as my non-working wireless.

So I gave it a shot. You know the deal with high latency -- I don't do gaming but I presume it wouldn't work. I did use VPN to my workplace and it was certainly affected, so that you only got 1-2 Mbps over VPN, but I actually considered that ok. I did some remote desktopping over VPN, and latency made things like writing code a pain, waiting for each character to echo back -- it did work though. The other killer is download limits. It was 8 GB/month and there was no monitor that could tell you when you were nearing the limit.

That's all the bad news. Now for some good news. Last November Digiweb upped the connection speed to 12 Mbps, doubled the download allowance, and implemented a usable download meter. I now have the first internet connection at my location that I would call solid and usable. I only just noticed the latest Digiweb offerings on their website, and assume they will be rolled out to existing customers like me. I don't care so much about the 20 Mbps as the unlimited nighttime downloads. I batch download a fair bit of video to watch, and am a night owl anyway, so 20 GB/month plus unlimited downloads at night are perfect for my needs. (If it wasn't that the more basic package doesn't include the night time data, I'd probably downgrade to it).

Browsing over satellite is fine. There's a delay while a page starts to load, but they use http accelerators (presumably preloading) so that pages come up promptly once they start to load. The other thing worth pointing out is that both VoIP and Skype both work absolutely fine. I've been using both regularly for two years over satellite. Yes, there's a noticeable delay, as you would expect, but the quality is fine due to the low jitter, and the delay is less of a nuisance than you might think.

The great thing that I have always found about satellite -- even in the bad old days of crappy 0.5 Mbps -- is that it is absolutely consistent and reliable. I've always gotten within 10% of the nominal upload and download rates, and since the speed increase last November I regularly get more than 12 Mbps. Here is a speed test run just now:



Finally, on the rare occasions when I've had occasion to contact Digiweb support, I have found them helpful. Bearing in mind the unfortunate state of broadband in Ireland, I would actually call myself a pretty happy customer.

ps200306

P.S. I don't suppose anyone knows when Digiweb will roll out the new speeds to existing customers? That's actually what I was looking for when I came across this thread.

Cheerful Spring

ps200306 wrote: »

Satellite has an unjustified bad reputation. I'm going to start by saying I have no connection with Digiweb or Tooway because this is going to sound like an ad.

I also am in a rural location. I spent years waiting for Eircom to upgrade the local exchange for DSL, and when they finally did they wouldn't upgrade a kilometre of "party line" so that anybody on my road could get it. I spent three miserable years with the local fixed wireless cowboys. Their service basically never worked, they had no competent technical staff, and no apparent willingness or ability to even diagnose problems, let alone fix them. That unhappy relationship ended with a complaint to ComReg. I used cellular, which was surprisingly good, but had too many outages to be used reliably as "primary" internet.

So that left satellite. I had a very early version of Tooway -- the Ku-band offering. If you want to see expensive and slow -- it was €1,500 installation and €120/month for 0.5 Mbps! However, after my fiasco with fixed wireless, I went back to Digiweb two years ago when the Ka-band product was launched. €250 installation and €60/month for 8 Mbps was a big step up from the previous offering, and was the same price as my non-working wireless.

So I gave it a shot. You know the deal with high latency -- I don't do gaming but I presume it wouldn't work. I did use VPN to my workplace and it was certainly affected, so that you only got 1-2 Mbps over VPN, but I actually considered that ok. I did some remote desktopping over VPN, and latency made things like writing code a pain, waiting for each character to echo back -- it did work though. The other killer is download limits. It was 8 GB/month and there was no monitor that could tell you when you were nearing the limit.

That's all the bad news. Now for some good news. Last November Digiweb upped the connection speed to 12 Mbps, doubled the download allowance, and implemented a usable download meter. I now have the first internet connection at my location that I would call solid and usable. I only just noticed the latest Digiweb offerings on their website, and assume they will be rolled out to existing customers like me. I don't care so much about the 20 Mbps as the unlimited nighttime downloads. I batch download a fair bit of video to watch, and am a night owl anyway, so 20 GB/month plus unlimited downloads at night are perfect for my needs. (If it wasn't that the more basic package doesn't include the night time data, I'd probably downgrade to it).

Browsing over satellite is fine. There's a delay while a page starts to load, but they use http accelerators (presumably preloading) so that pages come up promptly once they start to load. The other thing worth pointing out is that both VoIP and Skype both work absolutely fine. I've been using both regularly for two years over satellite. Yes, there's a noticeable delay, as you would expect, but the quality is fine due to the low jitter, and the delay is less of a nuisance than you might think.

The great thing that I have always found about satellite -- even in the bad old days of crappy 0.5 Mbps -- is that it is absolutely consistent and reliable. I've always gotten within 10% of the nominal upload and download rates, and since the speed increase last November I regularly get more than 12 Mbps. Here is a speed test run just now:



Finally, on the rare occasions when I've had occasion to contact Digiweb support, I have found them helpful. Bearing in mind the unfortunate state of broadband in Ireland, I would actually call myself a pretty happy customer.

For someone who plays x box live the ping and latency would be awful for gaming. For those who don't care this would be alternative to having no service at all.

ps200306

Cheerful Spring wrote: »

For someone who plays x box live the ping and latency would be awful for gaming. For those who don't care this would be alternative to having no service at all.

My experience is that satellite is better than all the other options available to me (cellular and fixed wireless). It's not just "the next least worst thing after nothing". That said, I have no desire for gaming or other applications requiring low latency. And I wish it was cheaper. Can't have it all, I suppose.

PogMoThoin

2.5mbit Dsl would still be better, there is no point dropping working Dsl for satellite

ps200306

PogMoThoin wrote: »

2.5mbit Dsl would still be better, there is no point dropping working Dsl for satellite

Six months ago I would have agreed -- 6 Mb satellite vs. 2.5 Mb DSL might have been a fair comparison. You'd take the lower latency of DSL without thinking too hard about it. But 20 Mb satellite give you 8 times faster burst mode downloads, for things like video (assuming download caps are ok). Suddenly, you've got to decide which things are more important to you.

PogMoThoin

ps200306 wrote: »

Six months ago I would have agreed -- 6 Mb satellite vs. 2.5 Mb DSL might have been a fair comparison. You'd take the lower latency of DSL without thinking too hard about it. But 20 Mb satellite give you 8 times faster burst mode downloads, for things like video (assuming download caps are ok). Suddenly, you've got to decide which things are more important to you.

Until they oversell it, then it becomes just as crap as what you had

Johro

ps200306 wrote: »

Satellite has an unjustified bad reputation. I'm going to start by saying I have no connection with Digiweb or Tooway because this is going to sound like an ad.

I also am in a rural location. I spent years waiting for Eircom to upgrade the local exchange for DSL, and when they finally did they wouldn't upgrade a kilometre of "party line" so that anybody on my road could get it. I spent three miserable years with the local fixed wireless cowboys. Their service basically never worked, they had no competent technical staff, and no apparent willingness or ability to even diagnose problems, let alone fix them. That unhappy relationship ended with a complaint to ComReg. I used cellular, which was surprisingly good, but had too many outages to be used reliably as "primary" internet.

So that left satellite. I had a very early version of Tooway -- the Ku-band offering. If you want to see expensive and slow -- it was €1,500 installation and €120/month for 0.5 Mbps! However, after my fiasco with fixed wireless, I went back to Digiweb two years ago when the Ka-band product was launched. €250 installation and €60/month for 8 Mbps was a big step up from the previous offering, and was the same price as my non-working wireless.

So I gave it a shot. You know the deal with high latency -- I don't do gaming but I presume it wouldn't work. I did use VPN to my workplace and it was certainly affected, so that you only got 1-2 Mbps over VPN, but I actually considered that ok. I did some remote desktopping over VPN, and latency made things like writing code a pain, waiting for each character to echo back -- it did work though. The other killer is download limits. It was 8 GB/month and there was no monitor that could tell you when you were nearing the limit.

That's all the bad news. Now for some good news. Last November Digiweb upped the connection speed to 12 Mbps, doubled the download allowance, and implemented a usable download meter. I now have the first internet connection at my location that I would call solid and usable. I only just noticed the latest Digiweb offerings on their website, and assume they will be rolled out to existing customers like me. I don't care so much about the 20 Mbps as the unlimited nighttime downloads. I batch download a fair bit of video to watch, and am a night owl anyway, so 20 GB/month plus unlimited downloads at night are perfect for my needs. (If it wasn't that the more basic package doesn't include the night time data, I'd probably downgrade to it).

Browsing over satellite is fine. There's a delay while a page starts to load, but they use http accelerators (presumably preloading) so that pages come up promptly once they start to load. The other thing worth pointing out is that both VoIP and Skype both work absolutely fine. I've been using both regularly for two years over satellite. Yes, there's a noticeable delay, as you would expect, but the quality is fine due to the low jitter, and the delay is less of a nuisance than you might think.

The great thing that I have always found about satellite -- even in the bad old days of crappy 0.5 Mbps -- is that it is absolutely consistent and reliable. I've always gotten within 10% of the nominal upload and download rates, and since the speed increase last November I regularly get more than 12 Mbps. Here is a speed test run just now:



Finally, on the rare occasions when I've had occasion to contact Digiweb support, I have found them helpful. Bearing in mind the unfortunate state of broadband in Ireland, I would actually call myself a pretty happy customer.

Yes I am also with Digiweb, have been for a number of years, but only because eircom are worse than useless and have been promising to upgrade our local exchange and lines for the last ten years and done nothing, and I can't get a decent mobile signal either.
I've tried different providers but they pretty much all require a 'line of sight' to one of their bases and I just don't have that, I'm in a river valley surrounded by tall trees and hills, I use free to air satellite too to get a tv signal.
My satellite installation is an older one, it cost me €598,00 to install (yeah.. I know) and I pay €35,99 per month for 3.5 Mbps download and 0.5 upload. Add to that a 2 GB monthly download limit. :eek:
The good news is that the download speed is consistent. The bad news is I like my ps3, and gaming is crap, if you want to play any FPS games like Black Ops, forget it, the lag is ridiculous.
I was told Digiweb's new offering was okay for gaming. It's also supposed to offer an Irish dynamic IP, which I currently don't have, my IP address puts me in Torino, Italy, which is where the sat base is, and that causes problems too. If anyone knows of anything better, please oh please let me know.
I gotta say I was pretty pissed off to get an email newsletter from Digiweb a while back telling me about the new satellite package, which offered more than double the download speed and upload speed, but at an installation cost of €249,-. Considering I paid out nearly six hundred for the original installation I find that outrageous, you'd think that as an existing customer for a good number of years they would simply upgrade your installation and charge the appropriate monthly fee, and waive the installation fee.

ps200306

Johro, I feel your pain. If it's any consolation my previous satellite installation cost 1,500 to install, and 120/month! :eek:

Ok, Digiweb upgraded my satellite package on 11th March, so have had it for over a month now. Only aspect of it I have yet to check out is the "all you can eat data" overnight -- I haven't done enough late night downloading to ascertain that yet. But here's a speedtest I did just now -- I am regularly getting above the nominal 20Mbps down, and 90% of the 6Mbps up.

sasol

ps200306 wrote: »

Johro, I feel your pain. If it's any consolation my previous satellite installation cost 1,500 to install, and 120/month! :eek:

Ok, Digiweb upgraded my satellite package on 11th March, so have had it for over a month now. Only aspect of it I have yet to check out is the "all you can eat data" overnight -- I haven't done enough late night downloading to ascertain that yet. But here's a speedtest I did just now -- I am regularly getting above the nominal 20Mbps down, and 90% of the 6Mbps up.

That download speed is certainly impressive.

Can you let me know what are the implications of a high latency speed ? I am not a particularly 'techie' person.

I am considering Digiweb to work from home . I would be using VPN and VoIP, but I have no interest in gaming, netflix etc, so I would like to understand if there are reasons that Digiweb would not work for me (specifically in relation to the high latency figures you have shown).

PogMoThoin

sasol wrote: »

That download speed is certainly impressive.

Can you let me know what are the implications of a high latency speed ? I am not a particularly 'techie' person.

I am considering Digiweb to work from home . I would be using VPN and VoIP, but I have no interest in gaming, netflix etc, so I would like to understand if there are reasons that Digiweb would not work for me (specifically in relation to the high latency figures you have shown).

You cannot VPN on satellite, the latency is too high. The VOIP experience will not be great either.

bealtine

sasol wrote: »

That download speed is certainly impressive.



I would be using VPN and VoIP, but I have no interest in gaming, netflix etc, so I would like to understand if there are reasons that Digiweb would not work for me (specifically in relation to the high latency figures you have shown).

Sat is utterly useless for work over a VPN and kind of works for VOIP.
Latency means the time it takes for a packet to arrive at it's destination. So press a key at it will take 800ms to arrive (which is just short of a second). So no RDP or remote control will work reliably over satellite

ps200306

sasol wrote: »

That download speed is certainly impressive.

Can you let me know what are the implications of a high latency speed ? I am not a particularly 'techie' person.

I am considering Digiweb to work from home . I would be using VPN and VoIP, but I have no interest in gaming, netflix etc, so I would like to understand if there are reasons that Digiweb would not work for me (specifically in relation to the high latency figures you have shown).

The latency is the amount of time it take to "ping" a remote computer and get a response. In other words, it's the round trip travel time for a small packet of data.

You don't have to worry about latency for "burst mode" activities, e.g. downloading a file over a 20 Mbps satellite connection will be just like downloading it over a 20 Mbps DSL or cable connection because there is no need for two-way communication during the download. On the other hand, playing an online game or any activity where the two ends are communicating frequently and waiting for a reponse, you will notice a very high overhead on satellite -- in the worst case it will be dozens of times slower than a low latency connection such as DSL. An intermediate scenario would be web browsing -- on satellite it will take a second or two for a page to start loading but once it starts it will be very quick.

The web appears to be full of horror stories about satellite performance from people who have never used it. I've used it in different incarnations for several years, and have also used DSL, cable, cellular and wireless, so I know what I am comparing it against.

Contrary to popular opinion, VPN does work over satellite -- it's just slower because the VPN defeats certain acceleration techniques used by the sat service. My experience is that VPN runs about 8 times slower than the nominal connection speed. So on a 20 Mbps connection you will be able to transfer files over VPN at 2.5 Mbps. Different VPNs may vary.

I find Skype and VoIP work fine over satellite (it has admirably low jitter), but I would be doubtful about VoIP over VPN if your employer provides IP telephony on their network. Web browsing over VPN works fine. Remote-desktopping is a bit of a pain. I have used it or writing code remotely, but it is far from ideal.

Basically, assume you will get a good reliable connection, but think about the implications of high latency for any uses you intend to put it to. Also make sure you can live with the download caps -- 10 GB on Digiweb's cheapest package, but 20 GB and free nighttime data on the next package up.

bealtine

ps200306 wrote: »

The latency is the amount of time it take to "ping" a remote computer and get a response. In other words, it's the round trip travel time for a small packet of data.

You are confusing two measurements here, latency is a one-way measure from source to destination however round-trip latency is indeed a two way measure.
Sometimes used but not so much.

If a packet takes 800ms to arrive at it's destination then it is useless for VPN work, no way will RDP or any remote control protocol work at almost a second delay. It's just too painful to wait a second for every keystroke.

ps200306

bealtine wrote: »

You are confusing two measurements here

No, I'm not.

bealtine wrote: »

latency is a one-way measure from source to destination however round-trip latency is indeed a two way measure.
Sometimes used but not so much.

No, one-way latency is the one-way measure. When latency is quoted on a residential connection it is invariably two-way. That's what the Ookla line quality test uses which is provided by UPC, Tooway, and speedtest.net on their respective bandwidth tests.

bealtine wrote: »

If a packet takes 800ms to arrive at it's destination then it is useless for VPN work, no way will RDP or any remote control protocol work at almost a second delay. It's just too painful to wait a second for every keystroke.

As noted, 800ms is the round-trip time. (Think about it -- double round trip distance to geostationary orbit divided by the speed of light). You don't have to wait a second for every keystroke. I type whole words or sentences at a time (I'm a sixty words a minute typist). The feedback lags behind the typing, but you do not have to wait one second (or any time at all) between keystrokes unless you are a one finger typist who needs to see whether you typed the right thing.

bealtine

ps200306 wrote: »

As noted, 800ms is the round-trip time. (Think about it -- double round trip distance to geostationary orbit divided by the speed of light). You don't have to wait a second for every keystroke. I type whole words or sentences at a time (I'm a sixty words a minute typist). The feedback lags behind the typing, but you do not have to wait one second (or any time at all) between keystrokes unless you are a one finger typist who needs to see whether you typed the right thing.

I've had the displeasure of using satellite to try and RDP to servers before and it was simply impossible.

Think about it yourself the sat is what 35,000km away in geostationary orbit blah blah. Think how long the signal takes to travel that distance: 300-500ms depending on atmospheric conditions

Anyway pimp away, I'm just warning the original poster that he won't be doing VPN work or reasonable VOIP over a sat link just like I couldn't when I had to suffer sat communications.

ps200306

bealtine wrote: »

I've had the displeasure of using satellite to try and RDP to servers before and it was simply impossible.

What sort of satellite connection? Where were the servers? How did you measure how much was due to the satellite? I've RDP'd to servers on the other side of the world with a local fibre connection at 100 Mbps and it was unusably slow.

bealtine wrote: »

Think about it yourself the sat is what 35,000km away in geostationary orbit blah blah. Think how long the signal takes to travel that distance: 300-500ms depending on atmospheric conditions.

So the speed of light is 70,000 km/sec in your world and can be slowed down by weather? Try the real world... it's more than four times faster.

bealtine

ps200306 wrote: »

What sort of satellite connection? Where were the servers? How did you measure how much was due to the satellite? I've RDP'd to servers on the other side of the world with a local fibre connection at 100 Mbps and it was unusably slow.



So the speed of light is 70,000 km/sec in your world and can be slowed down by weather? Try the real world... it's more than four times faster.

You really are insistent on pimping satellite connections and simply ignoring basic physics.

I used it to get to servers in Dublin and it sucked big time. The latency was horrific. That's if you must know

The time to a sat is about 300-500ms one way 300 on a good day...look it up.

Then lookup http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rain_fade

Stop pimping sat it's utterly useless, it's fine for broadcast TV and basic communications in the Sahara or the middle of the Atlantic but utterly crap for anything else. I know this because I've used them and wouldn't recommend satellite to my worst enemies...especially for any sort of connection that needs any form of interaction, it may be ok for a bit of browsing and basic internet access but it will never be broadband.

Anyway that's that...the op will make his own mind up and if he goes with sat he'll be utterly disappointed with the fantastic "headline" speeds on sat.

We haven't even gotten into the utterly crap sliding windows nonsense (download caps) that sat providers impose.

ps200306

bealtine wrote: »

You really are insistent on pimping satellite connections and simply ignoring basic physics...

The time to a sat is about 300-500ms one way 300 on a good day...look it up.

LOL. Are you genuinely sticking to your guns and insisting that your speed of light is a quarter of everyone else's? Here's the basic calc, just so you don't mislead anyone else. Time to sat for 45 degrees latitude is roughly 125 ms one way, 250 ms up and down, and 500 ms round trip to earth station, i.e. up and down twice.

bealtine wrote: »

Then lookup http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rain_fade

Uh huh. Where does it say the speed of light get slower when it rains? It says the connection stops working, which is exactly the case. I had that happen once in two years, during a thunderstorm.

bealtine wrote: »

Stop pimping sat it's utterly useless, it's fine for broadcast TV and basic communications in the Sahara or the middle of the Atlantic but utterly crap for anything else. I know this because I've used them and wouldn't recommend satellite to my worst enemies...especially for any sort of connection that needs any form of interaction, it may be ok for a bit of browsing and basic internet access but it will never be broadband.

I have no reason to pimp anything. Unlike you, I am using a satellite connection right this second, as I type. You maybe used a satellite connection once to do RDP -- you're not telling us when, or what product you were using (older Ku band sat was vastly different from newer Ka band, although obviously the latency issues have to be the same). I've been teleworking for 10 years, 4 of them using two different satellite products. I've been using the actual product the OP is talking about for 2 years. I've used RDP, VPN, VoIP, and a host of other applications. I am making no outrageous claims about sat -- I wouldn't use it for RDP either if I had any choice. But it is perfectly adequate for many applications, and a lot more reliable that many other types of connection available in this country.

bealtine wrote: »

We haven't even gotten into the utterly crap sliding windows nonsense (download caps) that sat providers impose.

Nor should we, since there aren't any sliding windows on the product that the OP is talking about. It's a simple monthly cap. Really, you've got some cheek pontificating about a product that you obviously haven't either used or researched, nor understand the basic physics of, when the OP is caught between a rock and hard place for a usable connection. Having been in the same position, I know what I would (and did) choose between a high latency (but highly reliable) sat connection, and piece of wireless crap that the ISP couldn't or wouldn't get working reliably. (That one ended up with ComReg).

ps200306

Just a thought, OP -- many years ago when I was very dubious about my first satellite connection from Digiweb, they let me try it out from their offices in Dundalk before signing up. I have no idea if they still do the same thing. (Contrary to the previous poster's suspicions, I am not actually writing from that Dundalk office ). You could call them and check if they have somewhere you could bring your laptop down to try it out, with your VPN installed and ready to do a few real world representative tests. I always find a practical test is a more reliable guide than some randomer on the interweb. :rolleyes: