Satellite-Delivered Broadband Gets Louder 180
David Savage writes: "AOL and MSN are about to announce the release of broadband Internet connections that will allow users to access the Internet at cable and DSL speeds via satellite dishes. The MSN service will allow users to download and upload data via a satellite dish. The AOL service on the other hand will require users to upload data through a regular dial-up connection and download through the dish. Both plans will have prices that compete with current cable and DSL prices, but will have hefty setup fees (in the hundreds of dollars). Both companies are planning to begin offering their broadband services, which will be available almost anywhere within the U.S., in the next couple of months." As the article points out, satellite access has been around for a while but whether because of cost, complexity or low marketing not made the splash that cable and DSL access have. But when the 800-pound gorillas (AOL and MSN) jump in, that scene could change a lot. I'd like a little price competition in space (since it seems more likely than among local land-bound connections), but why can't the dishes and setup be free like they are with satellite TV promotions?
I don't see the utility (Score:1)
MSN is Gilat (Score:3)
That sounds almost perfect (Score:1)
Re:System Requirements... (Score:1)
And yet, it gets a +1 informative. Only on Slashdot...
And yes, the hw requirements are a slight jab at the trend of bloatware that comes from our favorite company, but most of the post applies to AOL's ventures into this arena as well.
Part of the problem/reason is what we've already seen with DirectPC - it's very much a Windows-only "solution" to high-speed access. IIRC, Win9x-only at that. Blech!
Paranoid rants aside, I honestly don't think that Microsoft and AOL will allow for platforms that they cannot fully control. MS's control is obvious. AOL can resort to tricks like taking over the network adaptor configuration (like the PPP debacle with AOL 5.0), and say things like "Oh, Connection Sharing? Sorry, we don't support that, so we disable it. Read your licence agreement again, it's in there.. "
But neither of them can fully control other platforms like that, nor do we want them to.
At the very least, it'll come down to what platforms can they actually support. Details are sketchy, so writing drivers may or may not be an issue, but certainly I doubt that AOL or even MS has the resources (or desire) to take calls from every quasi-major platform user that they may see.
Hell, my ISP escalates me immediatly when they hear me say the word "Linux" - 'cos the front-line folks don't have a clue how to deal with tshooting it (even though I've done all that anyway before I call).
Re:So monopoly eh? Doh! (Score:1)
Re:Sniffing the satelite surf waves. (Score:2)
As to your other point, I would darned well hope that the signals were encrypted or (the dereaded security through obscurity method) were only receivable by special devices.
Re:So monopoly eh? Doh! (Score:2)
Re:I don't see the utility (Score:1)
Anyhow, I'm sure there are some areas where there are options for cable service, I just don't think that its very common.
Yes, but.. (Score:2)
Re:MSN is Gilat (Score:1)
Latency is bad (Score:5)
A satellite in geosynchronous orbit is 22,300 mi away, minimum (at least according to the linked article). According to my math, that's about .12 light-seconds. In other words, it takes a signal 120 milliseconds to get from the satellite to the earth.
Think about telnet, or quake, or something like that. You press a key, and a packet gets sent. 120ms later, it reaches the sat. The sat sends it back down to a station, that takes another 120ms. Ignoring any latency on the ground, the ack for that packet takes 120ms to reach the sat and another 120ms to get to you. We're up to nearly half a second. Now add any ground-based latency, and you are one sorry-ass High Ping Bastard.
And of course your actual rate of download will depend on how large the TCP window is, 'cause it takes the same half a second for you to ack that MP3 file being beamed to you from outer space...
Low earth orbit satellites make *much* more sense for Internet because of this problem. Too bad no one could redo Iridium satellites to route IP! Of course, your favorite billionaires, Bill Gates and Craig McCaw, are collaborating on an outfit called Teledesic [teledesic.com] to do LEO sat Internet, but they are targeting 2004 for service start... which probably means more like 2006+, if ever.
Re:They can't even agree on chat . . (Score:1)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but IM software isn't exactly hauling in the $$ is it? Just my thoughts...
Can microsoft say ping time? (Score:1)
Never heard of him (Score:1)
Re:*Upload* via satellite - Impossible! (Score:4)
- Zilch
Re:DBS Bandwidth 32Mbps (Score:1)
Have a look over here:
Lyngsat [lyngsat.com]
Looks pretty crowded up there already
What is an MMDS spectrum? (Score:1)
Re:Latency (Score:3)
Short answer: Its rilly, rilly bad.
Think about it. That satellite is a long way away - geosynchronous orbit is 22,236 miles up - and your packets have to up to the satillite and back down to the ground station - thats 44,472 miles one-way. The speed of light is 186,000 miles per second, so in optimal conditions, you're looking at almost 500 milliseconds for a ping to your ISP.
Games are pretty much unplayable. Large transfers are fast, as long as you don't drop any packets. Filling that pipe is a bitch!
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Re:"Why..." (Score:1)
Re:I don't see the utility (Score:1)
And I really, really don't want more people using cable. There's too many now.
And some people still have the traditional 1 line (Score:1)
AOL Broadband (Score:1)
Gilat being ridiculous? (Score:2)
But... (Score:2)
I look forward to receiving comments on this.
So monopoly eh? Doh! (Score:1)
Who's doing the MSN satelite? (Score:2)
Details on how it will work here [gilat2home.com] ,as well as receive DISH Network satellite television programming from two EchoStar satellites. Additional information about this combined offering will be provided in the near future on this Web page.
From the page: "The GTH system both sends requests to the Internet and receives the requested Internet content via a Ku-band satellite in geostationary orbit approximately 22,300 miles above the equator. The satellite, in turn, communicates with GTH's hub facility, which has a direct connection to the Internet. The result is two-way satellite Internet service that provides high-speed, always-on access on par with other broadband technologies, such as cable modems and DSL. Best of all, no telephone connection is needed, no terrestrial Internet account is required, and the service is available in any location that enjoys a clear view of the satellite. The GTH satellite dish is also capable of receiving EchoStar's DISH Network? 500-channel satellite television programming. By taking advantage of this capability, a single antenna can provide two-way satellite Internet service
Re:Take it up with your provider not with society (Score:2)
It makes sense to offer low-cost dial-up plans for people who are legitimately *really* poor, just like the phone company does...but whining that DSL and cable are just too expensive and about how the "elites" are keeping it all to themselves? Gimme a freaking break. It's expensive to lay the infrastructure for high-bandwidth connections, and contrary to popular belief, phone and cable companies are not making money hand-over-fist off these services.
(I know, I know, cry me a river...but these companies are in business to make money, and they've got to cover their costs like anyone else.)
Someday, high-speed access will be cheap/free, when bandwidth is no longer a scarce good. But by then, we'll have changed our idea of what "high-speed" is, so people will be whining about that, I'm sure.
Re:Whats the advantage over cable? (Score:1)
(Yes, there's the whole aiming, etc to worry about.. But screw that, I'm patient)
Now don't tell my bosss I can get 768K per sec when I go vacationing... But he might not care.. esp since telnet will be lagged to fuck.
Owell I see farmers, and others in the boonies buying this, and loving this. If I was in Bublefarq Ks, and this was my only option than 28.8 dial up.. I'd take it.. in a heartbeat
The MSN offer is impressive indeed (Score:1)
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"My kernel can beat up your kernel"
"I use Windows 2000. Get over it."
Gilat system in final pilot tests (Score:1)
wireless acess (Score:1)
Re:*Upload* via satellite - Impossible! (Score:2)
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Great! More idiot newbies all over the place! (Score:3)
On web sites, 1.2meg 1280x1024 graphics scaled down to 30x30 graphics thanks to Microsoft Frontpage(tm) and all the chaotic pages it creates.
In email, problems with people trying to send 15 meg file attachments and recieving them back constantly.
Talk about a Tech. Support nightmare!
They can't even agree on chat . . (Score:1)
Re:System Requirements... (Score:1)
On a side note, does anyone think those reqs might be to help sales of Win2k or WinME? I'm sure there'll be some people who will upgrade just to use this.
Re:What is an MMDS spectrum? (Score:1)
eudas
sounds great but... (Score:2)
Re:Latency (Score:1)
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Sniffing the satelite surf waves. (Score:2)
Anyway, my question is: Wouldn't it be easier to eaves drop on a satelite internet connection (especially one that's used to both send and recieve data) or is the transmission encoded before it gets thrown out as electromagnetic radiation?
hobbz
Latency (Score:2)
What would be the maximum speed per satellite?
How well will these dishes be able to sync up on a very cloudy / stormy day?
I guess, still you cannot dare say these will be as reliable as a dedicated connection. But does anyone know the answers to even these SIMPLE questions?
broadband over power lines (Score:1)
DirectPC the same basic service. Big deal. (Score:3)
Re:Signal recieved by dish, is there a better way? (Score:1)
1. You have to use an omnidirectional antenna, for mobile operation. This means you have to use more wattage and cause more interference to the band. 2. It would generally have to be below 1 Ghz, which would limit bandwidth, and also, a lot of frequencies are already allocated to Cell and Comsumer products in that band.
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Re:sounds great but... (Score:2)
And some cablemodems required a modem uplink too - they were one way devices. I don't think many providers have it this way anymore...
And for most people, a fast downstream (with huge latency >
No good for gaming (Score:3)
Insert Time Warner...here. (Score:1)
A year ago I might have cared (Score:1)
Re:Sniffing the satelite surf waves. (Score:1)
But, yes, it's extremely easy to eavesdrop on sat communications. the only thing holding it back is that encryption. Other than that, just about anybody anywhere could listen in. The trouble would arrive when you try to figure out who requested what documents :)
my guess would be that each transmission would start with a ID number, which says who gets what, and that it's encrypted, then decrypted in hardware by the satellite dish/receiver/whatever, unique to that dish. Of course, I really don't know, and this is a pretty random guess. moderate security, pretty expensive (although not overly difficult) to eavesdrop.
MSN with Linux (Score:1)
I can see it now . . (Score:5)
[cue maniacal laughter]
[pet kitty]
[kiss pinky ring]
Wireless everywhere (Score:1)
Re:So monopoly eh? Doh! (Score:1)
Disclaimer: I work for a cable company. This comment does not represent the ideas of my employer.
There really aren't any barriers per say, and many communities have more than one cable company (the one I live in, for example). Most of them are servicing apartment buildings, setting up bulk agreements with the building managers/owners. Sometimes they are good, sometimes not so good. If they are good, and can reach a profitability stage, they can begin to expand to normal residential service. But, there is a very high price to setting up a broadband cable network (or a CLEC, or whatever). That is one reason that wireless is a big deal right now. Wall street is seeing how much it costs to upgrade wired networks and doesn't want to foot the bill. So, the investors are convincing the government that it makes much more sense to sell wireless spectrum to the highest bidder. This has the effect of taking out the small players (auctions are very expensive), lets the feds pay off the debt (theoritically - one of the big reasons the budget will "ballence" is becuase of projected revenue from spectrum auctions), and takes money out of local communities - that franchise fee you pay on your cable bill every month.
Re:Questions regarding upstream and client separat (Score:1)
not to be a wet blanket, but theres a bright side (Score:3)
Just imagine: instantly, there's world wide internet available EVERYWHERE, regardless of lag. Competitively price it, and then imagine the impact that this tech gone mainstream would have on the sagging, bloated internet economy.
s
Re:And some people still have the traditional 1 li (Score:1)
I don't think thats how DirecPC does it, but it could be.
Thanks (Score:1)
Re:broadband over power lines (Score:1)
Re:Satellite Broadband only matters to rural folk. (Score:1)
Re:So monopoly eh? Doh! (Score:2)
1. network buildout (laying the cable, setting up bandwidth, etc)
2. overcoming advertising of companies like timewarner
3. some other things i probably forgot
to be more explicit, in (2) above i refer to timewarner. what i mean by that is timewarner is a juggernaut. they own the cablemodem internet service that they provide and they own the tv service they provide. the tv service sells quite well due to the semi-monopoly mentioned previously and gives them an advertising advantage. in order to overcome this advertising advantage you would either have to provide your own tv service to consumers (with all the costs associates with THAT business) or you would have to pay them to advertise on their networks to reach their consumers, which would still cost you and put money into their pockets (which is their end goal anyway). either way it's tough and you're getting the short end of the stick in the competition.
in (1) above, i refer to network buildout. i don't know much about timewarner's buildout, but it probably involves quite a lot of cable laid in various places. this was probably expensive to do, which is a barrier to entry and paid off only over a long amount of time. (i could be wrong.) for the internet side of things, you've got to have your routers, servers, switches, bandwidth, and redundancy in all of those things. (not to mention personnel.) the last-mile war is probably more of a pain in the ass to do, though. several companies, like the one i used to work for (http://www.nucentrix.net if you care), are attempting to circumvent this by creating their own last-mile arena in the form of fixed-point wireless services. they hold licences for MMDS spectrum usage in certain areas, and are converting its use from wireless cable tv to wireless internet service. they put an antenna/transceiver on your roof which transmits/receives a signal from a local tower, run RG-6 cable down to a cablemodem inside the building, and a 10baseT ethernet jack on the back of that plugs into your pc/router/hub/whatever. there are limitations to this, however, the most notable that there must be line-of-sight from the transmission tower to the target antenna. line of sight is sometimes difficult to obtain, because even if the terrain map shows line-of-sight on the lay of the land, there may still exist other obstructions like buildings, trees in front of your house, etc. Multipath is also an issue, although since i'm not an RF specialist, i won't go into that. in any case, unless you build your own last mile you'll still end up giving the existing companies a share of your profits, and if you do build your own then you're incurring an even larger cost to yourself, at least intitially.
i would like to include a mild disclaimer at the end of this post: i don't guarantee anything i write to be 100% correct, and if you find that i speak falsely about anything herein, feel free to correct me. please just don't be a jerk about it.
eudas
Re:AOL (Score:1)
just a clueless $0.02.
eudas
Whats the advantage over cable? (Score:1)
Download speed is same.
Upload speed on AOL is slower.
Setup fee is greater.
Monthly/yearly fee is same.
Can work anywhere as long as a point in the sky is visible.
So basically, it offers the advantage of working pretty much anywhere (for areas that don't have cable) provided you are willing to put up with higher latency and a higher initial cost.
Are there any other advantages??
Re:What is an MMDS spectrum? (Score:1)
http://www.wdslconsortium.com/mmds.html
eudas
Re:Actual use/need of Internet-II? (Score:2)
As for Universities not deserving the reduced price bandwidth, give me a break... Tuition is high enough already. Did you know that many Universities lease out excess bandwidth to corporations and smaller schools? Savings aren't just squandered and resources don't go unwasted. Smaller schools struggle to make use of the limited bandwidth they even have. How else do you think the MP3 craze could bring campus networks to their knees? Legitimate research and information sharing is severly hampered in today's world when the bandwidth isn't available on campus.
Don't attack educational institutions... That is where some of the best developments in technology come from in the first place!
Re:Latency (Score:1)
There are tons of problems with this delay over TCP. TCP is looking for a reply much quicker than 350 ms so it assumes the link is errored and halves the session transmission rate. This continues down to about 200 Kbps (depending on your TCP window size) where it stabilizes. To make the session speed higher, the satellite operator "spoofs" the TCP both at the uplink and the consumer's box. With this technique (described in an RFC) single session speeds can reach many, many megabits per second.
As far as filling the pipe, both systems mentioned in the post use a shared~27 Mbps carrier on the forward channel (to the subscribers... like cable modem). The return channel (back to the ISP) is also shared but at a much lower rate (128 - 150 Kbps) and it can be "hogged" for short periods.
MSN originally though they could get by with 20,000 subscribers per satellite transponder ($2,000,000/year) but after beta testing they are going to have to back it down to below 7,000 subs (and IMHO below 2,500) to get acceptable performance.
The real satellite broadband will NOT happen because of the economics mentioned above until Ka-Band satellites such as WildBlue or Cyberstar get launched beginning in late 2001. Then the bandwidth costs will drop by 4 or 5 times making it reasonable to offer a $20-$30 per month price.
Re:uploading to the satellite? (Score:3)
Re:not to be a wet blanket, but theres a bright si (Score:1)
eudas
Re:Teledesic? (Score:1)
The difference between Teledesic and other satellite providers it the capabilities of the network. That and launch cost will still be less than $3 billion (plus R$D, of course;). With the investors they have (including Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal, Craig McCaw, and Bill Gates among others), cost of launch shouldn't be that much of an issue.
Prices on both dishes? (Score:1)
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Re:Spewing disinformation (Score:2)
Re:Signal recieved by dish, is there a better way? (Score:2)
No. Really, all this "mobile no wire" stuff is still in the early-adopter phase. If the rich and committed like it and pay for it, eventually the economics of scale kick in and the price comes down. If you want to lower the price then I suggest either:
a) paying the high price now and contributing to entrenching this as a cheap technology for later on...
b) hyping it until you're blue in the face to people who can afford it...
My Dad's first calculator cost $500 and didn't do square roots. See the parallel? Sattelite connections don't do square roots either...
I am not crying a river here just for service (Score:1)
Re:Take it up with your provider not with society (Score:1)
Wow! Your site is the most amazing example of net-hubris I have ever seen. It's like a 12 minute guitar solo...
Re:But... (Score:1)
well... (Score:2)
Broadband over powerllines: some information (Score:3)
I don't know what's going on in the powerline market over in the States, but here in Germany this has been in the media for quite some time (if you can read German, then check out this list of articles [heise.de] that were on the Heise news service over the last few months.
Development in the field is rather active over here. You can buy home spin-off solutions that are based on powerline communication already. One application that is already being sold is a (phone line) modem whose serial port is replaced by a powerline adapter, and by hooking up your computer to a second adapter you're able to access your modem from anywhere within your local house circuit. I am not quite sure what implications this has on security, but I am fairly sure that some measures are being taken. This is not really high-speed, though, even though it seems fairly reliable.
Powerline Internet access is a different matter, of course. In Cologne, they will be starting to sell powerline-based Internet and telephony by the beginning of 2001. A couple of field tests, also on a larger scale in a somewhat more public environment, have already been conducted.
The speed that is being claimed varies. Preussen Elektra [preussenelektra.de] (recently merger'ed into e.on Energie [eon-energie.de]) claim that their particular system is capable of reaching 10 Mbps in-house and 2 Mbps for incoming/outgoing Internet access. Siemens [siemens.de] claim they reach 1.3 Mbps over public lines and plan to extend this to 10 Mbps. So as far as cable or DSL are concerned, this is quite a competition. :-)
The central problem with powerline communications is that your average powerline is just a pair of wires arranged in an unpredictable network topology, and that the behaviour of the electrical properties of the system tends to be a bit difficult to handle because most electric devices emit quite a bit of noise. Take a look at the noise emissions from a 100 to 300 W dimmable ceiling lamp, for example, and then you'll immediately see why powerline network access took this long to develop. It appears that they got this quite under control, though.
The final problems introducing this over here appear to be of a legal sort, because there are quite strict regulations in Germany as to which emissions are allowed in which part of the spectrum. With powerline communications, one has the problem of the non-shielded wires acting like a very large antenna, so they have to take care as to which frequencies they're using and how they're reducing emissions. The carriers needed for 1 to 10 Mbit are well in the amateur radio spectrum, for example. Nevertheless, powerline internet has good prospects for the future over here because it is by far the least expensive way by which to hook up people to the network (and since all major electricity corporations here also sell network services, they are quite interested in extending their customer base) - practically every house is connected to the powerline network already and has quite a bit of wiring installed as well.
Questions regarding upstream and client separation (Score:2)
I've got two questions that were left unanswered so far, so if anyone could help me out with these, I'd really appreciate it.
If there's anyone out there who knows a bit about how these technical details are tackled, I'd appreciate to hear about it... ;-)
Re: Damn! Too expensive and slow for me! (Score:2)
Broadband baby (Score:2)
Questions (Score:2)
In regards to the bidirectional satellite Internet access...
I would assume that the satellite is not "aiming" signals at each receiver, so does that mean it's like cable modems where everyone is sharing the bandwidth (at least for a particular channel)? Will everyone's dish receive the packets of everyone else on that channel? And (therefore), will it slow down the more users that are using it?
If the answer to all that is "yes", I would be curious to know how much bandwidth each satellite channel has, how many channels, and how many satellites they actually have in orbit.
As for uploads, if multiple people are sharing the same channel, can the satellite handle many signals coming in at once, or does it need some Ethernet-style collision detection? Is the signal actually digitally processed by the satellite, or is it just "bounced" through some sort of analog retransmitter?
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System Requirements... (Score:2)
System Requirements
- PC equipped with Pentium II or better running at 300 MhZ or better
- 128MB of RAM or more
- 300MB of free HD space
- Windows2000 or WindowsME
- Mouse
No Linux, no BSD, no Solaris, no MacOS, no BeOS. Maybe they'll let you plug your XBox into it, but otherwise it's gonna be pretty restrictive.
Not to mention what the user access agreement looks like. "In exchange for this service you agree that we may, at any time, make available, with or without notice, information which may or may not be personally identifiable as coming from you. Failure to agree to these terms will result in termination of service. Termination of service does not release liabilty to fufill your usage contract, which will, in the event of termination be due in full at time of termination..." And so on.
Of course, this is just speculation, based on past behavior, and is as likely to be completely wrong as not. Just don't say I didn't tell you so. Me, I'm sticking with DSL, thanks.
Arizona (Score:2)
This is a friggin' amazing deal for the bandwidth we get, plus there is infinite expandability, since all they have to do is add another antenna if the demand gets too high. The upload rate is slightly lower (256K/s), but it is comparable to the Frame Relay we are using at work.
One of my coworkers is getting in on this deal for many of the reasons shown here. He is sick of using his DirecPC connection with a dialup for upload. I would love to see this type of technology catch on, since it is infinitely cheaper than running coaxial cable through downtown streets. The only problem is that not every city has a mountain at the outskirts of the city.
But You Guys Are Missing The Point (Score:2)
Someone out in Podunk, Kansas will be thrilled to have a satellite connection after suffering thru sub-28.8 speeds for years. As for latency, yes its a factor. However, for your average home user playing games isn't a high priority. It'll be used mostly to surf the web and download files. Thus, it seems like latency isn't going to be that big of an issue to most people.
Gilate... (Score:2)
GEO and LEO (Score:3)
Re:Sniffing the satelite surf waves. (Score:2)
Generally, frequencies are allocated to various services. In many cases, some sort of a licence is required. This is often to prevent massive interfearence that occurs when anyone is allowed to transmit a signal which is likely to interfear with everyone else's signal. In other cases, licencing is either not required (i.e. Citizens Band) or is given to a specific company (i.e. Family Radio Service).
Also, the signal these dishes use for uplink is not likely to create interfearance. The dishes are highly directional, and it is in the users best interest to point the dish at the sat, not at their neighbor's house. Additionally, because of line of sight, it takes relativly low power to transmit the signal to the satilite.
Re:Round trip time (Score:3)
1) Transit to satellite: 120ms
2) Unknown delay: x
3) Transit to groundstation: 120ms
4) Some typical ping time on wired Internet (roundtrip from groundstation to ping site to groundstation): y
5) Transit to satellite: 120ms
6) Unknown delay: x
7) Transit to home: 120ms
Add it all up and we have 480ms + 2x + y. Seems to me that could easily be 900ms.
Re:Sniffing the satelite surf waves. (Score:2)
Shared Uplinks Can't Work (Score:2)
I recently played the the beta GTH system, and even with only a few beta testers on it, it doesn't work.
I know about the whole speed of light thing(which is where most of the latency comes from), but sharing an uplink makes it worse. The problem is that although data is always streaming on the downlink side, people have to take turns transmitting. For example, when I was the only user with data to transmit, my ping times to the first router were ~700ms (pure speed-o-light), but when one person was ahead of me to transmit a packet, it quickly went to ~1500ms, then ~2400ms, etc. When someone is ahead of you to transmit you have to wait for them to stop transmitting data, for their transmitter to shut down, your transiever's rx-tx turnaround, your transmitter to come on, and then you can finally get your packet out. Imagine this whole sequence with ten people ahead of you(if the service became widespread, this could become very common)!
The other problem is that people with defective transmitters(or malicous people who modified them), could easily jam the transponder being used for the uplink. If someone is transmitting continuously(knowingly or unknowing), A SINGLE USER COULD TAKE DOWN THE WHOLE SYSTEM! How's that for bad security!
"Why..." (Score:5)
Because the hardware is more expensive, and targeting them is a pain in the ass. I used to work for DirecPC (The company that does this with AOL.) and their signal bandwidth is very tight, so a satellite must be pointed within several tenths of an inch, versus within half a foot or so for a TV dish. The TV signal is also much stronger, so the parts to pick it up cost less.
On top of that, tech support calls for the PC stuff are more common, and expensive to deal with. The call centers have specially *cough*POORLY*cough* trained staff who are all in front of high end windows machines (To simulate the kind of machine that someone hard-core enough to want satellite net access would have.) running these satellite systems as well as good, I mean, land-based internet connections, and the costs for all of that get high pretty fast, as opposed to TV where most of the calls are just "Ok now push the select button on the remote. It's the one that says "select" on it.
Anyway, these systems are pretty much guaranteed to suck, as they are all being run by companies that have done little more than muck up the net as it is.
Better be a LOT richer if you want a T... (Score:3)
Anyway... just incase you were really thinking about it.
1st.... contact your regional Telco and check out the pricing to lease the line. Depending on your location to the POP of the ISP/Tier service provider you want, this will run about $1500/mo
not to mention hefty install prices
2nd... Contact an ISP/Tier Service provider to see what the cost of the Internet connection would be.
(Better to go with a Tier1 provider like Sprintlink here... That way you KNOW your on a fat backbone rather than having your T run to an ISP that has 2000 dialups, a couple dds56K circuits and 3 more T-1's all going on a 3MB outbound pipe
3rd... don't forget the extra equipment, CSU/DSU (I recommend a good Kentrox), get yourself a decent router, Cisco 26xx would be good..
4th... Get ready to dowload your pr0n!!!!!
so all in all, figure into about 3K/month for your T-1 and about 10K in setup fees...
This is one of the reasons why mid-high speed access is expensive, the ISP's must expand their network infrastructure so you don't have similar problems that the telco's have today, and bottleneck all their customers.
(Most phone networks were created using the average call time of 5-10 minutes.... PRE-INTERNET days)
Why? (Score:2)
Simple...Have you ever had to deal with an MSN/AOL user? They have to pay the install Techs "Danger Pay" to go in, and the possability of Millions in "Work Related Phyciatric Damage"
Latency -- not teribly good... (Score:2)
Re:AOL (Score:2)
Nah, it's all good guys.. (Score:3)
GPS does not transmit back (Score:2)
Get 3 signals and you're set. So don't worry, GPS isn't like big brother or anything. *You* are finding out where *you* are. You transmit nothing.
As for MSN's thing, transmitting back is quite a feat. I also wonder how fast their uplink really is. Just look at Iridium and Globalstar. Iridium could transmit 2400bps (although they went out of business) and the newer Globalstar can transmit 9600bps. I don't think MSN's thing is going to upload fast at all.
-Justin
Re:Gilate... (Score:5)
A couple of weeks or so ago I got the formal invitation in my email to get in to the program early as a beta tester. I turned it down for several reasons.
First, as someone else has already mentioned, just to be a beta tester you had to fork up $499 (plus a hefty installation fee unless installed before Sept 15th). What the previous poster didn't mention was this was because you were buying a whole new friggin computer...you can't use any old machine you got laying around, you MUST by a new one from them, and use their OS (Windows) and hardware. Hence I can't use it with my notebook and I can't use it on my own Linux box without doing a network of my own (see the third point below).
Second, in reading the fine print I discovered that they only guarentee access at 150kbps. After the beta period is over (January 1) I am not willing to pay $69.95 a month to have access that is only going to be 2 - 3 times faster than what I have now for $19.95.
And third, and this was the biggie for me, VPN is forbidden. They consider this a "business" service, and if they make VPN allowable, it will be for "an additional fee". And while they don't explicitly say no networking or internet connection sharing, they don't support it and won't help make it work either.
So my opinion after reading everything was that, at least for me, their service is not offering me anything that would make it worth $69.95 a month plus all the up front cash.
uploading to the satellite? (Score:2)
Unless, I'm mistaken, this dish that you put on your house must be very big and very powerfull to be able to send to a GEO sat.
Has there been a quantum leap in technology?
The only satellite uplink dishes I've seen have been 4 meters across, and have had little brick houses next to them.
Re:Better be a LOT richer if you want a T... (Score:3)
I have a fractional T1 service... but "fractional" can mean a lot of different speeds, and in my case it's only 128 kbps. It is expensive to set up a T1 service, but at least in Portland Oregon, it's not quite as bad as you make it out to be.
The most expensive part is the upstream service from an ISP. Most ISPs are quite expensive. I did quite a bit of searching in my area, and I found two with competitive prices. I went with Internet Arena [inetarena.com], because the other was some christian place with filtering at their router, and we've all heard about how well filtering software works [peacefire.com].
Not far behind the ISP is the telco. In my area, it's GTE. A year ago their prices were lower... it seems strange that they're increased. Unlike the ISP, at least where I live, you're stuck with your local telco. The service is Frame Relay [gte.com]. In Oregon, and probably in many other places, there's no room for a bargain, since the rates are set by a utility commission.
Of course, you then need equipment. I wanted a low cost Linux based solution. At the time, the only real option was Sangoma [sangoma.com]. They sell a card that goes in your PC that more or less does everything you need. The mounting bracket has one 8 pin jack (same size and shape as an 10baseT ethernet connector) but it's for a T1 line. Like ethernet, only four wires are used, a pair for transmit and a pair for receive. I'll give more details about the wiring below. You can always email me [mailto] if you're trying to set it up and have a question.
Indeed it is expensive. I don't recall all the costs down to the penny, but here's more or less how it worked out:
- Setup: Samgoma card, $950
- Setup: Telco install fee, $350
- Reoccur: Telco, $123
- Reoccur: ISP, $150
Now I'm sure your thinking, dear reader, that that's a rip-off for only 128 kbps service. Indeed it is expensive, and perhaps in a year or two when DSL is finally available in my area, I may switch. The one really cool thing about frame relay service is that the ping time is about 20 ms, and many installations (but not mine) seem to run at a 10 ms ping time. However, I don't play network games...Now I could go on about why I decided to spring for an expensive T1 service, but that's really getting off-topic from and already slightly off-topic post. The main point of this post was to respond with the actual costs of setting up a low speed fractional T1 service.... or at least the actual costs in my area, as they were about a year ago. A secondary purpose was to give a little bit of info about how to do it. To that end, I'll ramble on just a bit more about the setup.
I called both the ISP and the telco and asked about how to set things up. My experience was that it's better and easier to deal with the ISP. Finding a cool ISP is not easy, but they're out there. Dave at Internet Arena is a great guy, so if you're in the Portland area, I'd suggest you give Dave a call. He's got a bunch of other really high speed/moderate cost options for certain areas, using leased T1 lines instead of the telco. Anyway, the point is to talk with ISPs and make a visit to any you want to do business with.
Often times the ISP will call the telco for you to set up all the details, but you can get involved if you want. I did. Each T1 line has a circuit ID number. Your new service will get a number. When you hear your new number, be sure to write it down and don't lose it. You may never need it again, but it's a pain to find someone at the telco who knows enough to look it up if you ever have a problem with the line.
Frame Relay is a protocol, much like the ethernet 802.3 frames. Like IPv4 gives 32 bit IP addresses, frame relay provides DLCI numbers. Unlike IP, a DLCI number is a short integer which is unique only on your line. The phone company establishes Permanent Virtual Connections (PVC) through the frame relay network, by adding routes and doing who knows what else. Ultimately, the PVC will link a DLCI number (short integer) on your your circuit ID (big long number) to a DLCI number on the ISP's circuit ID. You'll probably never use the circuit ID number, but you do need to know the DLCI number to set up the sangoma card.
Since I bought my card, Sangoma has made some major improvements in the setup process (I set up another card for someone a couple months ago). The installer looks a lot like RedHat's text based installation program. It will ask you about for various bit of information, and it'll want to know about each DLCI you have. You'd probably only establish one PVC to your ISP, but it's possible to have lots of PVC to other people, all running on the same line. After the installation, each PVC will appear as an interface. I named mine "fr16", and it looks like this when I run ifconfig:
fr16 Link encap:Frame Relay DLCI HWaddr 4096
inet addr:207.149.244.8 P-t-P:207.149.244.1 Mask:255.255.255.224
UP POINTOPOINT RUNNING MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:4889031 errors:0 dropped:12 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:7655668 errors:136874 dropped:51 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:10
Interrupt:7 Base address:0x360 Memory:c00de000-c00dffff
From here it's just the usual linux routing things.
Well, that's probably enough rambling on. If anyone reading this is looking to set up a T1 service on linux, on a budget, hopefully this has helped a bit instead of just creating more confusion. It's not cheap, but also not as bad as some people make it out to be.
Re:Sniffing the satelite surf waves. (Score:2)
Not necessarily. Some Russian comm sats use highly elliptical orbits which spent most of their time over Russia and then quickly pass over the other side of Earth (their perigee is over the Antarctic, and apogee of orbit is over Russia). A common such orbit is called Molniya and has a period of 12 hours at high inclinations (often 63.4 degrees) with respect to the equator. These are good because there is better visibility of the satellite at high lattitudes.
Re:DirectPC the same basic service. Big deal. (Score:2)
"Microsoft will also include "two-way" dishes that allow downloads and uploads just as fast as cable modems or DSL".