Sattelite Internet

So…. Installed a Wilson cell phone booster on the home. This was no small feat considering my entire house (yes wall, ceiling and all) are 1" solid wood. Got 4 bars 3G coverage in the house (When it's off, cell coverage goes to 0 bars) , work gave me a iPhone 5S complete with wifi hotspot. and for the first time EVER I just watched an entire YouTube video from start to finish from the comfort of my own home, without interruption. (It was Rubberband Man by the Spinners if you're wondering :) ) I'm happy.
 
bartmc said:
So…. Installed a Wilson cell phone booster on the home. This was no small feat considering my entire house (yes wall, ceiling and all) are 1" solid wood. Got 4 bars 3G coverage in the house (When it's off, cell coverage goes to 0 bars) , work gave me a iPhone 5S complete with wifi hotspot. and for the first time EVER I just watched an entire YouTube video from start to finish from the comfort of my own home, without interruption. (It was Rubberband Man by the Spinners if you're wondering :) ) I'm happy.
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Amazing how well RF works when you poke amplified holes in Mr. Faraday's cage. ;)
 
bartmc said:
So…. Installed a Wilson cell phone booster on the home. This was no small feat considering my entire house (yes wall, ceiling and all) are 1" solid wood. Got 4 bars 3G coverage in the house (When it's off, cell coverage goes to 0 bars) , work gave me a iPhone 5S complete with wifi hotspot. and for the first time EVER I just watched an entire YouTube video from start to finish from the comfort of my own home, without interruption. (It was Rubberband Man by the Spinners if you're wondering :) ) I'm happy.
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They do work remarkably well, don't they? I installed a bunch of them back in the day, both in homes and at various sorts of commercial facilities that needed Internet but were far from any sort of wired service. With a good directional antenna and a mast, we could snag towers as far as 20 miles away.

I hope you have an unlimited plan on that iPhone, though... :hairraise:

-Rich
 
bartmc said:
Sucks
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Speciality DISH NET.. up load speeds of .35mbps and down loads of 1.50 mbps. will not support skipe or you tube video.

I bitched, they sent out a tech, he trouble shot the installation, changed the black box with all the blinking lights and said he fixed it. tonight it requires 5 minutes to open this page.

It ain't fixed.
 
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Tom-D said:
Speciality DISH NET.. up load speeds of .35mbps and down loads of 1.50 mbps. will not support skipe or you tube video.

I bitched, they sent out a tech, he trouble shot the installation, changed the black box with all the blinking lights and said he fixed it. tonight it requires 5 minutes to open this page.

It ain't fixed.
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The only satellite Internet provider that I never heard complaints about was WildBlue.

-Rich
 
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.
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Actually Hughesnet is far from the last resort, they are just the cheapest. INMARST is the last resort nd they are ungodly expensive, but they work everywhere from 70°N to 70°S. V-Sat is another choice but to get good speed out of them is not cheap either.
 
Tom-D said:
What do you use to check speeds ?



http://www.speedtest.net



What numbers do you get for speeds?
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I don't think any of us have HughesNet. Our numbers would be meaningless against yours. Right? Who are you asking?

HughesNet also has two distinct services. One is meant to be fixed locations and relies on "spot beam" technology to provide about a 400 mile footprint your receiver can work inside of and is faster than the other. The other is a wider coverage satellite and is much slower. Many RVers still try to buy that service over the newer since even though you're not technically supposed to move around you can. Whereas the other is designed to stay put.

Someone mentioned Dish. That's not Hughes now is it ?

WildBlue is also meant to be fixed with spot beams. They tweaked buffers in their routers and head end gear to try to minimize the effects of round trip time latency. Mixed reviews on that idea.

Using a tool like Speedtest.net could easily push you over a daily throttling cap. And I believe they all have daily throttling caps. Go over your daily allotment you'll see slow speed until you are out of the penalty box again. Most also have a late night timeframe where they don't count your bandwidth for bulk downloads of things like software updates, etc.

Check and see if your speed testing put you in the daily penalty box, Tom.
 
Tom-D said:
What do you use to check speeds ?

http://www.speedtest.net

What numbers do you get for speeds?
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Ping 925 ms
Download speed 20.80 Mbps
Upload speed 3.14 Mbps

Service provider: Wildblue Communications (via Exede.com)

Latency is bad (as to be expected via geosync satellite,) but bit rate is better than I was getting with DSL. Also more reliable than DSL was (we had a noisy phone line the techs could never clean up.) Have successfully used Skype and Webex over that link. Tried netrek, which is an old old real-time network game on it, but as expected the latency is too much to survive a twitch game.
 
I have the Verizon home fusion service... basically just a dedicated LTE connection with better(still not great) data packages than you can buy for normal cell service.

The speed is really good, latency is low, basically as good as cable from a speed/performance standpoint. Unfortunately the biggest data package you can buy is 30GB/mo which really just isn't enough. Then it's $10/gb when you go over. It's still better than any satellite service I ever had.
 
This AM, 1 inch of snow put the dish out of service.
 
cowman said:
I have the Verizon home fusion service... basically just a dedicated LTE connection with better(still not great) data packages than you can buy for normal cell service.

The speed is really good, latency is low, basically as good as cable from a speed/performance standpoint. Unfortunately the biggest data package you can buy is 30GB/mo which really just isn't enough. Then it's $10/gb when you go over. It's still better than any satellite service I ever had.
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My iPhone 5S with the Personal hotspot turned on with an LTE connection clocked 21Mbps download last night. I only got 3G at the house that I have to suck in with a signal booster. Reliably getting 1Mbps up and down. Works well with my VPN and general internet surfing. Got the grandfathered unlimited data plan on my personal phone, stupidly upgraded to iOS 6.1.3 and no jailbreak out for that yet.
 
bartmc said:
My iPhone 5S with the Personal hotspot turned on with an LTE connection clocked 21Mbps download last night. I only got 3G at the house that I have to suck in with a signal booster. Reliably getting 1Mbps up and down. Works well with my VPN and general internet surfing. Got the grandfathered unlimited data plan on my personal phone, stupidly upgraded to iOS 6.1.3 and no jailbreak out for that yet.
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Were you trying to run your VPN across the satellite link ?
 
cowman said:
I have the Verizon home fusion service... basically just a dedicated LTE connection with better(still not great) data packages than you can buy for normal cell service.



The speed is really good, latency is low, basically as good as cable from a speed/performance standpoint. Unfortunately the biggest data package you can buy is 30GB/mo which really just isn't enough. Then it's $10/gb when you go over. It's still better than any satellite service I ever had.
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That's less bandwidth than two full U.S. Foreflight updates.

Speaking of that. Sure would be cool if you could download once and the other device could copy the data from the first. ;)
 
Yeah I just go to the FBO and use their free wifi when I update Foreflight.
 
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