On Wed, 2002-10-23 at 11:23, dsavage@peaknet.net wrote: > > Thom, > > Here in the Lower 48 DirectWay is a pure satellite system, unlike its hybrid > predecessor which required a land line modem for all outbound traffic. > > The biggest problem with DirectWay is the speed of light. The minimum one-way > distance to a geosynchronous satellite is still 23,500 miles, which is about 1/8 > light-second. That means the absolute minimum time required for a full duplex > character echo from the distant end is at least 1/2 second (up & down outbound > followed by up & down return). To that time you must add in the arctangent > multipliers for each of the two look angles, and the absolute delays along any > terrestrial path segments. I thought it was a microwave signal based? And it was spread out such as not to fry people, and the dish collected enough signal to make a data stream. > > Aside from the human interface difficulties this delay presents, it can have all > sorts of wierd effects on protocols which expect ping times in the 100 msec > range. I remember how we had to change the cryptographic resync pattern from > 10101010... to 11111111000000001111111100000000... for 50 kbps analog modems on > military satellite links. I can well imagine how HTTP acceleration and FTP might > be very adversly affected by such lengthy absolute delays. It may work okay with http with that long of a delay, because it's not that chatty to require a quick reply. I've clicked links and waited several long seconds for a reply. FTP might be okay as long as the server doesn't have to resend alot of packets. But I guess my Jedi Knight 2 frag session would be out. :) > If you are trying to connect to the Internet from someplace so remote that > satellite is your only means available, then I think DirectWay may be a > tolerable solution. As an engineer, however, I believe DirectWay's designers > must have been sitting on their collective brains when they packaged their > product exclusively for USB + Windows. My parents live in North Bay, Ontario. They managed to get a second phone line strictly for internet. I've been looking at the Bell option for a while but still decided against it. My mom has never had high speed, so she really doesn't know what she is missing. DWay would have been better off making it talk ethernet so you can just plug in a hunk of cat5 and away you go. This USB nonsense is starting to get on my nerves. It seems like everything is migrating to it and it's almost more trouble than it's worth. But that's just me and my two copper pennies. -- -=/>Thom Red Hat Linux release 8.0 (Psyche) running Linux Kernel 2.4.18-17.8.0 Up: 11:34am up 4 days, 23:14, 1 user, load average: 1.36, 1.47, 2.00 Registered Linux User #214499 http://counter.li.org -- Psyche-list mailing list Psyche-list@redhat.com https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/psyche-list
