Satellite internet advice

[Josey]

I live off grid, so I use Starband satellite internet. It has worked well for years, then it started to lose sync and drop out. Starband is a somewhat troubled company and there are no dealers/installers out here. On the advice of the Starband techs, I purchased a new modem, one upgraded to 1000 kbps download speed. But it has never worked well. On their advice, I also changed the LNB and the feedhorn.

The problem is that surfing is difficult because websites don't load or don't load property (red x instead of photos, controls overlapped). Some sites don't work at all, or take several trys. Streaming radio is tough because it loses connection on a regular basis.

The download speeds are consistent at about 940 kbps, but upload speeds are slow, ranging from 11 to 90, with the most common speeds being in the low 20s.

No one at Starband is able to help. And I signed a 2-year contract with I upgraded to the faster service.

If anyone has an idea, I'd appreciate the advice.

Thanks,

Josey

 

[BIGIRON]

Re: Satelliet internet advice

My sister uses WildBlue. Very happy with it. Don't know her exact speeds, but she says it's every bit as fast as her DSL at work.

Your extended contract probably has all sorts of boilerplate to keep you from cancelling but maybe you can wear them out with service calls (if you don't wear yourself out first) and they'd be more accepting of a cancellation.

I don't know what's considered industry acceptable performance, but I bet there's a geek or two around who does.

 

[matrixshaman]

Re: Satelliet internet advice

You have my sympathy. When I moved from an area where DSL was common (and even fiber optic was available) to an area where 28.8 Kbps was maximum available speed from the phone company I decided to try Satellite with Direcway. It was one of the worst nightmares I've ever experienced from any company. The bad part too is they probably got away with a lot of their nonsense on people who didn't know better but with my background in computers and networking of over 28 years they didn't get away with all their usual nonsense with me -- and that usually resulted in them becoming very abusive - I could not believe they let people say things to customers that were said in my attempts to let them know there were problems with their system. And they had so many problems it was unreal that they could continue selling service at their prices. And forget doing anything on a secure web site as it was slower than 28.8 K modems by far - something they failed to point out in their advertising. And this was the type of web site I was using extensively.
So I was looking for other technologies and found some in trial phases like the one using your AC electric lines to feed a signal across (which unfortunately won't do you any good if you are off grid). It seemed promising but I haven't heard more about it - however I haven't looked lately either. Also the extended range WiFi holds some promise. Cellular looks like it's probably still too expensive for most areas so it's the pits (but I haven't checked on this either lately). Are you off grid to where you don't have regular phone service? If so you may be stuck with satellite but obviously I don't recommend Direcway. I'd detail all the problems I had with them here but I think I'd burn my fingers out before I was done I really have not looked into any of this lately as my last area finally got DSL. If you do have regular phone service I'd consider using a modem and fine tuning the computer and browser with all the speed enhancements you can get. Have you googled for alternative services in your area? It seems it really ought to be required to have at least one high speed service available to all areas in this day and age (I know in which Utopian dream ) And if you are in Washington state - well Billy G. should be ashamed that his home state still has people without decent access :laughing:
Best of luck in getting a better service - I guess that is one of the slight drawbacks to living off grid but maybe there is some other satellite service that is better hopefully or the extended Wifi. I admire that you are living off grid. I could do so right now with what I have but I do enjoy having the grid hookups as long as they are available.

 

[Josey]

Re: Satelliet internet advice

Thanks Bigiron and Matrix. I do have a phone, but it runs 13 miles to the nearest exchange and needs some repeaters. It has a lot of noise, so internet by phone is not really possible.

The thing is, my service for years was great. No problems at all. Way faster than dial-up. But something went wrong during the upgrade. They don't have anyone here to service the equipment (my newly assigned dealer is in Nevada), so I've been doing it myself. The signal is strong, so I know I did my part.

It is frustrating, but to be honest, having access, even spotty access to the internet is awesome way out here.

A couple springs ago, a violet and green swallow was spending a lot of time trying to get into one of my bird houses, but the hole was a too small. I got on the internet, found the exact size hole they like and ran out and did a quick drill job. About an hour later, I walked past the bird house and the swallow was sitting inside looking out. Priceless.

Josey

 

[BIGIRON]

Your swallow story is great. That's the kind of stuff that makes it all worthwhile.

I'm sure you've done the simple stuff. Replaced connectors, suspect cableing, power sources, cleaned the dish and so on because you state you've got a strong signal (at the modem?).

My sister lives on a ranch in central Texas. She had dialup (very slow becuase of the distance and quality of the lines - like you said). She was on the fringe of cellular, which she tried, but it was spotty.

I just talked to her, she's had no problems with WildBlue at all and continues to be most pleased with it.

 

[sunspot]

. If you do have regular phone service I'd consider using a modem and fine tuning the computer and browser with all the speed enhancements you can get.

Not to stray OT, but where can I find that information? AT&T is my ISP and I use Firefox.

I live in a rural area without cable or cellular. It ticks me off that my phone is fed from a crossbox that has fiber-optics. The phon-co won't put in the DSLAM that is needed for DSL.

 

[Josey]

Thanks, Bigiron. The strong signal -- or at least a good signal -- is measured by the satellite company themselves as the signal bouncing back from my equipment. So that seems to eliminate my equipment, unless I have an intermittent partial failure.

 

[TedTheLed]

I wish I had the info I looked up years ago when I had the same problem, maybe if you googed 'home telephone telemetry' you'll find similar stuff; that is, setting up your own transmitter and receiver at the nearest hard telephone line (hopefully a securable spot, with some power) -- not cheap, but it could work..

I ended up just laying "gopher-proof" telephone cable on the ground..in over ten years not a single bite on the 1000 foot run..! why the animals don't even try a nibble I don't know, the wire is armored and grease impregnated, but the rats and bunnies don't even try, maybe they read the alifornia warning label?

 

[BobVA]

Hi Josey:
Just speculating, but the first thing I'd check is the cables. Coax can get water intrusion over time, critters can munch on it, etc.

Best of luck!

Bob

 

[Josey]

Thanks, Bob. I'm going to replace the transmitter. If that doesn't work, I'll take your advice and put in all new cables. A squirrel did chew the cable about three years ago, but it worked fine. Maybe water finally did get in. The uploading runs slow and intermittently, which seems like it would be an electronic issue, especially since the download speed is OK.

Josey

 

[BobVA]

Do you have/can you borrow a laptop for some troubleshooting? If so, could you drag all the gear out next to the antenna and hook up everything with test cables? Might be faster/cheaper than running new ones if you're not sure that's the problem. If it doesn't work any better there, that probably lets out the cable (but it doesn't hurt to replace them periodically, anyway).

I'm guessing the transmitter is at the dish, correct? If the uplink cable is bad, you could be putting up a strong, but noisy, signal to the satellite. If the signal report they are giving you is just signal strength, that could be misleading.

What would help is if they can do a BERT (bit error rate test) with your modem in a "loopback" configuration. Basically they send you a random stream of data which your modem turns around and sends right back. They then compare the outgoing and incoming data to look for errors. If they already did something like that and it passed, it's probably not a signal equipment problem on your end. More likely would be an incompatible configuration on one end or the other (they may be able to remotely configure your modem, so it could be either end).

The classic case is setting the acknowledgment delay too low for the link latency. Then when you send a packet your modem is expecting confirmation that it was received (acknowledgment) from the distant end sooner than it can get there. So the modem sends it again - then it gets the first acknowledgment and sends the next packet, while the distant end is busy sending an error that it didn't receive the second packet, but got the first one twice, then they ping-pong error messages back and forth while they sort it out, then it happens again.

Something like that fits the symptoms you're seeing (good signal strength, slow throughput) so if you come up empty on your troubleshooting, you might see if they can confirm all the protocol/modem settings on both ends. Also might be worth finding out if they changed out any equipment on their end 'round about the time your problem cropped up. They may not have configured it optimally, or it may not be perfectly compatible with your gear.

Long shot: try googling around with your modem info (modem, make) and details ("slow uplink", etc.) to see if anybody else has had similar issues (particularly if they started at the same time).

Good hunting!

Bob

 

[Josey]

Thanks, Bob. That's a lot of great suggestions -- enough to keep me going for a while and enough to keep up my optimism. It's nice to have a plan B while I'm working on plan A. If nothing else, I can sound intelligent when I call up their techs. Maybe that will scare them into taking the problem seriously.

I really appreciate your help.

Josey