[SpacemanSpiff]

I realize this is off topic, however, you guys are the largest repository of sat knowledge that I know of so you get the question.

At my house I cannot get DSL. There is a possibility of a wifi connection from my local ISP but the retard who actually knows whether it will work or not is never in his office and refuses to return calls. (He's also the owner so that doesn't bode well for customer service.) I could get cable modem service, but for reasons which go back to why I've been with D* since 2000 I refuse to deal with them in any capacity.

So I'm stuck with Dial-Up or DWay.

Anyway, a man in town is selling a DWay Dish and a DWR6000 modem for $100. We would of course be stuck with installation and a DWR6000. Talking to DWay last night my wife was told that we could get set up with the 6000 modem, and then the next day, call in and upgrade the modem to the 7000 which is faster etc.

While I'm not entirely convinced I want to take the jump to DWay, the chance of getting faster than dial-up speeds (shared between 3 computers) is very appealing.

Can anyone talk me off the fence one way or the other?

 

[schwa73]

Without even looking at quality, $60 a month just seems like an obscene amount of money to pay for broadband.

But if your hands are tied, and this is your only choice for high-speed Internet access, then perhaps the price can be justified.

 

[morgantown]

I'd still try and give the Wi-fi a shot nonetheless. How does cable's cost compare?

 

[HiDefGator]

Only a retard (to use your words) would use DWay or dial up if you could get cable modem service. No matter how much you hate cable you will hate DWay more.

 

[dishrich]

Sight unseen, TAKE THE CABLE MODEM! I have a couple clients on satellite internet, only because they cannot get ANYTHING else whatsoever. They both DETEST it - sometimes, it actually is as slow as being back on dial-up, but they both work out of their homes & need some sort of high speed connection, so they are stuck on it.

Sorry, but satellite internet is really a last resort - BTW, do you guys have "wireless internet" available? I'm not talking about Wi-Fi, but it uses a terrestrial tower & you have a hi-gain antenna on your house to capture the signal. I also have some clients on it & while it doesn't match a good cable modem or DSL connection, it seems to offer pretty consistent performance. It costs them about $50 a month & a couple hundred to buy the equipment. Again, these people got it because they had NO other alternatives.

I hate to sound heartless, but seriously, you might just want to suck it up & give the cable modem a shot before you go other routes. (HDG summed it up quite nicely )

BTW, what cable co. serves you?

 

[morgantown]

Yea, I'd have to agree with the other posts. I was trying to be diplomatic

 

[skw]

Hold your nose and get the cable modem. Or perhaps you could move somewhere else to get DSL?

 

[LlamaLarry]

Only a retard (to use your words) would use DWay or dial up if you could get cable modem service. No matter how much you hate cable you will hate DWay more.

No cable (TV or ISP) in the sticks, no DSL either, so I DirecWay. Seriously, don't think about DirecWay as a broadband provider if ANY other method is available. Costs more, slower downloads, even slower uploads, 10x latency and FAP to bring you down to sub modem speeds if you download too much. Easy decision if you have another option.

 

[SpacemanSpiff]

When I said WiFi I meant wireless broadband. They're the ones who won't return calls.

Cable internet is $40 per month plus $30 for basic cable. The man who lived two doors down from me until he moved a few months ago had cable modem service. They would go down for weeks at a time. So in addition to cable sucking here, cable modem sucks as well.

Currently I'm paying $20 for dial up + $35 for a phone line.

The money isn't much more for theoretically higher speeds.

I'm going to point my wife at this thread so she can read what ya'll are saying because she's already told me that she wants to do it because dial-up is killing her.

 

[Dkerr24]

Directway is only a last resort. They put download caps on your account, so if you're more than a light user, you get stopped if you download too much data. The ping times are horrendous, so you can't use Directway for internet gaming.

If I had a choice of dial-up or Directway, I'd stick with dial-up.... Directway is THAT bad!

 

[LlamaLarry]

To be fair, my DirecWay is rarely goes down and when it does the outages are measured in minutes or hours, not days or weeks. I started with DirecPC dial return, went to PC hosted satellite return and am now on self hosted satellite return (DW7000).

Uploads are much faster than on my DW4000 and since it is self hosted it is much easier to work with and gets rid of MS Internet Connection Sharing.

Broadbandreports.com's DirecWay forum is another great resource.

 

[face]

I agree. If DirecWay is your only option it is not a bad option. The inititial issue is getting it properly installed. It is much more critical to have a good install for DirecWay than DirecTV. My DirecWay D/Ls are usually 1000/1500 and U/Ls around 200 with DW7000. Latency is a problem with gaming only, you won't really notice it with browsing.

NOW if you need to VPN with it, it will be slow, but it can work.

To be fair, my DirecWay is rarely goes down and when it does the outages are measured in minutes or hours, not days or weeks. I started with DirecPC dial return, went to PC hosted satellite return and am now on self hosted satellite return (DW7000).

Uploads are much faster than on my DW4000 and since it is self hosted it is much easier to work with and gets rid of MS Internet Connection Sharing.

Broadbandreports.com's DirecWay forum is another great resource.

 

[The Flush]

WildBlue is a new satellite internet provider that you should compare with Direcway.

I went with a wireless ISP instead of satellite due to lower startup costs, no bandwith throttling, similar speed and cost. My WISP is still more expensive and slower than almost all DSL and cable, but I had no DSL or cable to choose from.

 

[wangmaster]

I agree. If DirecWay is your only option it is not a bad option. The inititial issue is getting it properly installed. It is much more critical to have a good install for DirecWay than DirecTV. My DirecWay D/Ls are usually 1000/1500 and U/Ls around 200 with DW7000. Latency is a problem with gaming only, you won't really notice it with browsing.

NOW if you need to VPN with it, it will be slow, but it can work.

Depending on the types of web pages you hit, the 1000+ms latency can indeed suck with satellite. Think about it, You hit a web page with 4 pictures on it. Just the latency time is 5+ seconds (1 second for the html page, 1 second each for the 4 pictures). If you're able to use a proxy server that can stream the entire thing down as one big chunk, this is not as bad, but for normal straight browsing 1s latency is HUGE.

 

[no-blue-screen]

Go with cable and get one of those $10 per month dial-up ISP to use as a backup if the cable goes down. As almost everyone else has stated, DirectWay is really meant for those who live "out in the sticks" or "literally in the middle of nowhere" and have no other options for HSI. I know cable can suck sometimes, but, I would bite the bullet and get cable. If it turns out it is down more than it is up, then you can revisit the issue, but overall I think you will be much happier with Cable than DWAY. Also, as others have stated, the latency is really a big issue with VPN, online gaming, etc. This causes the connection to slow down to dial-up speeds. In short, the DWAY uses packet compression for the increased speeds and with certain online activites this can be a major issue.

 

[topochicho]

When I said WiFi I meant wireless broadband. They're the ones who won't return calls.

Cable internet is $40 per month plus $30 for basic cable. The man who lived two doors down from me until he moved a few months ago had cable modem service. They would go down for weeks at a time. So in addition to cable sucking here, cable modem sucks as well.

Currently I'm paying $20 for dial up + $35 for a phone line.

The money isn't much more for theoretically higher speeds.

I'm going to point my wife at this thread so she can read what ya'll are saying because she's already told me that she wants to do it because dial-up is killing her.

Not sure where you are at but you might want to see if Earthlink can be supply you with your cable connection.
At my parents house DSL is not an option, and they moved to DTV a couple years ago. TimeWarner told them they would have to subscribe to basic cable ($30... which in itself was a lie cause there is a "Life line" cable for $12) in order to get broadband.
I called Earthlink and got them setup with cable broadband for $1 less than what TW wanted, got 3 more months at $19.99 than TW was offering, don't have to pay for life line or basic, and get 3X as many hours of free dialup (dad uses when he travels) as TW gives.

And of course even though we are with Earthlink, TW is actually providing the service.

 

[Jerry_K]

I had DirecWay and jumped on cable like a flea on a stray dog as soon as I could. DirecWay throttling is the WORST. Try downloading Windows XP Service Pack 2. No dice. The throttling kicks in at 125 meg into the download and it will not complete because the Microsoft site expects a reply every fortnight or so.

In addition, if you get DirecWay you will be very limited in your choice of Router. The D6000 will only work on 192.168.0.1 which is where most routers start out. You cannot get the IP on the router changed. I wound up with a Belkin which could coexist. The Belkin is slow compared to my nice new Netgear even with wired connections.

Good luck, and a little crow goes well to make you appreciate the next filet mignon coming down the road.

 

[rob_kr]

Hi,

I had Dway installed at my house for almost a year, and it was pathetic.

The latency in the connection makes all the difference. When they demo the thing, it's all fine and dandy. They show you a download of a large file, and it's alright. I had the $120 a month professional version with the 4 foot dish, and the theoretical maximum was 1.5M down and 256k up.
With the mydirecway speed test I would score maybe 300-500 down and 180 up. But when you do a real test with real surfing behavior (like numion) you would see the true behavior. 20-24k down and 8k up. Way less than dial-up.

On an average day, pulling up one page of ebay with a lot of gifs would take over 90 seconds. It shtunk. The answer from Dway (and I have 14 escalation case numbers to prove it) was always the same. "that's very strange. Try rebooting. <minutes later> let me pass you on to 2nd tier support". And the next guy on the phone would never be aware of the fact he was 2nd tier support, because there isn't such a thing.

I am now back on cable modem and with all of its glitches, it works infinitely better than Dway. If you want, I still have my DW-6000 modem sitting here and you can have it for S&H ($5, $10?). I'll gladly send it to you and you can mail me the check later. When you talk to them, just beware of the sales trap, and have them guarantee and verify their throughput numbers with numion. Not mydirecway.

RK

 

[SpacemanSpiff]

Being as I live in podunk MS with a podunk cable co, using Earthlink or someone else as my provider over the cable companies lines isn't an option.

Anyway, I pointed my wife to this thread and after reading the input we've decided we're still stuck with dial-up for the foreseable future.

 

[Mr2sday]

This is a hard one, I think I'd seriously consider moving. Call your congressman and tell him/her to get you broadband for Christmas.

My parents still have dialup and it kills. I pull up 5-8 browsers, type in the urls for the sites I want to see and watch tv for the 30-45 minutes it takes to get everything going. When my parents want to e-mail pictures to people or do ebay stuff, they drive the 20 minutes to my house. It's either 20 minutes each way plus 10 minutes online or 90 minutes on their dialup.

In my opinion, Dway is never an option either. Sorry, gotta go with cable or sell your computer.