Considering the logistics of bouncing IP traffic off of an orbiting satellite, I can promise you it will not be a very pleasant experience. Probably fine if you just need to download bulk data in the background, but it will offer a terrible interactive experience (compared to just about any non-broken terrestrial service), and it will really only be usable interactively via some highly tweaked TCP stack and application settings. RTTs *start* at a 1/4 of a second here, and have you looked lately at the number of round-trips that occur in a somewhat serialized fashion at the start of a web browsing session?
I actually used an older generation of satellite internet, as it was the *only* service we could get at the time. It required a dial-up uplink, but I'm fairly sure that there are options now for satellite uplink. DSL uplink would provide *better* service, though, as it wouldn't incur the latency of bouncing data off an object in space. It was just absolutely terrible, and although I could bulk download faster than dial-up, doing anything interactive like ssh or web browsing was excruciatingly painful. There are some solutions to the problems inherent in satellite internet (i.e. lots of low-orbiting satellites) but I don't think there's currently anything in place, and it might be hard to convince anyone who's suffered through previous satellite internet incarnations that the new ones might actually work. On Sat, Oct 18, 2014 at 1:08 PM, Nicholas Leippe <[email protected]> wrote: > I have a friend in Utah county looking at getting internet service via > reenabling a dish network account. The dish rep has told her that they > offer two options: 1) via satellite service, or 2) via their own dsl > service. > > Previously, she had service through them and dish's internet service was > actually a bundled centurylink account--which she does not want. > > Dish's reps refuse (or cannot) confirm what exactly they are offering and > she doesn't want to wait for the installer to show up to find out it's > something she doesn't want. Also, my understanding is that some satellite > services still use a modem/dsl for the uplink--is this still true? > > Can anyone confirm what exactly dish has to offer now? > > Her only other viable option would be Digis, but that could prove painful > given some logistic issues of her current home. > > /* > PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net > Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug > Don't fear the penguin. > */ /* PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug Don't fear the penguin. */
