droo wrote:
>
> On Sun, 25 Sep 2005 15:59:56 -0400, Ryan Stewart
> <dapurplert@dakota-durango.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> Directv uses a satellite receiver. ANYONE can get it. My friend who
>> can't get DSL or Cable has it. Works pretty good (not quite as good as
>> most cable/DSL and useless for online gaming) but it betas the holy hell
>> outta dialup. Weather does affect it, but not as bad as you think.
>>
>> Think he is paying 59.99 a month though.....
>
>
> OIC. I just checked their website and they6 mention that in small print
> at th ebottom that if DSL is not available. So what is the deal. Is
> the uplink a dialup connection?
That's the way it used to work when the service was first made
available. I think there are still a number of offerings that use
dial-up as the uplink connection.
However, most vsat services available now are 2-way. As with DSL, the
download speeds that are available (and technically possible) are much
greater than the upload speeds. As was already mentioned, it's next to
useless for games or most other applications that are very latency
sensetive. You're looking at a minimum of ~600ms latency, often more,
simply due to the physical round-trip that the packet must make.
"Acceleration" based on transparent web proxies, packet spoofing, and
header modification make most applications like HTTP work reasonably
well. File transfers are plenty fast as well, since the raw bandwidth
is present -- there's just a mild delay.
Most of what I work with is commercial grade stuff, quite a bit more
sophisticated (and faster, more expensive, etc.) than the DirecTV
"DirecWay" service. For residential users with no other option, it's a
good route to go. There are also a number of companies popping up that
are using Surfbeam gear on Ka-band spot beams (main benefit = smaller
dish required) at extremely reasonable rates (relatively speaking). The
end-user gear for Surfbeam-based services is quite a bit cheaper because
it's based on DOCSIS (the cable modem standard) rather than the
proprietary systems used by most other manufacturers. Surprisingly,
despite the various complications, it's become quite possible to
implement applications like VoIP over satellite links with quite amazing
results.
The one thing to keep in mind with virtually any residential satellite
link (unless you're paying through the teeth for dedicated bandwidth) is
that they are going to be WAY oversubscribing the total bandwidth
available. Much more so than with DSL or cable services. This is
because their actual costs for the satellite bandwidth are astronomical
compared to access to copper/fiber. Clever design and management of the
network makes this pretty transparent to most users, though.
-Bill
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