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Dish Satellite, is it always this bad?


ArrowMaker

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We just had Dish satellite internet installed because our speed was so bad at the bitter end of a Verizon DSL line.  Dish satellite internet has been terrible, really slow when we can get a connection at all.  Are we alone?  Shouldn't satellite internet be much faster and more reliable than either DSL or Cable?  In this case it sure is not.  What's your experience?  We are well out in the country and cable is not even available, so DSL was the other option.  We had hopped satellite internet would be better.  So far it certainly is not.  Is this usual?  

 

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Based on what I've often heard about satellite Internet, it is considered a "last resort" means of Internet connectivity, i.e. where you cannot get a stable DSL connection, fixed wireless, cellular data or other means of Internet connection.  No matter what the satellite operator claims, it is certainly not a DSL, cable, etc. replacement, with the small exception of very slow (<1Mbps up/down) and unstable connections. 

Your speed tests actually seem pretty good for a satellite connection.  I have visited a few people who had a satellite connection which typically hovered around 300kbps in the evening and incredibly slow to browse the internet, i.e. 30 seconds per page. 

Minimum ping (round trip) time over satellite is generally 600ms to 800ms due to the physical time it takes for the signal to reach the geostationary satellite and back, so satellite is unsuitable for low latency requirements such as online gaming.  I'm fairly sure VoIP works, but with roughly a 1 second delay, similar to a satellite phone.

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If you read their terms as well as other internet providers, it will state "up to" 3X to 5X. the key words "up to". Believe me they try to use them to their advantage. There are topics here whit people using satellite internet and your story is very much in common with theirs. As stated above satellite is a last resort.

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Show us the ads if you have them.  Include a picture of the fine print.

When you're running good you are downloading faster than some low end DSL and cable, for sure.  But your latency kills the responsiveness.  Once the download is actually initiated you can actually actually cruise pretty good.

https://testmy.net/db/_fInCgehX

If it would stay at those speeds you'd be pretty good... still wouldn't be nearly as good as a Cable or DSL connection at the same speed or even at half the speed. But it's definitely beats any other rural alternative. The problem is that 7 hours later you get this...

https://testmy.net/db/Aysn65FS2

Let's check that fine print...

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  • 4 weeks later...

I was visiting someone earlier today who has satellite Internet and I asked if I could run a speed test on their connection.  Their service is Q Sat and they are paying €35/month.  They don't know what speed they're suppose to get, but they just use it for light Internet access such as Gmail and Facebook and said it's been slow since they first got it in, but have to put up with it due to no DSL in their area.

So I fired up TestMy, signed in and picked the 12MB download test.  After a short while, I gave up waiting with it only reaching 20% and just went for the automatic test.  I then tried an upload test, which timed out doing the initial 96KB test, so tried it again and this time it completed, so the following is what one can expect on Satellite Internet in Ireland, at least on the Q Sat service:

EeQ6qrlaU.zuESDrdOP.png

The following is a multi-threaded test with the default 256KB block size.  When I tried a larger block, it got stuck at 0%.

b6ILOGNU~.png

One more linear test, but with the UK server instead of Germany above:

5adjq3ONK.png

I had my spare phone with which I'm testing Meteor with and to their surprise, I picked up a 3 bar 3G signal in the front window.  Their mobile is with Vodafone which doesn't pick up anything and the same with my main Three phone.  So I decided to tether their laptop with my phone on Meteor just to run a speed test...

hE8JZvKmF.UT6abRrOM.png

It was a complete shock to them, particularly when they tried Gmail that normally takes a minute to reach the Inbox page over satellite.  I spoke with Eircom just to see whether DSL is available on their line and sure enough it's not.  Going by Q Sat's website, they don't make any claims about speed or being able to stream video, but it's pretty clear it's no match for even a 3G connection and I wouldn't be surprised if the other satellite operators here have a similar performance on their consumer packages. 

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Wow, makes me feel fortunate.  Sounds like they should just tether a mobile hotspot or something.  If the 3G didn't have a data cap... what am I talking about, at the speed they have now they can't even do anything.  Who cares about the data cap.  Actually...

@ 256 Kbps you can download 112.5 MB per hour.  So you could theoretically push about 80 GB per month on that connection if it was consistently downloading.

@ 7.2 Mbps you could download 3168 MB per hour.  So if you have a 5GB data cap and you don't control your use it could get out of control quickly.  Consistently downloading at that speed for a month would theoretically result in 2.18 TB of transfer. 

Now the upload... they can only upload 7 MB per hour.  Ouch.  It's like they have dial up, except it's 2015 and the Internet is more bandwidth hungry.   At a constant 2 kB/s, it could theoretically transfer 4.9 GB per month. ((2*86400*30)/1024)/1024

Keep old TMN [removed] in mind if you ever have a problem running the current version of TMN on older computers or slower connections.

Besides while the test was running, did TMN load faster for you than most other websites on that connection?

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The TestMy website took roughly 30 seconds to load from what I recall.  The longest part was signing in as I wanted to have the test results saved.  Going by the QSat website, their €35 package has an 8GB cap. 

I explained to them how to get 3G and which provider and package to go with.  The Meteor package is €25/month for 30GB, which includes the 3G router (similar to a Smartphone plan), so they said they are indeed going to try ordering it.  It's only in recent months that Meteor put up 3G masts around my area, so when they got the satellite system several years ago, it was their only means of internet access besides dial-up.

Indeed, the speed they are getting is roughly what I use to get when I had satellite Internet back in 2004.  At that time, 2-way satellite was relatively new and incredibly expensive, so my Internet connection used the satellite for the downlink only, with the uplink carried over dial-up.  I typically got 30KB/s to 40KB/s at the time on downloads, which was a huge improvement over the 4KB/s to 5KB/s I got with just the 56K modem.  My usage allowance at the time was 1.5GB per month for the satellite and 250 hours of dial-up, not to mention the dial-up connection tied up the phone line!

Thanks for the tip the old site as I didn't know about it.  I'll try that the next time I try a very slow link.

Edited by Sean
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  • 1 month later...
  On 9/28/2015 at 12:24 AM, ArrowMaker said:

We just had Dish satellite internet installed because our speed was so bad at the bitter end of a Verizon DSL line.  Dish satellite internet has been terrible, really slow when we can get a connection at all.  Are we alone?  Shouldn't satellite internet be much faster and more reliable than either DSL or Cable?  In this case it sure is not.  What's your experience?  We are well out in the country and cable is not even available, so DSL was the other option.  We had hopped satellite internet would be better.  So far it certainly is not.  Is this usual?  

 

Expand  

I have the same problem with them. when they test it, it says it's up to speed. (it is as slow as dial up) but by testmynet, it shows how slow it really is.and says there is a problem. 

 I even bought a new pc, and it is just as slow..grr..looking for a new provider

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  On 12/22/2015 at 2:51 PM, bettylynn said:

I have the same problem with them. when they test it, it says it's up to speed. (it is as slow as dial up) but by testmynet, it shows how slow it really is.and says there is a problem. 

 I even bought a new pc, and it is just as slow..grr..looking for a new provider

Expand  

 

 

https://testmy.net/stats/?&t=c&d=12222015&x=10000&l=25&q=6618129649461

Maybe try running a small auto test for at least 24 hours, this way we can determine if there are specific slow times with your connection.

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