Internet via satellite

[roykp]

I am moving to Spain to live (!!) and will have to have Internet via satellite connection (rural area with poor telephone line). Does anyone have any experience of (a) exactly how this works (I believe I will still have to use a dial-up connection to an ISP) and (b) a recommendation for the best PCI card to use?

Appreicate any help/advice

[thekingofpain]

A friend of mine has Starband and she is having nothing but problems with it, its 2 way and her problem being a web designer is it wont properly upload the large files she uses to maintain sites, she has been round and round with them trying to sort it out to no avail, works ok otherwise tho...

[statiatech]

Well...I live on an island in the Caribbean now. I had to give up cable and DSL. The company put in a large dish that is pulling a signal from Cal. in US. I can download at speads of around 300KB per sec(thats the best I have seen). On average I download at 100+KB per secong...not to bad http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif. The upload speed is another story. The dish we have will transmit also. We pay extra for the speed of that and we only paid for 32Kb. Very very slow if you need to upload anything large. And as for online gaming..give it up. I have not been able to play any games online...lag is a killer. Never had a chance to really play Tribes II
http://www.sysopt.com/forum/frown.gif

[NDC]

Moved to Networking & Internet

[Praetorian]

I think Satellite connection is only 1 way (I'm not sure) so you'll need a modem to upload anything. The satellite would be all down transfers so you'll be able to surf the net quickly. When you ask about the best PCI card you should get a hardware modem. Ask around here and they'll explain the difference between a hardware and software modem. I personally didn't think there was a difference.

[Cody]

Most Satellite providers offer two options:

1) One-way satellite (you download off satellite, and upload over dial-up)
2) Two-way satellite (you download&upload from satellite).

The Two-way is usually about $10 more, but the dialup calls usually come close to that a month.

Note - satellite is bad for online gaming, since the signal travels at light speed, and there is a constant lag.

[Philip1952]

It is avaiable up and down load now. It has a lot of lag if you want to play games. but if all you want to do is surf the internet. It will be good for that. Here is a link for one of the companys. http://www.starband.com/
The other one is direct tv. I don't have a link to them.