[Akarso]

Directway Satellite or any other satellite system for their broadband internet connection? I happen to live in the armpit of the broadband universe and i'm not accessible to DSL or Digital Cable for at least another year or two (that's what they say at least and they've been telling me that for 4 years now). But recently i just received an offer from earthlink for their satellite system, but i don't know much about it. It's a 2 way connection, and i'm not sure on the speed. So my question is, does anybody have a satellite connection and are you happy with it? What about weather problems? Is there any other problems i should worry about? Thanks in advance.

[Davidarm]

I used DirecPC (DirecWay's predecessor) for about 1.5 years...back then it was PC only, so I had to use a PC as a gateway to feed my Airport + Powerbook and wife's iBook...service used modem return (no 2-way back then) so latency was horrible (ping times of 600ms and longer!)...weather had no effect but occasionally planes would fly through our signal path and we'd drop for 5-10 minutes...from what I've heard the 2-way system doesn't guarantee upload speeds nor does it improve the latency...the only advantage is you don't have to use a phone line or pay for an ISP...overall I was happy with the satellite access, it's certainly better than dial-up...but not nearly as good as the cable modem we have now...

[Camelot]

The big problem with satellite connections is latency. Physics dictates that there'll be a 500ms MINIMUM latency between you and any site you connect to.

Essentially, this means it will take at least one second to establish a connection to any site, but once connected it wouldn't be so bad.

While this won't be a huge problem for streaming downloads, and the satellite people do various cache and proxy tricks to limit impact, you will still suffer.

Any high-latency applications are going to really suffer. Most VPN solutions, for example, won't work, nor will online games (or, at least they will but no one will want to play with you).

Finally, most satellite providers that I've encountered don't "support" Macs. Usually this is purely because they don't know Macs rather than any technical reason. However, some of them will expect a PC for setup (they have a PC-based setup application) so you might want to have a PC (loaned from a friend?) around when they come to install.

[Ray@SAT]

Originally posted by Akarso:
Directway Satellite or any other satellite system for their broadband internet connection? I happen to live in the armpit of the broadband universe and i'm not accessible to DSL or Digital Cable for at least another year or two (that's what they say at least and they've been telling me that for 4 years now). But recently i just received an offer from earthlink for their satellite system, but i don't know much about it. It's a 2 way connection, and i'm not sure on the speed. So my question is, does anybody have a satellite connection and are you happy with it? What about weather problems? Is there any other problems i should worry about? Thanks in advance.

I have it !
It's called the 4020hub from Direcway (DirecPC) It's a two-way satellite system, it's OS independent (any op. system will work: Mac, linux, windowz and the others) as long as you have TCP connectivity. Just plug your ethernet cable in, and wham ! your up and running.... realy fast. I think I may have been the first in America to get it. A pc is needed for the set up. In my case it was done by the installer in his shop (no pc is allowed in my home )
hope all you macfriends get this system soon!