BajaNomad

Alternative to Starband or Hughesnet?

astrobaja - 11-9-2009 at 01:11 PM

Hi all,

I've been customer to both Starband and Hughesnet and can honestly say both are pretty crappy. Starband might have a slight edge in terms of FAP, since you can monitor your useage on a rolling average basis.
Since Starband moved to a new bird their service has been pretty slow, about 30-50% slower than normal. I have gotten a notice from them saying they are working on it but its all over the place right now in terms of speed. We upgraded to the 1500 package which is like 25$ more a month to give us a 5 gig weekly bandwidth and supposedly twice the upload speed, but in reality its still barely 100 Kbps (instead of the up to 256 K).
Is there any sort of alternative to these 2 companies for satellite internet? I'd pay more $$ to get something that gave better more consistent performance, perhaps even roll up VOIP and internet in one package. Starband does offer commercial grade service but its like $400 a month, plus new equipment. Does VOIP use up a lot of bandwidth I wonder?

monoloco - 11-9-2009 at 01:51 PM

Have you looked into the Telcel 3g modem? It works good for me and supports my majicjack with no problems.

Alternatives ?

MrBillM - 11-9-2009 at 04:41 PM

A High-Gain External antenna and good Cracking software ?

Alternatives to StarBad and UsedNut

BCSTech - 11-9-2009 at 09:36 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by astrobaja Is there any sort of alternative to these 2 companies for satellite internet? I'd pay more $$ to get something that gave better more consistent performance, perhaps even roll up VOIP and internet in one package. Starband does offer commercial grade service but its like $400 a month, plus new equipment. Does VOIP use up a lot of bandwidth I wonder?
VSAT Systems using iDirect or ViaSat platforms are available but, you're right, they can be a little pricey compared to SB or HN. SB's commercial service is in this league.

In any event, you'll still need new equipment. You can reuse your 1.2 meter StarBand dish, tho, for what it's worth. You'll need a new modem and outdoor electronics, probably around $2,200 to $2,500 if you know what you're doing and shop. Monthly service starts at $150 per month, and there are a number of service providers to choose from.

But... most of these "commercial" service providers offer a guaranteed service level, there are fewer users competing with you on your same channel, and you can use VoIP, no problem. They're built to support it.

The problem with VoIP is not so much that it uses a lot of bandwidth, but it's more an issue with the amount of delay and jitter over satellite - the delay in getting signals to and from the satellite and back, and variations in the spaces between the little data packets. When these are high, VoIP doesn't like it at all.

Also you need good, stable up speed. Most common complaint with VoIP over sat is that you can hear the caller but they can't hear you. That's a problem with your upload speed being too low or too variable.

We like VSATs because we can talk to the service techs directly, and they know we're in Mexico and it doesn't matter. No playing games, or having to look up the weather conditions for some fake address in the US before calling tech support "How's the weather there in Houston?" "Gee, I dunno, I'm not there right now...d'oh!"

Downside? Unless you watch what you're doing, you can use up a lot of data and go over your monthly plan limit on these systems. Unlike SN and HN, many of these services charge by the MB when you go over your limit. One customer we had ran up an $800 bill the first month. The service provider was flexible, tho, and forgave a good portion of that. Higher service level plans avoid this.

astrobaja - 11-10-2009 at 01:09 PM

Thanks for that Alan

You pretty much confirmed what I suspected. Regular service on either Hughes or Starband means you get UP a certain level but the reality is that up and down speeds vary greatly depending on network congestion, this is why voip works so erratically. The premium commercial grade plans assure certain levels of speed, but for this you pay a fair bit more, which is to be expected. Wondering if these companies will ever come down say 30-40% in their prices? I expect not as these types of plans have a limited customer base. For me the rolling weekly bandwidth of 5 gig works out pretty well, when we get our astronomy B&B up and running we will need that bandwidth as astronomers are big time techno geeks!
Have to wait and see if Starbands moving to a new bird will eventually make for better more consistent speeds, perhaps my voip will be more stable then...

astrobaja - 11-10-2009 at 01:11 PM

Mono,

We have little to no cell coverage here, but there is a new cell tower being put up down in San Telmo so perhaps in the future it could be a solution.

Riom - 11-10-2009 at 06:52 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by astrobaja
For me the rolling weekly bandwidth of 5 gig works out pretty well,


The Telcel 3G has FAP limits as well: 3GB per month for prepaid (around $50/mo), 3GB/mo and 10GB/mo for long contracts ($35 and $50).

roadhog - 11-11-2009 at 09:54 AM

The conversation is about internet satellite reception at Baja ?
I asked Hughes about Baja. Hughes said, no reception for Baja.
The interest is using:
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsus/
https://sslearthquake.usgs.gov/ens/?page=help
for research, not an on-site seismograph unit.

The potential equipment mounts on/in a Ford van.
Any ideas on power consumption/hr ?

Is this possible ?

BCSTech - 11-11-2009 at 10:06 AM

UsedNut will not knowingly offer their service outside the US but it does work in Baja all the way to Cabo San Lucas.

If you go with them be sure you do not get an HN9000 modem. It WILL NOT work in almost all of Baja and moving it anywhere outside of a few miles from its US installation point will cause it to deactivate.

[Edited on 11-11-2009 by BCSTech]

BCSTech - 11-11-2009 at 10:11 AM

HughesNet power supplies are rated for 64 watts.

Yes, it is possible to have a mobile unit. If you're moving around a lot and USGS is paying for it, get a DataStorm motorized unit that will automatically find the satellite no matter where you are. Very pricey but saves a lot of setup time.

[Edited on 11-11-2009 by BCSTech]

roadhog - 11-11-2009 at 09:35 PM

Alan, suggest an ideal BAJA mobile system for receiving USGS data ?

roadhog - 11-11-2009 at 10:39 PM

Alan,
read your business site. Hughes gives the equipment away, Idirect costs 3500 up.
How is that ?

viabaja - 11-12-2009 at 07:38 PM

Astrobaja - Hughes Net SUCKS!! I have had them for 2 years up here in the high desert (calif). If Verizon ever decides to run fiber out to where we live, I will drop them like a hot rock. Hughes Net promises everything, but delivers NADA. One pays for a set service and the only time you get it is a 2 AM! I'm told Starband is the same way. If you call for service, you will be speaking to someone in India. There ought to be a class action law suit against Hughes for false advertising. Also, ever since they "upgraded" their email service, our 3rd party email service/downloads has slowed down big time, notably around 5 PM. go figure.

BCSTech - 11-13-2009 at 06:53 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by roadhog
Alan, read your business site. Hughes gives the equipment away, Idirect costs 3500 up. How is that ?
HughesNet is consumer-grade US only, and iDirect commercial-grade international. We can't get either system and ship it/import it to Mexico for free.

[Edited on 11-13-2009 by BCSTech]

larryC - 11-13-2009 at 09:34 AM

astro
My starband has been working very well for the last 2 weeks, before that voip was unusable. Seems that Starband is trying to get it togegher after the switch to the new sat. Not sure what you are complaining about, is it a problem with not enough gig allowance per week? Or is your voip not working well? I just have the residential service at $50 per month, uploads are only 30 to 40 kb sec, but that is enough for now to make the service usable for us. My wife talks to our daughter for an hour or more and only misses a few words in that time. We use Magicjack. Since you have the 1500 service, did you install the 2 watt transmitter? I have seen some accounts where the customer upgrades but the dealer did not send out the upgraded transmitter. I assume you are repointed to 121 sat, do you know what your EBno is? You can view that in the Skymanage page. A low EBno will make your system erratic and cause it to drop service occasionally. Low EBno can be caused by a couple of different things, poor dish aiming, bad wire or connection in the receive circuit or a LNB going bad. Check your LNB, a .5db is what you want. If you are getting FAPed did you know that if you do large downloads between the hours of 9pm and 3 am PST, that those downloads do not count against you.
I am a Starband installer and if I can help, or you have any questions I'll try to answer them.
Larry

astrobaja - 11-13-2009 at 10:44 AM

Hi Larry,

Very much appreciate your advice and help here! We did upgrade to the 1500 package and the installer Roberto came to do the repoint and install the new 2W transmitter. He did forget to change the workshop address from 256 to 257, but with his help via e-mail I got into the modem setup page to change it. When you talk about the EBno parameter is it in the same setup page as the workshop info? If so I know how to get to it to check.
We too use Magicjack but get very poor results especially with the other end hearing us, this was the case with the 1000 plan and continues to be the case with the 1500. I use various sites to test down & upload speeds and get very varied results (depending on time of day, so presumably network loads factor in here) download speeds range from 0.51-1.12 Mb/s
and upload are between 0.04-0.09 Kbps. According to the speed test sites these figures are 30-50% below what the average starband user is experiencing, so not sure if that is accurate or not. I go to the starband.net site to see my bandwidth usage so I'm not getting Fap'ed. I will check the EBno to see what that is....

BCSTech - 11-13-2009 at 10:46 AM

To change your download schedule in Windows XP and others, go to Start > Settings > Control Panel > Scheduled Tasks.

Double Click on any program entries you find there, click the Schedule tab, and change the download time to start at 9PM BCN or 10 PM BCS. This will help ensure your downloads finish before 3 AM Pacific time.

Next, go to Start > Settings > Control Panel > Automatic Updates, and do the same thing there, changing the download time to start at 9PM BCN or 10 PM BCS.

larryC - 11-14-2009 at 09:59 AM

Astro
Alan has some good advice, just be aware that if you start a down load at 8:59 by accident then all of that download will be charged to your account so I usually start mine at 9:05 just to be sure.
As far as the EBno, it is found on the Skymanage "status" page, on the left side click the "telemetry" tab. It should be better than a 5 and hopefully in the 7 or 8 range. Alan mentioned in a previous post that you have a 1.2 meter dish is that correct? If so then your numbers should even be better than 8. You say that "Roberto" didn't configure the 257 into the modem, did the modem work before he left? On the modems that I have misconfigured, the 4th light would never come on, which is a hint that it is configured wrong and needs to be redone.
Another possibility for the poor Magicjack performance is that your computer may need to be cleaned up. A freind of mine was having similar problems and he ended up taking his computer up to San Diego and having someone up there basically reload the operating system and his voip worked much better. I guess a good test for you could be to try a different computer on your modem and see if that makes any difference. One more possibility is to get your dealer to have your account reassigned to the other cluster, (there are only 2, either 90 or 91) maybe that would help. Anyway look at Skymanage and see what your EBno is and then we can go from there. we can also do this u2u but I thought that someone else might benefit that is having problems.
Larry

BCSTech - 11-14-2009 at 11:30 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by larryCAlan mentioned in a previous post that you have a 1.2 meter dish is that correct?
oops, my assumption, based only on installations I've seen in BCS!

astrobaja - 11-15-2009 at 01:14 PM

Hi Larry and Alan,

I actually have the 0.75 meter dish, I was told I id not need the 1.2 being that I was on Baja Norte. I went to the telemetry page on the modem and I have a good EBno. of 8.7!
I think Starband may have streamlined their service as I'm getting much faster upload speeds usually between 70-160 kbps! This has been for the last 2 days so MagicJack works a fair bit better!
Good point on the Windows updates and waiting till after nine to do high bandwidth stuff. The only big bandwidth stuff I do is online streaming video from Netflix and I wait till like 5-10 minutes after 9.

Bajabus - 11-15-2009 at 08:08 PM

here is the deal. SB used to have 5 transponders on G-27. They recently leased 6 new transponders on G-23.

Right now they only are using 2 transponders on the new G23 bird. Both are kind a crowded right now but it's for a reason.

2 days ago they started turning off the line cards and hub equipment that was dedicated to the transponders on G27 (the old bird). eventually only 1.5 transponders will be left on the old bird for cluster 80 Vertical customers using only the newer Nova SE modems. No legacy equipment will be allowed on the old bird...they use up too much bandwidth and are very inefficient.

These line cards and hub equipment are now being put into service for the additional new transponders on G23 the new bird. As new transponders come into service over the next few weeks customers on the new bird will start to see much better speeds as they get balanced out over the 6 new transponders SB has. All in All SB is going from 5 transponders on the old bird to 7.5 transponders in total between both birds.

Also there are some new good developments coming from SB in terms of VOIP but it's all still in beta and protected by NDA's

Other good news is that as customers attrition off the old bird, some dealers will be able to still create new accounts on the old bird so SB will still be available on a limited basis in BCS where the footprint of the new bird does not reach

For auto pointing platforms Motosat is OK, we are a dealer and sell quite a few of them. We just started testing a new unit from General Dynamics that is quite impressive and not much more that a motosat unit. if you really want a bomb proof dependable auto pointing unit you need to look at an AVL/Tracstar unit but be prepared to drop a nice chunk of change on it.

Spacenet is SB's parent company and they are the ones selling commercial service plans. As pointed out they are expensive, offer limited band width at the low end price points but are very stable and robust. Spacenets commercial equipment is much less expensive than iDirect...on the order of $1600 for a complete sys with 2 watt BUC. When i have used equipment which is often you can get set up for under 1K. if you already have a 1.2 dish.....even less. If you already have SB service with the newer SE modem, a 1.2 meter dish and a 2 watt TX then you would have no upfront costs to switch to a commercial service plan. If you have one of the older legacy modems you can upgrade it now for $149.99 directly from SB. They will only ship to a USA address.

Commercial service is a world of difference but the additional expense might not be for everyone.

BTW Spacenet or Starband really does not give a hoot if you are in mexico and you don't have to be afraid to mention it if you have to call in.

If you call and ask about service in mexico they will send you to a dealer with a proven track record of supporting OCONUS customers ( outside the continental US ). There are several of us

[Edited on 16-11-2009 by Bajabus]

larryC - 11-16-2009 at 08:40 AM

Max
Thanks for the input, always nice to get your take on things. I'm looking forward to the improvement in the service, here in Bahia we seem to be right on the edge of the footprint where the .75 mtr dish becomes unusable. I'm getting complaints of sync and online lights going out in the afternoons. I am finding that the older phase 2 dishes get a better Ebno than the newer phase 3 dishes by as much as 2 db. (5db with the phase 3 and 7db with the phase 2) so unless I can find a supply of the older dishes some of my customers may have to buy a 1.2 meter dish. Do you have a source for those?

Astro
Sounds like your system is aimed properly so I can't be of any help there, voip reliability and uplaod and download speeds are highly variable and not always acceptable to some customers. All I can say is "welcome to the new sattelite". Hopefully Max is right and the system will improve soon.
Larry

Bajabus - 11-16-2009 at 10:11 AM

Larry there are a few things you can try for customers in a marginal area for the size dish they are using.

1) there are currently two clusters in use on G23. Cluster 90 and cluster 91. you want to make sure that those in marginal areas are on cluster 90. the reason is that cluster 90 uses DVB modulation VS cluster 91 which uses 8PSK modulation. 8PSK is a great modulation algorithm that allows teleports to squeeze a lot more data in a given frequency spectrum however the trade off is a lower Eb no at a given power level. Marginal customers should be using cluster 90 which was specifically set up to help AK and other OCONUS customers avoid low Ebno/loss of sync/loss of con issues and give a better rain fade margin to them.

2).96 meter dish is a lot less expensive not just in price point for the product but also because it can be shipped via regular UPS and FedEx. Shipping a 1.2 meter dish is an expensive proposition because it has to go ground freight on a carrier like Yellow or Conway. We sell both in our online store. The price includes shipping anywhere in the lower 48/USA. Beware that the OD for the pipe is not the same. the .96 and the 1.2 commonly mount on a pipe with a 2.88 OD. You may be able to get by with a .96 there. Of course a 1.2 would be better and give you a much better rain fade margin and Ebno. Spacenets commercial plans mandate an Ebno of 9 or higher in order to guarantee the service level agreements. typically in CONUS areas Ebno is in the 8 - 13 area for SB residential service.

BTW the world teleport association today released a list of the top 20 teleports in the world in 3 categories. I'm happy to say that Spacenet was in two of the categories. Hughesnet didn't make any of the categories.

astrobaja - 11-17-2009 at 09:47 AM

Max, thanks very much for the detailed explanation of what is going to be hapening over the next few weeks.
Please let us know when the majority of the new transpnders become active, also good news about some developments with respect to VOIP alternatives!