Pardon the plethora of needy OP’s. I’ve been needing to ask this for a while.
I’m the data manager for a network of national parks. One important necessity of managing this natural resources data flowing in from hither and yon is the ability to actually retrieve it to my machine and beam it back out to whoever needs it. Communication. Easy. We live in the internet age. Get thee to a broadband provider!
Right. Wish I could. Where I’m based is so far out in the woods that no DSL service or cable internet will make it out here. And my network is not interested in spending scads of money running a dedicated T1 over the river and through the woods to my little data management shack. They already have to pipe sunshine into the place as it is.
I’ve been stuck with an unstabel, piss-poor dialup number that maxes my bandwidth out at a stunning 26.4 kbps. Yeah. Pretty much totally unacceptable.
So I began investigating satellite internet. Last year, after an entrely too brief period of research, I went with Starband. GIANT mistake. It never worked. The service tech had to travel 200 miles for a service call. The company then went ashcan. Bad scene. After months and months, I finally managed to get the government’s money back.
Out of desperate hope, I put satellite internet back into this year’s budget. So I need recommendations and help. Any assistance would be fantastically appreciated. I’ve seen some of the broadband review sites, and while that’s all well and good, they make me wonder how many corporate reps go online and give their own products 5 star ratings. QA/QC may be for shit on the sites.
You guys I trust a bit more. So, DirecWay? Skycaster? Something else? Any of them worth a flying damn? Help?
Ok, you don’t have a lot of responses yet, so I’ll tell you what I know, which isn’t much.
I’ve looked into DirectTV’s satellite internet. Right now, the equipment cost is about $450, just for the dish and modem. The download speeds are compairable with cable, but the upload speeds are still about what you get over a phone line. But you don’t need a phone line anymore…you do upload to the satelite. The representative I talked to at CES told me that depending on FCC regulations that they hope take place this summer, that upload speed could double. Unlike a home satelite dish, this would require you to have a professional installation. There’s no way around that. I’m not sure what difficulties you might have with that where you are. Monthly cost was around $50 a month if I remember right. I’m not sure what weather extreams you get, or what your line of site to the southern sky is, but keep in mind things like rain, sleet, and snow will effect your reception. Heck, waving tree branches could effect it.
Direcway (which is what atrael is referring to) is $55 per month for me. And I have the spiffy two-way version.
With the latest software I’ve bursted past 2MB at times and tend to camp between 1.2 and 1.5MB. It’s pretty nifty for those of us in out-of-touch land (like myself).
You do get problems with lost packets and dropped network connections during extremely heavy cloud cover. Be warned.
I’ve been looking at Direcway for some time but the problem for me is that according to the website it doesn’t work so well with VPN (virtual private network) technology, which is how I log in to work from my cabin. The IT guys at work didn’t have much to say because nobody’s ever tried it before. So it may or may not be worth it depending on the nature of your network’s security.
I was looking into Direcway too but several times a winter I have to lean out the upstairs bedroom window and knock snow off the dish, which doesn’t always work; plus, if the neighboor’s tree grows anymore there goes my line to the southern sky. For those reasons I decided against it because I would HATE losing my internet connection, addict that I am.
Is there any way to set up a LOS point to point link between your “tech shack” and remote location. With the increasing ranges of wireless technology this may be something feasable. Again this would need a line of site installation. Or a reapeating set up of some time, from the bottom of a valley per se to the top of a mountain and then back down to your tech shack. With directional aimed antennas the ranges can easily exceed >15km. This may be something worth looking into. The negative will be the inital cost of the equipment and installation but the positive will be near non-existent monthy costs. That is of course unless you set up a service contract with an installation company.
So, DirecWay? Skycaster? Something else? Any of them worth a flying damn? Help?