satellite internet

[bazookaman]

so I know that there are no joyous hughesnet users here. but my mom basically has no alternative except verizon dialup. and let me just say verizon dialup sucks donkeys. at least where she is. She sets the modem to connect and MAYBE it connects after an hour or so. Then of course once she's connected its STILL dialup.

She recently got a flyer for this company called wildblue (http://www.4wildblue.com) which seemed to offer the same thing as hughsnet but $10 less pr month. does anyone use wildblue? or has anyone heard of it?

I know they probably aren't as good as cable or dsl, but compared to dialup? satellite has GOT to be better.

[Wailer]

I believe satellite internet still requires a dial-up for uploading.

It then tells the satellite the packets to beam down to you. It is a fat pipe, but there are some serious latency issues since data has to be beamed to a satellite and then beamed to you.

I'd look into ISDN or perhaps shared T1 or a better ISP. Your mom's experience doesn't sound right unless she lives somewhere very rural with very poor phone service.

[bazookaman]

[quote Wailer]Your mom's experience doesn't sound right unless she lives somewhere very rural with very poor phone service.
LOL! Once you get to the middle of nowhere, hang a right and go about 10 miles. thats where my mom lives.

[Paul F.]

Has been true for years...
The dish is a transmitter AND reciever. No phone line required.

My impression of Wildblue from some forums is that it's not wildly better than Hughes.net.

I will say that Hughes.net beats Dial-up all black and blue... no question.

I'll also say that if her area can use cell-phone based internet access, give that a shot before satellite.
The speed-of-light latency issues, as well as the over-sold bandwidth of satellite, make for some real issues.

[Wailer]

Thanks for correcting me Paul F. I wasn't aware that one can now broadcast via satellite internet.

Latency must be on the order of seconds and not milliseconds! Forget playing WOW or even using ichat.

[Paul F.]

It's not THAT bad.... after all, 22,500 miles is NOT all that far for a radio signal at 186,000 miles per SECOND...
But it can be noticable doing anythying with requires a lot of "back and forth" talk. Secure sites (https) in particular can be awfully slow loading.
NOT slow compared to dial-up, but if you have REAL "High Speed" internet at work, and Hughes at home, you'll go mad trying to pay your bills on secure sites.

[AlphaDog]

Poke around on this Verizon site a bit. Several months ago I posted, asking about satellite service for my friend, who now lives and travels in a motor home. You're actually getting more polite responses about satellite internet than I did, and then somebody mentioned the Verizon wireless access cards. That's what she decided to try, and, with just a couple of exceptions, she's been really happy with the choice. In her case, I think she wasn't able to get service in a couple of remote areas where there were mountains, but mostly it's been fine and a couple of times has been able to go online even when she couldn't get a cell signal. If your mother is wanting access from home, I figure it would either work consistently or not at all.

http://b2b.vzw.com/broadband/bbapccard.html

[bazookaman]

I think i looked at the Verizon broadband. I don't believe she can get it where she is. Her location would be in the dictionary under "remote area where there are mountains"

[AlphaDog]

Oh, that's too bad. I mean it's too bad if you want a fast internet connection, but it's probably a great place to live!

[TheTominator]

Some satellite plans still use the dish(download)/dial-up (upload). Advantages are lower latency on the upload side and lower price for the service (excluding cost of phone line).

Others use the dish for both download and upload.

I recommend that your mother should force the phone company to improve the quality of the phone line (it probably has audible noise on it due to some hardware problem) or switch to a different dial-up provider. One of those two is probably at fault for the lack of connection.

If your satellite provider uses dial-up for the upload side, you will get bad performance if your phone line isn't up to spec, i.e. if it is noisy.

If you are looking for inexpensive (you ask about something $10 cheaper), then Internet via cell phone, e.g. Verizon wireless access card, will probably be more expensive than satellite. But if it is available in your area, it is likely going to be more reliable.