A glowing endorsement of satellite internet

[bobofthenorth]

I think there are a few members here already who are using satellite internet.  We are recent converts to the system.  We bought a Hughes tripod system from a Canadian VAR, Tech Mobile (www.techmcw.com) about a month ago.  I've used it enough now to know that it is going to work for us and work really well.  We've been set up boondocking in a friends yard about 20 miles west of Saskatoon for close to a week now and it has never felt like we were out of touch.  The system is easy to set up - I wouldn't say it is dead simple but it is relatively easy.  In addition to the satellite system I bought an Align-A-Site which reminds me of a sextant.  It gives me a clear visual indication of exactly where the dish is going to look to see the satellite.  That was invaluable here - we wouldn't have got connected without it.  There are tall columnar poplars all along the south of where the bus is parked.  We are shooting over the rear corner of the bus from slightly in front of the bus in order to get enough elevation to clear the poplars. 





I have a good friend who is vastly more technically savvy than I am but he owes me a big smooch where the sun don't shine because of a little wager we made.  He assured me that this connection wouldn't be able to do remote desktop which my bride is now doing albeit with a few problems but it is more than usable.  He also said it wouldn't be adequate for VOIP - not true.  We have skyped with it very successfully.  And some members here know that it will let me into the chat room.  Life is good.

[H3Jim]

This is exciting, keep us posted as your adventures continue.

[larryh]

Bob I got mine this last april and took a 7000+ trip this summer and as most places we go theres no cell no nothing. I set up the tripod about 35 times in the 3 months we was gone it take me now about 15 minutes to be on line I love my STARBAND Unit.

LarryH

[prevost82]

Hey Bob ... good to see you're up and running. I'm current in the middle of know where at a BC Bus Nut's Ralley in Princeton, BC. About 30 coaches, using my Datastorm. Gotta love it.
Ron

[bobofthenorth]

Ron - sorry we can't be in BC too.  This is the first summer in a long time that we haven't spent a bunch of time at Mara Lake.  And it won't happen again.  We're booked there for June & July 2008.  We've had a summer of major changes & just couldn't work BC into our plans.  We're just outside Prince Albert right now - dish setup went smoothly again but I had a glitch in my coach network.  I just couldn't resist re-using an old cat 5 cable that I had lying around when I wired the bus and sure enough it puked yesterday so I had to rip it out and replace it with a new one last night.  Of course it was routed from the modem, across the coach, ahead through 3 bays and up into the router in the living room.  But now I have it done right - like I should have done in the 1st place.

[prevost82]

Yea ... that's the way it seems to go ...   If you cheat a little bit it will come back to haunt you. Are you on the DataStorm map?
Ron

[bobofthenorth]

I are - #5632

[DavidInWilmNC]

If you don't mind, what are the costs (equipment and monthly) for such a setup?  Do you know what your connection speeds are?

David

[prevost82]

David ... you can pickup a used tripod (manual setup) for around $300 and a used DataStorm with a 7000 modem for around $3000. It cost around $69 a month for the basic package. Speed can vary from 500 to 1000 kbps down and 100 to 250 kbps up. Mine runs around 750 down and 150 up most of the time, I find it vary workable, use it for work also, and I am not in cell range alot.
Ron

[bobofthenorth]

I bought new - I've got just under $2500 in a tripod setup, everything in.  That includes an Align-a-site which I use for aiming at the satellite - and which I would STRONGLY recommend for anyone.  My price also includes a 2 watt radio upgrade which is supposed to enhance my upload speeds in fringe areas and a Bell ExpressVu LNB that is going to attach to the dish if it ever shows up.  I'm paying $69 per month for access.  I just ran a testmy.net and these are the results:

:::.. testmy.net test results ..:::
Download Connection is:: 473 Kbps about 0.47 Mbps (tested with 579 kB)
Download Speed is:: 58 kB/s
Upload Connection is:: 118 Kbps about 0.1 Mbps (tested with 386 kB)
Upload Speed is:: 14 kB/s

FWIW that's the slowest connect I have seen since getting the dish.  Usually the numbers run around 700k down and 130k up.  I've seen as high as 800k down.  My signal strength here is about 78% which is normal for this satellite so there must be a pretty heavy load on the satellite this Sunday morning.  The real issue with a satellite connection is latency.  Here's the ping for Homestead:

Pinging homestead.com [209.157.71.50] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 209.157.71.50: bytes=32 time=886ms TTL=241
Reply from 209.157.71.50: bytes=32 time=743ms TTL=241
Reply from 209.157.71.50: bytes=32 time=722ms TTL=241
Reply from 209.157.71.50: bytes=32 time=791ms TTL=241

Ping statistics for 209.157.71.50:
    Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 722ms, Maximum =  886ms, Average =  785ms

We have skyped on the connection and Marilyn has used remote desktop but there are some "issues" with both uses.  The quality of the skype line is more than adequate but the lag takes some getting used to.  Remote desktop occasionally pukes out because of the latency.