iMac and satellite

I've got several clients who are using satellite connections up here in the mountains. The modems the companies provide have the same ethernet port as any other broadband modem. You'll need a router if you want to connect more than one machine to the internet. I never recommend these high latency connections if a person can get any other form of broadband like Cable Modem, DSL, Cell Modem, Local Wireless company.

The connections do work, with the same limitations as PC's. Streaming video is either jerky or refuses to work at all. Voip will not work with Skype, etc. The latency can be made worse when using a slow router. VPN would not work for one of my clients, so they've spent around $700 to get a high end parabolic antenna and amplifier to be able to use the much faster Verizon cellular network. They had a very weak signal which required improvement to work reliably.

I haven't noticed a bit of difference between Hughesnet and Wildblue as far as how web pages work. Be aware of the daily and monthly download limits. These companies use a "Rolling" 24 hour period or 30 day period to adjust your download speeds if you go over their caps.

I've been burning the large OS Combo updates to CD or DVD when they come out, and giving them to satellite and cellular users.

I did run into one problem with Wildblue and an IMAP email account with Gmail. The person kept getting a "Recovered Messages" folder problem and the Apple Mail program would download the entire Gmail messages to a new folder over and over. This really ate into their daily and monthly limits. First I just deleted the messages and set the mail account up in Apple Mail again, hoping it was just a fluke. The problem came back a couple of weeks later and I stopped this from happening by setting up Gmail as a POP server for them. No problems for 2 months now.

Hope this helps...

There isn't much to set up. There is no dialing program or other add-ons required to make the connection because the modem provided by the company handles it and is pre-authorized with any password, etc that might be required. The satellite company can easily control access to their network as they know your particular modem by MAC number and other info. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAC_address

Your computer, Mac or PC, just knows that you want to use the ethernet port, and the standard TCP/IP that all networks use on the internet. Plug and Play.

WildBlue does have a program that tries to make some changes in your network settings as far as caching and transmitted block size that supposed to help some pages, but I don't really think it matters a whole lot. Mac users can download the software from here: http://help.wildblue.net/kb/article/1957

Wildblue also recommends installing the Apple Broadband Tuner for high latency connections: http://support.apple.com/downloads/BroadbandTuner_10 - Note that Apple doesn't recommend this program for connections that use an Airport router, and I'm not sure it's of any use for a computer that is behind any normal NAT router being sold on the market. While their may be some slight improvement for some protocols on the internet, for a computer running these changed networking settings, no router has this setup as a default, and the settings on the network can't override the router. People still get on with a router (even my iPad can use their wireless router)... Nothing can fix the latency issue: http://compnetworking.about.com/od/speedtests/a/network_latency.htm

Message was edited by: dechamp

Your Welcome and thanks for the star! It's a subject that comes up pretty often up here in the mountains. I keep telling people they could get better internet by moving back to the city, but I haven't seen anybody leave yet... 🙂

The good news for a lot of folks is that the government is giving grants to companies to expand high speed internet with wireless towers in some rural areas. Here's one that's working in our area: http://www.ecliptixnet.com/index.aspx