Satellite Broadband

[tut]

Just about to sign up with Bentley Walker who use tooway but with a better package. Equipment is free, there is no start up or connection fee just £150 installation fee, and that is with them coming down from Thurso. I also liked the sales approach, none pushy, no asking for CC details for a special deal in the next five minutes, contract e-mailed to me so that I could check all the small print before signing. He was also completely honest about performance and the realistic speeds that customers are getting, including themselves, which was one of the things putting me off due to the throttling mentioned in reviews.

However with the spot system they are now using he said that I would get good results in my area compared to congested ones. Also that if I was not satisfied within the first 30 days, apart from my consumer rights, they would collect the equipment and cancel my Contract without charge apart from the first months payment.

I have gone for the 22/6mb with 40GB Data at £59, but I have no real alternative now, Sky was usable initially as I was getting upto 1.3mb, but then the Internet connection started dropping and speed was hovering around the .5mb mark. Support have been good in trying to sort it out, several long phone calls and they succeeded in getting it back to normal for a while, but it would not hold. Seems there is little else that can be done, I am just too far from the Keith Exchange. As I have free Broadband for two years it is not even a case for cancelling it, so I will run it alongside the Satellite and hope for a future improvement. I have free unlimited Data download overnight so the 40GB could be an overkill, but I can always downgrade to 25GB.

Installation is on 17th August so will report back after that.

tut

[Sanjøy]

You could try bonding the lines? Send the low latency facetime to the kids etc on the copper and the browser stuff to the dish? Someone more intelligent than me will be along in a minute to tell you how much of a pita this will be to setup though.

S

[tut]

If I want to run Sky BB in conjunction with Sat BB, would I require two wireless routers?

tut

[graeme]

Tut,

2 routers on one network will not play nicely together, so the only way would be to have 2 completely separate wireless routers and keep switching your laptop between the two wireless networks, which sucks a bit, but would be cheap and cheerful.

Or...

You can get both connections into one router and then share them on a single house/wireless network. It wouldn't be possible with the free routers you get from Sky etc. You'd need a "proper" router and a wireless access point. £150 tops for the kit.

You can't bond both connections as such to add up the bandwidth,. Using both connections at the same time is quite hard. But you could use some rules to use one connection or the other at different times of day, or automatically use one as a backup if the other fails. You can identify SOME protocols well enough to send different types of traffic (e.g. web pages/http) to one connection always. There are a few options, all fun to tinker with, but only if you speak router config, which isn't really user friendly. It's something somebody would have to set up for you.

So, there you go... spend about £150 on kit and have somebody set it up for you for a little bit of added coolness to you network setup, or live with 2 completely separate wireless networks and switch your laptop between them as you choose.

[tut]

Thanks Graeme, if the Sat works as I hope then there would be no need for a .5mb Sky connection.

If I downloaded loads of films, videos, music, etc I could have left it on overnight, but as I have free Data between 2400-0600 and it would be running at close to 22mb, there would not really be any point.

tut

[Sparky]

I have a few Tooway satellite connections setup at work – hanging off portacabins and sites that cant get a decent broadband connection.

The speeds are great but expect a short delay when you click on a link – the latency is around 700ms in comparison to 25ms on a standard broadband connection. The delay isn’t that bad and when streaming music you won’t see any difference.

In regard to other solutions there is some confusion between splitting a connection over two routers and bonding two connections together. If you want to bond connections together you need for example two ADSL2+ connections and pay a third company to bond them together. You do see results with this but because you’re only getting 0.5mbps it’s not worth going down this route.

Hope all goes well with the Tooway install

[douglasgdmw]

Tut,

Let us know how it goes as I am with Avonline who recommended Avanti. To be honest I am not really happy with the service and due to the nature of my work, Sky's limited speed has worked better for me (issues due to latency). Interesting to see how Tooway works for you.

One thing that I did notice with the downloads of movies on Sky (which may be due to my Avanti) is that is the latency gets too much then the Sky download just cancels. Due to the size of the movies that you get now, this has caused me issues. Not approached Sky on this but have noticed it a number of times when downloading through the multi-room in the Kitchen (Living room box is connected to the fixed line broadband).

George

[tut]

What speed do you get with Sky George?

Installation is on the 17th so will pass on the good/bad news after that. Do Avanti use a different Satellite than tooway?

tut

[douglasgdmw]

What speed do you get with Sky George?

Installation is on the 17th so will pass on the good/bad news after that. Do Avanti use a different Satellite than tooway?

tut

With Sky I am anything from 0.5Mb - 08Mb due to being so far away from the exchange.

Yep, Avanti and Tooway use different satellites:
http://www.simply-balanced-satellite.co ... vanti.html

[tut]

Satellite installer just came two weeks early and all hooked up after two hours.

Great results, 680 latency, 20.1 down, 6.1 up, so back to full HD, streaming, and no internet drop outs. He put a new cable/wireless router in that is dual 2.5/5.0 GHz so the kids can use the second channel and the Sky BB is still usable if I get near data limits.

tut

[Sanjøy]

Enough of this, get that TV bought as I want to see how it is!

[tut]

Still debating, new models out in Sept which will be a lot more expensive, seem to be TV's, so not sure if there will be a Monitor replacement.

Present model 680 drawback is no HDMI 2.0 or H.265, and only the no1 HDMI socket is 4K, not the other three. Not sure if any of these will really make a big difference to me, Sky box can go into 2, 3, or 4, and a 4k 3D Blu-ray if I ever bought one could go into 1. Also a Smart TV box in line would probably add those on.

tut

[tut]

Pages a little slower to load due to latency, but then seem to go into cache, the rest is win-win.

tut

[r10crw]

So whats normal useage for a family with kids that seem to live on Netflix. Assuming its not HD quality just standard Netflix what is say five hours streaming equivalent to?

[ed]

Looking forward to the days when this is a bit cheaper and we can get shot of BT.......