Starspeeder - Satillite ISP

[Drefsab]

I've placed an order for the equipment needed for starspeeder. With any luck it should all arive on monday. I will keep everyone here posted about how it goes and how the service is once I have it all up and running. I know that so far satilite ISP's have had poor service (just look at europe online), but I have high hopes for this one.

I've been in contact with their technical support department about serveral issues already, so far they have proved to be helpfull and polite, the only thing I think they are lacking is detailed information for the more technicaly minded of us out there.

So with any luck I will be able to report that those of us that dont live on an area covered by ADSL or Cable Modems can enjoy a decent connection speed for only £15 per month. The other thing I would like to mention is that I've only payed for a DVB card (£100), I am able to use a sky dish to lock onto the satillite. So it may be cheaper than you'd think.

[nonstop]

How did you lock your dish onto the satillite?
how much did that cost?


Let us know how you get on...

[Drefsab]

All the astra satillites are in geosyncronas orbit. This means all you need to do is point your dish in the sky at the satillite (in this case 45 degree's east) and it will always be locked on that satillite. My dish and DVB card are due to be delivered tomorrow evening so with any luck I will get a chance to put it up and get online before the end of the week.

[Drefsab]

I got my equipment this morning.. ok yes it was a day late but I dont mind. The package included a 60cm mesh dish.. a universal LNB.. all the wall mounts and cables.. and a DVB card :) All I have to do now is put up the dish and then hook it up to the pc. Since in working today and tomorrow it looks like I'll have to do this on thursday.

[nonstop]

I can hardly wait!!!

[spanky]

Is gettin his StarSpeeder kit today so I'll let you know how it goes aswell!!!!!

[Drefsab]

All my equipment arrived yesterday. I've installed the DVB card into my pc and I have booked an installer to put my dish up (only cost £20) thursday afternoon.

I've had all my username and passwords for the starspeeder VPN server so I should be downloading with a decent speed any time soon.

So far the starspeeder support staff have been very good in answering my questions. They even gave me an installation help line for the installer if they have any problems locking on to the satillite.

[Drefsab]

Im online with them now! :) its great getting 50k/s all the time. Im more than happy with it. I recomend starspeeder to anyone.

[scottish69]

:confused: Does any1 know what kind of ping people are getting on the starspeeder service? i need to know because i play games as well as download huge files. I heard its around 1000 which is obviously too high for me.... any thoughts keep me posted!

Scott.

[Drefsab]

As you probably know im on starspeeder and my average ping is 395ms. Thats fine for downloads but If I want to play games then I drop off the satillite and use my ISDN.

[spanky]

Ello, its all up and working, vpn and equipment was a bit of a pain in the **** to set up. But once all that was sorted out, its actually very good. IE dl's are a bit yo yoing, but if u use a dl manager that normally sorts that out. Napster, if you hit the right connection ie.T1, then I get a constant 49k now :D. For me IRC works, but the dl speeds again are a bit iffy, you have to hit the right connection again. All in all it is a very good service for only 15 squids a month, and if you have never had broadband and wont have for some time then this is the ticket.:D

[algore]

Im a newbie at Broadband

[Drefsab]

and your point is?

[algore]

read the topic, What is wrong with Europe Online???

[Drefsab]

opps sorry I shoud read the posts more carefully. Well to answer your question, it would be easyer to answer whats right with EON. Basicaly ist VERY slow.. and to get data to come in you have to route it all via a proxy. That means you cant use IRC, ICQ, FTP or such like with out a lot of messing about. The service is up and down like a yo-yo, in fact last month I belive it was down for more than 60% of the month. EON as a company dont care about their internet customers they will do nothing to help you or solve any of your problems.

The thing to remeber is that they are planning to drop the internet service all together and provide streaming media instead. So in short I wouldnt recomend them.

[gopikanta]

OK Drefsab... you have my attention...

I'm whats known as a disabled internet user (no chance of cable/adsl for 2-3 years). I looked at the satellite option over a year ago but was disappointed at what I saw then. Seeing some new kids on the block (SkyStorm and Starspeeder) I have decided to take another look. And it's got me excited. But, I would appreciate if anyone could help answer a few questions before I dive into the nectarian world of 50k/s.

1) Which of the 2 companies listed above are the better, and why?

2) Does your average ISP have any objection to using satellite for data coming down?

3) Being a little higher than average online user (time online and downloads attempted (music, games, apps. etc.), does Starspeeder/Skystorm have a daily/weekly limit on downloads/online time?

4) I consider myself a fairly capable computer person, figuring out problems, changing hardware, would I really need someone to install the equipment?

5) After the initial payment for hardware/subscription, can one set up a direct debit payment scheme?

6) Can one still use Zonealarm, AVP.... the usual protection programmes?

6) How long does it take to receive the equipment, and how long before you are connected after installation?

The prospect of faster surfing and downloading is very exciting. Please help answer my queries, much appreciated..

[Drefsab]

I know what you mean I to was a disabled internet user.. but the anoying thing is I work for the tech support of a broadband ISP and I cant even have the thing myself. Thats why I decided to give Starspeeder a go. I had looked at Europe Online for a long time but I never went for it cos of the bad rep it gets. Anyway onto the answers.

1) I belive starspeeder to be the best for the simple fact that they are live now. I know a lot more people other than myself on starspeeder and we are all very happy about it. I have yet to find one single person on skystorm.

2) No ISP I've found has a problem with using the satellite for downstream at all. In fact they are in favor of this as it save's their bandwidth.

3) There are not limits to what you can download at all (That was what made up my mind about them). I have been online for weeks now and my pc is always online downloading one iso or another at about 45-60k/s.

4) You should easily be able to install the hardware. The only thing you may been help with is putting up the satillite dish and aligning it. Many people have done both.

5) Im sure they can set up a direct debit system for you. I cant say for 100% certain as I dont work for them but they are VERY helpful and will do what they can for you.

6) Yes zonealarm and AVP both work fine.. I've yet to find a program that will not work with it yet :)

7) If you order your equipment from Trac they do next day delivery. They are out of stock at the moment but they will get a big shipment of the DVB card on monday morning. So you could have it all on tuesday. When you order your equipment ring them up and ask for the MAC address of the DVB card as this needs to be registered with Starspeeder. It takes 48 hours from when you register your MAC address untill you can use it.

[gopikanta]

Thank you Drefsab for your swift reply. I will be on the phone Monday to order my equipment. I see from the latest news on Starspeeders website that higher speed overnight download queue's are soon to be available with their upcoming 'Gold' account.....know any more about that service? And sending the 'Mac' address to Starspeeder, excuse my ignorance, that's got nothing to do with Apple Mac has it? Just cos my PC is not a Mac. Getting more and more excited!!!

[Drefsab]

No problem :) Im happy to help. As for the speed of my reply, im always on the net so I'll reply as soon as I can. I just remembered that monday is a bank holiday so I dont know if they will be in, they probably will be but if they are not you may have to try on tuesday.

As for the Gold service they havnt let no very much about it but basicaly you que up files to download at a certain time. At that time those files come in from the dish at upto 6Mbps even if you are offline (your pc will have to be on thought). This will require some 3rd party software but starspeeder will provide that free of charge.

A MAC address is the "Media Access Control" address. This is the unique identifyer of every network card out there. In theory no two network cards should have the same MAC address, and seeing as the DVB card is a network card it has a MAC address. So need to worry you dont need to have anything to do with a Macintosh. No offence to all Macintosh users out there.

I know how you feel I had beed waiting for broadband at home for a LONG time and I was over the moon to get this.

[Rainbow Warrior]

Thanks, Drefsab for keeping everyone informed as to how the satellite service is working.

It is certainly good to see that there is an alternative to ADSL or Cable, and that it is working. Some areas purportedly ADSL enabled or Cabled can't get broadband - satellite broadband reaches places even BT can't reach !

I can see some mini-satellite dish attachments for laptops coming soon.

Presumably, the returned data is beamed across the whole footprint of the satellite area - are there any security implications on that ? eg if your online bank sends back data regarding your bank account, or your e-mails being collected.

Thanks again.

[Stephen79]

This does sound a good deal all in all. I have read through your posts, but what kind of dish is used?? I guess the connection go directly into the DVB card?

Steve

[Bluetack]

I hope its not a standard black mess one! i have just lobbed one in the bin last week :(

[gopikanta]

Hi Drefsab, finally got my setup connected..after a few minor 'wheres the transponder?' issues, but it all is a little disappointing to be truthful at the moment. Just quite a bit slower than expected. I tried the Microsoft test file and managed to very briefly flicker near 20k for a second but mostly settling around 8-12. Certainly nowhere near the 40-60k I was hoping for. Tried all sorts of downloads from various http and ftp sites, and Napster from T3 (4-5k, disappointing, same as usual)connections, and again all floundered from zero to 10, 15 briefly, even more briefly up to 20. But no 30 what to speak of 40 and above. My web pages dont really seem much faster either, maybe a little, but not in a flash.

P111 450, 256 ram, and connecting as I normally do at 52,000kbps. My modem has always maintained a pretty steady d'load speed (for 56k) of 4-5.5k, which is pretty good for standard modem, so I dont think its a modem problem. Any tweaking secrets or help available? I do use flashget mainly for d'loading. The Penta@net signal box thing on the screen is 3/4 red 1/4 green and doesnt seem to get past the B in MBps, hovering around 0.02 - 0.05/0.06. Any ideas, tips, help of any kind to speed things up a bit? Your friendly slowcoach......

[welby]

I don't know much about broadband sat, but i know 4 sky that if your dish is almost lined up (not quite but just enough for it to 'lock' onto a transponder on the satelite) your speed (well picture will be jumpy / lost + sound crackly on sky (yes even on Sky digital))

also are there trees / other buildings in the line of site at all, cos my sky dish could not be placed where the old anolouge dish was because of a tree

So if it was not installed by a qualified installer it might be an idea to ge the yellow pages and find one, it might help, but that is a long shot

hope this helps