satellite broadband as a backup - help appreciated

staringelf

i currently have broadband with eircom which for the most part works fine for me. however, due to the nature of my job (i work from home) i need internet access all the time and if it goes down even for a minute it can (and has) potentially cost me a lot of money - i play high stakes poker online.

so, i was thinking about getting a satellite broadband option installed, in addition to the eircom option i have as more of an immediate backup should eircom fail me, which happens once or twice a month on average. it'll cost about a grand for the installation and about 90 euro rental per month which believe it or is worth it for me, even if i only need it for a few minutes every month.

from google i found www.digiweb.ie and www.broadbandwherever.ie
not sure which is better...

couple of questions about this:

1. could i use their satellite option in conjunction with eircom's broadband and if eircom went down would it switch over instantly to the satellite?
2. even better, could i use both at the same time and have a connection twice as fast (which would be sweet, especially for downloading movies and whatnot) and would this be a problem to set up?
3. anyone got any experience with either of these companies?

what do you recommend i do?
i probably should email their customer support but i figured i'd post here first and get some hopefully unbiased and probably more reliable/knowledgeable info first.

cheers to all who can help

Sponge Bob

mediasat also do 2 way sat. I would advise you that its probably unusable for poker.

try proper wireless from Digiweb or Net1 if you are in Louth somewhere

alternatively try 3g datacard from Vodafone.

all are cheaper and better than 2 way sat.

shortys94

I use Digiwebs satellite service, its great but expensive. I am currently trying to connect to wireless with west net. I may be actually selling my digiweb equipment if all goes well with west net if you are interested.

Sponge Bob

If you HAD to go 2 way sat it would save you a packet if you bought it from shortys , dish and lnb and all in good nick .

shortys94

Yea, but again I am still waiting for west net to send me out contracts and install, so I would primarily want to use the west net service for awhile before selling satellite just to be sure the service is good. But the satellite is in great condition.

staringelf

Sponge Bob wrote:

mediasat also do 2 way sat. I would advise you that its probably unusable for poker.

try proper wireless from Digiweb or Net1 if you are in Louth somewhere

alternatively try 3g datacard from Vodafone.

all are cheaper and better than 2 way sat.

proper wireless isn't actually available in the area that i'm in. its available in loads of places surrounding me but my house can't pick it up for some reason

why do you say sat is unusable for poker? even if it was slighly slow but it worked it would be fine...its only a backup after all.

anyone got an info about using eircm/sat together. does it equal double speed, etc??

RE shorty: i might take you up on that offer. send me a pm if you do decide to sell. cheers

Sponge Bob

Its $50 over on ebay for teh kit

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/gilat-360e-sky-edge-with-BUC-DISH-MODEM_W0QQitemZ330011974483QQihZ014QQcategoryZ11175QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

DublinWriter

staringelf wrote:

1. could i use their satellite option in conjunction with eircom's broadband and if eircom went down would it switch over instantly to the satellite?

Yes, but you'd need a fairly advanced router set up for that, not the average router you'd buy down in PC World. Something like a high-resiliance soft router or a Cisco product.

staringelf

DublinWriter wrote:

Yes, but you'd need a fairly advanced router set up for that, not the average router you'd buy down in PC World. Something like a high-resiliance soft router or a Cisco product.

where would i get one of these? and how much would it cost? and is it easy to install or would i need to get someone to do it for me? cheers

Sponge Bob

nahh, be ready to switch over manually (plug and unplug ethernet cable stuff) 10 secs later you are on the other provider

staringelf

Sponge Bob wrote:

nahh, be ready to switch over manually (plug and unplug ethernet cable stuff) 10 secs later you are on the other provider

i need it to change over instantly. that 10 secs when it goes down is vital. that's the whole point of this and why i need 2.

anyone have info about that router i need?

bushy...

Before you go to all this bother the poker software at the far end may not be the happiest if you suddenly change ip to a completely different range , maybe drop them an email first and ask.
About 150euro would sort you with a box to do it.

staringelf

bushy... wrote:

Before you go to all this bother the poker software at the far end may not be the happiest if you suddenly change ip to a completely different range , maybe drop them an email first and ask.
About 150euro would sort you with a box to do it.

thats a good point. i didn't think of that. i'll see what they say. cheers

staringelf

ok, a little update - i may be able to get wireless after all with net1 - they say it is available where i live eeven tho digiweb said it isn't. if it is, i'll go that instead of satellite.

here's my question tho, if i did get the wireless does that mean i then have 2 ip address (an eircom one and the wireless one) even tho they're both coming from the same computer. is it my computer that determines the ip or the amount of connections i have. if i can have just one ip address but 2 connections independent of each other then that would be great as i wouldn't have to worry about the poker site not allowing me to change over and back. hope i'm making myself clear. any thoughts?

Sponge Bob

you can get a "failover" router which connects to BOTH but the traffic normally goes via one IP/carrier and the IP wil change when it fails over to the other carrier because that normal carrier is down.

you will only notice at the changeover which is say 30 secs of up/down every so often, I would remind you that you get this up/down from eircom once a week when they change your IP address

the poker site will not like it though , requiring a log in . If its that serious get yourself fibre

bushy...

staringelf wrote:

is it my computer that determines the ip or the amount of connections i have. if i can have just one ip address but 2 connections independent of each other then that would be great as i wouldn't have to worry about the poker site not allowing me to change over and back. hope i'm making myself clear. any thoughts?

The ip allocation is done from the far end each provider will have been allocated a few blocks of ip addresses , so say eircoms address might be all 86.41.x.x and IBB would be all 87.192.x.x , they will each provide you with a separate ip .

Is it the Paddy Power site you play on ?

loyatemu

to failover and keep the same IP address you need either 2 connections from the same provider (and you can be pretty sure none of the ISPs will set this up for a broadband customer), or your own BGP area (forget it).

I would be surprised if your connection to the poker server would survive an sudden change of IP.

sleur

loyatemu wrote:

to failover and keep the same IP address you need either 2 connections from the same provider (and you can be pretty sure none of the ISPs will set this up for a broadband customer), or your own BGP area (forget it).

I would be surprised if your connection to the poker server would survive an sudden change of IP.

would it not make more sense to hire a dedicated server and use screen to start your web browser? It's more likely your home connection will break from time to time but a managed service shouldn't have impromptu network outages. If your home conenction is broken, then it's just a matter of resuming the screen session.

Snaga

loyatemu wrote:

to failover and keep the same IP address you need either 2 connections from the same provider (and you can be pretty sure none of the ISPs will set this up for a broadband customer), or your own BGP area (forget it).

I would be surprised if your connection to the poker server would survive an sudden change of IP.

Just 2 connections from the same provider would be fine (You can use a private BGP area (AS Number) for this). This will require a router capable of running multiple BGP sessions and a network bod to configure.

You would of course need to make sure that both connections from the same provider are diverse (Thats the whole point! You dont want them hanging off the same radio/exchange etc..) and of course that the provider will go to the bother for you. Both of these are likely to be a sticking point.

You will most likely be looking at corporate rates for a solution like this plus a nice setup fee for whoever you get to set it up.

Good luck

staringelf

thanks for all the replys everyone. it looks like this is going to be harder than i thought to set up...:rolleyes:

arseagon

Have you considered getting a fixed Public IP from eircom? In my experience connections don't drop as much when on a Public IP. Also consider changing your router. Some are better at keeping connections up than others.

Sponge Bob

sleur wrote:

would it not make more sense to hire a dedicated server and use screen to start your web browser? It's more likely your home connection will break from time to time but a managed service shouldn't have impromptu network outages. If your home conenction is broken, then it's just a matter of resuming the screen session.

Very good idea. Just remote desktop into the managed server , say a 2003 managed server, and run the browser on that remote desktop.

if the dsl goes down the session from the browser to the poker stays up while you reconfigure fast by plugging your pc network cable into the wireless box, ipconfig and bring up remote desktop again.