Satellite Internet

[Grader4me]

I just recently moved to an area that has no high speed internet. I'm currently on dail up :Banghead:Banghead The only other option I have right now is satellite internet. Its going to cost me approx. $260.00 for installation and $49.95 per month there after.
They are erecting a tower nearby in December, so I will be able to go wireless. I know nothing about the speed of the satellite systems but it has to be better than dail up. The more speed that you want the more it costs you per month.
Anyone here operating off satellite and how does it work for you? Thanks in advance

[Farmer]

I have sat here in aus, its not as fast as adsl but my dial up is 28k and my sat is 1028 down and 512 up

[Grader4me]

Thanks for you reply Farmer..I was beginning to think that I was going to be the only one on here with satelite lol.
So....basically what you're saying is that I won't be pulling my hair out (whats left of it) when waiting for web pages to up load.
What about heavy rain, snow etc.? Does this effect the signal? Common sense tells me it would I guess.

Of course you wouldn' know about the snow ..I need to pay more attention to where people are from..lol

[bill onthehill]

I had it for 2 years before I moved here. Some companies limit you to how much you use it. I had Hughesnet and it was a major improvement over dialup. Be sure you can reach the dish to clean snow off it. Heavy rain will wash out the signal the same as direct tv. The only thing I hated was their customer service was based in India and with my bad hearing and their language it was hard to understand them.

[xcavator120]

I no longer have Sat internet, (before it was Hughes Net (DirecWay), but did for a while. It is much faster than dial-up, especially when just surfing the net. Only in heavy rain or T-storms should it affect your connection, also if you have a large snowfall, you'll need to make sure that your dish isn't buried. Here in Kansas we get both..

I think that all tech support has been re-routed to India, and I have the same problem as you Bill, bad hearing. When I have to call, and I get one of those gibbering guys, the first thing I ask them is don't you have anyone that speaks english!!!

[Squizzy246B]

Last edited by Grader4me; Today at 06:40 PM. Reason: Blind when reading

Please, when you actually get your computer on the net try and be sober...:rolleyes::cool2

[Steve Frazier]

Do you have any radio towers within sight of you? I met a guy a number of years ago who owned a commercial radio company who told me he also provided internet service through his system. It might be worth looking in to.

[Orchard Ex]

Sorry I must have missed this the first time. I have Hughesnet and I agree with Bill. It's much better than dialup but I lose signal to the internet with about half the precip rate that takes out the DirecTV. i.e. medium rain, light snow here or heavier precip over the NOC (Silver Spring MD) will take it out. I really wish I had a cheaper alternative but not right now...

[Grader4me]

Please, when you actually get your computer on the net try and be sober...:rolleyes::cool2


I'll try to my friend lol



Do you have any radio towers within sight of you? I met a guy a number of years ago who owned a commercial radio company who told me he also provided internet service through his system. It might be worth looking in to.

Steve, there is no tower near me right now, but there's one going up in December so I'll make the switch.
The installer is coming out tommorrow to get me going. I'll let you guys know how I like it...Thanks for all the responses...yeah.. even you Squizzy...lol

[Grader4me]

Well, I'm all hooked up to satelite. Soooo much better than dial up. I find the speed close to what I was used to with the high speed. Anyways, I'm a happy little camper again..:drinkup

[RonG]

Keep us informed as to how the weather affects it and anything else that might sway a person considering using it.
If I ever hit the lottery I would like to move back to Maine and build on my property there.The best I have ever gotten is 28k on dialup in my hometown.:).Ron G

[Grader4me]

Yep, I'll do that Ron. Good luck with the lottery...lol. I'd go buy some tickets but all my spare money is going into this satelite :D

[powerjoke]

in short,....HUGHESNET SUCKS lol. and yeah it's alot better than dial up and was somewhat happy with the speed when the weather was allowing me to have service at all. BUT...........(there's always a butt ;) )

I have a cell phone that could act as a modem and so i tried it....and since then I have gotten 2 other "air cards" that me and the wife use on each of our laptops and it is 300% faster (at least) than the satellite is. but unfortunately i still have the satellite due to the contract, so as of now I have 3 methods of getting HEF :D lol

from what i understand the INTERNET sends info in "packets" and even though it is 3mbps download, it pieces of a picture or site in 4 different "packets" so it is possible for a slower service to actually appear much faster. and especially if you are a "gamer" and want your playstation to hook up to the net.....IT WONT HAPPEN! not a big deal for me but some people it could be?

EDIT: I forgot to add, if you chose to go with an aircard most cell phone companies will alow you to take one home and play with it for a night or two, and there is also a Router that you can hook to an aircard so you dont have to have one for each computer........and the best part is you can take it with you to bid jobs.. and its deductable just like a cell phone ;)

Pj

[what the]

Im new here but I like the support you give each other.

I have Hughes the 79.99 a month package ( no other net avail ) and I like it the page loads as fast as I click it. I'm in socal during a hard rain it slows but I haven't lost signal yet. As for tech service well this is America we use products made in Mexico and supported by others it a dam shame :(. Sorry if I offend anyone. :usa

[countrylife]

Just so you know, Hughes is not the only satellite internet provider. Wild Blue http://get.wildblue.com/ also provides internet at up to 1.5Mbps. I do not have either so I can't talk to how well they perform. I'll be moving out to the country shortly and will have to choose one, although I've heard microwave internet is available out there. (Land line washes out when it gets wet and takes 2 weeks to dry out and cell phone is spotty). Don't forget you can do phone calls over the internet.

[Grader4me]

Welcome the the forum what the. Humm wonder what the third word in your user name would have been :confused: lol

Man, it's quite expensive for satelite in your area. Now tonight I had a problem with my wireless router. My laptop wouldn't connect to it. It was telling me that there wasn't a connection available. Now my wife has a laptop and she was happily surfing away:Banghead Sooo..I call the support line which is local by the way. After about 5 minutes or so of listening to the auto voice feature I was ready to kill someone.
Finally a real person answers the phone..I explain my problem and she tells me to find the support number on the box of the router and call them. Great. During this call my wifes laptop lost the internet connection as well...so I get growled at as she thinks I screwed it up:Banghead
Sooo...it looks like I have to figure it out myself as I couldn't find the number on the damm router box:Banghead
Then the light came on (in my old head)..tried unplugging it for a few seconds, then plug it back in. Worked fine after that.
I'm starting to get a bad feeling about this system...Oh well, I was happy for one night :drinkup

[what the]

Thank you for the welcome Grader,

The 79.99 is due to I got the office plan for the higher speed and yes every once in a while I have to reset the hughes modem. there is a link to monitor the system from your lap top www.systemcontrolcenter.com and you can reset the system from there. Also if you use a wireless router make sure it is secure or no body near by can use your signal on the system status page from the control screen you will see a box that says fair access policy. If others get your signal and down load large files like music etc. the system will slow way down for a few hours. keep an eye on the modem and if the lights are flashing when you and your wife are not surfing some else picked up your signal.

[95zIV]

Grader4me

I've got the Comcast triple package so it's a land line into my house with Coax. The problem you had, I've had with my own wireless router so it's not the server. My wife and son could connect but I couldn't. Unplug, pull the battery and wait a bit. Restart everything and it all works. I've also had to call Comcast and have them reprogram the modem because things happen with electronics. Of course the nice thing is when the Comcast line goes down, I loose the phone too and have to go out and stand on one foot with my right arm stuck out straight and bent at the elbow with my hand pointing forward, my head cocked to the left with my eyes closed, so I can make a call on my cell and get answers.

[Grader4me]

Thank you for the welcome Grader,

The 79.99 is due to I got the office plan for the higher speed and yes every once in a while I have to reset the hughes modem. there is a link to monitor the system from your lap top www.systemcontrolcenter.com and you can reset the system from there. Also if you use a wireless router make sure it is secure or no body near by can use your signal on the system status page from the control screen you will see a box that says fair access policy. If others get your signal and down load large files like music etc. the system will slow way down for a few hours. keep an eye on the modem and if the lights are flashing when you and your wife are not surfing some else picked up your signal.

Thanks for the info. My system is through Xplornet. They have a deal I believe with the Provincial Government to provide high speed to the rural areas. They are erecting towers all over the place so hopefully I will get onto one of these.
Good info about other people picking up my signal. There are a couple of houses nearby.


Of course the nice thing is when the Comcast line goes down, I loose the phone too and have to go out and stand on one foot with my right arm stuck out straight and bent at the elbow with my hand pointing forward, my head cocked to the left with my eyes closed, so I can make a call on my cell and get

:lmao Eyes closed and head cocked the left?

[Grader4me]

Well, I've had this system for over a month now and although I was a little skeptical at first, its really performing well. About every week I have to unplug the router for a couple of minutes and plug it back in so I can get my connection back, but I can live with that.
Had a few bad wind/rain storms that never affected it at all. Now I'm just curious as to what a snow storm will do to it. So far so good tho!

[porcupine73]

I was in a similar situation, cable and DSL are not available at my home. I tried wildblue and hughes but the latency was just too much for efficient use in certain applications such as remote desktop. Look into cellular based broadband. For about the same price I was paying for wildblue, I got cellular broadband which has a great signal at my home and gives somewhere around 1000kbps down and 400kbps up (with a 5GB transfer limit per month). Plus it works on any modern Windows pc with a usb cable that has activesync installed so I can use it on my home pc, laptop, etc. Most cellular carries have these plans available; I just went with Sprint because they were the only ones that had a tower close enough to my home to have a good signal. And at the time I got it a few years back they were the only ones to have it in my area with reasonable speeds; the others in my area were more like modem dialup speeds.

[CinOK]

We use alltell now verizon broadband we use a cradlepoint router with it. We run 4 laptops off one card not as fast as cable dsl but it works. If we got to town we take the usb card with use and its real fast.

[Iron Horse]

This scattered cloud in the West of my property was enough to stop my Satellite connection this morning . They all tell lies !!!!

[Grader4me]

Really? There must be something wrong somewhere. Mine slowed down one day last week, but we had heavy wet snow that covered my dish. Next day it was fine again. Rain, overcast skys, etc. has never been a problem. My signal runs at 196 out of a possible 200 at most times. When it was covered with snow it was at 46 but it still worked..awful slow though...

[Orchard Ex]

Iron Horse,
Either your dish isn't pointed correctly (which would make it flaky all the time) or there was a problem at the Network Operation Center. Weather at the NOC messes with the connectivity just as the weather at your location does. There are problems with the satellites, routers and all manner of equipment on my system that makes it go out at random times, but that amount of cloud shouldn't matter.