Satellite Internet

getut · Apr 21, 2005

It is most likely 802.11b. The technology is very stable, so they won't be there "bugging" you often. The towers are no big deal, they are all very properly grounded and may even provide the slight benefit as a lightning attractor to keep it away from anything else nearby.

100' with no guy wires seems a little much to me, but if they are going with an 8' x 8' pad, then it might be OK. I would personally jump on the deal (obviously since I have already jumped on a similar deal).

Other than the tower itself and any qualms you may have with the way it looks, there really isn't any downside to having it there.

fishman · Apr 21, 2005

Thanks for the reply, getut. The height I mention is the maximum he is permitted for, so it might be less. However, where I'm at, the extra height would make a big difference in how many subscribers he can pull in. He mentioned that most are on a 900 mhz channel, but that for my area he would likely bump it up to something over 2 ghz (I don't remember what) in order to get improved penetration through the trees. He sounds like he knows what he's doing and I'm probably going to go for it, but I'm a little cautious by nature.

carrerascott · Apr 28, 2005

Late to the party, but my thoughts on Direcway:

I have used Direcway for a few years now.

Bottom line is: If there was an alternative, I would dump Direcway in a heartbeat.

Surfing is "OK" -- streaming videos and the like are pretty decent, about 1/2 the speed of DSL downloading. However sites that are Secure or that have data going back and forth are pretty bad -- almost modem speed. The lag of outbound data really slows secure sites down, and sites that send lots of little bits of data back and forth.

Uploading is slow -- if you are lucky you will get a couple times modem speed on outbound data -- so don't expect to send big files out quickly -- not gonna happen.

As for reliability, its not bad lately, they had some outages that lasted all day a few months ago, and it does go out in heavy rains just like DirecTV.

But it is better than a phone line . . .

fishman · Apr 28, 2005

Since this was brought back to the top . . .

Getut, I see that you have a static IP address. What are the advantages and/or disadvantages of that compared to a dynamic IP address?

getut · Apr 28, 2005

No disadvantages other than it usually comes at an extra cost.

The advantages are usually not important to the average residential user. A static IP address allows you to run servers, register a domain and basically do anything any other full fledged internet site does.

It is possible with dynamic IP by using dynamic IP tracking services, but not as reliable as static IP addressing.