Satellite Internet Forum

[Rockin Rog]

I've had Bell Expressvu's DirecPC One-Way Satellite Internet for about 4 or 5 years due to living in an area not accessible by broadband (although a fibre line exists 1 mile away as it's route thru Northern Ontario). Anyways, DirecPC was awesome at downloading where I would always achieve 100kb and up downloads and if I used a download accelerator I would see 200kb's...now that was pure DSL/Cable however I'd eat my bandwidth limit in no time then only to be throttled back LOL.

The main b*tc* I had with DirecPC's service was that it was 1-way plus was plagued with SMTP problems.   Now I have Telesat's Ka service for over 3 months and have yet to look back.   The plus's are:   1. 2-way service. (no 2nd phoneline-dialup account).   2. True Routable service. (Plug into a router and go).   3. SMTP mail works as intended.   4. 477k down/ 104k up speeds (http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/)    5. Reliable in rain so far.     The negatives are:   1. Download is always consistent at 58k/sec max.   2. Did lose service once in a fierce thunderstorm.     So as you can see the plus's outweight the negatives for my needs and you'll note that I stated a consistent download of 58k/sec as a negative. Reason I gave it a negative is that with DirecPc I was able to accelerate the data from several servers thus giving me the full pipe whereas it appears Telesat has it's pipe capped correctly to the level of service paid for which in itself is actually a kudo's for Telesat for monitoring their service correctly. This of course gives all users the proper useable bandwidth so it's a good thing really.   54.99/mnth for a 512/128 Kbps connection where speeds are consistent as advertised while living on a farm is to me pure heaven. I have 3 PC's running on a wireless 54G network, each one connected and receiving large files and updates daily from the internet plus streaming 128kbps to 384kbps video/music with Winamp is more than I can ask.    I am more than pleased...thank you.  

[Deb Currie]

Hi all, just surfed in looking for answers while I'm waiting for tech support to call back again. Having problems with xplornet satellite, will be working fine then it stop, light flashes twice, goes to 3 then back to twice again. First time I called they said it was caught in a loop, had to unplug the modem for a sec every 10 min for about 45 min. Didn't do anything. The next morning it was working fine when tech called. Said it should be fine no more problems. Well it's doing it again. Right now I'm not too happy, good thing I have dial up as a back up.   If somebody knows how to fix this problem or might have an idea, I'm open to suggestions.

[Neal McGarry]

I have the xplornet KA system, Kazoom service, 1 meg down 256 k up. The speeds are as advertised, VOIP works very well. I have used my VPN back to the office. Clouds, rain, snow no problems yet. Very happy.

[LoneStar]

[Contributed by Member LoneStar 14 Dec 2005   14:23 ] I am half way through my second month of WildBlue KA service.  For the first 30 days I was on the Value Pak and speeds were consistently as advertised.  I decided to try the fastest package for the next 30 day period and, likewise, have been satisfied.  Typical download speeds are 1400-1500 Kbps, and I am seeing upload speeds of 250 plus.     My best browser results have been with Firefox with the Fasterfox extension activated.     Prior to WildBlue I subscribed for several years to DirecWay dial-return service, but got tired of the "blazing fast" 14.4 Kbps return link part of the equation.  I'm way out in the country on telephone cable in poor condition, and also out of range of the only WISP in the area.

[PJeddore]

Been hooked up with xplornet for a week now. Loving it!   Speeds as advertised although one test on toast, got me redlined all across the page without even getting a glimpse of the mars rover! Don't know what happened there. I am only on the entry level speed.

[T_Wilson]

We have had the Xplornet Ka band system for about 6 weeks. The downloads have been pretty good outside of having to reboot the modem a few times and teach the tech support a couple of things. We are paying for the small business package with up to 1mbs download speed. I have tested our speed at 934 kbs which is pretty close but when I physically time downloads it is actually slower by half of this so BUYER BEWARE.     The really big problem which nobody told me about prior to getting the system is that the size of uploads or emails is restricted. I tried emailing out a 21.1MB attachment last night which would not go. BUYER BEWARE. I phoned tech support today and was told it was too large and I would need to split it up to do this. 21 MB is not very large. How can they expect a business to operate within these restrictions? Perhaps there is some way around or through this of which I am unaware. Is this going to prevent me from uploading video stream to a website? I am with a non-profit research facility and this is the main reason we got the system; to share video footage of microscopic images.     Please, if anyone is experiencing similar trouble or knows a solution email me at timjwilson@xplornet.com       Cheers,   Tim

[AlexCidem]

Tim

Can you estimate what you want in terms of long term average upload and download bit rates ? I've been thinking that 1 kbit/s upload and 4 kbit/s download per PC user is reasonable use, for shared-use systems like WildBlue. Some people agree with me and some don't.     If people start using the internet for applications like video streaming up and down it will change the requirements.     If it costs $3M/year to provide for 50 Mbit/s how much should someone with an average of 5kbit/s be paying to contribute fairly towards the costs ?     My opinion is that satellite systems need to be charged for mainly on the basis of the total traffic sent and received. We pay for water on the basis of diameter of pipe (fixed small charge per quarter) plus cubic meters used. Could satellite be charged similarly with a small $x for the max possible bit rate + $y per GB.   If you want to do uplink video streaming at more than 1 kbit/s you might be better off with a dedicated SCPC uplink at say 128kbit/s which might cost $640 per month. If it is to a single destination, put a large dish at the far end to allow an advanced modulation mode and thus minimise costs.     I don't know if Wildblue offer dedicated connections using fixed allocated time slots, but it would be worth asking. ViaSat LinkStar may be operated in pre-assigned dedicated mode, but this mode does, of course, cost many times more than operating in shared use mode such as 20:1 or 30:1 or 40:1 etc.     Incidentally, is it true that Beam 27, which covers patrs of Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin and beam 28, which covers Ohio, are both full up. Does anyone know how many terminals were needed to 'fill up' these beams ?     Best regards, Alex.