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one-way satellite provider

Hi guys,

I have found this provider www.broadsat.com
that offers various satellite services.
I have been using the Opensky service on the Eurobird satellite (33° est)
since 3 weeks and I think that it is the best one-way satellite I never used!!
The download speed is really up to 2Mbps :eek:
Maybe they have the transponder not full..I don't know, but it is fanstatic
to download up to 2Mbit with a simple dial-up connection :)

I hope that this post can be useful for all the people searching a good service with nice price!

All the best,
MrSat
 
I would be interested to know what your experience is with browsing. My file transfer speeds are acceptable, but my browsing speed is not much better than 56k dial-up.
I have improved this by using on-speed (compresion service) - but it is still very poor when compared with ADSL.
 
Hi john-boy,
even if it is a good service it's always a satellite service :(
The delay is about 350-400ms, it's not possible to compare it with a adsl delay...
But, in any case, you must wait few sec before to receive the web page,
and I think it is better than the 56k dial-up.

Bye
 
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I have been trying to deceide whether to go in for satellite, and as with everything, some say good and some bad.

With landline broadband I would have to lose the low users rebate from BT on telephone charges :( before I could have it installed.

Is there an unmetered SB, only these people TELES SkyDSL charge 1p per MB on all downloads, which I think could soon add up.

The question is how much data does an average user download in a month doing general surfing, emails etc. No music videos or games ? 1GB ??
 
fontwell said:
I have been trying to deceide whether to go in for satellite, and as with everything, some say good and some bad.

With landline broadband I would have to lose the low users rebate from BT on telephone charges :( before I could have it installed.

Is there an unmetered SB, only these people TELES SkyDSL charge 1p per MB on all downloads, which I think could soon add up.

The question is how much data does an average user download in a month doing general surfing, emails etc. No music videos or games ? 1GB ??

For me the problem is with Browsing (as I have said before). browsing is painfully slow because of the continual "handshaking" going on. My experience is that it is not a lot better than 56l dail-up. I have improved the situation by using onspeed, but it is still slow. This is also true when using things like frontpage etc where onspeed cannot be used.
However my experience with file transfer is good. It starts off slow but quickly builds up to speed after 5 to 10 seconds.

(assuming ADSL is not an option) then personally I think that a better option would be to go for dual channel ISDN which although only 128k nevertheless gives high quality and reliable service. Browsing would definitely be faster, although FT would be slower. This option also works out cheaper than satellite, both for installation and ongoing charges. For this option (if you are in the UK) check out this site...
http://www.cymru1.net/247/isdnpremium.php which is the cheapest solution I have found.
 
If you have a choice between connection types I'd strongly recommend choosing products in this order: landline ADSL, ISDN, satellite BB.

This is based on spending years in the ADSL wilderness. At one point, I didn't even have ISDN as an option! Just dialup.

Satellite can be great, but having used four different providers in the past, I can honestly say that the honeymoon period is not great, or long. Great speeds when you first sign up, then increasingly poor service as more people subscribe.

ADSL itself can be variable, but on the whole is reliable and trouble-free. Again, I'd recommend avoiding the DSL Max version for the time being, until the problems are resolved and just go for a standard ADSL package (if you can find one).

ISDN has the advantage of being uncontended, so the speed is constant (barring line faults, of course) and I survived on that for two or three years, supplemented with satellite BB, before ADSL became an option.

It also depends on what you are using the connection for. Heavy downloading is best on ADSL or satellite, obviously, but gamers should avoid satellite as the lag will be awful. But for general browsing and emails, pretty much anything will be fine.

Just my two-cents worth :)
 
Thank you for those thoughts, I think the idea of sat surfing has rather caught my imagination. It's also interesting researching the subject

These people at Sky DSL have a special offer running at the moment, free dish and DVB Card. The cost is £4.99 pm and 1p per MB min 6 months contract.
The point is if you cancel they want their equipment back, so unbolt dish remove Card !

I assume you can turn if off and revert to two way dial-up, should it prove rather expensive. I has been checking my bandwidth use on general surfing, and it is around 5MB ph.

I am no techie, so the lack of support as they are in Berlin, probably email only, is another thought.

Their satellite is at 8 deg W

http://www.satcodx9.com/3520/deu/dishtrak.cgi
 
Last edited:
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I used one-way sat for just over a year as I was unable to get ADSL until the extended reach programme rolled out. Overall it was really good with normal download speed between 1.5 - 2Mbps, often going up to 8Mbps. It was also very reliable.

The downside was expense, as you have to maintain a landline ISP service for the backhaul as well as paying the satellite provider.

As soon as ADSL was available, I jumped ship.

For those with no landline option for DSL one (or even two) way sat is certainly an option.
 
Can you say which provider you were with and which satellite they used. I would like to check them out.

The cheapest option on Sky DSL is £4.99 pm, speeds up to 1 Mbps. The good news is my ISP have reduced their dial-up price to £4.99 also, so its looking affordable.

I have been looking at dish angles, but the result comes up as "NaN" and no figures. Someone thinks this means the sat is below the horizon, but aren't they all down at the equator.?
 
Initially I was with a UK reseller of skyDSL but they went bust :( Fortunately, as a parting gesture to their customer base, they negotiated a deal directly with skyDSL and I continued my service with them until I was able to get ADSL.

The skyDSL satellite is at 8 degrees west so there is no reason you cannot receive it if your dish is properly aligned. I'm a lot further north than you are and got a very good signal with a 60cm dish. On my street, it always caused some confusion as my dish was pointing in a very different direction to all the sat-TV dishes ;)

You may find this link useful.
 
I am a little confused how one-way satellite works. Perhaps someone could emighten me.

Obviously the receiving side is done via satellite connection, and the transmit side is done by land line. But (for example) when you request a web page, you will send a request from your browser via the land line over the internet to the web server, and then the web server responds to the request by delivering the page back to the requester - but how does the returning page get sent via satellite rather than back through the land line connection?
What stops the land line connection (which is 2-way) from handling everything? I am used to having a single internet connection set up and working within windows which tells the browser where to look for its connection, but hoiw does this work with one-way sat?

Perhaps I am missing something fundamental here?
 
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If I recall correctly, you connect as normal through a landline (typically dialup) but set up all requests to go through a proxy (which is the sat providers server). So when you request a web page, your request goes to the sat server first, which then forwards the page request to the relevant site. The reply then is sent back to the sat server, which routes the data through their satellite instead of sending it back directly through the land line. So effectively:

PC ---> Sat Server ---> Web Site ---> Sat Server ---> Satellite ---> PC

It sounds rather convoluted, but it works. It also creates a small but noticeable lag between sending the request and recieving the web-page, which is why it's not much use for gamers.

It's also worthwhile noting that, depending on what programs you use to access the net other than a browser, you can actually utilise your landline's downstream portion to do other things whilst browsing. For example, using IRC via the landline whilst browsing/downloading via the satellite. Possibly using messenger etc. (though I don't use that myself, so can't be sure).

Every little bit helps :)
 
Mr Hat has got it in one. Some sat services such as EOL back in the day got you to manually setup the proxy servers into IE/Mozilla etc etc where as those such as Silvermead and the like used their own software to route traffic over the satellite. Browsing with sat isnt much faster than using a dialup modem (taking into account the lag). It's only an advantage when your downloading. The TV features that some of the sat services offer and aome of the multicasting are also very good but it tends to be more geared towards European viewers. Basically if you can get ADSL/Cable or even to an extent ISDN go for that rather than sat.
 
Because of my current experience I was considering the following set-up.
1-way sat (skyDSL - 4Mbit package) plus dual channel ISDN (128Kb).
This package would still work out cheaper than my existing 2-way sat which is 512kb down and 256kb up.
I am thinking that the browsing experience might be slightly improved with one-way than 2-way because of the one-way lag rather than 2-way lag. The other possibility is to use the ISDN connection for browsing (which I think would be much faster than Sat) and the Sat for downloads and email etc.
What I am not sure is how to configure differnet apllications to use different connection methods (e.g. my common uses are...
* Browsing
* FTP downloads via ws-ftp pro
* MS Frontpage web site software
* Email connection via outlook to hosted exchange server

Any views would be appreciated.
 
do you get as much lag on 2-way as you would on 1-way? I am presuming the use of a proxy to divert the downstream would not be required?

Interesting thread by the way...
 
john-boy said:
The other possibility is to use the ISDN connection for browsing (which I think would be much faster than Sat) and the Sat for downloads and email etc.


In my experience, one-way sat gave a very fast browsing experience. FWIW, my setup was one-way sat with a single channel ISDN connection for the backhaul.
 
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One Way..... Man....

ThatzVinyl said:
do you get as much lag on 2-way as you would on 1-way? I am presuming the use of a proxy to divert the downstream would not be required?

I think that the lag on 2 way would be more because the request for data (transmit) has to go up to the sat and then down again before it gets to the internet - and then visa versa for the return. The land line connection will be that much faster even though it has to go via a proxy.
My experience of 2 way sat for browsing is very poor :crap: . I used to have ISDN (128k) before ADSL (I now cannot get ADSL having moved out into the sticks) and ISDN was pretty good, but obviously still not as good as basic ADSL.
 
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