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Satellite Internet - worthwhile or not??

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by goldenbarstewart

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We only have access to dial-up at our location - the phone company has not seen fit to upgrade their equipment so that we can have access to dsl. Has anyone gone the route of satellite internet, and if so how has it worked out?

9 replies

by jester james

I have worked at both ends of the spectrum when it comes to satellite internet. I was trying (unsuccessfully) to sell it to rural Kansas when it was first available to home users for the low low price of $800 to install and $80 a month for little better then base DSL. It big, bulky and downright ugly. I sold one.

On the other end, I currently work for a multinational retail company currently making all of it's stores networked together over high speed internet, including remote areas of Alaska, Canada, Texas, etc. Here is the current list of eligible services:
DSL
Cable
Wireless (Cell)
FiOS (test project)
Satellite (test project)

Keep in mind that there are many factors that can effect a satellite signal. However it does work, and work well when you have the signal. You would have to check locally for prices. Hope this helps!

by chris.black

Like the previous post, what kind of stuff are you looking to do over the connection? Also what is the surrounding area like? Flat and clear view of the southern sky? Is the area around you very windy?
Lots of things go into deploying Internet Sattelite, one major thing is: the bigger the dish, the bigger your bandwidth pipe available to you.

So there are a lot of things to consider about how you intend to use the system, environmental issues, cost of hardware/bandwidth/assistance center, and even considering if you are going to move it from place to place.

Good luck with the choice!

by goldenbarstewart

We use the dial-up we have now for large and small downloads (even small ones can take forever) and we have given up on large downloads. I go to the nearest wireless dsl location for these but it means a trip to town. Also, we do stock trading and it can take forever for pages to refresh. I have just ordered a satellite setup for a customer ($600 for equipment and installation - 512 kbps @$54/mo with the option of upgrading to the next level @1000 kpbs @$80/mo)and I guess then I'll be able to know better if it's worthwhile. I assume that I will be able to set up a wireless router for internet access under satellite - I know for dialup this can't be done (that is to share internet access.) Thanks to you both for your input - very helpful as usual!

by goldenbarstewart

Thanks for that info - I was under the impression that sharing a dialup connection wirelessly was not possible!!

by tg2

That link was for an all in one solution.. generally cheap if you can afford it and don't have a slighly older unused pc laying around...

and then if you did have a pc laying around.. you could install any of a number of linux or *nix based router installs, and turn the machine into a common multipurpose router. make connections from it to modem and dialup network.. from there it shares out a network port.

you could even just have a network card in your own PC, use your pc with Microsoft's Internet Connection Sharing, on the modem, to share it back out your network interface, where you would stick any generic wireless router, and those around you would get the signal.

genius is 1% inpiration and 99% perspiration ..

Now.. here's another idea.. have you looked for wireless access providers? Not cellular, but wireless?

And do you have any friends in town that would be line of site from you? for a few hundred dollars you could have two wireless routers, aimed at each other with yagi antennae and stretch your signal miles for a meg or two of bandwidth.

It would be a dream to be in a situation to know several people between me and my local town.. and to set them up with wireless routers (50 bucks a pop, 100 in antennae?) and get 54G running from here back to town where we could sustain multimeg dsl and share it amongst us.

Time consuming? sure.. but there are others out there that are already building a service backed by such things.. and you may find someone that you can work with to provide wireless at under 80 a month for higher speed, and faster response times then Sat.

And in the end, that is going to be your two part problem. Not just bandwidth, but response time.

My friend day traded for 4 years before going back into the regular workforce (wouldn't say he failed, he started with 50K, still had to pay his living expenses of about 1500/mo plus all the fees for trades, and lasted 4 years before he was under 10k left) Anyway.. the point to which is that he had one or two moves that were fatal, and one or two that were really good, ALL because of timing.. missed a few spots, and taken a fall, hit the others.. and went up with the ride.. seconds, split seconds, can count dearly.. and anything that delivers 400 to 4000 milisecond response time, is no good. (.4 to a full 4 seconds)

Gamers, they too can not really exist on Satelite because by the time their reaction to a threat gets back to the game server, they've already been shot.

Not to discourage satelite, but just so you know for sure, its uses can cause great frustration. If all you needed was media streaming.. ie. you make a single click and the content starts streaming and you don't need to interact with that content... satelite is great.. could listen to internet music, watch internet videos, but fast paced response critical things.. not good.

by goldenbarstewart

Thanks TG for taking the time to respond - but please clarify - are you suggesting that a wireless router connected to one of the ports of a wired router (or hub) will allow the dialup internet connection to be shared? If so, how is it (the wireless router)set up?

by tg2

You would set up a PC .. even an old one, running windows 98 or newer or just about any distribution of linux.

You would setup dialup networking

Then share the dialup connection... by default, this share is done via that pc's ethernet connection (obviously it means having an ethernet network card in it).

So, this pc would share the modem through the network port on the pc, you connect that port to your "internet" or "wan" port on the wireless router, not one of the client ports, but the internet port of the router...

then set the wireless router to get its ip via DHCP from the modem sharing pc or manually assign the router wan port a 192.168.0.2 ip and gateway of .1.

For windows XP, it is 192.168.0.x
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/306126

and a wirless router, which is setup for its *internet* or *wan* connection to use DHCP should be able to obtain one from your windows shared connection, again, the wan or internet port of that wireless router must be plugged into the PC that is sharing the modem.

Keep in mind, you should not connect the ethernet port of the pc sharing the modem connection to *any other* switch or hub. If you do, than other wired devices would try to obtain DHCP ip addresses and would get confused between the modem sharing pc, and your wireless router.

FYI, things that may break, VPN Access. You may not be able to do a vpn through your wireless router through the modem share. This would happen because of the mulitple NAT-ting going on.

The benefit to this.. is that you're reusing stuff you may already have. And even if you don't have a spare machine, any wired windows PC can be used, caution of course, is that you should have a better firewall installed on that pc than the one that comes with windows (ZoneAlarm makes one freely available that is fairly decent, but it would need to know you are modem/internet connection sharing too)

This will work.. but also keep in mind..
1) the slower the pc that shares the modem, the slower the response for all in house sharing the modem
2) its a modem, even at 56k, sharing is slow for all.

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