OT but relevant to this site.

[Black Forest]

We were just switched to telephone over the internet here. We had no choice it the matter. So now our telephone and internet come in on our DSL lines. The telephone seems to work with no problems but the internet is not very reliable or fast. Uploads at .200 mb/s downloads at .420mb/s.

After repeated conversations with our provider, Telekom, they are telling us there is nothing they can do for us.

So does anyone on here use a satellite dish for internet? I have been researching different companies.

My biggest issue is with what they call the fair usage policy and how you get grouped with similar users and that throttles back your internet quite severely sometimes.

Do any of you all use satellite internet?

[Tommo]

Satellite is horrible, don't do it. We used to have dialup, that was our only option until about six years ago when we finally got DSL. IN the interim we had satellite for about a year or two and it absolutely sucked. If it was raining too hard, if it was cloudy, if there were sunspots, etc you basically don't have an internet connection.
We're still waiting for cable internet, but the phone company that owns the lines won't let other companies use the utility poles or some BS like that. I've been in 3rd world countries with better internet.

[Robin R]

We recently switched fro cable internet to satelite. The reason we switched was because the cable supplier apparently couldn't buy enough bandwidth, so we would spend to much time just watching the wheel go round. Both our sons had switched to satelite and told us things would be much better. Well it hasn't worked out for us, the service doesn't just drop out like with the cable, but it is even slower.

We had to sign up for 2 years, but after that time is up we will probably switch back if things have not improved much in the mean time.

[SteveF]

I don't have it but my buddy, who recently moved out in the country, uses Exede. When I was at his house we checked speeds and it was about 7 Megbit/sec download and 1.5 upload. He is satisfied with it and says it doesn't get much slower during peak periods. BTW he is a telecom engineering consultant and gets paid very well to design networks for large corporate and government clients. So, I'm may switch over myself as my DSL keeps getting slower.

Steve

[skunkworks]

There are 2 things that you need to research.

- bandwidth throttling / monthly limits / unlimited bandwidth times.
- ping times.

If you're not playing video games - ping times (>1 second) probably are not a problem. (remote desktop also could be a pain)

[KJ1I]

We don't have satellite for internet, but we do have DirecTV for video. As Tommo said, with every heavy rain or snow storm, we get pixelization then a "Loss of Signal" message and revert to DVDs until the storm has passed. And I do mean every storm.

[MattiJ]

How is 4G in your corner of forest?
If I remember correctly it's not as widespread and cheap as in here but maybe worth a check.
Speeds wary but I get usually at least 10/10 Mbps down/upload. At the moment 15 down and 20 up. 100/40 on a good day.

[Jim Stewart]

We don't have satellite for internet, but we do have DirecTV for video. As Tommo said, with every heavy rain or snow storm, we get pixelization then a "Loss of Signal" message and revert to DVDs until the storm has passed. And I do mean every storm.

Really, that bad? I've had DirecTV for 20 years and never once seen a loss of signal message, seldom see noise problems.

I'm closer to the equator than you, but I have no idea where on the equator your satellite hangs. Mine is about 30 degrees east of due south. Your path may just be that much longer than mine.

Do your neighbors have the same problem? If not I'd suggest getting the DirecTV guys out to aim your dish.

-js (KF6R)

[tomato coupe]

We had Hughes satellite internet for many years, only because it was the only thing available. It was pretty slow (1 Mbps down, 0.1 Mbps up), pretty expensive, but was fairly reliable except during snowstorms and heavy rain. The biggest problem, however, was the daily download limitations set by the FAP (Fair Access Policy). I think we were limited to about 300 MByte of downloads in any 24 hour period. That was okay for a while, but we started to run into problems when software manufacturers moved to online delivery of programs and system updates. The breaking point for me was when I bought a new laptop and, unknown to me, it tried to update it's operating system in the background. We quickly hit the FAP limit and they throttled us down to 50 kbps. I phoned Hughes as soon as I realized what had happened and pleaded with them to turn our faucet back on. The conversation went like this:

Me: How long have we been customers?
Hughes: 7 years
Me: How many times in that 7 year period have we exceeded the FAP limit?
Highes: Our records indicate you have never exceeded the limit.
Me: Okay, based on our stellar record, can you please turn our service back on. I really need internet access today.
Hughes: I'm sorry, we can't do that.

Two months later they implemented a new policy that would have allowed us to pay $10 to turn the faucet back on. Luckily, DSL became available at the same time and we dumped Hughes. And, just to illustrate how bad Hughes customer service was, they tried to charge us a disconnect fee after we had been customers for nearly 8 years. (I finally negotiated to sell the equipment back to them for the same amount as the disconnect fee.)

[Black Forest]

How is 4G in your corner of forest?
If I remember correctly it's not as widespread and cheap as in here but maybe worth a check.
Speeds wary but I get usually at least 10/10 Mbps down/upload. At the moment 15 down and 20 up. 100/40 on a good day.

No chance here for 4G. One of the problems of having a place with no neighbors is we don't get updated with much of anything. We use a satellite dish for TV and I can only remember 1 time losing a signal.

[danlb]

Really, that bad? I've had DirecTV for 20 years and never once seen a loss of signal message, seldom see noise problems.

I'm closer to the equator than you, but I have no idea where on the equator your satellite hangs. Mine is about 30 degrees east of due south. Your path may just be that much longer than mine.

I see that Milford, NH is only 350 further north than Concord Ca.

BUT.... I've lived in Concord and it has relatively nice weather year round. Nice as in good enough to ride a motorcycle most days. I suspect that Milford sees a lot more Atlantic storms and snow storms.

Dan

[Mark Rand]

We had to use satellite communications for a couple of power station construction sites (For some reason, power stations tend to get built in areas with poor cable and phone infrastructure. Who'd a thunk it). Bandwidth is not a problem, thouth it's expensive. Latency can be a killer. Minimum time is a quarter of a second in each direction. No problem for streaming a film, which is nearly all one way. Irritating for phone calls, every single call has intercontinental delays. For interactive use or web pages with many links (most of them these days), it's dire.

Is there a possibility of a point to point wireles link from some corner of the farm with a shorter cable route to the exchange?

[Danl]

Latency can be a killer. Minimum time is a quarter of a second in each direction. No problem for streaming a film, which is nearly all one way. Irritating for phone calls, every single call has intercontinental delays. For interactive use or web pages with many links (most of them these days), it's dire.

Is there a possibility of a point to point wireles link from some corner of the farm with a shorter cable route to the exchange?

That was my experience also. Pressing the return key for a search, for example, results in a ¼ second or so to upload to a satellite, return it to your ISP hub, then the normal search time occurs, and finally the results are again beamed into the sky and finally back down to your computer. I had two different providers for years when I had a small farm here in Oregon, and ping times are absolutely dreadful. Plain Old Telephony System modems have much better ping times.

Heavy rains here also caused blackouts many times. And snow would need to be constantly swept off the dish to keep the signal going.

Dan L

[kendall]

I've had satellite for the last 4 years, if you have another option, go for it.

I get about 750ms ping during the day, dropping to 600ms at night. Can't play online games, but general browsing and watching videos isn't bad at all.
I am on the cheapest plan available at Excede, and have a cap of 10 gigabytes, easy to burn through if you watch a lot of videos. But from midnight to 5am, it's uncounted and unrestricted, so I just schedule downloads for after midnight.
Actually have only lost signal a few times because of weather, so while I would jump on any other option in a heartbeat, I wouldn't call satellite terrible.

Edit the speeds I posted are my 'restricted speed' because of going over my cap. typical unrestricted speed is about 630ms.

[Norman Bain]

The key starting point is to know what speed is attainable with your DSL; then to work with the telco to achieve that.

To get static IP when I moved to "home office mode" we signed up for ASDL that included the office telephone lines etc. Short story it was not a good experience for a considerable period of time. The upload/download was variable and generally slower than the quoted speeds.

To get it resolved we had to work thru the bull**** and escalate till the line supplier started performing proper analysis.

One of the side channels the telco sent us thru was that there must be RF comming from someplace else in the building or from a neighbours air con etc etc. Purchased a transistor radio for that analysis. Sure I could reduce the RF by turning off some of the LED lights and one printer, but really this was just blindsiding us as even with them off the service did not improve.

What worked was building up enough rapor with a technician to actually keep up the discussion/analysis. Eventually he settled to go back to basics and test the line. Over several visits and tests there were located "grubby connections" at xxx meters from the house. We then went to that location (pulled the covers off the pits or climbed poles) and fixed same.

Another option is to get a modem that can accept a 3G or 4G modem ... may not be the cheapest option for volume usage.