Xplornet High Speed Satellite Service

[Spidinator]

thanks for the info guys, much appreciated

[macspectrum]

Originally Posted by Spidinator

alright so that is out, but in comparison to adsl or cable can you really notice a big difference?

night and day
I used to have Rogers when I lived in Toronto and Anikast is at least 1/2 the download speed at double the price

In a world where Bell rules the world via ADSL (no Bell ADSL switches, no ADSL) and no Rogers, Anikast is the only game and expensive one at that.
Not to mention rain shadows resulting in slower speeds and outages.

I collected about 40 names in 2 hours of people that would be willing to purchase ADSL from Bell.
I submitted it to Bell and after waiting for a week, the answer comes down from the mountain top; "You are not even scheduled for ADSL deployment in 2006"

This after moving here in 2004 and being told; "ADSL coming real soon !"

Bell must mean "soon" in geologic terms.
I wonder if I can pay my bill "soon?"

[Chevygal]

[QUOTE=macspectrum]atmospheric conditions are constantly screwing with my connection
anikast theorizes that i may be getting "moisture" in the antenna assembly, but cancelled sending a tech out 2 weeks ago and i don't know why (save money i guess)
tech supposed to be coming some time this week"

If it is moisture on the antenna assembly a simple wipe with a clean cloth could fix up the difficulty. If moisture is indeed getting into the system, then it wasn't installed correctly or the equipment was faulty. These things are supposed to be weather proof. If it's rain fade that they are talking about...it's crap...should not affect Ka.. If only the people that you called for support had an idea about the equipment life would be good!

[macspectrum]

[QUOTE=Chevygal]

Originally Posted by macspectrum

atmospheric conditions are constantly screwing with my connection
anikast theorizes that i may be getting "moisture" in the antenna assembly, but cancelled sending a tech out 2 weeks ago and i don't know why (save money i guess)
tech supposed to be coming some time this week"

If it is moisture on the antenna assembly a simple wipe with a clean cloth could fix up the difficulty. If moisture is indeed getting into the system, then it wasn't installed correctly or the equipment was faulty. These things are supposed to be weather proof. If it's rain fade that they are talking about...it's crap...should not affect Ka.. If only the people that you called for support had an idea about the equipment life would be good!

and here's the scary part - Telesat are the people called for support and it's their technology
don't even get me started on their "tech. support"
like calling Canada Post for support - you get the idea

[mopepom]

I have just bought a satellite dish to use for satellite internet - Anik.
The installation went relatively smoothly ( 90 minutes, in total, including a roof mounted dish, 75 m. of cable, hook-up to the modem to a notebook PC). Not much professionalism on the part of the company doing the installation job - ony documentation was 2 crumpled pages of a quick reference guide. Surprisingly, this was enough to get me up and going with browsing via Firefox and e-mail on both webmail and usung pop to xplornet.com on Thunderbird.

I had one technical question, which was resolved from initial contact to a tech specialist in his car in less than 15 minutes. A fantastic response from Direct City, Ottawa.

I am paying about $60/mo for 512 kbs d/l and 128 kbs u/l for service from xplornet.com.

Browsing speed comes in at 400 kbs - very satisfactory.
Upload speed is running from 60 to 70 kbs - very poor. It is not significantly faster than my 56.6 kbs modem on a rural line (delivering up to 48 kbs, on a good day, with the wind blowing from the South).

I have done some tweaking of the internet parameters - only marginal improvement.

Any ideas? I do need most of the 128 kbs, the salesman sold me, since I am a work-at-home type.

Your advice would be appreciated.

[mopepom]

I have just bought a satellite dish to use for satellite internet - Anik.
The installation went relatively smoothly ( 90 minutes, in total, including a roof mounted dish, 75 m. of cable, hook-up to the modem to a notebook PC). Not much professionalism on the part of the company doing the installation job - ony documentation was 2 crumpled pages of a quick reference guide. Surprisingly, this was enough to get me up and going with browsing via Firefox and e-mail on both webmail and usung pop to xplornet.com on Thunderbird.

I had one technical question, which was resolved from initial contact to a tech specialist in his car in less than 15 minutes. A fantastic response from Direct City, Ottawa.

I am paying about $60/mo for 512 kbs d/l and 128 kbs u/l for service from xplornet.com.

Browsing speed comes in at 400 kbs - very satisfactory.
Upload speed is running from 60 to 70 kbs - very poor. It is not significantly faster than my 56.6 kbs modem on a rural line (delivering up to 48 kbs, on a good day, with the wind blowing from the South).

I have done some tweaking of the internet parameters - only marginal improvement.

Any ideas? I do need most of the 128 kbs, the salesman sold me, since I am a work-at-home type.

Your advice would be appreciated.

[macspectrum]

Browsing speed comes in at 400 kbs - very satisfactory.
Upload speed is running from 60 to 70 kbs - very poor. It is not significantly faster than my 56.6 kbs modem on a rural line (delivering up to 48 kbs, on a good day, with the wind blowing from the South).

I have done some tweaking of the internet parameters - only marginal improvement.

Any ideas? I do need most of the 128 kbs, the salesman sold me, since I am a work-at-home type.

call your supplier's tech. support dept.
your upload speeds are horrible
don't give up calling them until they come close to 100 kbps upload
this 2 way anikast is such a scam and a very expensive one at that

[speedadmin]

Originally Posted by macspectrum

the latency (delay) is too long for internet gaming
I have "pinged" the Anikast gateway and get times from 450ms - 750ms which is far too long for any useful online gaming.

I take issue with that statement. I play World of Warcraft and even though my ping times are generally half a second longer than someone on cable/dsl you don't notice it and neither does other people you play with. For most MMOPG and RTS games its more than playable, however first person shooters you will have a difficult time enjoying it.

[vdsvin]

After days and days this is the result. I did some searches and phone calls and finally got some answers. One of the biggest answer is still not intuduced, FAP?
Service: Explornet 512/128

I did lots of tests and emails on this 2 way service and would suggest STAY with dialup.

FAP will get you P/O'ed to the highest level and if you take your payment in consideration will make you flip, well me anyway.

Xplornet Support wrote:

Hello,

Thank you for your e-mail. When researching your issue, we have discovered that you have reached your hourly limitation for uploading/downloading several times over the past week. When this occurs, your speed will be throttled by 25%. Each hour this will refresh by 25% if you are not over the limit, if you are still continuing to download, your speeds will be throttled by another 25%. This occurs each hour. A complex algorithm determines your limitation and implements this threshold.

Vinnie Wrote:

Hmmm ok so based on what you have just said and a speed based on 500 i should be droped by 125 every hour. This helps a little but what is the target that i will start to drop by 25%. I can see a little on how it works but would like to know for sure, as i see it i can download full bandwith for about 10 min. then i get droped down in speed by 25% and if it continues i get droped again, Is this correct and if so what is the target? Do i get full bandwith for 50 mb then get droped is it more less. Please let me know the target so i can keep a beter eye on what im am doing. As i was one of the first ones in manitoba to get this service and reashearched the FAP stuff before buying i was told on several ocassions that manitoba had lots of bandwith alotted and would not be a issue, as we can see this was a false statement. I would like a beter explanation of the fap now in place with #s and such.


Xplornet Support wrote:

Vinnie
Thank you for your email.
We don’t have exact numbers for the hourly threshold limit; this is because this number varies depending on the time of day, as well as the number of users online at any one time. This policy has always been in place, but only recently have we been given more specific information regarding how the policy works, how much the speed gets throttled down, etc.
Regards,

Xplornet Support Team

Vinne Wrote:

Based on the 25% rule how can u make it apply in this situation?
On a hourly basis it should work like this: Probley over d/l threshold and 6:30 and should loose 25% making from 7:00am to 8:00am
beening on FAP. Now from 9:00am to 10:00am i should have full bandwith and as you can see this is not the situation.
Or 6:30 after d/l FAP applyed till 7:am the throttled up?

Please help me understand what the situation is as im getting confused, I pay for 500k d/l and will/do respect FAP but based on your last email looks like we may be affected buy other users and throttle everyone back. I am thinking now that time of day has a big factor, if i d/led at 6:30 full bandwith and now at 9:21 get throttled down at approx 30mb (partial download finish) it looks like to me that thats will be close to the magic #,s.

This is my activity as of this 6:30 am central d/led 76 mb file full bandwith. FINISHED with full bandwidth for entire download
No activity uinless there was a virus update (uncertain)
9:21 am started d/l 45 mb file.
Started at full bandwith around 60k then droped to 37k and finished file at 9:43.

These are c/p from me to them as of today, I will post some speedtest under this as well to make ppl see what kind of service they may or may not want to get into.

:::.. Download Stats ..:::
Connection is:: 140 Kbps about 0.14 Mbps (tested with 1496 kB)
Download Speed is:: 17 kB/s
Tested From:: http://testmy.net (Server 2)
Test Time:: 2006/04/27 - 10:13am

:::.. Download Stats ..:::
Connection is:: 489 Kbps about 0.49 Mbps (tested with 1496 kB)
Download Speed is:: 60 kB/s
Tested From:: http://testmy.net (Server 1)
Test Time:: 2006/04/27 - 10:47am


In a nutshell all Satellte internet service as i can see, read and have been on fall into this: Satellite Internet service is for the individuals that require higher speed then dialup for the SOLE purpose of web browsing and email.
Thats it.

Do not expect to download anything as FAP has hit and is here to stay.
I'm just passing info on to all reading this thread as this in my searches is where i ended up and want to share my results to you.
Thanks Vin and dont't mind my spelling please as i'm not to happy

[hudson3709]

Interesting thing I hear in this thread is KA being compared to DSL or cable. It is not a replacement - or even compitition for DSL. The speeds do not come close as they are not supposed to. Data transfer over satellite is the most expensive way to transfer data. So they need to turn down the speeds to keep the customer total up and thus keep monthly costs down.

As for monthly cost - DSL in rural is $50 / month - Wireless $60. So $55 is resonable for a satellite conection. Start up cost to high? Yes compared to DSL. But DSL does not have to install a satellite and run cables (price just lowered to $499 now) also do you remember when Star Choice started and was $1000 +. This is a new product, price will go lower.

I have trouble listening to anyone who is a HEAVY user - hitting the FAP. How much stuff is being downloaded in the background while you surf. By the way PTP is not supported on Satellite. It may work but they do not give any priority to the ports that use PTP and may shut these down if they are overused.

I just want to let the readers here know that if they have no other options the satellite service is very good. If you can get DSL or Wireless - Get that!

[macspectrum]

Originally Posted by hudson3709

Interesting thing I hear in this thread is KA being compared to DSL or cable. It is not a replacement - or even compitition for DSL. The speeds do not come close as they are not supposed to. Data transfer over satellite is the most expensive way to transfer data. So they need to turn down the speeds to keep the customer total up and thus keep monthly costs down.

As for monthly cost - DSL in rural is $50 / month - Wireless $60. So $55 is resonable for a satellite conection. Start up cost to high? Yes compared to DSL. But DSL does not have to install a satellite and run cables (price just lowered to $499 now) also do you remember when Star Choice started and was $1000 +. This is a new product, price will go lower.

I have trouble listening to anyone who is a HEAVY user - hitting the FAP. How much stuff is being downloaded in the background while you surf. By the way PTP is not supported on Satellite. It may work but they do not give any priority to the ports that use PTP and may shut these down if they are overused.

I just want to let the readers here know that if they have no other options the satellite service is very good. If you can get DSL or Wireless - Get that!

the reason people are comparing Ka band satellite to DSL and cable is that the CEO of BCE (who own Telesat) said that Ka band "would offer close to dsl speeds for close to dsl pricing"

$90/mth + $600 installation and equipment
for
1 mbps down and 256 kbps up hardly falls into the "close" category

and I would take dsl or cable in a heartbeat if bell or rogers would bring it here
you'd see my satellite equipment on ebay in a flash

[hudson3709]

This is not now, nor ever was to be a replacement for DSL. Wow so a CEO of Bell tried to oversell the service. Does that really suprise you? He is in sales. This service is meant for those people, like you, who need a faster connection than dial-up but have no other options. When you compare it to its compatition , wireless - not DSL, it stands up very good. Yes the speeds are not as high, but for the average consumer (under 2 PC's) the $55 pack 512down 128up, is more than acceptable (remember most DSL give you only 128up). Compare to start up for wireless $500 and $60 month for wireless (sasktel - goverment subsidised - 2.5GHz range without all the interfearence you get on 2.4) and I think it is a good deal.

But then I am biased because I do sell the systems. But I also know that my customers - who have NO other choice, are very happy with the service.

All should remember that message boards like this tend to get the most angry customers posting and do not reflect the full extent of customer satisfaction or dissatisfaction. Please keep an open mind.

[macspectrum]

Originally Posted by hudson3709

This is not now, nor ever was to be a replacement for DSL. Wow so a CEO of Bell tried to oversell the service. Does that really suprise you? He is in sales. This service is meant for those people, like you, who need a faster connection than dial-up but have no other options. When you compare it to its compatition , wireless - not DSL, it stands up very good. Yes the speeds are not as high, but for the average consumer (under 2 PC's) the $55 pack 512down 128up, is more than acceptable (remember most DSL give you only 128up). Compare to start up for wireless $500 and $60 month for wireless (sasktel - goverment subsidised - 2.5GHz range without all the interfearence you get on 2.4) and I think it is a good deal.

But then I am biased because I do sell the systems. But I also know that my customers - who have NO other choice, are very happy with the service.

All should remember that message boards like this tend to get the most angry customers posting and do not reflect the full extent of customer satisfaction or dissatisfaction. Please keep an open mind.

"Wow so a CEO of Bell tried to oversell the service."
actually the CEO of BCE

Of course you are biased. I could tell from your first post you were "in the business"

"(remember most DSL give you only 128up)."
on what planet?
please check out Bell and Rogers hi-speed
avg is about 512K up

sure Anikast is "better" than dial up, but it still a very, very overpriced system

I am a computer consultant and used to live in a city where I had tried both Bell ADSL and Rogers.
Sadly the service was much better from Rogers than Bell and service from Anikast is just bad.
The analogy I use is; "Imagine Canada Post was your ISP"
Telesat still acts like a gov't agency. They do their best NOT to deal with people, which in the this case is actually customers.

Anikast (owned by BCE) service is now just an excuse for Bell (owned by BCE) to NOT install hi speed into rural areas and download most, if not all, infrastructure costs onto the consumer.
The equipment is horrbily overpriced and they can do it because they basically have monopoly.
So much for the CRTC being a defender of the public airwaves.

the bottom line;
"But I also know that my customers - who have NO other choice"
BCE and Telesat are very aware we have no other choice and they are laughing all the way to the bank

[macspectrum]

another day of Anikast phone tag

been calling all day due to spotty service
one minute it is up and the next it is down

excuse #1: it's the weather over the last 2 weeks, no issues with your spot beam, not congestion
excuse #2: it's congestion, not the weather

one Anikast CSR told me that Anikast is NOT owned by BCE, but when I checked the telesat website it indicates the opposite

for anyone looking at Anikast

if you have lots of money and don't care about the internet service or the technical support, then get Anikast

it's been a horrible waste of money for me

almost makes me wish i was on dial up

this is a bad technology and just an excuse for BCE to tell Bell to not install DSL in certain areas when BCE can make a boatload more money by suckering people into buying Anikast where hardware costs are astronomical and monthly service fees are at least double of DSL for at least 1/2 the speed

oh and did I mention the spotty service?

not to mention CSRs that barely listen and have no idea of what is going on

horrible people and horrible service

I just wonder how the hell they got a licence from the CRTC for this low level of service

[taliosfalcon]

I've been trying to figure out what exactly Xplornets KA faps are before subscribing to their service..and they responded to my email with "Unfortunately we do not know what the FAP limit is. The higher the package you are on, the more you would be able to download/upload before becoming FAP'd. We do know that the limit is based on every hour and it recovers hourly as well."

... o.O? anyone know what their FAP is? although I must admit I am very leery of an ISP that FAPS you without any idea what the FAP is....