Anyone using Satellite-based ISPs?
 

What's your experience? How is the upload speed? D/L speed? Does it work well enough for a 'remote office'?

Thanks in advance!

I used direcway for awhile but I had a lot of trouble with it. One time it was really overcast and I couldn't get a signal... and when I did it was really slow. I spent a lot of time with tech support and never really got a good speed.

Luckily that was just temporary until I moved.

I'm on Direcway now, and I'm counting the days until my contract runs up so that I can go back to sweet, sweet dialup.

Surfing is slightly faster, uploading is basically the same as dialup and you can pretty much forget about streaming audio/video/anything. Stats remote frequently causes the modem to crash especially if you have a bunch of programs.

Worst tech support system and phone manner of any company I've worked with...ever. I've actually been "accidentally" hung up on four times when they couldn't figure out a problem.

Depending on your signal strength on a sunny day you will most likely lose your connection on a slight drizzle of rain.

Satellite is like a paysite with all babes and 10's on the tour, but when you join all you get is low-res pics of dogs and crack whores. Oh, and it's $700 if you want to cancel before your contract date.

Pray for alternative broadband solutions if you have no other choice.

:1orglaugh

Yes, I have DirecWay (by DirecTV) because I live in the middle of nowhere and 'real' broadband isn't available. I just upgraded from the DW4000 to the DW6000, which is one modem instead of dual modems.

I've had it for over 3 years now (along with 12 phone lines) and it has been a nightmare. It rains, snows, humming bird flutters over it and it goes down. The download speed is decent, but the upload at best is 4kb/sec. Logging in to remote computers is SLOW. The latency is awful. Surfing web sites is slow... there's a really bad lag. I must say that the DW6000 is a lot faster than the DW4000 was, but it's a lot of money for crappy service. I paid $1200 for the hardware and it's $69.95 a month.

On top of the slowness and the latency, you are limited to 22 TCP connections in a 4 hour period for personal accounts and 30 for business plans which cost more. If you exceed the limit in 4 hours, your bandwidth gets capped down to nothing, to the point where you can't even load a web page and IM programs disconnect. On top of the TCP connection limit, you can only download up to 169MB in a 4 hour period, or again, your bandwidth gets capped because of the fair access policy they have. The government in the US has a lot of laws about satellite transmission, so that's one of the main factor's of it sucking.

I cannot wait to move to where I can get REAL broadband. There were days I was PRAYING for a dial up 21k connection. It's HORRID!!!! :Oh crap

Oh and tech support? Ha! Have fun calling India. :(

I'm on the new ka-band satellite connection and all I can say is SWEET JESUS THANK GOD I'M RID OF DIALUP.

I can download (on average) around 100kbps and upload around 18kbps There is a latency issue, and depending on how well they install your dish its 250ms to 1000ms. I'm around the 400ms mark.

You can't do the online gamer thing with it, but everything else including VPN works fine. I use PCAnywhere, RDC and VPN regularly for other work I do and have no issues.

www.xplornet.com is the Canadian option
and
www.wildblue.com is the USA option

We've had rain and storms up here the last 2 weeks and I haven't lost connection once.

just bought a new laptop and am looking for a satellite based ISP as well...

used direcway for about 2 years prior to high speed microwave internet.

locked into a high priced contract through earthlink.

verdict: total shit.

weather related outages often, upload speed usually slower than dialup. FAP is a joke, you surf for a few hours and suddenly your download is capped down to dialup speeds.

emphatically DO NOT RECOMMEND.

oh, and forgot to mention. you will need to be on the phone with tech support every month if you are trying to make your living on the internet with satellite connectivity.

and tech support is mind bogglingly, bad, waiting 30 minutes on the speakerphone listening to the fucking "your call is important to us" horseshit while being forced to listen to some jackoff upsale, and then finally when you get a live person, it is some turban head in bangladesh who doesn't know the earth is round and can't speak english.

total fucking hype.

however, directTV is quite good.

Thanks for the feedback, guys.

A friend of mine just got it and says it sucks.

I just upgraded to the DW6000 too....i agree the tech support in India is Bullshit...but i live in the boonies and i have some nasty horrid weather...i mean garbage shit....ice and shit half the year....if you live closer to a town or even in town...frequencies mess it up tons....i didnt know all this regulation shit that you talk of though....good to know.....

but i like how mine runs.....ive noticed when a car pulls up with a radar detector it craps out totally.....garage door openers.....but being where im at its not a problem

the next big boom in high speed in rural areas not served by cable is short distance wireless.

i have T-1 speeds both up and down for $75/mo. very reliable all weather solution.

do a search and see if it is avail in your area, this technology is rolling out rapidly in USA.