[TriLUG] anyone using Wild Blue satellite?

[Rick DeNatale]

On 8/1/05, Tarus Balog <tarus at opennms.org> wrote:
> 
> On Aug 1, 2005, at 11:36 AM, Greg Brown wrote:
> 
> > http://www.wildblue.com/
> >
> > I would like to know what you think about the service, does it work
> > with VPN clients, and would you suggest this service to someone who
> > has no access to DSL or cable?
> 
> Hrm. As someone without high speed at the house, I'm always looking
> for possibilities (luckily I have 10MB to TW's SONET ring at the
> office in town).
> 
> I suffered with DirecPC for three years, but dropped them due to poor
> service, unrealistic limitation on traffic and the whole smart card
> debacle.
> 
> I've been looking at Starband (http://www.starband.com) and while
> I've heard good things about them, they are too expensive.

I took a look at their website, and they don't seem to support
internet connection sharing except for their most expensive "Small
office" plan. Also they say that ipsec vpn connections will run at
dial-up speed.

Plus, they deny Linux support for the residential plan, don't know if
this is a hardware restriction or not.

> 
> Wildblue is half the price of Starband, and it is also apparently
> part of NRTC (National Rural Telecommunications Cooperative) with is
> a pretty respected organization (I used to help manage their
> network). I would love it if it works.

They claim to require Windoze or Mac, searching for linux on their
site draws a blank, again no idea if this is a technical limitation or
not. They do claim to support wireless routers, so they probably
support sharing.  Same issue with latency killing vpn throughput.