Two-Way Satellite Internet For Linux/Mac/BSD/etc.

tjw writes: "It seems that Starband has gone out of their way to make sure that their bidirectional satellite internet service was ONLY compatable with Newer MS OS's. However, if you don't mind voiding your warranty, you can strip out this "feature" and use the external modem as its engineers intended by use of a crossover cable, NIC, and DHCP client on ANY modern Operating System. You still need a USB->serial cable and a MS Operating system to install/commission the hardware though."

Re:networking the starband

I see a few problems with your comments.
1)Your issue with lack of support.
They provide a servide. They support that service. Try calling Ford about the diesel engine you dropped in your brand new Tarus. I am positive it will no longer be covered in a bumper to bumper waranty.
Just because you want them to provide or support a service does not mean that they do or should have to.

2)The attitude that the help desk should spend his time learning from your call. He has other customers, those staying inside the box that are on hold. He should help them first. Had you called at 4:30 am, it might have been different. Also, if a company thinks it is worth the tech guys time to learn about an alternate way of using them, they would send him to a class.

3)Thee fact that they get paid tons of money.
I imagine that the person is not rolling in the dough as you suggest. If this was a first level tech guy, I am almost positive. Not to knock the job, cause I value good support people, but I don't see it as one of the more desirable jobs, which brings me to my last problem.

4)The negative attitude that they had against you.
I have a feeling from your post, that you may not have handled the situation well, I know you aren't now, it is very negative and bitter. This attitude shows on the phone more than people know.

To summarize, I think you need to take a deep breath, realize that they had a job which they did. Maybe they didn't respond all rosey about the whole thing, but they could of had a long day. Now that you know how to do what you want, do something about it. Put together a reffernce page to tell others how to do what you did, maybe even a HOW-TO. After it is done, and done well, send it along to the support email address for the service provider. Maybe they will add support when they see how easy it is, you never know.
Keep a positive attitude with them, it will help in the long run.

Re:usb

but that is exactly what they did.
a builtin USB-->Ethernet adapter
granted, they could have used an external one, (actually i got such a beast with my cable modem a year ago).
but, that's an extra device, more difficoult to use (and just plain annoying: why should i have an extra device when i can have it built in)
the fact that the USB-->Ethernet adapter conflicts with the ethernet-card is bad design (very bad) and thus just plain stupid, but it does not contitute a malicious act.
and not thinking about linux is just short sighted, nothing more.

greetings, eMBee.
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Re:I have starbands service

I'm thinking I may have to go for this service. I live out in the sticks and there is no DSL, Intermedia recently took the internet-capable equipment out from round here and swapped it with another county that had crap equipment, Bellsouth analogue craps out at 5:30pm every day for a couple of hours and trying to get ISDN installed, we've get told after buying all the equipment that areaplus (increased local dialling range) is not available for ISDN and my ISP is outside the local area. That and although flat rate ISDN is supposed to be avaialble in TN, they keep taking about milage bands.

Anyway, I basically need a good reliable internet connection, latency is not a big issue but transfer speeds are the faster the better. Do Starband have static IPs available or is it all dynamic?

Rich

Re:Shame...

Doesnt seem like a good business plan

Sure it does... in fact, that's why they've done it. Support Costs. They only have to train their market droids / help desk helmets on a few specific systems. I'm not saying its right, but they way they look at it MS has the dominant marketshare so they'll go with Windows. Remember who this is being market to.

Now, if they were really savvy they would have some "this is unofficial and we won't support it, but if you want to hook up to Linux/*BSD/BeOS/MacOS/Atari 800xl here's how you do it / here's a link to someone else who's done it... just don't call us if you have any problems." I would think that would be the least they could do.

You're asking for trouble when you void warranties

Once you've done this modification and voided your warranty, you're SOL when the service gets upgraded and you're left behind. I'm surprised people are willing to do this kind of thing when others are spending all kinds of money to protect [4dws.com] their devices.

If I had to choose between spending a thousand dollars on a new device when I broke mine or a thousand dollars on a new windows box I could network to my other computer and run as a gateway, I'd rather choose the latter: at least that way, you get something tangible out of it. Windows may not make a great workstation OS, but it's just fine if you're running some network daemons in the background on it and don't fiddle directly. I've done it just fine.

Re:Speedup trick for MS

I've been playing around with MTU and RWIN pretty frequently, but haven't noticed much difference between an RWIN of ~32K and 64K...matter of fact, really haven't noticed a diff at all.

According to the standard formula you'll find on sites like dslreports [dslreports.com], I should be running with an RWIN of like 500K (terrible terrible latency averages around 800ms).

From what I've read elsewhere, my experiences aren't unique. With the wild variance of bandwidth you'll see on satellite, with latency swinging from 500ms on the low end up to 1500, the registry tweaks are only going to give moderate increases.

networking the starband

Before anyone jumps on Starband over their support for only Win 98+, have a look at a bit from their rather intelligent FAQ:

"Our Help Desk does not support networking questions and issues, so if you want to try networking with our system, you do so at your own risk, and we recommend that you first make sure that you have access to technical support through other sources. You will be charged by StarBand for any maintenance / repair / support services provided by StarBand due to problems resulting from your networking activities. While we do not yet provide a "StarBand-approved" networking solution, users have done it successfully."

They say "our Help Desk does not support..." Then they say "make sure you have access to technical support through other sources."

It sounds pretty clueful to me. Their Help Desk has enough trouble supporting Win9x, and they certainly don't need to be helping some 15YO with his Mac or Linux problems. (having worked tech support I have some pretty strong opinions.) But they do say networking has been done, and they don't explicitly ban the practice, like many other broadband providers.

What choice do rural users have?

What options are there for rural users, though? i.e., so rural you can't even get cable TV, and your address is "Route X, Box YY", and you're about 15 miles away from the nearest town (which only has a population of a couple thousand)? That's where my parents are right now, and they're stuck with a 33.6 modem. Granted, they haven't expressed any desire to upgrade--yet--but someday they might. What's there for them other than satellite?
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usb

what exactly indicates that they have gone out of their way to stop linux from working?

they use USB surely to avoid having to add a networkcard to the users pc. considering that all machines come with USB nowadays, but not necessarily with a networkcard, this is a GOOD IDEA.

and it is definetly not their problem that linux USB support is not up to par.

before anyone complains about lacking linux-support by this company, test the USB support in linux first (and then help get it finished)

greetings, eMBee.
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Speedup trick for MS

The easiest way to quickly boost the performance of your satellite link to is kick up your TCP window maximum segment size (MSS). The MSS determinates the amount of data sent per round trip.

On NT and W9x the MSS defaults to a pathetic 8KB. On Windows 2000 it defaults to 17KB, which is not much better. MS does not provide a documented way to change the MSS using the GUI. However you can hack the registry [microsoft.com] to boost the MSS to the max (0xFFFF = 65535) for a decent speedup. However, beware of the infamous 64240 byte bug [microsoft.com] in Windows 2000 and the equally infamous "windo" typo [microsoft.com] in Windows 98.

An interesting setup

Following instructions I initially read about on a Delphi satellite forum (linked somewhere in here), I successfully configured my StarBand reciever at my friend's place using standard ethernet, where he has no cable or landline phone service. He's quite deep in the woods. To make everything worse, his house is located where there is no clear sight to the south, but he did have a tower set up 200 meters away from his house where his HAM repeater/antenna is placed.

So here's what we did: We placed the StarBand dish on the tower, but we needed to get the signal to the house somehow. In the box where all his repeater equipment was housed, we put the 180 in there and hooked it up (via ethernet) to a Lucent WaveLAN transmitter to send the data from the tower to his house. (Thank god there was a line of sight between the antenna and the house in question.) Then, on the recieving end, we hooked up the home WaveLAN antenna/Orinoco card to an OpenBSD server set up as a firewall/wireless bridge (following some instructions we saw somewhere about obsd and WaveLAN) and then networked it using good old RJ-45 to his 3-pc LAN. Yes, he's a total NUT, I've told him that numerous times, but he absolutely wanted internet access at his wood cabin.

And yes, latency is EXTREMELY HORRIBLE at his place. But he has internet access and he's happy.

(Don't ask about the StarBand installer, we just told him to kindly 'buzz off'.)

Should be your LAST choice for broadband

I've been using DirecPC for the past month and a half, and I'll just say that using satellite should be your last choice, IMHO. Latency is bad enough on one-way, and on two way it basically kills anything other than straight browsing and FTP's. Bandwidth can drop to modem speeds. Do yourself a favor and research the experience of current users before ya take the plunge. If you can get cable or DSL (even at a higher cost), you'll probably be much happier...if you have no other options at all, satellite can be a decent, though often frustrating service.