Subject: RE: [Fwd: Update from AccessTNG on Carleton Golf & Yacht Club]
Date: Tue, 07 Oct 2003 16:04:48 -0400
From: Francis Moran <fmoran@inmedia.com>
[Recipient list deleted]
Good afternoon, all.
Sorry for the long message that follows but before concluding that AccessTNG is the only viable option that residents of CCYG have for high-speed Internet, you should consider the experience I have had to date with Direcway, a two-way satellite service from Hughes that is offered in Canada by LinCsat and sold in Ottawa by Digital City.
Unlike the lengthy and ultimately fruitless experiences we have all had with AccessTNG, the LinCsat installer arrived at my house when scheduled, and the installation was completely problem free, notwithstanding the fact that I was still using a very old computer. (Hughes's minimum requirements are Windows98 or above with at least 128 Meg of RAM. The computer I was using barely met bare minimum.)
The owner of Digital City, who lives in CCYG, came by during the installation to make sure everything went smoothly.
Rather than a 30-foot mast hanging off my chimney, or a 50- or 60-foot tower on my property, I have a fairly ordinary looking satellite dish on my roof.
I later re-installed the service myself onto a newer computer with Windows XP and 256 Meg of RAM. That installation also went flawlessly and took me about 20 minutes.
Okay, so much for smooth installation and a service-as-promised approach. How fast is it, they all want to know.
Pretty fast.
Satellite-delivered Internet is a unique proposition, and the actual bit rate at any given time can fluctuate considerably due to the compression technology used by Hughes, the satellite's latency - it is way up there in geosynchronous orbit, after all - and the number of users on this shared pipeline.
Industry-standard tests - I particularly like the one at http://www.dslreports.com/stest?loc=1 - suggest that I am getting between 500k and 1 Meg download, with an average of about 800k. This is faster than Hughes's promise of 500k. Upload speeds are lower. I am recording uploads between 40k and 120k, with an average of about 100k. Again, while not blinding, this is faster than Hughes's promise. The experiences of other Direcway customers are at http://www.dslreports.com/archive?zip=&dnsdom=direcpc.com&start=Search.
These are not as good as the speeds promised by AccessTNG, and I paid about twice as much for the installation of equipment. BUT ... I am ACTUALLY getting Internet service as these speeds while AccessTNG is still nothing more than vapourware.
I have gone on to install an 802.11b wireless hub so the connection can be shared by all the users in my house, and it is here that things begin to get a little disappointing.
Because the satellite terminal equipment - think of it as a somewhat oversized modem - plugs into the computer using a USB port, I couldn't put my hub between the terminal and the computer, as would normally be the case. This means that the computer attached to the terminal acts as the network gateway and firewall, and, since it is a fairly slow computer, it is dragging everything down.
It also meant that I had to call in my IT support guy to install and configure the hub, but it took him less than 30 minutes to work things out.
Plugging a second computer directly into the hub using an Ethernet cable delivers upload and download speeds on this second computer that are about 50% of that experienced on the computer attached directly to the terminal. Using an 802.11b wireless card to connect to the hub delivers even worse performance - about 20% the speeds experienced by the computer attached directly to the computer.
The 50% loss is probably due to the poor performance of the gateway computer. The further degradation when connecting wirelessly should not be happening, and my IT guy is researching causes and cures.
Also, Hughes itself cautions against using a VPN with its service. Because a VPN encrypts all data packets, Hughes's compression technology can't work on them and so speeds deteriorate. That being said, I have tunnelled into my corporate LAN to retrieve files and the experience was acceptable.
Hughes has also just announced the availability of new terminal equipment that connects via Ethernet and will support VPN. (See their news release.) I have asked Digital City to look into an upgrade for me.
Bottom line: This is not a perfect solution for all my needs and it does not have the performance characteristics of DSL or those promised by AccessTNG. But you can have it up and working this week. My wife, who often works from home, declares herself delighted and the kids are very happy.
Caveat emptor.
Francis Moran
Managing Partner
inmedia
1015 - 130 Slater Street
Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA K1P 6E2
(613) 234-7227 x224
(613) 234-8563 Fax
(613) 769-7753 Mobile
fmoran@inmedia.com
www.inmedia.com