My experience with satellite broadband

markmagennis

Just in case anyone out there is in a deprived area like me where the only possible broadband option is satellite, I thought I'd post my experience of having National Broadband two-way satellite broadband installed for the past month at my house in Glencar, 5 miles North East of Sligo town.

Basically it works a treat. It's rated 1Meg and I get a steady 980kbps download and 160kbps upload. I don't know whether the available speeds will increase in the future but I hope they do because at some point even 1Meg is going to be completely useless. As it is, although many people will wonder how a person can live with only 1Meg, it enables me to do things on the Web that I couldn't do before, including software upgrades, music downloads, streaming video (I just discovered You Tube and most videos stream without any pauses :-). The result is I can do everything I need to and I don't have to consider speed and size any more.

Beware! Ping is around 1.6 seconds due to the satellite latency. This means it's no good for VOIP or online gaming.

Installation was fast and easy. It also works with my wireless network (Apple Extreme base station) without a problem.

It's two-way, which means I don't need a telephone line for the uploads. A lot of so-called satellite broadbands are only one-way.

I got the Home Office package for 69 Euro a month plus a once-off installation fee of 255 Euro and a 200 Euro deposit. That works out at 78 Euro per month over a two year period, which is only 26 Euro per month more than I was paying for dial-up (dedicated line plus BT Anytime package)! The contract locks me in for a year I think. Apparently the equipment is rented from NBB (rental is included in the monthly fee) so if I cancel it at some point they will come and collect it. Although I wouldn't bet on it.

So to summarise...

POSITIVES:
Does what it says on the tin.
Quick, easy installation.
Reliable.
Adequate for all my normal Web needs.
Affordable now for my employer.

NEGATIVES:
Not suitable for VOIP.
Not suitable for online gaming.
Still bloody slow compared with what most people can get.
Still bloody expensive compared with what most people are paying.
Question of future speed upgrades and how expensive they might be.

Please note that it apparently doesn't work as well the further South East you are located.

Disclaimer: I have absolutely no connection with National Broadband, their owners or their employees, other than being a customer.

Mark

watty

What speed upload?
on http://www.speedtest.net/ when
1) Light drizzle
2) Normal Rain

Is it A2C / Astra 2 Connect (Newtec Sat3play Access box on label of Modem)? If so, then it uses a 500mW ODU and can't go faster without replacing all the equipment.

Do you mean South East or South West? Most Irish Services apart from the Schools Satellite come from Eastern Satellites.
Thanks.


There are 2 way satellite that do up to 2Mbps/512k (link), and if Sponge Bob is right maybe more people will be looking for these.

Sponge Bob

Yeah but they all fairly rape the wallet Watty. 3g and Astra2Connect are good dialup substitutes but most people should support thieir local WISP for decent speeds and latency.

This is what you get charged by a WISP like Lightnet if you live on an island off the coast of Connemara for example.

broadband prices



Home inc. VAT @ 21%
Business Plus VAT@ 21%

Flat monthly fee - no hidden costs!
Surf 24 hours a day if you want, (though we don't recommend it!) you'll only pay your monthly fee.

Once-off Installation fees:

Standard Home Connection Installation €200.00 (inc VAT)

Standard Business Installation
€249.00 (ex VAT)


Contention Ratios

Home User 1mb - 25:1 or less
Small Business 2mb - 20:1 or less
Large Business 3mb - 10:1 or less

WISPs are pretty widespread nowadays , only the desperate should look at satellite .

watty

That's why it's a mystery why if the Government wants to build the economy that they haven't invested more and more wisely in Infrastructure.

It's worth borrowing money for in the long term.

Sponge Bob

watty wrote: »

they haven't invested more and more wisely in Infrastructure.

Lets see. How do I fit Mary O Rourke, Noel Dempsey and Eamonn Ryan , and the word :eek: "Wise" :eek: ...in one sentence :eek:

Dermot Ahern was the only one with a clue in the past 10 years, the rest of them were in between a national tragedy and a national disaster individually

Collectively those three have been a cataclysm of epic proportions

Thank **** there is some sentient thought down in Dungarvan which sentient beings Broadband enabled the whole town 10 years ago today .

markmagennis

watty wrote: »

What speed upload?
on http://www.speedtest.net/ when
1) Light drizzle

Currently light drizzle and it's down to 140kbps upload.

2) Normal Rain

I'll let you know next time it rains normally.

It's Astra 2 Connect.

Sponge Bob

what size is the dish ?? 80cm 90cm or 100cm ??

Marlow

watty wrote: »

Do you mean South East or South West? Most Irish Services apart from the Schools Satellite come from Eastern Satellites.

You are aware, that depending on what package the schools have, there are two different providers supplying the satellite broadband? One is Digiweb and the other is Smart.

Not sure, if they are using the same satellites.

/Martin

watty

Yes Smart have some too. I don't know which satellite they use.

Anyway, the point is the Astra 2 Connect ought to be Better toward the South East, as it is from 23.5E, so that is why I mentioned the Eastern Satellites stuff, as I suspected either I misunderstood the OP or he mixed up his east & west?

I wasn't trying to make any point about the Schools project. I hope they realise they need to lobby to get funding for it to continue past this Autumn or some/most of it will get cut off?

markmagennis

Sponge Bob wrote: »

what size is the dish ?? 80cm 90cm or 100cm ??

It's 90cm I think. I'll measure it to be sure (when it stops raining, probably sometime around September).

And yes, I did get my East and West mixed up.

Mark

Sponge Bob

watty wrote: »

Anyway, the point is the Astra 2 Connect ought to be Better toward the South East, as it is from 23.5E, so that is why I mentioned the Eastern Satellites stuff, as I suspected either I misunderstood the OP or he mixed up his east & west?

Just for the record, Watty and NBB had an animated discussion ( somewhere on Boards) on

a) The immutable laws of physics
b) the FACT that A2C comes in from the south east on a slant with the curve of the earth .
c) The expected coverage map shown on the SES Astra website.

Basically Watty said in that animated discussion that an 80cm dish would not work well west of a line between Derry and Cork ( or so ) maybe it was Sligo - Waterford instead but I do remember that most of connaught was west of it.

Therefore it seemed logical according to both Watty and the laws of physics that the dish should be larger than 80cm in the west.

If the sat was over the atlantic instead then the signal would be stronger in the west of Ireland and the dish would have to be bigger in Dublin again because of the curve of the earth etc .

Markmagennis is on or near that line indicated on the SES Astra map so his particular service experience is an important early marker (for us around here) in observing the quality of the A2C service , especially if he has an 80cm dish and more especially if both Watty and the Laws of Physics are in accord as I strongly suspect they are :cool: . If he has a 90cm dish then maybe NBB listened to Watty

Of course the weather also gets worse as you go west so if you needed a 100cm dish in Belmullet to get the same quality of service ( QoS) as an 80 cm dish in Wicklow then I would personally start to worry about wind loading etc ...never mind just the Laws of Physics .

Moonbeam

Marlow wrote: »

You are aware, that depending on what package the schools have, there are two different providers supplying the satellite broadband? One is Digiweb and the other is Smart.

Not sure, if they are using the same satellites.

/Martin

Smart and Digiweb do not use the same satellites.

markmagennis

Sponge Bob wrote: »

Markmagennis is on or near that line indicated on the SES Astra map so his particular service experience is an important early marker (for us around here) in observing the quality of the A2C service , especially if he has an 80cm dish.

It's 90cm.

Sponge Bob

Nice to see they paid some heed to Watty

How is it doing in heavy rain by the way ???

I did some work on the school broadband systems, basically just rigging them up to the local networks. But I recall hearing at the time that one of the operators was using eBird (renamed Eurobird 3) at 33°E.

markmagennis

Sponge Bob wrote: »

How is it doing in heavy rain by the way ???

don't know yet. The only very heavy rain we've had was when I was out of the country. I'll let you know though.

Mark

Ogham

Markmagennis - NBB say that their system includes a telephone service. If you say it is no good for VOIP - how does this work?

markmagennis

Ogham wrote: »

Markmagennis - NBB say that their system includes a telephone service. If you say it is no good for VOIP - how does this work?

Good question. I haven't a clue. I've already got free local and national calls so I've never needed to use the 200 free minutes or whatever it is that came with my NBB subscription. I assume it doesn't go through the satellite dish though because it would be impossible to have a decent conversation wouldn't it? I've never actually tried using VOIP via my satellite broadband. I just read that it's not feasible.

If you find out how their free telephone calls work, let me know.

Mark

Fuzzy Clam

A question for Mark

Is there a contention ratio for NBB?

I don't this it mentioned on the website.

markmagennis

Fuzzy Clam wrote: »

Is there a contention ratio for NBB?

I don't know. Mine is rated at 1mbps and I get consistently close to that except in bad weather. Usually around 980 or 990kbps. Whether that means there is no contention, I don't know. And whether it would change if they signed up a lot more customers, I don't know either. If it did I would seriously complain because 1mbps is pretty much a minimum requirement for serious Internet access.

Mark

crawler

There is contention - it's usually a few hundred to one. not sure of exact specs on A2C.

watty

markmagennis wrote: »

I don't know. Mine is rated at 1mbps and I get consistently close to that except in bad weather. Usually around 980 or 990kbps. Whether that means there is no contention, I don't know. And whether it would change if they signed up a lot more customers, I don't know either. If it did I would seriously complain because 1mbps is pretty much a minimum requirement for serious Internet access.

Mark

All new satellite Broadband is good at launch (few customers). They tend to run at 200:1 contention. Unless they add more transponders the contention is one transponder shared to most of Western Europe.

Ogham

markmagennis wrote: »

Good question. I haven't a clue. I've already got free local and national calls so I've never needed to use the 200 free minutes or whatever it is that came with my NBB subscription. I assume it doesn't go through the satellite dish though because it would be impossible to have a decent conversation wouldn't it? I've never actually tried using VOIP via my satellite broadband. I just read that it's not feasible.

If you find out how their free telephone calls work, let me know.

Mark

Surely NBB would be the ones to tell you - not me!
I'm surprised NBB did not tell you more about the phone calls? They make a big thing of it on their website - saying you can basically get rid of your landline. They say they will set you up with a phone number too. Did they not even mention this to you?

markmagennis

Ogham wrote: »

Surely NBB would be the ones to tell you - not me!
I'm surprised NBB did not tell you more about the phone calls? They make a big thing of it on their website - saying you can basically get rid of your landline. They say they will set you up with a phone number too. Did they not even mention this to you?

They may have done Ogham, but I ignored it because I'm perfectly happy with my phone arrangements and don't want to switch to any other provider.

Mark

Nehaxak

There's also this option http://www.skylogic.com/brochures/tooway-brochure.pdf

Seen it in operation myself last year @ EutelSat in France while bringing a couple of our guys from Africa for VSAT installation training. The KA system itself was extremely easy to self install but I'd doubt it's ability to provide good servicde to Ireland, in which case you'd probably have to run with their KU band system instead, which was also easy enough to install. They were (EutelSat/SkyLogic) at that stage under negotiations with distributors for Ireland but unsure of where things are at, at this stage.

If you were looking to improve your speeds during rain et all, you could look to upgrade your antenna and BUC/LNB (transmitter/receive) if you had the space available. If I'm correct, if you go over your current transmit power on the uplink you would require a VSAT licence from the Government here, which is very easy to get and last time I checked only cost 50 Euros.
I think (again could be wrong) if you stay at or under a certain output power on the uplink there's no need for a VSAT licence.

If you did decide to upgrade your antenna to cope better with rain (it is Ireland afterall, summer? what summer!) then make sure to go the extra length and get the high quality RG11 cable with FM32 connectors.

Nehaxak

Just to add also, we have users on some of our VSATs around the world using Skype without any dedicated VOIP channel/bandwidth and it's perfectly fine.

Latencies on VSATs on high quality, best of equipment and perfect as is possible installs will still range between 600ms and 2,000ms+ but still Skype has worked perfectly fine. Thing to remember, when you talk on the phone, a lot of the time you use it like a walkie talkie - you talk then stop and wait for the person to respond. It's only when people talk over each other that the latency is really noticeable and even still it's not much bother.
I'm being very basic here with that explanation but to give another example, I had my home blueface.ie VOIP service working perfectly fine on a VSAT in one of our office locations in Africa, was no QOS or anything like that implemented or even possible but still it worked no problem.

Just remember, walkie talkie, just don't keep saying "over" or "roger" after each sentence

EDIT: Worth mentioning to remember to use the business version of Skype and disable that supernode crap.

watty

Tooway will not be available for another 3 years in Ireland, subject to a successful launch of a new 13E bird.


Any firewall will block the supernode. Add an inward firewall rule for the skype magic number for the PC/laptop IP and then your Skype connection doesn't need a supernode/relay elsewhere as long as other person has done it too. Otherwise the latency increases by time to/from a supernode.

800ms+ is a more realistic minimum latency to expect on satellite. HSDPA or Ripwave can actually be longer!

Nehaxak

I'll ask for an update from source in regards the Tooway tomorrow in work if I remember as I'll be talking with them. So long as it's not NDA or anything like that I'll post a reply but yes, you could well be right Watty. The KA coverage reached Dublin last time I checked and KU on another bird covered all Ireland but they may have changed the footprint since then due to commercial reasons, or just that I was looking at the time at a proposed KU footprint.

watty

It's only really a trial of the technology and I beleive in Europe, really only part of Germany. In USA already using "wildblue". The real service will have 1000 times existing sat capacity and loads and loads of spots.

Nehaxak

Alrighty, small update on the Tooway which I asked them about today on another unrelated call...

Apologies if this isn't spot on, taken from notes after the call and the Italian accent and quality of the conference call doesn't help at times

Full Docsis on KA service to Ireland will be available only in 2010 subject as what Watty said to launch of new satellite but may revert to KU only service depending on commercial needs et all at that time.

TooWay KA service currently available on EuroBird 3 and HotBird 6 to Italy, Spain, France and Germany with some coverage available to Southern England also.

Tooway KU service should be available along some of the east coast of Ireland now but no guarantees until September/October this year when they're hoping to give better coverage to Ireland on KU via either the EuroBird3 or HotBird 6 (never asked which one exactly would be used for Ireland).

Anyway, in short, no full roll-out of service until 2010 via launch of new satellite but in the meantime KU service should be available in Sep/Oct this year for Ireland.

Not sure who the distributor is for Ireland that SkyLogic have chosen and never bothered to ask as it wasn't the time or place to ask such.