>Anybody have any experience with WildBlue Satellite internet service? > >http://www.wildblue.com > >$49.95/month -- 512kb Down - 128k up >$69.96/month -- 1Mbps down - 200Kbps up > >Currently Free installation/Free first month...
Hi Chet, Not with WildBlue, but I had StarBand for quite a while. They are similar. WildBlue uses a "spot beam" technology, aiming transmissions from different transponders to different areas of the country. StarBand had at one time a couple of satellites and used broader beams. Both companies use geosynchronous satellites. Being some 22,000 miles away, there is an unavoidable 1-second lag on all packet round trips. This makes satellite internet either problematic or completely unsuitable for use with anything where timeouts are a problem, like real-time games, some forms of instant messaging, some types of VPN, and some kinds of streaming media. It also means that web access is not any faster than dial-up, on average. The only thing they're really good at is high-speed downloading. Typically those speed numbers are *maximum* off-peak speeds; expect speeds to be about 1/2 those quoted much or most of the time. StarBand was subject to frequent weather outtages (heavy thunderstorms or snowstorms); WildBlue is even more subject to them than StarBand is. StarBand has only one uplink point, in Georgia. That means that when the weather is bad in the Southeast, NOBODY can connect to StarBand. I don't know where WildBlue's uplink point is, or if they have more than one. If they only have one and it isn't in the desert, they'll have the same issue. StarBand, in addition, was notorious for badly managing their network and being stingy about adding bandwidth to their trunk lines. They were highly unreliable as a service, though their most recent hardware was pretty rugged. WildBlue has a reputation for weaker hardware but better managed service. Both companies have "Fair Access Policies" (FAPs)--they will throttle your speed waaaaay back if you exceed download byte maximums during a revolving period of time. In short--satellite internet basically sucks if you have access to any other form of broadband service. It's really only suitable for people who have nothing but dialup. And it's not going to work much better than dialup for some kinds of applications. Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org _______________________________________________ Post Messages to: [email protected] Subscription Maintenance: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
