[plug] North of joondalup?

[Luke Dudney]

Onno Benschop wrote:

>On Wed, 2004-04-14 at 15:06, Craig Ringer wrote:
>  
>
>>On Wed, 2004-04-14 at 11:55, Shayne O'Neill wrote:
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>>>Is satelite available in WA?
>>>      
>>>
>>Yes, but mostly from Telstra. Prices aren't attractive, nor is latency,
>>and a lot of satellite is one-way (so you have a 2Mb/33.6k link).
>>
>>Onno will know more.
>>    
>>
>
>..cue Onno..
>
>Two providers (that I know of) Telstra and Optus. AFAIK the rest are
>resellers (but it is entirely likely that I'm wrong on that account :-)
>
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iHug (or should I call them iiHug now?) also provide coverage in 
Australia, and resell their products to ISPs (WestNet is one ISP I know 
that does this, but there may be others). In WA at least, the iHug feed 
is bounced off PAS-8. I think Telstra use PAS-2, and Optus B3, but I 
could be mistaken.

>One way and Two way services exist for both.
>
>As pointed out, One way uses an alternative connection for the out-bound
>leg of your Internet connection. (Dial-up or ISDN).
>
>Two way uses the satellite for both.
>
>Prices I know of (in the area you speak of) for two way Internet from
>Optus ~$2000 for the hardware, ~$150 per month for 400kb.76kb. (down/up)
>
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I did some testing and comparisons with the Optus and Telstra two-way 
products about 18 months ago to determine if they could be used with a 
Linux server. The Telstra product was a proprietary USB device which 
only had drivers for Windows, and even then was difficult to get going. 
The Optus product was similar to the contemporary ethernet ADSL routers 
in that you would connect the server via crossover to the decoder which 
would DHCP lease you your IP address and network details. It also had a 
linux daemon that would act as a TCP accelerator by manipulating window 
sizes etc, which I thought was quite nifty. Of course 18 months is a 
long time in this industry, so things may have changed since then.

Cheers
Luke

>You should also know that if ADSL and Cable are both not available,
>there are ISDN alternatives that offer normal dial-up charges, rather
>than ISDN rates - check with Telstra.
>
>The latency on the satellite link is only a problem if you need to use
>interactive services. With the Web/Email/FTP I don't notice it. With
>ssh, some days are worse than others, but pretty usable.
>
>HTH.
>
>
>Onno Benschop 
>
>Connected via Optus B3 at S38°01'05" - E145°25'10" (Upper Beaconsfield, VIC)
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