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Anyone know anything about satellite internet?

10K views 57 replies 36 participants last post by  ratsg 
#1 ·
I'm moving further into BFE in a few weeks and my normal provider doesn't serve the area, from what I understand all I can get is something called "Wild Blue" I looked up the reviews and they seem to be pretty hideous.....does anyone have any experience or suggestions for alternatives?
 
#40 ·
Never checked where you were speaking of. Being south of Reno in the high desert at the start of the eastern sierras, I could enlighten you on the problems you will be facing.

First, not sure of your situation, but disregard all the talk against satellite. Being in a remote spot of the desert before I moved, i had no choice and I assume you might not either. The. Cable company wanting 5000 to string a line from the road a mile away. Also dsl was not available.

As for the wind it's part of the desert. The wind is brutal. My daughter's saying when she's driving is 'i swear I'm not drunk, it's the wind'.

So yes as previously mentioned due to the high tolerances of the satellite you will lose service alot. There will also be many moments of frustration and resetting regardless of provider.

But as I told everybody who criticized me for getting satellite: 'it beats the alternative; Nothing'

As for what service, the jury is still out on all of them. Hughesnet worked for me and I liked it because it won't charge you when you exceed the limits, it only slows down to dialup speed. They also provide you with one 250 MB token each month for those days you really need to download something.
 
#41 ·
I use Skybeam service.

4-5 Mb Down (Supposedly they are doing system upgrades that will get us up to 10Mb down in the next few months)
850 KB up

35ms Average response times (latency)

$44 a month

I have better speeds than I did when I had DSL (was far from the CO).

The service can go down at times, however, it is fast for wireless and the latency is very nice. I play PS3 games now and again and games like COD work great on it. I don't need service 24/7 anyway...so some downtime here and there is not bad.

On a typical day I can send out 20,000 or more packets with a 0% average loss (typically close to 125 total lost packets). Not too bad.

Good luck with your search!
 
#43 ·
I would get seriously angry with Hughesnet --

it can be a beautiful day but wherever, how ever high the sat is, it could be space weather -- it could be ice or wind --

some days a simple music vid would never load

I'm getting wifi right now through my sons cellphone -- $50 or so for the equipment -- my hughesnet isn't even installed here --

my BIGGEST gripe is CONTRACTS ... don't let them bury you under one for 3 years like they did us -- if you get new equipment your contracted again for more time -

good luck -- maybe wild blue isn't as bad
 
#45 ·
no one really cares!
she simply wanted to know about satt. service...
nanny state fools... cry like a little baby if things arent ****ing perfect...
grow up, oh, i forgot... you voted for BO...

this country is full of whinning, crying, babys... and you get what you deserve...
 
#47 ·
My mom had Hughes Net, and truthfully I would sometimes rather have dial up. When it worked it was fine, but rain, cloud coverage, heavy winds, etc it would go down. I also want to say that for a day you could only use 2gb worth of data. For the "average" person it would probably be ok, but for someone who is always on the net watching videos, Netflix, whatever it is not very good.

She eventually got wireless internet from Speednet. It was much much better. You could use it during storms, cloud coverage, everything. There was no maximum data usage per day like Hughes Net, and it was much faster. There were a few times when it was down, but that turned out to be due to a faulty router.

IMO if you HAVE to get satellite net, but if you can get anything else you should go for it.
 
#49 ·
I have had Wildblue for two years and am switching to Hughes Net next week. They both are similar in that you have a download limit based on how much you pay. With Wildblue it is based on a 30 day period, Hughes does a 24 hour period so if you go over your limit you only have to wait 24 hours for it to reset. Also Hughes has a period of about 4 or 5 hours in the middle of the night where nothing u download counts against your limit. Hughes allows you to rollover unused download to the next 24 hour period.

For me the final straw with Wildblue was a recent billing problem. I closed the account where my auto pay was coming from and totaly forgot to notify Wildblue. My fault. So one day i come home to use the internet and when i try and log on i get a big blank page from Wildblue, welcoming me to the activation page because my account was suspended. I called the 866 number and got things straightened out and got the service turned back on. The problem is that same screen comes up everytime i log on to the internet. Instead of logging into my yahoo home page i get that ****ing screen. I can't get to this website at all from firefox...even if i google this site and try and come in from their i get that Wildblue screen. If i go to my favorites bar to try and come here i get the Wildblue screen. I had to switch to Internet Explorer from Firefox to be able to come to this site. Spent an hour and a half on the phone with Wildblue and they tell me they can't remove the screen because it is on my hard drive....the usual commands they use to get the screen to go away don't work so i have to call Microsoft. Suffice to say this issue is not over.
 
#50 ·
We are on wildblue, we have had it for about 6 weeks now. We have always had dial up before this so it seems pretty impressive to us.

We have had some trouble with it going down a couple times, but so far no major complaints here.

We are running a magic jack phone through it for our phone service, and we often have trouble with the phone cutting in and out due to poor signal on the internet. But the vast majority of the time the phone works well.

Out in BFE like we are you just kinda got to deal with it because there really isn't much for options.
 
#51 ·
I live in the remote sticks as well and had the option of the following

*Hughes Net - Multiple people tell me they suck, unreliable. By far the highest price of all providers as well. Limited data connection

*Wild Blue - Medium priced variant, don't know a lot about them. Limited data connection

*Blue Wire - This is who I have at the time. My monthly payment is $79.99 for 1.5mbs. I have had zero issues with the connection staying active to date (used them about six months so far). If you need technicial support or customer service you will have to call them and leave a message for them to call you back almost everytime you call. Best part about it is that the connection is unlimited.

@50msns - Try doing a complete uninstall of Mozilla Firefox and reinstall. Also try clearing all caches, cookies, etc...
 
#52 ·
I'm an IT professional and have had them all, Satellite, Dialup, DSL, and T1. There are 3 issues with satellite. There is a lag in the signal so no multiplayer gaming. Also remote access, which is how I work, doesn't work. There are some strict download limits and restrictions, which change frequently. As with a DSL connection uploading is tied to a land line and runs at modem speeds, which is what most of Americans deal with. Depending on your local phone connection modem speed can be really bad 1440 or less. However it's better than nothing. I had Hughes and was satisfied until I got DSL, Now I have a T1 and the cost is killing me!
 
#54 ·
We moved from a city (with 24/7 cable connection) to the Smoky Mountains. Folks around here just smiled (some outright laughed) when I started inquiring about the best internet provider. So...I began my quest and went through satellite, dial-up, dsl, Cricket, and several cell phone providers services. ALL were bad....and I mean HORRIBLE, especially when you have 3 heavy users of internet who are suffering internet withdraw (especially my hard core gamer teenage son). Although we haven't been able to find any service that has good VoIP, we have found the best service and best deal with Virgin Mobile WiFi. We have our own WiFi hot spot and can use up to 5 computers online at a time. Cost...$50 a month and that is unlimited! Definitively the best I have found. :thumb:
 
#56 ·
Although my hughes net is slow, its been extremely reliable...more so than the comcast dsl my rents have had for years that is always going in and out. Only goes out when we have real heavy storms.

Also, the other day in the mail I got a letter about a class action lawsuit against them, something over advertised speeds.
 
#57 ·
I've been with Hughesnet for about a year and half now. As someone who was used to real internet, it *is* painful. However, when you compare it to dial-up it's infinitely better. If you use the internet for practically anything these days, you do *not* want dial-up. Web 2.0 is murderously slow over dial-up, and most every popular site is chocked full of Web 2.0 features. I find the service worthwhile for what it is, but that said, if I had a choice other than satellite, I would take it in a heartbeat.

The latency thing is a bit of a pain as well (your latency will be around 1 second, when other connections are more in line with say 10 milliseconds). It causes some web-based services to think you've lost connection, which means that they won't work at all--however that's not a super common issue, but as mentioned earlier, don't think you'll be well positioned to use real time, data dense services such as video conferencing, VOIP, Skype, or the like.

As for the talk about Hughesnet not being crystal clear about their speeds and such, a couple of days ago I got a post card stating that I was apparently a part of some class action lawsuit about that, their fair access policy, and early termination fees--already they are undergoing some changes in how they do business (they were bought out like a year ago I believe), and thus far all of these policy changes have been for the better.

Like what led me to go with Hughesnet over WB was when I was looking into things, WB gave you a monthly download allowance and charged you overages at a certain point (not sure if this is the case now). Hughesnet gives you a daily download allowance. They've recently changed things up to where if you have some of your bucket you've not used for one day, it carries over to the next for a maximum of twice your daily allowance before you get throttled. So, I've got the lowest level package that gives me 250MB/day before they slow me down. This means that if I don't use it for one day, the next day I can use 500MB without getting throttled. Since I've only got 250MB/day, it will never be more than 500MB, so if I don't use it for a week, when I use it again, I can just use 500MB (twice my 250MB limit) and not 250 for each day I didn't use it. There is also a five hour free download period in the mornings.

Now, I've also noticed that they've been playing around with the limits here of late. Sometimes it shows as if I have 300MB, sometimes 500MB--but when they play with it like this it's always you getting more. They'll never drop you below the plan you're on.

There's a useful extension for Chrome/Chromium that can help you keep track of your usage.

Some helpful tips for using satellite internet:
Access the mobile version of websites--typically you can just stick a "wap.", "m.", or "mobile." in front of a URL (e.g., wap.yahoo.com ). Oh, if you use the wap, use that in place of www, not with www, so "www.wap.yahoo.com" is not the right way, but "wap.yahoo.com" is. This will give you a much more streamlined version of the website, optimized for mobile devices. You won't necessarily have all of the features, but the main functionality of the site should be retained.
Find a good download manager and learn how to use it. Schedule downloads for the free access period. There are dozens of quality ones out there, but one will probably be the best fit for you.
Don't stream media/carefully plan when and what you stream. Streaming eats up a ton of bandwidth, video moreso than audio. You might consider using services that allow you to download videos from sites like youtube in conjunction with your download manager to still be able to watch what you want to, but not get kicked in the teeth from going over your allocated amount.
Resize pictures you send. Digicams these days make ridiculously large images. A 10MP camera's pictures will usually range around 1.5-2.8MB each. Uploads for Hughesnet don't affect your download limit, but your latency and relatively slow upload speed can make uploading a bunch of large pictures a pain. By that same note, downloading pictures can add up surprisingly quickly.
Disable features like Google's search while you type. That 1 second lag becomes ridiculous when you're trying to type something, google keeps trying to respond to what you type letter by letter, and then some 30 seconds after you finish, it finally has gotten everything you typed.
If you go with hughesnet, save this URL: 192.168.0.1/stlui/fs/advanced/index.html This gives you access to the advanced configuration settings of your modem (I'm assuming that the modem will assign itself this IP--don't see why it shouldn't but if it does just take all of the stuff after the IP, copy it, and paste it after your modem's IP). In general, do *not* muck around in here unless you know precisely what you're doing. However, there is one thing that will be of service to you: It let's you turn off Turbopages. Turbopages is just Hughesnet's web accelerator service, but sometimes it becomes annoyingly buggy and I've found the best way to deal with it is just to kill it.
If you can, I suggest buying the modem/satellite and not leasing them. In the long run, assuming it doesn't get hit by lightning, it's much cheaper.


Hrm...one last thing: unless you've got unlimited data on your cell phone plan, I would highly recommend you avoid using that as your primary source of a web connection. It's a great thing to have as a supplemental connection, but for the most part, you'll be amazingly limited in what you can do, and you might well end up paying a lot more for a lot more limited service (mobile providers don't have free download periods, and I frequently go well above the nominal 7.5GB of usage allotted to me by my 250MB/day plan in a month without hardly ever getting throttled just by using the system intelligently).

Now, if you do have existing mobile service, you're probably better off trying that for a month or two before you commit to satellite internet because your needs could well be very different from mine.
 
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