Anyone here on/used satellite broadband?

[autopilot]

It's looking like my only option where i live until WiMAX takes off (if ever).

If you use it, or have much experience with it, i would like your opinions please.

I realise it's no good for gaming or VoIP, but i can live without that for now. The type of service i am looking at is a one-way connection - the upload is over dialup with the download via Satellite (set up costs are upwards of £1,000 for 2 way and i have heard bad things about it anyway).

You can get up to 24Mb/sec unlimited download with some services now and the price seems to have come right down too. The only thing is that there is very little decent info on the net and would like to hear from people who have it and can tell me what the realistic speeds that can be expected are and what other limitations/reliability is like.

Thanks.

[ultim8um]

Well... As I used to work for a comms company that specialised in satty links (commercial ones mind you) I can tell you this... Latency is the killer with (if I remember correctly) 256kbps being the fastest you could go using straight TCP/IP with no adjustments. However using it for home broadband is a different kettle of the proverbial...

Commercially you would use protocol converters or just not use TCP/IP directly over the link.

Anyhoo see here: http://www.dslreports.com/faq/satell...epth+Info#8237 and scroll about a third of the way down to where it says Tweaks.

Use Dr TCP to adjust your RWIN etc and you should find that its fine for downloading and browsing etc (apart from the latency!).