Sattelite Internet

You do see the irony of posting on an internet board that your method of connecting to the internet is subpar..... :rofl:
 
I just upgraded to docsys 3 30Mbps down / 5 Mbps up. Neener neener.
 
bartmc said:
Sucks
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The only thing good about it id that it works in the middle of the ocean.

It sucks even worse when you are on the destroyer and the CVN sucks up all the allocated bandwidth!


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD
 
Sorry to read of your dismay. I switched from DSL to Exede satellite service last year. As I understand it, Exede is owned by the Wildblue folks.

Our DSL reliability was exceedingly poor due to line noise the phone company techs could never isolate. Very frustrating to constantly lose sync.

Our service with Exede has been very reliable. Speeds are faster than we were getting on DSL too. The only two downsides are the higher cost and the large latencies (typically .7 seconds round trip times to most sites.) However I have been able to use Skype and Webex successfully. When I do Webex demos I'll use Plain Old Telephone Service for audio and Desk top sharing for the normally live demos.

The only aviation related aspect was that I got to chatting with the satellite dish installer. Turned out he was a pilot, too. Had spent a lot of time flying in Alaska and had owned several planes over the years. I'm afraid his install took longer than it should have because we talked a lot about flying. He didn't mind and neither did I.
 
I can handle the latency... If it just worked. Don't get me started on FAP. I'm in negotiations with the phone company to bring me DSL, the closest home that could get DSL is 8 miles away, so they're not very motivated.

Hughesnet works about 5% of the time. They know they have you by the balls and they're a last resort.

Luckily I have a grandfathered Verizon unlimited plan and a jail broken iPhone..... Just have to put a high gain antenna on the roof to get cell reception.
 
bartmc said:
If you only knew the effort I put forth to make the post.
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I feel your pain, brother.... Until we moved, I lived in a condo complex with too many splits for DSL, and the cable infrastructure was too old for cable modems. The oldest phone infrastructure in town, plus a bunch of splits, so even dial up only got to 32kbps.
So we were on satellite internet in the middle of the city of Denver... :dunno:

Then I bought a new house, in a new area, with 50mbps DSL (YeeeHaw!)
 
bartmc said:
I can handle the latency... If it just worked. Don't get me started on FAP. I'm in negotiations with the phone company to bring me DSL, the closest home that could get DSL is 8 miles away, so they're not very motivated.

Hughesnet works about 5% of the time. They know they have you by the balls and they're a last resort.

Luckily I have a grandfathered Verizon unlimited plan and a jail broken iPhone..... Just have to put a high gain antenna on the roof to get cell reception.
Click to expand...

I never had a client complain about Wildblue / Exede. I would have used them myself if very excellent cable weren't available here through my backwoods, but excellent phone company.

If you have a strong T-Mobile signal, you could also try their unlimited prepaid service. Get a phone with hotspot capability. T-Mo doesn't care if you tether.

Sprint also provides amazing 4G if you have a good signal. I used to get 10 Mbs in the middle of nowhere in PA. Clear also works over Sprint, but I've heard mixed reviews (more about the company than the service). Probably half a dozen other MVNO EVDO providers also piggyback off Sprint.

-Rich
 
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Had Hughes Net for at least 2 yrs once then 2 yrs again. Hated it but better than dial up. Then a cell tower was installed 2 mi away and been doing the 3G on iphone/ipad since.
 
Jim Logajan said:
Sorry to read of your dismay. I switched from DSL to Exede satellite service last year. As I understand it, Exede is owned by the Wildblue folks.

Our DSL reliability was exceedingly poor due to line noise the phone company techs could never isolate. Very frustrating to constantly lose sync.

Our service with Exede has been very reliable. Speeds are faster than we were getting on DSL too. The only two downsides are the higher cost and the large latencies (typically .7 seconds round trip times to most sites.) However I have been able to use Skype and Webex successfully. When I do Webex demos I'll use Plain Old Telephone Service for audio and Desk top sharing for the normally live demos.

The only aviation related aspect was that I got to chatting with the satellite dish installer. Turned out he was a pilot, too. Had spent a lot of time flying in Alaska and had owned several planes over the years. I'm afraid his install took longer than it should have because we talked a lot about flying. He didn't mind and neither did I.
Click to expand...

Again, Wildblue is the only sat service I never had a complaint about. They seem to run a tight ship over there, by all accounts.

As for DSL... Probably 80 - 90 percent of the times when the telco people couldn't isolate line noise in my clients' accounts, the problems turned out to be in the premises wiring. The telcos usually maintain their wiring reasonably well in most places. Building owners / occupants, not so much. Old wiring, excessive splits (hand-twisted and taped up with cellophane tape)... all sorts of things that don't matter for voice matter very much for DSL.

What I did in those cases, rather than trying to isolate the zillion premises line problems, was simply install a DSL/POTS splitter. I would mount it as close to the NIB as possible -- as in a couple of inches -- and split the DSL from the POTS right there. Then I installed the router inside the building, as close to the NIB as possible, and ran Ethernet the rest of the way and took all the filters out of the system. That solved 80 - 90 percent of line problems.

Even clients who weren't having major problems experienced sometimes-dramatic improvements using this method. It was standard procedure on any initial DSL installation that my guys did. Splitters were standard. Filters were banned. My guys weren't even allowed to have filters in their possession.

The splitters I preferred were made by Suttle and used to cost about $45.00 or so if you bought them by the case. I think they retailed for about $60.00. There were other companies who made them, but I'd always had good luck with Suttle, so I stayed with them as long as I was in that end of the business. (I think I sent my last splitter to someone on POA, actually.)

-Rich
 
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Old house, could do ungodly fast service from Crapcast. Didn't pay for it though. Did pay for static IPs for various stuff.

New house, only "traditional" provider is CenturyLink. They can offer a whopping 1 Mb/s DSL. Neighbor is an outside plant guy. He says the box up the road is fed on a fiber ring, they just won't put a new DSLAM out here in the boonies.

Service here is on a Wireless ISP using Motorola Canopy gear, then. Skybeam. A conglomerate of three or four (perhaps more by now, and they're trying to get bought by a bigger regional fish and go Private again) other wireless ISPs in the area.

Decent but I'm at the edge of their service coverage so 5M/1M.

I'll be getting in touch with the tech management to see if they want another tower out here. Might as well be the head end of the neighborhood if I'm going to put up a couple of 80-100 foot sticks anyway... They do that with homeowners out here... The guy at the top of the hill to the West is the distribution for three towers further East. He feeds another guy I know who's got a 100 footer up for other stuff and Skybeam is on the 65' level with a couple of dishes.

No time to mess with it for a couple more months. Currently it works fine. I do have a 20 dB dish to add to the mount to make the thing rock-solid even in heavy precip once I see if the mount is far enough over to point the dish the correct direction.
 
Hmm first sentence is weird. Didn't pay for the ungodly fast, just the normal fast. Haha. 15M/3M.
 
I hear exede is good. That's what they're peddling here these days. We formerly had both wild blue and Hughes. Both sucked, especially in the evenings. Less than one Mbps download.

Then last fall Verizon erected a new 4G tower that looks right down our valley and I dropped hughes like a hot potato.

We have Verizon's true unlimited data plan for $30/mo. The one you can't get anymore but can hold onto if you've had it since they offered it. We're averaging 30GB / month and 18 Mbps down, 5 up. We see download speeds as high as 30.

Life is good after 4 years of satellite misery.
 
timwinters said:
I hear exede is good. That's what they're peddling here these days. We formerly had both wild blue and Hughes. Both sucked, especially in the evenings. Less than one Mbps download.

Then last fall Verizon erected a new 4G tower that looks right down our valley and I dropped hughes like a hot potato.

We have Verizon's true unlimited data plan for $30/mo. The one you can't get anymore but can hold onto if you've had it since they offered it. We're averaging 30GB / month and 18 Mbps down, 5 up. We see download speeds as high as 30.

Life is good after 4 years of satellite misery.
Click to expand...

Have you looked at Verizon's home fusion service? It is a building mounted 4g antenna that provides pretty nice fast Internet service. It is pricy but when it is all you can get....

We had it in our office for about six months. I recommend it over satellite and most dsl if you can get a good 4g signal.
 
ChrisK said:
Have you looked at Verizon's home fusion service? It is a building mounted 4g antenna that provides pretty nice fast Internet service. It is pricy but when it is all you can get....

We had it in our office for about six months. I recommend it over satellite and most dsl if you can get a good 4g signal.
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Now.....why would I buy a system that I'd pay extra for...and pay by the GB...when I have the old unlimited plan and can use as much as I want for $30? :). :thumbsup:

I rooted one of my phones (Motorola DROID Razr) and use it as a wifi hotspot. It covers almost the entire house. Chris simply tethers her phone to her laptop. If it weren't for my iPad I wouldn't really need a hotspot, everything else will tether.
 
timwinters said:
Now.....why would I buy a system that I'd pay extra for...and pay by the GB...when I have the old unlimited plan and can use as much as I want for $30? :). :thumbsup:

I rooted one of my phones (Motorola DROID Razr) and use it as a wifi hotspot. It covers almost the entire house. Chris simply tethers her phone to her laptop. If it weren't for my iPad I wouldn't really need a hotspot, everything else will tether.
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I have a jailbroken iPhone and the grandfathered unlimited plan. Problem is, we don't have cell service either. I'm going to try out one of those high gain cell phone antennas that mount to the roof and repeat the signal inside the house.

The previous homeowner had 7 months left on her Hughesnet contract and I agreed to pay up those 7 months and use the remaining service.

I'll go dial up if I can't find something better. When it does work, it's worse than dial up speeds but a lot of the time, i get Hughesnet invented 5XX HTTP errors after waiting a minute or two for the pleasure. There is no signal issue, their service just sucks.
 
I understand your frustration. During a 2009-2010 stint in Afghanistan me and a buddy took on the challenge of setting up satellite Internet for our company. We had the equipment from the units previous deployment, but it did not come with a base. We built one as sturdy as we could out of plywood, 2x4s and 4x4s. No one had a clue about satellite pointing, but we figured it out kinda. Every sandstorm or cloudy day slowed it way down. We barely had enough bandwidth as it was, and couldn't keep the guys from sucking it all up with streaming videos. It was a miserable experience.
 
bartmc said:
I have a jailbroken iPhone and the grandfathered unlimited plan. Problem is, we don't have cell service either. I'm going to try out one of those high gain cell phone antennas that mount to the roof and repeat the signal inside the house.

The previous homeowner had 7 months left on her Hughesnet contract and I agreed to pay up those 7 months and use the remaining service.

I'll go dial up if I can't find something better. When it does work, it's worse than dial up speeds but a lot of the time, i get Hughesnet invented 5XX HTTP errors after waiting a minute or two for the pleasure. There is no signal issue, their service just sucks.
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I used to be able to pull good, solid signal from towers at 18 - 25 miles with good, amplified, directional antennas and nothing but air in between, back when we did stationary EVDO. But with obstructions (even trees), your chances go down dramatically.

The other problem is that the equipment is pricey, and you don't really know how well it's going to work until you try it. Amp and antenna used to go for around $800.00, plus the mounting or mast, ground pipe, cable, and whatever other paraphernalia was needed for a given job.

Some cell companies could be a little secretive about their tower locations and capabilities back then, too, but that was when some people were convinced that the towers caused cancer, extra limbs, demonic possession, or whatever. In any event, you can get that information (at least the location) from the FCC databases.

-Rich
 
I WISH I could get FIOS. My local cable company just started offering "Enterprise" service at 50 down / 10 up for $120/month (OUCH)
 
Re: Satellite Internet

bartmc said:
I'm going to try out one of those high gain cell phone antennas that mount to the roof and repeat the signal inside the house.
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We sell and install a fair amount of Wilson Electronics BDA's (Bi-directional amp) for exactly the issue your describing. The equipment is decent and works well. My guess is a yagi pointed to your cell site, a 65DB BDA and a few panel antennas and you will have around -60 to -70 DB in the house. That means 4-5 bars of signal :)

You can find their stuff available all over the web including Amazon.
 
Re: Satellite Internet

CT Arrow said:
We sell and install a fair amount of Wilson Electronics BDA's (Bi-directional amp) for exactly the issue your describing. The equipment is decent and works well. My guess is a yagi pointed to your cell site, a 65DB BDA and a few panel antennas and you will have around -60 to -70 DB in the house. That means 4-5 bars of signal :)

You can find their stuff available all over the web including Amazon.
Click to expand...

They seem to offer a lot of different BDAs and antennas. Most carriers are in the 1900MHz band, what would a typical setup to forward the signal into the house require ?
 
Fearless Tower said:
The only thing good about it id that it works in the middle of the ocean.

It sucks even worse when you are on the destroyer and the CVN sucks up all the allocated bandwidth!


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD
Click to expand...

I was on the CVN that took all the bandwidth all the time and could barely use the net at all, even at night.

David
 
Re: Satellite Internet

weilke said:
They seem to offer a lot of different BDAs and antennas. Most carriers are in the 1900MHz band, what would a typical setup to forward the signal into the house require ?
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First, what carrier are you currently using? ATT and Verizion use similar equipment. If your using Sprint, that is a whole other game.

Second, you need to find out where the tower locations are for both ATT and Verizion providing your using either service. This is very important for a number of reasons. This will help determine what type of antenna and BDA will be needed. Also, if the tower is is too close this can cause the amp to overload and shut down. It can also cause issues with the cell site.

Third, the average BDA system that we install runs around $3500. If you self install, and depending on equipment, I would estimate around $1500- 2000. It could be less but I am estimating on the high side
 
Re: Satellite Internet

CT Arrow said:
We sell and install a fair amount of Wilson Electronics BDA's (Bi-directional amp) for exactly the issue your describing. The equipment is decent and works well. My guess is a yagi pointed to your cell site, a 65DB BDA and a few panel antennas and you will have around -60 to -70 DB in the house. That means 4-5 bars of signal :)

You can find their stuff available all over the web including Amazon.
Click to expand...

I'm posting in this spot only because I anticipate meeting(eating, drinking?) with CT Arrow on the coming Sunday or Monday, here on this seacoast island.

When I lived on the mainland I had Suscom(became Comcast) broadband cable. It was very good for the transmittal of my many very large photo files to labs in California, Texas, other distant places. When I moved to Georgetown, an island that is approachable via highway from the mainland after crossing to and over another island(Arrowsic), there is no cable.
Verizon had sold their land lines in Maine, NH and somewhere else, to Fairpoint Communications. The only good thing about that was that Verizon got PAID. Fairpoint stunk, was into bankruptcy, slowly got better(slightly), and finally continued the DSL which Verizon had started(but only to parts of the island).
Before I was able to get the DSL I had Hughes Net, better than Dial-up, but lousy compared to what I had on the mainland. After setting up Hughes Net I proceeded one night to transmit 73 photo files to California. It took three days/24/7. After 2 to 3 years with Hughes Net, DSL became a speed blessing, but nothing like back on the mainland. Fairpoint is still in the process of upgrading speeds, but via a region to region basis, and our "region" is only "on our schedule," they say.

Cell phone service is hit-or-miss in Georgetown because of so many hills/valleys that traverse the huge ledge on which the island sits. Call drops are common if one is talking while driving. True story: there was a fellow "from away"(common around these parts) who was building a substantial seasonal(eventual retirement) home. He discovered that his cellular reception was bad at his location and other places in town. It seems that he was an executive with one of the big carriers. It wasn't too long before two new towers were erected. Position had pull, I guess.

CT Arrow: The friend who told me the above story is the fellow who painted the big American flag on the boulder that you and Diana will see, signalling your right turn to get to Grey Havens, less than a ½ mile from said turn.

HR
 

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I used to work in a small resort town that mostly consisted of weekend homes, few of them with broadband access. At night, there was allways a gaggle of cars parked in front of the local coffee-shop with individuals hacking away at their laptops. The shop didn't shut off their router and night and it was a well-known spot to leech a couple of hours of wifi.
 
weilke said:
I used to work in a small resort town that mostly consisted of weekend homes, few of them with broadband access. At night, there was allways a gaggle of cars parked in front of the local coffee-shop with individuals hacking away at their laptops. The shop didn't shut off their router and night and it was a well-known spot to leech a couple of hours of wifi.
Click to expand...

One of my favorite pictures I've taken since I moved in 2007 to this fishing community was on the back of a 4th of July parade float at Five Islands(a village in Georgetown). Beyond what the sign says, the population swells between early June and Labor Day. Families have been summering here for generations. Artists of all media, many internationally-known, pay taxes here, as does actress Stockard Channing, though I don't know on which point she lives. Flying over the area one can see the many roads(Private) which jut off the Route #127. Those who travel #127 may see those roads but they never see the aerial view of the spider web of "lanes"(driveways) that spike off the private roads.
Photo #2? Very few of those properties on Bay Point are owned by natives. The one at top left is owned by a dot.com success from San Ysidro, CA.
Photo #3. House in the middle used to be one house. Next generation came along, built a similar house and they are connected by a passageway.
Photo #4. Reid State Park, a couple miles further down the road from where CT Arrow will be staying. All that land was given to the State of Maine(in 1949) by a man who in 1904 built the spectacular home which is now Grey Havens Inn.

HR

HR
 

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Re: Satellite Internet

CT Arrow said:
We sell and install a fair amount of Wilson Electronics BDA's (Bi-directional amp) for exactly the issue your describing. The equipment is decent and works well. My guess is a yagi pointed to your cell site, a 65DB BDA and a few panel antennas and you will have around -60 to -70 DB in the house. That means 4-5 bars of signal :)

You can find their stuff available all over the web including Amazon.
Click to expand...

Wilson is what I've been looking at. If you sell them, I'll buy from you, was going to PM you but you seem to have those turned off.
 
Re: Satellite Internet

bartmc said:
Wilson is what I've been looking at. If you sell them, I'll buy from you, was going to PM you but you seem to have those turned off.
Click to expand...
Hmm, I'll fix that
Here is the biz email: adec.comm@snet.net
We are a Wilson Certified install shop and look forward to your email. Glad to help!

Andy
 
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Re: Satellite Internet

Lawreston said:
I'm posting in this spot only because I anticipate meeting(eating, drinking?) with CT Arrow on the coming Sunday or Monday, here on this seacoast island.

CT Arrow: The friend who told me the above story is the fellow who painted the big American flag on the boulder that you and Diana will see, signaling your right turn to get to Grey Havens, less than a ½ mile from said turn.

HR
Click to expand...

Love the pics! Gets us more excited to visit! I see they do Mojitos in the bar, Hallelujah! Sitting on the porch with a few cool cocktails and new Friends is what it is all about!
 
I haven't been able to watch a YouTube video in months. POA is the only site that somewhat works with HughesNet with any sort of degree of reliability. But the funniest thing is, I get to call them right now and explain to them that their service is so ****ty that I can't even pay my bill online.
 
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