I can officially confirm that Dish Network's Internet Access S-U-C-K-S

[Amerigo Vespucci]

Visited a client W-A-Y up in the hills of Woodside tonight, where he can't get traditional Internet access. He said that the neighbors on either side have T1 lines, which run them about $650 per month. So he uses Dish TV's Internet Access, which chokes repeatedly. It's been a while since I've used a dialup connection but this seems even slower.

Just some info for anyone who ever wondered how good Satellite Internet Access is. It isn't.

:toast:

[DebJ]

1. Same at my Mom's in West Virginia. And Dish network

didn't even have full channel listings online that I could find. I was trying to find the PBS station numbers for her system (I'm in Pa with Comcast) so she could watch McCartney at the White House. The channel listings I found online were only for channels like 101 and up. My Mom is 81 and can't read her guide on the screen very well, so I was trying to help. Dad had to crawl up to the screen, find the station, and then I googled their PBS channel instead. Ridiculous.

I was in a house with satellite tv/Dish about 10 years ago, and every time the weather was bad, it went out. What the heck, who watches TV when you are stuck inside for a WEEK with snow, rain, ice???? Who would want TV then?

[Suich]

2. What's a "T1" line?

$650 a month???

:shrug:

[darkstar3]

3. Dedicated 1.44 megabits in both directions.

Great for businesses, usually, because it lets them run web servers and almost guarantees no downtime. If it's way out in the country, it wouldn't shock me in the least for the phone company to charge that much.

Now, as for who would pay that much...

[Amerigo Vespucci]

4. It's a seller's market...

...this is way the hell up in the woods...Neil Young country. There aren't a lot of options out there. I don't know who the provider is...the price seemed high, but given the location, I could see why.

[darkstar3]

5. The problem is that satellite comms are worse than dial-up

The speeds they quote are burst transmission cap speeds, not true throughput. And with various atmospheric and other issues you're looking at very probable packet loss. On a TV signal, you don't notice because all you lose is a pixel or 10, or maybe some color definition or part of the sound signal, and then it's all back to normal. On an internet connection transmission all of that lost data has to be retransmitted, and it's a huge pain in the ass. All of the clients I've ever supported with any kind of satellite internet have been lucky to get sustained throughput above 300k. They could barely load an Amazon or Ebay page in a reasonable amount of time, and FORGET youtube.

I would gladly opt for something better if I lived in that kind of area, but I wouldn't be able to afford such extravagant fees for internet...

[Amerigo Vespucci]

7. I have a streaming flash video on a client's Website that plays "like butter"...

...and last night, when I had him pull this up as an example of something else we were discussing, it choked about one minute in, then started playing again for about 30 seconds, then choked a second time and just STOPPED.

I tried to show him the Adobe Kuler Website (online resource for developing Web color schemes). Wouldn't load at all...got three "timeout" messages and we just gave up.

Tutored him in constructing a simple Web page. When we got to the point of uploading it via FTP, the server dropped the connection three times and the files finally uploaded on the fourth attempt.

When he mentioned the neighbors and the T1 lines, he said "but that's what they do for a living," so I am assuming that either their companies are paying for it, or if they own their own businesses, they are writing it off as a business expense, but yeah...few people would shoulder that kind of expense for casual, day-to-day Web surfing.

[NewJeffCT]

6. From what I've heard about ANY internet access via satellite

is that you don't do it unless you have no other choice. Sounds like this person has no other choice, as $650/month is $7,800 per year. Unless you're running a profitable business out of your house and can write off the expense, it's not something 95% of the population can do.

I guess this is one of the tradeoffs he gets for living in a remote area.