Anyone using satellite broadband?

Various people offer this, £50/month and above. For people like me in
a village where BT will probably never do it, it's an option.

BT are being suprisingly honest on their website about the limitations
of their satellite offering. They say the long time delay to/from the
satellite causes many internet applications to not work.

For example, a web page containing hundreds of objects (as many
"slick" commercial sites do) would take a very long time to load.



Peter.
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"Peter" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news(E-Mail Removed)...
>
> Various people offer this, £50/month and above. For people like me in
> a village where BT will probably never do it, it's an option.
>
> BT are being suprisingly honest on their website about the limitations
> of their satellite offering. They say the long time delay to/from the
> satellite causes many internet applications to not work.
>
> For example, a web page containing hundreds of objects (as many
> "slick" commercial sites do) would take a very long time to load.
>

There are a couple of issues with it . Firstly you use a standard modem for
your back channel (upload) & so sending mail etc is no faster and secondly
there is a delay of approximately 250ms to the satellite which is due to the
distances involved. Therefore stuff that's time sensitive & requires two
way communication is a non starter (i.e. game playing, VoIP, Video
conferencing etc).

Have you tried to get/considered getting a "Midband" based product? This is
based on ISDN & is basically 2 channels bonded together to give you 128K
(for a fixed price). For general use 128K would be a vast improvement over a
modem.

I.

"Iain Miller" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote

>There are a couple of issues with it . Firstly you use a standard modem for
>your back channel (upload) & so sending mail etc is no faster and secondly
>there is a delay of approximately 250ms to the satellite which is due to the
>distances involved. Therefore stuff that's time sensitive & requires two
>way communication is a non starter (i.e. game playing, VoIP, Video
>conferencing etc).

I was thinking about the satellite packages which use the sat both
ways, 512k/512k. I am not interested in games, voip or video
conferencing but wonder what e.g. BT could have done to speed up the
"complex website! problem; do they grab a copy of the whole web page
as soon as you first hit it and send it to you in one go, then let
your browser retrieve the various bits from the local copy?

Presumably they must have done something like that, since www is most
customers' main activity and the product would be no good with such
delays.

>Have you tried to get/considered getting a "Midband" based product? This is
>based on ISDN & is basically 2 channels bonded together to give you 128K
>(for a fixed price). For general use 128K would be a vast improvement over a
>modem.

I already have BTHH (via a Cisco 803 router) and have used multilink,
but it isn't 2x faster yet is guaranteed to cost 2x as much


Peter.
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"Peter" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
>
> "Iain Miller" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote
>
> >There are a couple of issues with it . Firstly you use a standard modem
for
> >your back channel (upload) & so sending mail etc is no faster and
secondly
> >there is a delay of approximately 250ms to the satellite which is due to
the
> >distances involved. Therefore stuff that's time sensitive & requires two
> >way communication is a non starter (i.e. game playing, VoIP, Video
> >conferencing etc).
>
> I was thinking about the satellite packages which use the sat both
> ways,

Two way satellite has twice the delay that one way satellite does.

> 512k/512k. I am not interested in games, voip or video
> conferencing but wonder what e.g. BT could have done to speed up the
> "complex website! problem; do they grab a copy of the whole web page
> as soon as you first hit it and send it to you in one go, then let
> your browser retrieve the various bits from the local copy?
>
> Presumably they must have done something like that, since www is most
> customers' main activity and the product would be no good with such
> delays.

Satellite is mainly suited to large downloads.

In message <3fec6c55$0$52885$(E-Mail Removed)>, Alastair
<(E-Mail Removed)> writes
>> 512k/512k. I am not interested in games, voip or video
>> conferencing but wonder what e.g. BT could have done to speed up the
>> "complex website! problem; do they grab a copy of the whole web page
>> as soon as you first hit it and send it to you in one go, then let
>> your browser retrieve the various bits from the local copy?
>>
>> Presumably they must have done something like that, since www is most
>> customers' main activity and the product would be no good with such
>> delays.
>
>Satellite is mainly suited to large downloads.

A friend of mine has this. There apparently is some sort of buffering
software used and to be honest, whenever I've popped over his place to
download large driver files etc on the weekend (I'm on a DACSed modem at
home!!), while you can detect a slight latency, I've found general
surfing to be fine and its never really bothered me - and I'm used to a
10Mb/s download at work ;-)

Its only the cost that's put me off having it myself.

--
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__________________________________________________

On Fri, 26 Dec 2003 15:23:23 +0000, (E-Mail Removed) (Peter) wrote:

>Presumably they must have done something like that, since www is most
>customers' main activity and the product would be no good with such
>delays.

I have a friend and colleague who uses satellite broadband for his
business which is located at an astronomical observatory at the top of
a hill where there is definitely no access to wired broadband. His
system is supplied via BT and he generally finds it satisfactory for
email web pages, MSN Messenger and downloading software. He doesn't
play online games or use video conferencing. When I have used it when
over there it seems to work fine. There is the latency due to the two
way link via satelilte but it is better then dial-up or ISDN in my
opinion. Downloads can be quite good (Over 300kbps) uploads tend to
be slower. Speed tends to vary quite a bit which I suspect is due to
the sharing of the bandwidth.

From a personal point of view. If I lived where I couldn't get cable
broadband or ADSL I would definitey get two-way satellite and not
bother with ISDN or any other mid-band technology.

Regards
Dave

On Fri, 26 Dec 2003 17:14:20 -0000, "Alastair" <(E-Mail Removed)>
wrote:

>Satellite is mainly suited to large downloads.

But if you download lots of data, don't BT then temporarily cap your
broadband speed to reduce your use of the system? They explain this
on their website somewhere I think.

Dave

>
> Satellite is mainly suited to large downloads.
>
>
That may of been the case a while back but nowadays all you see and hear
about is cappings.
Have a look on this forum dedicated to satellite internet users
http://www.sat4the.co.uk/forum/

i use AOL and central point.

They are very cheap and with the AOL dial-up, you dont get cut off all the!

I find this setup excellent!

I listen to radio stations off the net in CD quality and it is perfect,
(busy periods do slow a bit!)

I do a lot of brwosing and i find this certainly faster than normal dialup,
i wouldnt let satellite go now, as broadband isnt in my area, its perfect.

I do large downloads too, and just before xmas, i upgraded to a 1mbps
account, and i couldnt believe how quick i was downloading! It was
fantastic!

stuart


"Peter" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news(E-Mail Removed)...
>
> Various people offer this, £50/month and above. For people like me in
> a village where BT will probably never do it, it's an option.
>
> BT are being suprisingly honest on their website about the limitations
> of their satellite offering. They say the long time delay to/from the
> satellite causes many internet applications to not work.
>
> For example, a web page containing hundreds of objects (as many
> "slick" commercial sites do) would take a very long time to load.
>
>
>
> Peter.
> --
> Return address is invalid to help stop junk mail.
> E-mail replies to (E-Mail Removed) but remove the X and the Y.
> Please do NOT copy usenet posts to email - it is NOT necessary.

In article <bsp356$ib7$(E-Mail Removed)>, Stuart Turrell
<stuartturrell@yahooo!!.co.uk> writes
>i use AOL and central point.
>
>They are very cheap and with the AOL dial-up, you dont get cut off all the!
>
>I find this setup excellent!
>
>I listen to radio stations off the net in CD quality and it is perfect,
>(busy periods do slow a bit!)
>
>I do a lot of brwosing and i find this certainly faster than normal dialup,
>i wouldnt let satellite go now, as broadband isnt in my area, its perfect.
>
>I do large downloads too, and just before xmas, i upgraded to a 1mbps
>account, and i couldnt believe how quick i was downloading! It was
>fantastic!
>
>stuart
Lucky you!!

The question related to us poor sods who will "never" get wired
broadband. In fact my exchange is so old that it is not even system X
enabled... so max connection speed is around 37K:-(
>
>
>"Peter" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
>news(E-Mail Removed).. .
>>
>> Various people offer this, £50/month and above. For people like me in
>> a village where BT will probably never do it, it's an option.
>>
>> BT are being suprisingly honest on their website about the limitations
>> of their satellite offering. They say the long time delay to/from the
>> satellite causes many internet applications to not work.
>>
>> For example, a web page containing hundreds of objects (as many
>> "slick" commercial sites do) would take a very long time to load.
>>
>>
>>
>> Peter.
>> --
>> Return address is invalid to help stop junk mail.
>> E-mail replies to (E-Mail Removed) but remove the X and the Y.
>> Please do NOT copy usenet posts to email - it is NOT necessary.
>
>

Wally Hayward
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