Satellite vs. Wireless Broadband

Mark@mediasat

WiMax won't be launched. ( and just so everyone knows I work for Mediasatellite a satellite broadband ISP) I've been keeping an eye on Wi-Max and it doesn't have an IEEE standard yet or even a spectrum allocation. 2007 is the predicted rollout of standardised WI-Max.

you might get someone to roll out non standard Wi-Max but that's going to be costly and risky for a provider so I can't see it happening. People complain about mobile phone masts and that is a proven IEEE standard. I know I wouldn't allow a Wi-Max mast near me if I could stop it.

As for line rental, a phone line is for transferring voice traffic over a cable line,no way can you justify any sort of data requirements for line rental. To ensure data of a minimum quality you need to get a line for data and that's a leased line and there mega expensive.Untill there is a seperate voice and data network data's always going to play second fiddle voice.

oh and on bandwidth shaping, be caefull about that. We use it on our products and it is a great tool. it makes sure that the average user has the connection that they pay for and that the people who are heavy users get throttled. though the average home user downloads about 250Mb a month(seriously) so there will be as many people complaining about traffic shaping as any other method of control.

What would I lke to see in 2005 though, way more people getting satellite broadband so the costs can come down and but more importantly I can get a raise

damien

Mark@mediasat wrote:

satellite broadband

oxymoron

Mark@mediasat

damian,

would you like to clarify your terming of satellite broadband an oxymoron??

Is one way satellite that allows a home user in any location download information at 512-1M speeds, at rated speed much more often than cable wireless or DSL, not broadband because you have to use a landline or mobile phone as an uplink,

or is it the latency associated with two-way satellite that you have problems despite it allowing a very viable alternative to many buisness in rural location, allowing companies conduct their buisness in a faster more effeciant manner saving thousands in some cases off their monthly telecom bill.

is satellite perfect , no of course not, does it have issues, yes it does. does it offer the only viable solution to provide fast internet access to many customers yes it does.

Just to clarify these are my own views and not those of Mediasatellite (Ireland) Ltd. I am posting to offer my insight to satellite broadband being familiar with the technology

oscarBravo

Mark@mediasat wrote:

I know I wouldn't allow a Wi-Max mast near me if I could stop it.

Why, precisely?

Mark@mediasat wrote:

As for line rental, a phone line is for transferring voice traffic over a cable line,no way can you justify any sort of data requirements for line rental. To ensure data of a minimum quality you need to get a line for data and that's a leased line and there mega expensive.Untill there is a seperate voice and data network data's always going to play second fiddle voice.

You mentioned IEEE standards for wireless transmission; I presume you're aware of the CCITT standards for data over voice lines (V.xx)? I've been sending and receiving data over voice lines since 1987.

Besides, if it's not feasible to specify a minimum data rate for a voice line, how come OfCom have done it?

damien

Mark@mediasat wrote:

damian,

would you like to clarify your terming of satellite broadband an oxymoron??

Broadband: "high speed, always on, Internet connection" is the general definition. If you want to use a standard since you slagged off WiMax's lack of one (which I'll get to in a minute) the ITU definition for BB is 2MB/s up and down. FCC says 200k/s up and down.


one way satellite

high speed in one direction - no check
always on - no - no check
Internet connection - check

1 out of 3 does not make it broadband. Even using the most liberal definition.

Back to you disliking WiMax:

it doesn't have an IEEE standard yet or even a spectrum allocation.

What about IEEE 802.16a ? Frequency that's used is 3.5 GHz. ComReg gave out licences for this ages ago. Irish Broadband have many of them and will be rolling them out this year. They showed us their kit when we visited them in the HQ before Christmas.

I expect if they want to keep the licences they'll be rolling out fairly quickly. And as OscarBravo stated, do please clarify these issues with WiMax "masts".

Mark@mediasat

I wouldn't allow a Wi-Max station near me untill it has an IEEE standard. at that point there would be have been studies into the effect of the frequencies and power levels used on human tissue. I might still not be happy with a tower even if Wi-Max was standardised but at least there would be some scientific reason for the operating levels.

As for the data over phone lines, my point wasn't about how well it can be done but rather the entire phone network was designed for transferring voice traffic. ther will always be issues transferring data over it untill a seperate network is setup for data. or a compromise is reached. e.g. as the voice signal was degrading over distance the Telecom Eireann put repeater blocks in the network to stop degradation at voice frequenceis every 3 KM.these blocks however block higher frequency signals, e.g. Broadband. So by designing a high quality voice network we now are faced with a problem on the broadband rollout that broadband signals can't pass through these repeaters.

If Telecom Eireann wasn't so effeciant then broadband rollout would be easier today.

I was trying to illustrate that a while a single piece of coper can transmit either voice or data signals, data transmission and voice transmission are fundamentally differentand a line which can make phone calls perfectly might not be able adaquately carry data.

Mark@mediasat

Damian et al

give me two minutes before the barrage starts,
I may have sightly dissed WI-MAx unfairly, noy there are means to diss it I just need to check one or two things out ,
apologies for this

Mark@mediasat

I'm having a little trouble clarifing so if you can help please do. From what I can see the standards have been set by IEEE but are currently testing. Does this testing not have to be compleated before the standard can be fully implemented. At this point 802.16a is in the adolescent stage of standardization and not ready for implementation, and any implemenation of Wi-MAx was as a pre standard stage

as for one-way satellite broadband, and I'm not going to get into a big argument about definitions, i shouldn't have have mentioned the word sorry, cos we'd be here for days,but what counts at the end of the day isn't definitions but end user experience.

take a one way satellite system, connect using UTV's 30 euro package and you get a service which wil browse as quickly as DSL, download as quickly if not quicker( you can download over satellite and phone line increasing from 512 to 558, impressive no ;-) ) at a reasonable cost( yes dearer then DSL but much much much much much cheaper than ISDN). is it always on no but most people rather having a high speed when thay want it rather than a slow speed.
I've seen customer download 25GB in a month on a one-way so it can't be that bad.

does it have a high upload speed no but really who needs this, not most users really.

obviously if everyone inthe cpountry could get cable DSL that would be great but that's not going to happen because it's too expensive, ther is very little money in DSL at the moment ,compare it to a phone bill. The rollout costs of rolling out new lines to everyone in the county would bankrupt Eircom as noone would pay the charges necessary to recoup the costs.

Wi-Max despite claiming a range of 30 miles really comes in about 10 miles max ,from what I've read and that's if it's not too hilly as the verdict is stil out on how it operates without line of sight . with ireland's dispersed housing roll out is going to be expensive we don't have the same economies of scale as Korea or Japan, so we won't get what they get

Call down to us and see for your self, have a play with satellite broadband. it does what an awful lot of customer want and is that not the important thing?? is it not better to provide people with a solution which fits their needs rather than dismiss a technology out of hand???


Just to clarify these are my own views and not those of Mediasatellite (Ireland) Ltd. I am posting to offer my insight to satellite broadband being familiar with the technology

oscarBravo

Mark@mediasat wrote:

I wouldn't allow a Wi-Max station near me untill it has an IEEE standard. at that point there would be have been studies into the effect of the frequencies and power levels used on human tissue.

There have been numerous studies into the effect on human tissue of non-ionising radiation at all sorts of frequencies and power levels. The issues are well understood. Nobody is going to make WiMax equipment that poses any kind of threat to your health or safety.

Mark@mediasat wrote:

I might still not be happy with a tower even if Wi-Max was standardised but at least there would be some scientific reason for the operating levels.

You're heading for the realms of superstition now. Wireless communication is safe. Move on, nothing to see here.

Mark@mediasat wrote:

As for the data over phone lines, my point wasn't about how well it can be done but rather the entire phone network was designed for transferring voice traffic.

You're dodging the point. The network was setup for circuit-switched voice traffic - true. Then some clever people came along and found ways of reliably transmitting packet-switched data over it. At that point, the voice/data dichotomy should have stopped being a problem. The fact that it didn't is not due to an inherent incompatibility, but rather to short-sightedness in the implementation of some parts of the network.

Mark@mediasat wrote:

as the voice signal was degrading over distance the Telecom Eireann put repeater blocks in the network to stop degradation at voice frequenceis every 3 KM.these blocks however block higher frequency signals, e.g. Broadband. So by designing a high quality voice network we now are faced with a problem on the broadband rollout that broadband signals can't pass through these repeaters.

Thing is, we're not really talking about broadband at this level. Most people talking about FIA on the PSTN network are talking about a minimum narrowband speed. The V.xx protocols are designed to work at voice frequencies. The problem is not repeaters (or even necessarily pairgains) per se, but any equipment incompatible with well-established V.xx protocols.

Mark@mediasat wrote:

If Telecom Eireann wasn't so effeciant then broadband rollout would be easier today.

That's something of a logic leap.

Mark@mediasat wrote:

I was trying to illustrate that a while a single piece of coper can transmit either voice or data signals, data transmission and voice transmission are fundamentally different

...and I've explained to you that they're not. Apart from anything else, the voice network is a data network (albeit circuit-switched) for almost its entirety.

Mark@mediasat wrote:

and a line which can make phone calls perfectly might not be able adaquately carry data.

That much is obvious. The point is that it should be able to, and if OfCom can mandate it, why can't ComReg?

Mark@mediasat

Wireless transmission being safe hmmm. It's like power lines being safe . and this is the one area wher I have expertiese, I did a masters on the wireless transmission of power and data to devices implanted under human tissue, (ya go me wahoo!!). I had a read of the report which basicially rubbished any reports saying the other wise and it basicially said most of the studies were too small or had a few quite nit picky reasons, for disregarding them from analysis however if you take all the studies and put them together you have a very large volume of data. on top of the americian power groups managed to get the FCC to only look at the heating effect of electromagnetic radiation. The soviets being concernet for the worker investigated, basically looked at everything, and come up with very diferent figures for safety.

Basicially I'm not convinced but obviously keep any masts more than 100m away from me and I'm happy, good old inverse cube relationships

That's not why I don't like WI-Max anyway, and I know it seams like I'm having a go at it which I didn't mean to do as it's a great idea, just not finished yet. I'll go into a proper rant someday but at the moment my brain doesn't have enough caffine.

As for data over voice lines,The V.xx protocols are designed to work at voice frequencies, and I do agree that all phone lines should be capable of 33.3Kbps. However if someone rings up and say hi I want a phone line to make phone calls and it's put in and it makes phone calls than saying oh I can't get good data rates is a little unfair as a line was put in to make voice calls. From what I know from eircom line contracts, which isn't much I admit, they never guarantee any data rates. they offer a phone line for voice traffic,

By the way I do agree that it should be a major aim by someone( eircom, comreg, the government santa claus) to get Ireland to a point where phone lines can all support narrowband traffic. I also think it should be the first aim of our nations road to becoming a networked island

Secondly is getting 256/64kbps to as many homes as possible, 512/128k to buisnesses, somewhere in the 90 % mark would be nice. 256 is a very usuable for your average home user.

Telecom Eireann was very ok not effeciant, perhaps being a state company but they were very thouragh and ireland did have the most advanced telecoms network in the world at one point. and the takpayer payed for that but the government elected by the people of this county sold eircom and got loads of cash for it, now the investors call the tune so why should eircom ivest in the telephone network. they make loads of money from it as it is, they'll make less with broadband rolled out. BT have rolled out broadband because of competition from cable companies, we haven't seen competition from cable and untill there is eircom are going to keep the status quo as much as they can, and rightly so too .The're a private company there to make money for their investors. Comes back to the fat that we shouldn't have sold it.

damien

Widly offtopic. Can this thread be split ?

lucernarian

I can see how using pairgains and "repeaters" would have made telecoms in Ireland more efficient 10 years ago and more in Ireland but Mark, could you tell me of your sources where you got this information about these repeater devices? Google seems annoyingly silent on stuff like this and I can't find out for the life of me how exactly a pairgain works, not to mention these repeater things. Do these repeaters appear above ground or are they found underground or what? Do they need their own power supply? I guess they would seeing as they're an active amplification device if what youre saying is true.

I know that bit was off-topic, but back to the topic, I would wish for a Comreg who is interested in regulating for the customers' convienences instead of the incumbent's whims. They only force Eircom to operate its network at basic levels of service (voice) and Comreg dont care at all how a phone line eventually enters a household or business, so long as calls can be made over it.

jwt

have a look at this thread here about WiMAx

I posted this back in early September, and the basic time lines quoted haven't moved a lot since then.

The article was here
and is still worth a read.


On a less serious note have a look here . I knew they were all out to get me


John

Mark@mediasat

could you tell me of your sources where you got this information about these repeater devices? Google seems annoyingly silent on stuff like this and I can't find out for the life of me how exactly a pairgain works, not to mention these repeater things. Do these repeaters appear above ground or are they found underground or what? Do they need their own power supply? I guess they would seeing as they're an active amplification device if what youre saying is true.

I go my info during college, in UCC, Dr Murphy and MCCarthy of the elec eng and microelectronics department. From what I remember, which is very little admittedly I don't think their active ,they don't amplify as such just lower losses. I think the'rs essentiall a block of iron with the wire wrapped around it. they lower the loss in frequencies beloy 8Khz( VOice) but block higher frequencies( broadband)

as for pair gains( is this the corrcect term??), not a clue. I'll go up to the attic tonight and check my notes

bminish

Mark@mediasat wrote:

Wireless transmission being safe hmmm. It's like power lines being safe.

Which it appears they are.
Power lines and Human Health FAQ

and this is the one area wher I have expertiese, I did a masters on the wireless transmission of power and data to devices implanted under human tissue, (ya go me wahoo!!).

So What! There have been RF heating issues observed with 200mW Wi-Fi cards on someone's lap but please do some math and consider the inverse square law effects of distance from a >5w EIRP source. Now combine this with the typical antenna pattern of sectoral antennas and you are still seriously concerned about risk from low power equipment on a mast at a distance through walls etc ??

Mobile phone masts (no more than a few 100 w EIRP) are subject to non ionising radiation Audits. Comreg publish these audits
NIR Site reports

However one feels about exactly at what level the human exposure limits are set at, it is hard to ignore the fact that sites tend to come in at levels that are many thousands of times Below the limits at the publicly accessible points and measurements are taken outside and in the clear so levels will be considerably lower again indoors.

Phone masts and Human Health FAQ

Satellite should not be considered a broadband solution, it can be a better than dial-up solution (considering the state of Dial-up in Ireland) But broadband it isn't.
I speak with several years of firsthand experience. I loved satellite so much that I put considerable effort into connecting myself and my neighbours on a wireless link to ADSL in town.

things you can't do with any sort of reliability or performance with Satellite
1/ VoIP
2/ Gaming
3/ Interactive services
4/ Quality Web browsing, the latency bites on sites with lots of images/ graphical elements. To get around this many services use cacheing streaming proxys to speed things up for plain old HTML. Doesn't work for Secure pages like banking.
5/ Big downloads (most providers have truly tiny caps.)
6/ Expensive

In addition to this many systems have weird hardware /driver setups restricting their use to windows based operating systems

.Brendan

Mark@mediasat

things you can't do with any sort of reliability or performance with Satellite
1/ VoIP- Yes you can, I've done it with no problems. call in and try it out if you want. give some notice if you are.

2/ Gaming no you can't never will be able to. but lots of people don't want broadband for gaming.

3/ Interactive services, not sure what you mean but I'm prety sure you can can you please clarify.

4/ Quality Web browsing, the latency bites on sites with lots of images/ graphical elements. To get around this many services use cacheing streaming proxys to speed things up for plain old HTML. Doesn't work for Secure pages like banking.

here we get into a fuzzy area. Using the most commonn technology for two way satellite broadband ping times are are in the 1to 2 second region averaging about 1.8 seconds with occasional pings of about 4 seconds. This technology uses TCP/IP Spoofing to speed up HTTP traffic and that works but it can't speed up https. but you can still use https it's just slower, however it's slow over the phone line too, most of the delay comes from the secure server .

I've done tests with a 512 satellite and a 512 DSL connection. takes between 15 and 30 seconds to open a secure page, it varies from 15 to 30 with both technologies with satellite about 1 second overage slower.

ther is a newer more expensive two-way satellite system which achieves ping times of 600 to 700 ms, this gets over latency issues for almost all application, not gaming still though but does allow for ipsec VPN tunnling,m and it works very well too from what i have seen.

5/ Big downloads (most providers have truly tiny caps.) some do. How big is big??
however that is not a criticisim of satllite braodband technology but rather it's implementation, We do have an unlimited one way product one customer took down 25GB last month, standard 2 way comes with 5 GB 20GB for a 1 Mbps connection, remember the average home user( calculate by me by averaging all our home user) only uses around 250 MB a month so a 5GB cap is 20 times higher than the aveage user

6/ Expensive, yes the kit is expensive, it will come down. but again this isn't a criticism of the technology really. The more people that use satellite broadband the cheaper it wil become,

If eircom was to rollout broadband to 100% of the contry today broadband would be more expensive.

I know the effects of of electromagnetic radiation, and I'm not happy about it. I don't like all these electromagnetic waves hitting me. I know the minimim allowable exposure levels are less than the levels experienced on a sunny day in ireland but I'm still not convinced by the scientific literature that exists, maybe just

Just to clarify these are my own views and not those of Mediasatellite (Ireland) Ltd. I am posting to offer my insight to satellite broadband being familiar with the technology

bminish

Mark@mediasat wrote:

I don't think their active ,they don't amplify as such just lower losses. I think the'rs essentiall a block of iron with the wire wrapped around it. they lower the loss in frequencies beloy 8Khz( VOice)

What Mark is referring to here are loading coils, commonly used to flatten the audio response on long lines at the expense of overall attenuation and much higher losses at frequencies above the voice range (which in telco terms is generally considered to be 300Hz to 3.5 Khz)

Loading coils need to be removed for things like DSL and ISDN, better active compensation techniques exist these days in digital exchanges.
In many countries one can request that the telco remove loading coils from your line

Loading coil
Loading coil Supplier

as for pair gains( is this the corrcect term??), not a clue. I'll go up to the attic tonight and check my notes

Pairgains are devices that allow Eircom to create more than 1 voice grade line out of one copper pair, a cheap and nasty solution to the lack of clean copper pairs in many areas

They are usually fed digitally these days. They work ok for voice but because of non-standard codecs don't work well for modems and since you don't actually have a dedicated copper pair DSL isn't an option.

In some countries one can request that the telco remove any pairgain from your line if it is in use for data. In other areas Pairgained lines are considered voice grade only and subject to lower monthly rental rates


.Brendan

bminish

Mark@mediasat wrote:

things you can't do with any sort of reliability or performance with Satellite
1/ VoIP- Yes you can, I've done it with no problems. call in and try it out if you want. give some notice if you are.

Well VoIP is ok if you call 1 second + round trip time acceptable for a voice call , it's certainly not land-line replacement quality, it's bloody painful and akin to using 2 way radio

3/ Interactive services, not sure what you mean but I'm prety sure you can can you please clarify.

Ermm, basically anything that requires any sort of interactivity at all, PCanyware, VPN, Remote SSH sessions, MUD etc

here we get into a fuzzy area. Using the most commonn technology for two way satellite broadband ping times are are in the 1to 2 second region averaging about 1.8 seconds with occasional pings of about 4 seconds. This technology uses TCP/IP Spoofing to speed up HTTP traffic and that works but it can't speed up https. but you can still use https it's just slower, however it's slow over the phone line too, most of the delay comes from the secure server .

The system I was on could manage sub 800msec pings most of the time. HTTP via the streaming proxy was just about ok, I improved things further by running my own local Squid Cache
HTTPS was just desperate for anything but the most simple HTTPS sites, it would at times take minutes for my on-line banking pages to load. it now loads in a few seconds. Small HTTPS pages like Credit card checkout facilities were slower but not by a whole lot (due mostly to the fact that checkout pages tend to be small and simple)

I've done tests with a 512 satellite and a 512 DSL connection. takes between 15 and 30 seconds to open a secure page, it varies from 15 to 30 with both technologies with satellite about 1 second overage slower.

your DSL provider must be bad.. Or are you using a Pentuim 133

ther is a newer more expensive two-way satellite system which achieves ping times of 600 to 700 ms, this gets over latency issues for almost all application, not gaming still though but does allow for ipsec VPN tunnling,m and it works very well too from what i have seen.

Rubbish! It's absolute pants. Been there done that

6/ Expensive, yes the kit is expensive, it will come down. but again this isn't a criticism of the technology really. The more people that use satellite broadband the cheaper it wil become,

Kit costs may come down but the infrastructure costs of satellite are very high (transponder space, uplink facilities etc) and the technical limitations aren't going to go away.
Satellite is a solution of last resort for the truly desperate, it is not a true broadband solution. I speak with experience, i have used 2 way satellite since late 2001

If eircom was to rollout broadband to 100% of the contry today broadband would be more expensive.

Why? Only if we have a weak regulator, Ohh I forgot, silly me.. We Do have a weak regulator.


EM Fud removed.

.brendan

Mark@mediasat

Brendan, all I can say is that my experience with satellite broad band seams to have been better than yours.

I've done voice over IP no problem, I've seen VPN being done I've seen teleconfrencing , PC anywhere, not to mention doen my internet banking no problem.

Obviously DSL is better than satellite, but satellite is suffering from bad press. It does an awful lot for an awful lot of people and I've talked to a lot of people who are delighted with it, I've had people tell me how their satellite broadband "is f****king Brilliant" honestly one customer rang in to say that.

and satellite is here now. no waiting, can be installed in 2-3 weeks.

AS for broadband being expensive it it was to rolled out immediatelly. The cost of upgradin the entire network would in wages alone be massive this cost would have to be recouped by higher service charges. by a slow rollout costs can be kept down allowing cheep broadband for those who can get it.

damien

Brendan, all I can say is that my experience with satellite broad band seams to have been better than yours.

Mark,
You are embarassing yourself, your employer and your piece of paper from UCC if you think you have better experience than Brendan Minish in anything telecoms related, while barely being two years out of college yourself. You have taken my thread completely offtopic and it is not appreciated.

If you want more of the expert posters to complete demolish any more of your weak arguments and misinformation I suggest creating a new thread and not ruining this anymore.

Lastly, despite what you are saying that you are posting as an individual, the fact that MediaSat has someone of your inexperience working for them hasn't given them much credibility whatsoever.

Please quit touting the greatness of satellite on this thread and let it get back to it's original topic.

Damien.

jbkenn

damien.m wrote:

Mark,
You are embarassing yourself, your employer and your piece of paper from UCC if you think you have better experience than Brendan Minish in anything telecoms related, while barely being two years out of college yourself.

Well said Damien

Back on Topic

Satellite Broadband: A Third world solution to a First world problem

jbkenn

jwt

Brendan, all I can say is that my experience with satellite broad band seams to have been better than yours.

Eh Damien I think he meant that he had had better results using Sat than Brendan as opposed to him being more experienced in using Sat ( I think)

Can a mod split this out into a new thread as I think its a good debate and nice to see to people with totally opposing views argue their respective points.

Thanks


John

damien

jwt wrote:

Eh Damien I think he meant that he had had better results using Sat than Brendan as opposed to him being more experienced in using Sat ( I think)

My reply stands. I have no time for someone that hijacks a thread and tries to knock a competing technology of their employer's by using FUD and misinformation tatics and then tries to exaggerate the benefits of the product they offer. I'm glad IrelandOffline has such a vast amount of intelligent and experienced posters to deal with nonsense like this. Well done to all.

Mark@mediasat

Damian.

I am not trying to hijack this thread. I have enjoyed it treamendously, especially the posts from Brendan, John and Paul, beacuse I am hearing from people who in my opinion have much more knowledge and experience in telecoms.

The electromagnitac radiation stuff is my own view based on the papers and reports I have read.

I have on many occasion asked people to correct me if I am wrong. and to those who have I thank sincerly. I have had an enjoyable morning reading the links sent to me.

To clarify I was saying that I seam to have had a better experience than Brendan using satellite broadband, I was not trying to set myself up as any sort of authority, I have during my posts repeatedly made referance to how my knowledge is far from complete as I try to remember lectures that I wasn't fully awake for a few years ago.

I yesterday put simply replied to another post saying I don't thing Wi-MAx rollout will happen till 2007. how I didn't like the idea of living next to a mast
This is a personal position I have reached after reading the relevant literature. It's nothing against WiMax.

I cautioned about traffic shaping that it might be a two edged sword

and I talked how I though that line rental is linked to the voice capabilities

the reply to my post was what I consider a flipant comment about satellite broadband being any oxymoron. I disagreed with this and wanted to see what issues peole had with satellite, off topic perhaps but I was replying to your post Damian. I have then tried to deal with you issues and even ivited people down to see. nothing I have said about Satellite broadband is false I have given my own personal experiences. Brendan has seamed to have had problems when he was using satellite broadband so I was trying to find out more about his experiences.

My intention was not to knock Wi-Max and say oh satellite is brilliant. I have freely acknowledged shortcomings of satellite on many occasions during my posts and I have said how I'm not trying to knock WI-MAx that it is a good technology but that I'm not sure that it will deliver all it's promised, i.e 30 mile ranges 70M speeds and signals bouncing of walls and customer able to walk around while browsing.. yes it will become a prominant part of the broadband infrastructure in ireland and provide needed competition to eircom but I think it it will become a feature in urban areas first followed by rural towns. I don't think it will be able reach truly rural consumers, which ireland has a lot of. I may be wrong.

given the choice between WI-Max and Satellite and I would choose Wi-Max. however even after Wi-MAx is rolled out fully many consumers in ireland will not be able to avail of it. My guess liiking at the distribution of ireland would be up to 10 %. Those customer will if they wish to use broadbraond will have to use satellite. and most of they will be happy with the service it provides.

I was trying to say that Wi-max isn't amazing and satellite isn't that bad

But I do agree that this is not the correct thread for this discussion. if the moderators want to move it I've no problem. If someone want's to contimue it with me over email Mark_G_ODonovan@mediasat.ie because I have enjoyed it. or if there is a technical telecoms forum that anyone know of I'd like to join that.

oscarBravo

Mark@mediasat wrote:

I cautioned about traffic shaping that it might be a two edged sword

It depends how it's used. We use it (still coming to grips with it) on KCN to prioritise interactive traffic and VoIP while allowing bulk traffic (like FTP and HTTP downloads) to run smoothly.

A negative example of traffic shaping: I recently had to download Fedora ISOs for Brendan and hand-deliver them, because his satellite provider throttled him before - correct me if I'm wrong, Brendan - he even got the first ISO downloaded. Meanwhile, I downloaded the three ISOs without adversely affecting the browsing experience of the other subscribers.

Mark@mediasat wrote:

given the choice between WI-Max and Satellite and I would choose Wi-Max. however even after Wi-MAx is rolled out fully many consumers in ireland will not be able to avail of it. My guess liiking at the distribution of ireland would be up to 10 %. Those customer will if they wish to use broadbraond will have to use satellite. and most of they will be happy with the service it provides.

Predictions like that are notoriously chancey. A couple of years ago, anyone who wanted broadband in Knockmore would "have to use satellite" - then a few of us decided to look at the problem a little more closely.

I realise your company is trying to sell a product, but it seems kinda nuts to me to get broadband from 35,000km away when there are very few places in Ireland more than a few km from fibre.

Mark@mediasat

It depends how it's used.

Agree 100%
that is my point because those nasty in people in teleco's will traffic shape to improve their profits. It will be done "to protect the average user" because the average user doesn't use much. (Drop me an email if you want because I have a few ideas on how to implement one that will protect as many users as possible)

but it seems kinda nuts to me to get broadband from 25,000km away when there are very few places in Ireland more than a few km from fibre.

well when you put it like that. sure but it works and is by using it you can access every point in the country without laying cables. the satellites are there so why not avail of them ,at the very least untill Wi-Max comes along.

The cost of running a cable to a customer a few KM from an exchange is costly

And while I think what has been done in Knockmore is marvelous there are very few people who will volunter their time to projects such as that. I am the type of person who does volunter for things and gets involved in clubs and organisation and getting people to help is very difficult but a discussion on volunterism in ireland in the 21st century is very of topic

Capt'n Midnight

How many subscribers do you need to rent a transponder on a satellite and keep the uplink running and pay some ISP for the data connection ?
How much bandwidth is there on a satellite transponder ?

How much bandwidth does this leave for each user and at what contention ?


Satellite is not always on in this country since you have to pay for the return connection and TBH if you had fixed price ISDN there would be no reason to use satellite. Yes sat bursts faster when no one else is online - but it's slower when busy.

Satellite is OK for broadcast eg: microsoft service packs and stuff,
I've been on satellite, used 128Kb Leased line , ADSL and WLAN, ISDN etc.

crawler

Just to make it fun....let's throw in Skylinc ( http://www.skylinc.co.uk ) as it lives half way between wireless and Sat

bminish

crawler wrote:

Just to make it fun....let's throw in Skylinc ( http://www.skylinc.co.uk ) as it lives half way between wireless and Sat

Thankfully a system like skylinc would be nowhere near halfway so latency will be a non-issue due to round trip distances of a few Km.
Skylinc is simply an instant high site without those pesky hillwalkers

The problem with current sat systems is the latency, this is due to the large round trip distances. Geostationary satellites are in geostationary orbit which is 35,768 Km above the equator
geostationary orbit

latency is due to the speed of light 299 792 458 m/Sec or about 300,000 Km/Sec

Since Europe is not at the equator the distance to the geostationary sat is more like 45,000 Km
On a 2 way sat system our outbound packet has to go 45,000km to the sat + 45,000Km back down again totalling 90,000 Km Your reply has to make the same journey making the total round trip ~ 180,000 Km
At the speed of light this will take 0.6 seconds or 600 msec
300 000 / 180 000

the above calculation doesn't include the other overheads or the Internet latency but in this case the sat latency is by far the largest part of the overall system latency

For comparison A Skylinc platform might be 3 Km above ground and 30 Km away, your packet has to go a little over 30 Km + the 3Km down the tether so call it 35Km, return trip is the same

70/300 000

latency 0.00023 seconds or 0.23 msec, pretty insignificant compared with the other latencies involved.

I have no idea how practical /impractical Skylinc is but I do know that they are not the only people looking at High altitude stationary platforms

Another option (theoretical at this stage) is LEO (low Earth orbiting Satellites) these would be orbiting at ~ 300 Km and lots would be needed. Round trip distances would be of the order of 1200 Km

Latency
1200/300 000
= 0.004 seconds or 4 msec

.Brendan

DonegalMan

Mark@mediasat wrote:

To clarify I was saying that I seam to have had a better experience than Brendan using satellite broadband

I'm coming in to this debate late, but I had 2 way satellite in my business in Letterkenny for about a year and my experience echoes Brendan's - it was mostly sh*te

Browsing and email were ok, but not noticeably any better than ISDN dialup and downloads were great. The main thing I wanted to do however, was access a MS SQL Server database, hosted on a dedicated server. It was dire, returning a table or view with less than a thousand rows could take anything up to 30 seconds, it was as exciting as watching paint dry.

Also used it for PC Anywhere linking over the net to PC's in some of our branches, again it was painfully slow.

I only stuck with it that long because Letterkenny exchange wasn't enabled at that time.

ednwireland

the oly experiences are similiar i know one company that uloads hundreds of word documents every day and they found it was faster with isdn than a 2/512 satellite link downlaods and browsing were fine anything else forget it. i've actually been looking at this for home we can't get dsl despite being on an enabled exchange and looking at the install costs mainbly its just not viable for 2 people working from home looked at the one way and it seems to have all the disadvantages and not many advantages esp. with the teeny caps that most companies have. mediasat don't look any better or worse but a €2500 euro install cost for a dish and modem come on with electronics prices as they are how can that be justifiable ? . it seems that the companies are resigned to small user bases so put up the hardware and install cost. anyway for myself and most small business it really doesn't justify itself, i've got one guy who wanted it until i told him the install cost and the monthly rental and he just stuck with isdn
I think mark has a pair of rose tined spectacles somewhere (i would too if they were paying me)