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pay as you go VSAT backup?

undernet

Member
Hi

With all the talk of potential power cuts this winter in a worst case I was looking into backup plans for internet as my job requires continuous connectivity 24/5 come what may.

I have backup power for everything, however it will not do me much good if the telephone exchange or FTTC goes down, I know they have backup power but I doubt they have enough to stay online 48Hrs+, from what I read it many be an hour or two only.

Same goes for the phone masts, I have 4G backup but that will not help if the mast looses power, UK rules do not require any back up power for the masts, some have a few hours of battery backup, some have a generator that will kick in and others have none at all.

So with this in mind I was looking at VSAT but I know nothing about this sector, is it possible to get a pay as you go service like the SIMs for satellite phones but for a small 492kbps data VSAT terminal instead, I do not want to pay monthly as it I would be paying for something I would not use 99% of the time.
 
You can suspend service on Starlink (minimum is one month) - but the gear is expensive (around £500 for a dishy) and requires about triple the juice a 4/5G router needs to run, so factor that in to your backup power calcs.*

I wouldn't bother with geo-stationary satellite based VSAT as the latency will be diabolical.

Saying this you would be hugely unlucky (or in a really dire situation) if FTTC + multiple masts nearby all failed.

Dare say at that point unless your job was life-critical, the boss may "understand" if you cant work from home - the circumstances would be rather extenuating - force majeur springs to mind
 
I'm a forex trader and the market does not care if I can't get out of the market due to loss of connectivity, I would loose money all the same even if my losses were capped due to a stop loss.

I live in a rural area so I can't be sure I will always be in range of another mast if my local one goes down. latency is not a deal breaker but of course a LEO network like iridium would be better but I thought they cater for voice only unless you can get satellite phones that you can tether to a laptop even if its just 32-56k bandwidth?

I did look at star link and like you said the up front costs are not attractive there is also the issue of restarting the service in minutes which is not supported AFAIK

 
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Starlink will be (way) cheaper to buy than any Iridium or Inmarsat terminal - that is before you add data minutes / timed sub. to either of the latter.

If you really think you need this then Starlink RV with pause-able monthly sub would be the way to go.
 
When it comes to satellite systems, there are a number of things to look at (besides the cost):

GEO vs. LEO/MEO: GEO systems have higher latency but that is not really an issue unless you want to play online games. TCP can be a bit slow to start, but there are TCP acccelerators out there which change the TCP window size and speed up file transfers etc. Latency is noticeable on voice calls but not too bad either. I have no idea if latency is an issue for Forex trading.
L-Band vs. Ka/Ku band: Ku and in particular Ka band suffer from rain fading and thick clouds (e..g snow). If you need near 100% availability, then L-Band is the only option. Some Ka Band systems even have automatic fall-back to L-Band to mitigate rainfades. However, Ka/Ku band gives you higher data rates than L-band, at least in theory as most systems share available capacity around users, just like 4G/5G.

Then there is obviously equipment size, cost and cost per MB to consider. Apparently, Inmarsat, Iridium and Thuraya (all L-Band) offer PAYG SIM cards.
 
I don't know of any pay as you go satellite service you can renew instantly.

As mentioned earlier, Starlink would probably be the closest thing but as you're probably already aware you have to ask support to reopen your account which = time to get back up and running.

I have clients who have asked me about it, as they're the type that if they're offline it means big money lost so they've been installing them recently as well as big battery backups for a what-if scenario when there's no power/internet/mobile networks etc. I must say I find it all way over the top, but if a client wants to pay for it, who am I to argue?

Wouldn't the latency on Starlink be horrible for forex trading? and couldn't you phone up your broker in the event you had no internet to ask them to sell your positions?
 
I have clients who have asked me about it, as they're the type that if they're offline it means big money lost so they've been installing them recently as well as big battery backups for a what-if scenario
This perplexes me. If you’re really at risk of losing x £ thousand per outage - would you seriously be working off a resi broadband connection?

Surely if it’s that important you want a guaranteed continuity and restoration of service. There are of course business level connections and services that offer that.

Broadband as we know provides…diddly squat guarantee of anything.
 
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This perplexes me. If you’re really at risk of losing x £ thousand per outage - would you seriously be working off a resi broadband connection?

Surely if it’s that important you want a guaranteed continuity and restoration of service. There are of course business level connections and services that offer that.

Broadband as we know provides…diddly squat guarantee of anything.

I think some rich people just don't want to be offline. I can understand not wanting to be offline as I've got cable and 5G. But that comes about because 1) It's the kind of thing i'd do anyway 2) It costs me very little (way little compared to the likes of Starlink).

Re: the resi broadband. I assume some of my clients have taken the business one. But they are also convinced that in the event of power loss, Starlink will be the only available service. I'm not so sure about that myself, but again, not my money. I personally would not get Starlink. I'd rather be offline, and while I also don't get paid for being offline, I can't imagine any situation that would take me offline for days or weeks on end and also prevent me somehow from just going to our data centre in Slough and working there, and if Slough is offline, then our entire company is so not much going on at all lol.
 
thanks for your comments, i'm not a high frequency trader or anything but my algos do need to open and close positions many times per day, 40-60ms on starlink or other LEO is fine, I only need a few KB per sec for data so my requirements are modest its just the 100% uptime I need.

until starlink allows instant service resume I think I will try to find a Inmarsat, Iridium or Thuraya pay as you go SIM sat phone that does data and allows tethering, all the ones I can find online seem to be stuck in the 90s and are voice only however.
 
Something to keep in mind here is that satellite broadband is not immune to significant power disruption events. Such LEO networks are reliant upon their ground stations and so it's conceivable that a major outage could still cause some disruption if those stations have not prepared for protracted problems (e.g. ensuring plenty of fuel for backup generators).

However, if such issues were to occur, then I suspect they would most probably present themselves as degraded service performance rather than a total loss of connectivity.
 
thanks for your comments, i'm not a high frequency trader or anything but my algos do need to open and close positions many times per day, 40-60ms on starlink or other LEO is fine

If it's algorithms, then you should rent a VM in one or more public clouds. They'll have continuous connectivity: much more reliable than any home broadband connection.

If you're out in the sticks, and are thinking about outages of more than 48 hours, then in emergency maybe it's possible to drive to a nearby town which has working Internet? Unless you're snowed in that is!

Otherwise I concur with what has been said before: if it's that important, you need a leased line, or pay £900p.a. for Starlink. Maybe you can share it with your neighbours.
 
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To add to @candlerb post above - if "business continuity" is the name of the game, then I wouldn't take my chances with a service that you have to 'start up' when the chips are down...

Through bitter experience, fate will intervene at the worst possible time and there's a good chance it won't work or won't start as quickly as what you need.

In this scenario where there is real money riding on the fact that you can get timely connection to a cloud, servers or box somewhere to do your work or make your trades, then you need more than one active connection...AND you need to regularly test all services/connections.

I wouldn't rely on a standy service/connection to dig me out of the proverbial. Especially if my livelihood depended on it.
 
Oh yeah, in a crisis your phone may not even work to call Starlink support and activate it for you. Or their phones may not work.. All sorts could go wrong.
It's best to just keep it on and take the budget hit, if it's that important.
 
until starlink allows instant service resume I think I will try to find a Inmarsat, Iridium or Thuraya pay as you go SIM sat phone that does data and allows tethering, all the ones I can find online seem to be stuck in the 90s and are voice only however.
They all offer data as well. A good summary can be found here

 
Oh yeah, in a crisis your phone may not even work to call Starlink support and activate it for you. Or their phones may not work.. All sorts could go wrong.
It's best to just keep it on and take the budget hit, if it's that important.
It’s all through the app @Lucian. They don’t publish any support numbers that I’m aware of.

Should however be able to activate a hibernated service from the app. when theres no other Internet but the dishy. But you know how these things can be…otherwise someone in Austin might respond in a day or three…
 
In this use case. I don’t see how having a commercial broadband connection would help? If it goes down, it won’t be repaired quick enough for the scenario given and bandwidth does not seem to be an issue.

Is 4G available? Decent speeds? Fttc decent speeds. I would go with Primary of FTTC with a 4G secondary. Run them active active with a load balancer. Using both at same time. One fails the other is there.

Look at battery back up for equipment? Enough for you to finish up for day. Plan what you will do in such a scenario with your trades. Fall back might be laptop, drive around get 4G signal - finish the day?
 
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In this use case. I don’t see how having a commercial broadband connection would help? If it goes down, it won’t be repaired quick enough for the scenario given and bandwidth does not seem to be an issue.

Is 4G available? Decent speeds? Fttc decent speeds. I would go with Primary of FTTC with a 4G secondary. Run them active active with a load balancer. Using both at same time. One fails the other is there.

Look at battery back up for equipment? Enough for you to finish up for day. Plan what you will do in such a scenario with your trades. Fall back might be laptop, drive around get 4G signal - finish the day?
Think this is more about if there is a huge local outage and masts&fttc cabinets etc fail.
 
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