Rural Broadband

[lukem]

If you need to VPN for work, satellite service blows.

 

[OhioBurner©]

Yeah we had to go satellite, and my wife tried to use it for her work VPN. The VPN slowed it down to near dialup!

Bit even web browsing it was noticeably slow with the 3MBps package I think we had. Latency was the big thing, usually around a second or so. Unfortunately it will always be high since, well sending a signal from my dish up into space and back down to another dish then back up into space and then back down to my dish, well law of physics I guess...

As soon as they brought DSL to our area we bit the stupidly rediculous $400 ETF and ditched it.

 

[Retired Guy]

Geosynchronous communication satellites are over the equator.

 

[Adabiviak]

We all probably have different definitions of 'rural', so I'll calibrate my own by stating that I'm just outside the service area for Comcast. Dial-up used to run at 26k, wireless (point to point as is described above) was fine, but expensive (and metered). I finally got a local ISP to figure out what was wrong with my phone connection (long story), and I've been using them for DSL since:


Grade F? Gaming is fine (my ping is usually in the 30s-40s for an in-state server), and all but the worst Flash-ridden websites load fine. I don't think this is indicative of normal speeds.

 

[OhioBurner©]

Well you got me beat for slowest broadband, I've got about 3MB/s and ~.5 up. I'd do the speedtest thingy but I'm at work right now, and we have stupid fast internet here. I do most my forum stuff at work.

 

[corey21]

Here is mine right now but my net is real erratic
.http://www.speedtest.net/result/2393008607.png

 

[WhitePine]

This should make some people feel better.

 

[begreen]

I feel for you all. Until cable showed up in the neighborhood I was paying through the nose for ISDN at 128K. Now I am cruising, with copper all the way. It costs a lot, but has been a godsend for work and VPN.