Satellite - T1 - Frame Relay - Oh My...

Cal Rogers is moving (no not from Kissling) in RL. Heading off to a rural area of Missouri from the suburbs of St. Louis. The problem is that DSL and cable access to the internet is not an option. So I began the search for a solution to my internet connection woe.

I looked into companies that offer wireless connections such as NetLogic.net but have learned that I am not in their coverage areas requireing line of site to the water towers in the town.

I've looked into a T1 solution (1.5mb/1.5mb) from my local phone company but learned that the cost will be $750 per month Hoping to find something less expensive has let me to look at Frame Relay and wonder about options for a Point to Point connection to an ISP.

Satellite connections are another alternative. It seems as though one reasonable solution is 480 system offered by Starband.com with 1mb/100k. Equipment costs are $600 with a 2 year contract at $139 monthly. When looking into the technical information on satellite, quotes like the following are found:

Real-time gaming applications rely on instantaneous feedback and even when using the accelerator software performance the remaining latency is still often too much for satisfactory performance.

While looking at my future neighbors within one mile I have no businesses only other rural homes (I can get you a dozen eggs fresh). Since a direct connection to a local business or school is out, I'm back to phone company provided services and attempting to justify $300-$500 per month. Any thoughts on Fractional T1s or Frame Relay? Is there a solution I'm not considering here?

I think that the DirectTV people also have a satellite internet service that is cheaper than the prices you noted. They would have the same latency problem, but the realtime gaming caveat might just be important for twitch-games. Most SL functions might be okay with it. Another consideration is data compression. VPNs do not work well with satellite connections; I don't know if Linden Labs uses data compression that would also be incompatable with satellite broadband.

In the past, satellite connections relied on a dial-up for the upstream connection, and used the satellite for downstream info. Modern satellite connections are 100% via satellite, but perhaps such a hybrid solution is still out there and might be more amenable to your SL needs. This is based on the assumption that SL downloads a lot of graphic information to the client, but the client only uploads mouse and keystroke information to the server.

Also, I have seen a number of long distance wifi antenna solutions. TigerDirect.com has an antenna that claims the ability to connect with 802.11b networks up to 8 km away. Although there are only homes in your new vicinity, perhaps you could work with some of your new neighbors to establish a relay network to the nearest hard access point.

Hope you are moving for good reasons; and hope these suggestions help.

Cal, as a european user and avid gamer, I can tell you that high pings are very common over the atlantic lines, and SL is still very usable at 300-500ms, which is obviously not the case with fast-paced games like Unreal and such shooters. Other than price, I dont see why a sattelite connection should be out of the question. I've gotten pings of a full second temporarily, and while it was annoying, it certainly didnt make me log out of the game.

The satellite problem is not quite the same as high ping values. Home satellite ISPs aggregate large packages of data at the satellite before sending them down to the host. The host then sends equally huge packages up to the satellite for distribution to the clients. So, a large ping value implies that your screen may update a few seconds later than those of other people in the world. It is the same data stream time shifted a little. The satellite connection implies that your screen may update half way, then require another few seconds before the rest of the frame comes in; although the SL viewer might be able to handle it, it would be irritating at best.

The problem with satellite isn't ping, it's latency. The signal is electromagnetic radiation. The satellite it goes to? Is in geosync orbit at around 90k miles above the earth. (Standard orbit for such satellites.... mathematically it pretty much has to be at that altitude.)

The signal travels at the speed of light. You're looking at a round trip of about one second. Unfortunately there's no way around this. If there was some way to use the Irridium system satellites (which are much lower) then latency wouldn't be an issue.... but they're owned by people who seem to think that being able to get a cell phone connection in the middle of the sahara desert is more important and more profitable than providing data connections to places where people actually live.

Wow, I'm learning quite a lot by reading the discussions. I appreciate each of your times in responding.

So if latency is my primary issue with satellite, then it would seem that different providers would have the same issue. Which would bring me back to some type of phone based solution to my requirement. Am I understanding correctly?

Pretty much. Satellite is fine for things like web browsing... where a one second delay doesn't really matter. For any kind of games it's not acceptable.

Where did you get these numbers? When I studied sattelite links in college 5 years ago the latency was supposed to be around 500ms, not a full second.
Slashdot has an article about 400ms pings in sat links. Thats a pretty damn good ping compared to what I get. Heck you can still build and chat pretty decently at a full second ping anyway.
http://slashdot.org/articles/00/11/06/2317256.shtml
I remember when 1 second pings were considered pretty damn fast on the local IRC network...
I also remember getting massive lag attacks now and then that completely interrupted my chat for about 10 minutes :|

The different latencies among satellites is a money issue. Low latency satellites are in near earth orbit. Near earth orbit requires MANY satellites because they are zooming by quite quickly. Therefore, the cost is great.

High latency satellites are in geosynchronous orbit. This means you only need one satellite, because it is always in the same place in the sky. One satellite = lower cost. But geosynchronous orbits are pretty distant from earth; hence the high latency.

Near earth, low latency connections are great for GPS and phones, because the data exchange rate is fairly low. Not so with broadband connections.

Also, cell phones that work in remote areas of the earth, where there is no infrastructure to carry signals, are a pretty good idea if you are living in an undeveloped third world area of the earth. They aren't all for the rich and famous.

Another aspect to look at from the satellite side is most satellite providers have a FAP (Fair Access Policy) that really, really sucks. From my understanding, most DirectPC ISP partners only allow about 200megs over a period of a couple hours. I used to use DirectPC via AOL, which at least at the time was the only one without a FAP. Latency was a bear! Sure, ideally I could pull 400ms pings, but usually they were in the 1000+ range. Another problem was if the weather got odd at all, the strength could drop, and occassionally just flat out would no longer transfer. (It really was horrible in Oregon).

Hey Cal, i'm over in Ballwin myself. I work with a guy (we both work for SAVVIS) who lives out in Jefferson County. He used to have DirectWay 2way satellite. Unfortunately, latency isn't the problem with it. They do some very funky proxying/NAT similar to what AOL does, except a bit worse. A lot of times you won't even have an IP address of your own, they actually share IP addresses.

He had priced out a full T1 $300/mo, but that was with service through our company, so i'm not sure what else you can find in the area. I know there are cheaper alternatives in it than the phone company.

Currently he's going through a wireless provider -- name is Brown Dog Networks, can find 'em at http://www.browndognetworks.com.

Frac T1s/Frame Relay isn't going to change the pricing much from a T1, but do check other providers, you can easily get better than 750/mo.

I used to work for a major ISP that did T1, T3, and higher connections. (in europe it's E1, E3, and STM1, etc...)

a T1 (or a fractional) is usually seperated into two costs: the "local loop" and the ISP portion.

The local loop charge is what the phone company charges you ( or your ISP) to deliver the T1 to your house. It's the same no matter if it's a T1, 384K or 768K fractional. 56K frames are probably not a good idea, unless there is absolutely no other way. The loop charge is the same as a T1, and there is no real service level guarentee.

THe ISP charges make up the rest of the bill, and are usually around $100- $300.

You can ask the person giving you the quote what the local loop charge is, and if it's integrated into your bill. A good salesperson will know what you are talking about and answer your question honestly.

Hope your move is hassle free!

If you can find someone who is in LOS of your house, and is able to get some sort of inexpensive broadband, you may want to look into doing point-to-point wireless using Wi-Fi (802.11b, g, or a) and paying to have access piped to that person's place.

Google "Robert Cringely". He is a tech columnist, and one of his archived columns is about him doing this in Northern California.

As others said, DirectWay or other such services suck for online games. Don't go there.

You might want to look into SDSL providers. I was to far away from my CO (Centeral Office) for DSL service but was able to JUST squeeze into a 256k/256k SDSL connection from choiceone. It's slow and expensive( $60 bucks a month, $250 install) but when it's your only choice it's a god send.

There is also ISDN which will work almost everywhere. You are going to pay about $100 bucks a month all together for only 128k but being a digital service your latency will be low and should be fine for online games. Somtimes there are usage charges to, but depends on you phone company. ISDN service also doubles as two extra voice lines in your house in case that matters to you.

If you got money, fractional T1s are around 200-400 bucks a month. Hardware costs a lot. You get 8 channels which translates into 512k. Maybe you can justify the cost by setting up a 802.11b network and selling bandwidth to your neighbors?

After a year without broadband this website help me find a solution for my location. I highly suggest it!

Here's a wacky idea...

Supposedly you can get span about 10 miles with a wireless network using a small
parabolic dish .

I happen to know someone using two larger wire dishes to go 25 miles across the ocean as a part of this project . Unfortunately, the effective bandwidth of the connection goes down as the reception goes weak, and my friend operates at about the same bitrate of a dialup on his tenuous link. The bandwidth loss is probably a function of packetloss, since he is using TCP to talk to some scientific instruments. SL is mostly UDP, but lots of packetloss will ruin the SL experience.

Anyway, if you don't have line of site to the water tower, then if you have line of site with someone who does, and if you made friends with that person, perhaps you could set up a router at their house and relay the bandwidth to yourself.

Wow these are all great ideas. I'm thinking some type of shuttle back to the water tower may be another possible solution (thanks Andrew).

Bino, I appreciate the info on that alternative that is another possible solution that may work for me.

Si, Is Savvis hiring? Anyway I'm moving to Lincoln county, but I would love to have the $300 T-1 line.

I did get a quote on burstable T-1 at $425, and full T-1 at $685 using the link to broadband.com that is on the dslreports site (thanks Aaron).

I'll probably go full vonage for phone lines, that will help justify my costs. I currently have 3 lines, but one is pretty much fax and alarm system. Looks like I could do a $25, $25, and $10 with vonage and be much cheaper. I could also move my web site hosting in-house from co-located, that would save me $100 per month. Although I won't have near the bandwidth or redundancy of an ISP setting, my sites are very low on bandwidth anyway.

I wonder, if I could just hire a couple of web cam girls and set them up in the barn.... No, the wife would never go for that, she doesn't look at the "big picture".