mynameisdan Posted March 9, 2005 CID Share Posted March 9, 2005 Let me start out by saying that I already purchased my system off of eBay for $89.00 so the equipment is all covered. I bought a DW 4000 system and it should arrive shortly. I called DWay and asked what I had to do, and I was surprised to learn that I don't even have to sign a yearly contract since I own the equipment. I can canel at anytime without any fees, so that really made me feel good. My problem is the plan that I was planning on getting was the $59.00 a month. It's not that big of a deal, price wise, but I got to reading about it and one thing I really don't like is the FAP (Fair Access Policy). That plan only gives you 176 MegaBytes download before it throttles your speed down to 56k speeds.. what the fuck? What in the hell am I paying $59.00 a month for then? Shit.. DSL is cheaper than this and they don't have any limits. Ok, there goes my rant. I just want to know if it's worth it or not. I was looking to download movies and full albums. I usually download overnight anyway, so if the speed dropped it wouldn't be ALL that bad. I just want to know if I download the 176 MBs, what is the speed that it'll drop to? and how long before I can get back to my normal speed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rlh24 Posted March 9, 2005 CID Share Posted March 9, 2005 Persnonally if I had access to DSL I would not be getting Direcway. It should only be a option if dial-up IS your only option. Here is some information that may help you. First, here is the official Hughes U.S. FAP Policy : To ensure equal Internet access for all DIRECWAY Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mynameisdan Posted March 10, 2005 Author CID Share Posted March 10, 2005 Yeah, I read that before, but I was wondering, with all that you know now.. is it worth it? Dial-up is my only option at the moment, and as I said, I'm more into downloading movies, music and games. When my download speed is lowered, what's the typical speed that I'll be getting? Right now, on diaup, I get 2KB/s so I know it wouldn't drop below that. Thinking that way it's fine with me, eventhough I'm tripling my money that I am paying. Another question I have is if I download overnight, and I trigger the FAP. By the time I wake up, It should of recharged to normal, right? It recharges while I am still downloading, right? or do I have to completely stop doing what I am doing for it to recharge? Thanks for the reply. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rlh24 Posted March 10, 2005 CID Share Posted March 10, 2005 Well to me personally I am glad I got my DW6000. Although I do not do alot of downloading like you are mentioning. I you are FAP'ED you will slow down to a crawl. Some have posted that you can not do anything at all. No download, no surfing. I have not experienced that so I can not tell you from experience. Hitting the FAP at night will take a bit longer. I can not say that it will be recharged by the time you get up. You will have to calculate that from the refill rate. As far as recharging while you are downloading, yes I believe you are correct it will refill your bucket as you download. But if you are going to download music and movies, you will get FAP'ED alot. It will not be able to refill your bucket near as fast as you will empty it. You would be wise to get a download manager. It will take longer to download but you will not get FAP'ed if you set it up correctly. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fikester Posted March 10, 2005 CID Share Posted March 10, 2005 Below is my experiences & opinion only: I can tell you my experience with [glow=blue,2,300]Direcway[/glow] FAP policy....I purposely downloaded 300+ MB (not a solid steady download) over a period of two hours. (music, lots of web pages etc..) nothing happened. Then I thought how about a movie, around 500MB in the 2AM time period... the next morning the download was shut off at 169MB, it just quit, my account showed FAP for one hour time block in the usage logs. So I cant answer you for sure how it recharges....I will try a movie again tonight around 500MB will post results for you in morning. Depending on your DSL speed if it is above 700Kbps connection.save yourself the trouble use the dish to listen for aliens. Seriously the uploads will also average 45Kbps or lower....on a rare occasion the speed go to 100Kbps. There goes on-line gaming as well....big time latency with satellite.Don't be fooled by the test scores either....web browsing is not the same as a solid download....sometimes it hesitates for a second or two before it starts to load a page! Direcway is not as DirecTv advertises with the red head! Never have I experienced instant page loads like they show, never. I could be wrong but think the dish must be installed by a "professional certified installer" too. If I could get DSL tomorrow, almost positively would take the penalty for ending the contract to hook up! Don't get me wrong its not all terrible with satellite, but much more to gain with less problems on DSL. Sat will also cost you at min. of $60/month....thought DSL was around $30? You might want to think about it. Myself since would not choose the satellite connection unless that was the only option other than 26.6 dial up or severe ISP downtimes. All the enhanced advertisements and no other broadband options got me signed on. Most everbody using sat most likely has no other high speed option available to them. Almost forgot you may need to hire a translator to speak to support too..... a great number of techs are very hard to understand. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
REV0LUTI0NIZED Posted March 10, 2005 CID Share Posted March 10, 2005 If there is other broadband providers like DSL & Cable in your area it's not worth getting DirecWay. But if there is not than I guess its worth it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sparky Posted March 10, 2005 CID Share Posted March 10, 2005 I agree with Fikester! If I knew then, what I know now, I would have told that Indian to stick the dish on his elephant! They told me my speed should average between 500Kb/s down, which it does most times and 50Kb/s up which it never has, I am using my FTP client uploading a 2.5 Mb file, you know how long its taking? so far 3 hours!!!!!! My damn modem was faster then this thing. As for the FAP, no one told me about that bullcrap, I signed up online and I guess Direcwaytooslow failed to point out anything about the FAP, I am sure someone will show me it but I never did see it on the sign up. $700.00 to buy the junk and $60 a month, dude I will drop this in a heartbeat if Cable or DSL comes down my road. This FAP is bull, why would someone offer a broadband (HUH) service if they cap you at 160 mb, do they realise how much graphics are in a website these days? flash sites consume a lot of bandwidth, thats the reason I left my dial-up service, sure it opens real fast, eventualy. I would do the same thing as mentioned above, draw a nice picture on the dish and point it at mars or something, you wont get much inteligent life talking with D-Way. Ohh your costs for an engineer to come out and set you up will hurt you, your looking at least $200, AT LEAST, and thats if they screw the thing to your roof! if its mounted elsewhere you got more costs, $150 I was quoted for a pole in my yard! They got you by the balls, and besides, if you come on D-Way that more of my bandwidth your going to steal, so stay with your dial-up! do not come on D-Way lmao Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mynameisdan Posted March 10, 2005 Author CID Share Posted March 10, 2005 Wow.. haha, this is all disappointing. I've already bought the Dish, so I might as well just try it for a month and see what it's like. I was all ok with it until I got to the point that Flick said. The download just stops completely? Now that is complete garbage. They don't say that anywhere in their FAP. They say it'll slow down, but for it to completely stop is bullshit. Sigh.. I wish I would of read up on it before buying the Dish. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sparky Posted March 10, 2005 CID Share Posted March 10, 2005 Wow.. haha, this is all disappointing. I've already bought the Dish, so I might as well just try it for a month and see what it's like. I was all ok with it until I got to the point that Flick said. The download just stops completely? Now that is complete garbage. They don't say that anywhere in their FAP. They say it'll slow down, but for it to completely stop is bullshit. Sigh.. I wish I would of read up on it before buying the Dish. I hit the FAP at least 12 times already this month, and I could not count last month, it does come to a crawl, if not a standstill! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wguntersr Posted March 10, 2005 CID Share Posted March 10, 2005 I just had my experience with FAP last month. I was trying to download a l.7 gig game from fileplanet. It woul haul but until it got to about 170 100 meg. Then it slow to a trickle about 3 to 5 kbytes. I would have to completely stop the downlkoad and not do anything for 4-6 hours then it would do the same thing, I did not know about the FAP until someone in Tech Support nmed Habib (but you my cll me Robert) told me. I signed up online lso.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deerkill10 Posted March 10, 2005 CID Share Posted March 10, 2005 If you want to download large files you will need a good download utility. Something you can shut off before you hit the 169 cap. or throttle down so you never reach the cap . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mynameisdan Posted March 11, 2005 Author CID Share Posted March 11, 2005 Well.. I just E-Mailed StarBand last night and was surprised to see that they don't even have a FAP? Then why am I even bothering with this shit?? I think I am going to get StarBand instead. If anyone is interested in buying a DirecWay Dish, DW4000.. Send me an email at [email protected] ; I'll sell for cheaper than what you could get off of the site. $200 should be a reasonable price for it. Contact me and we may be able to work something out. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sparky Posted March 11, 2005 CID Share Posted March 11, 2005 Star band avalible in the US? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sparky Posted March 11, 2005 CID Share Posted March 11, 2005 OHH my god, I made a big mistake, I did not even know Starband was avalible in the US, its cheaper, faster and NO FAP! http://www.starband.com/findadealer/index.asp Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fikester Posted March 11, 2005 CID Share Posted March 11, 2005 I do not have it or use it, but cant see where it would be cheaper when the equipment is going to cost you more than Direcway. There is most definitely a FAP policy it just doesn't state what excessive use is. (this could work either way right?) Today FAP might be 350 next day might be 75MB? I read different places of the same kind of complaints....also read that Starband is selling to another company, that could be a good for customers or a maybe not? The only thing I have not heard negative about them is they must have clearly English speaking techs. Only looks to be a few people using this forum in here, but check it out. You can do a general search on the Starband and find plenty of complaints. Unless you prefer [glow=green,2,300]green lights [/glow] instead of [glow=blue,2,300]blue[/glow] myself haven't read enough pro articles for me to switch. Starband Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sparky Posted March 11, 2005 CID Share Posted March 11, 2005 Looking into it the pricing structure is a bit messed up, looks like there talking about a 3 year contract too, I saw the first price and thought wow, $100 cheaper then I paid, but then I looked closer, still has 50kb up unless you goto the new starband unit with a nice pricetag! My fault, should have looked into it a bit more, thanks for pointing that out fikester! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mynameisdan Posted March 11, 2005 Author CID Share Posted March 11, 2005 This is the E-Mail I sent and received: "Well I recently bought a DirecWay system and was bummed out to find they have a FAP (Fair Access Policy). I then read somewhere that StarBand doesn't? If this is true, I'd be interested in Starband over DirecWay. If there isn't a FAP for StarBand, does that mean I can download as much as I want consistantly?" - Me I got a response from Starband: "Dan, You are absolutely right. StarBand does not have a FAP and you can download as much as you want. If you want to purchase the system, please call Sree Thampi at 703-245-xxxx. Thank you" ---- And to be honest, I'd be willing to pay a little bit more for the equipment to download all night at a continious rate than have it drop to 2kb/s after about an hour of downloading. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sparky Posted March 11, 2005 CID Share Posted March 11, 2005 Interesting! but what about the contract? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fikester Posted March 11, 2005 CID Share Posted March 11, 2005 Exactly, who wants a three year contract with technology or equipment that may change today?....one year is plenty long enough! Here are the prices and listed packages: http://www.starband.com/findadealer/index.asp Are there any time limits or hourly restrictions on the StarBand Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mynameisdan Posted March 11, 2005 Author CID Share Posted March 11, 2005 Nice catch on that, Fikester. I read through it and they don't actually say that they'll limit your speeds though. They don't give a 'punishment' for it. I e-mailed the person back and was a little more straight forward with my questioning. Thanks for the heads up, Fikester. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mynameisdan Posted March 11, 2005 Author CID Share Posted March 11, 2005 I just got done calling Starband and asking them about it. Their AUP is better than DirecWays.. by alot. They offer you 2GigaBytes over 7 days. DirecWay gives you 176MBS over a 4 hour period.. then if you go over you have to wait like 6 hours for it to be normal. Starband, you can download a 500MB file with no problems.. wait a few days before downloading another huge file. You'll stay under the 2GB limit easily. Starband > DirecWay. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
php Posted March 11, 2005 CID Share Posted March 11, 2005 i like Starband's bandwidth policies, but they are fairly specific to say you cant hook it up to a network. Oh well, direcway says something similar and i have 4 computers hooked up to it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fikester Posted March 11, 2005 CID Share Posted March 11, 2005 For me to switch the offer would need to more than just that....for the package price & equipment difference? http://www.starband.com/findadealer/index.asp 2GB =2048MB Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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