I played with the 2-way demo that Dish Network had at the state fair.  In
short, it sucked.  I wasn't getting any faster than 28.8 or so for download
speeds and latency to the first hop was about 750ms.  They claim bandwidth
should be much higher, but the latency is as good as it will get.  750ms
latency means no online gaming.  

I'm not sure if you need special windows software to control the dish, but
if you do, you can always whack up a crappy win98 box and turn on connection
sharing for your linux boxen behind it (as much as that would suck).
Although, Dish Network's 2-way technology is from Gilat.com, and Gilat has
traditionally been providing satellite network services for Unix boxes.  I
know of an investment company that has a Gilat system hooked up to a Solaris
box and it works fine.

Jay



-----Original Message-----
From: Eric F Crist [mailto:ecrist at ardent-hacker.net]
Sent: Saturday, November 25, 2000 11:29 AM
To: tclug-list at mn-linux.org
Subject: Re: [TCLUG] Satellite ISP


As far as I know, you cannot use DirecPC with linux.  They have some
proprietary software to control aspects of the dish and network
identification.
 On the other hand, it's been about 4 months since I've installed one of
those,
so they may have changed things.  Let me know how it goes.

Eric


On Sat, 25 Nov 2000, you wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I am exploring about subscribing to satellite ISP services from DirectPC.
> 
> If anyone is using this service, I would like to know if Linux can be used
> with the two-way access. Also, I would like to know the performance you
are
> experiencing.
> 
> Thank you for any info.
> 
> Subba Rao
> subb3 at attglobal.net
> http://pws.prserv.net/truemax/
> _______________________________________________
> tclug-list mailing list
> tclug-list at lists.real-time.com
> https://mailman.real-time.com/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list
-- 
Eric F Crist
System Administrator
Ardent-Hacker.net
_______________________________________________
tclug-list mailing list
tclug-list at lists.real-time.com
https://mailman.real-time.com/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list