NBN satellite user waiting for extra gigabytes? Keep waiting Remote Aussies getting their broadband from nbn™'s SkyMuster satellites have been promised a bit of bandwidth relief, with the company deciding to bundle some 'net traffic for free. So-called “essential” traffic, which nbn™ defines as collecting email, web browsing, and importantly, “critical” operating system updates for PCs …
At the recent MyBroadband 2018 an advertisement was aired about some new satellite internet SP hitting town - and they promised that lag is taken care of with certain *ahem* protocols and optimizations.
I beg to differ - have had the experience of 2000ms ping at three sites using satellite Internet to link the three together due to cable theft. We had to tune Informix to compensate for the latency.
When I demonstrated that 3G was faster and had better latency, we switched the sites over to 3G - and the satellite guys was not happy about that.
And at long last, fiber has come to the rescue, now we have 3G as a fallback option should a backhoe decide to nom nom nom some fiber cabling.
Unfortunately for some folks out in the sticks/boondocks/whatever the only feasible option is satellite Internet, and that's what they'll have to use. My sincere sympathies go with them.
One customer (about 16 years ago) had satellite internet access, but also had a fax modem on the in-house server - WinFax was still in use back then!
Satellite was so crap that I used the 28.8k modem for internet access while I was visiting. They were amazed at the speed and insisted that I set it up for them to use too. Arranged a dial-up provider for them, switched out the modem for a 56k jobbie and set up internet connection sharing.
Customer was delighted.
It also saved them a lot of money on the satellite connection.
In the days before ADSL, there were satellite providers where the data to them was via dial up modem and the bulk data went via a cable TV satellite. It had much better latency than symmetric satellite but was prone to errors and a real pain to fix. It was great for high speed downloads compared to the other options.
When we moved last year we found out that there was no Internet cable options for our new home. The available options were a communal WiFi or satellite. I inquired about both and I was clearly told that satellite had a 2-second upload latency.
We went for the WiFi option because a) I'm a gamer after work hours, and 2 seconds is guaranteed to keep you from logging on to any server, not to mention playing, and b) my wife would have gone nuts shopping with that kind of latency, and I would be the sounding board for her misery.
Thankfully, FTTP is on the way, hopefully before the end of the year.
Satellite NBN is slowing in year I have used it. Still beats _any_ terrestrial radio like 3G (In my locality, 4G is a fleeting fading myth, 5 G does not exist) by two orders of magnitude. And yes, I use a directional external high gain antennae. May Keating, Howard and their parties funding organisations burn in hell for selling Telstra infrastructure. Since this is Oz, all that will happen with any capacity increase is more users put on same capacity so service levels continue to drop.
<offtopic> Just wait until the real reason for MyHealth Record when revealed) Mass data mining to allow privatised Medicare to raise big money for government that sells it and more for the donors whose "Health Insurance" companies will make a kiling. Literally if one has a chronic health condition. Officially denied by Health Minister ? yes, which reminds me that Shaws dictum is worth recalling. "Believe nothing until it is officially denied" No, I loathe Labour party too </offtopic>
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