I looked int to the direcway service and the wild blue one and before I dumped
the dough got lucky and got a lowened DSL 7-8 miles out side of town.
Granted my speeds are not very high(128 up max and 512 down, if Im lucky).
but where my home isl ocated satellite and latency or lowend dsl(about 10
times faster than average dialup) is my only choise. At $30 a month for my
DSL ontop of my phone bill, cost was a no brainer especially since I like to
play Quake Fortress still, almost 10 years after the original Quake came
out....
On Sunday September 25 2005 6:36 pm, Bill Pitz wrote:
> 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
--Bill Day
"A rich man isn't always wealthy, he just has all the love he can give and ever wanted.." http://counter.li.org #384146 284016
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