Skyway Works Great For Me

[u2builder]

I live the boonies with no hope for DSL or cable. I have been aprehensive about Sat Internet after reading of all the bad experiences but decided to give Skyway a chance because the investment is smaller and because I like the simplicity of the one way system and the fact that I could install it and service it myself. I order the kit and installed it and so far am thrilled with the result.

The kit was nice, and included such things as lag bolts, cable ties, ground wire and attachments, coax, coax clips and other goodies. Installation was a snap and I tuned in the satellite in about 5 minutes in the dark with a flashlight.

I had a little trouble setting up the modem, but called tech support and got a real person on the phone at 9 PM with no wait, and was up and running in about 10 minutes. I must admit I was a little scared of giving up the trusty dial up, but things are working great. I could barely load this site with dial up.

I am getting good download speeds and just enjoying the heck out of this. I have a smile on my face when I get on the computer now. I know there are some limits to Satellite Internet, including the amount you can download, and it is not instant like the connection at work, but it is so much better than what I had that I am more than pleased.

 

[u2builder]

I discovered another benefit of this setup over dialup: now I can have wireless in the house and my son and I can both be on our computers at the same time. I installed a Linksys Wireless - G router and it works perfectly. Of course we share the connection speed, but we haven't really noticed any difference, probably because we are not uploading and downloading at the same instant most of the time. Anyway, works great. The skyway modem plugs into the wireless router, and it plugs into the computer. I am told by our computer consultant at work that this combination also provides a very good firewall.

 

[Jared Twomey]

kind of curious what kind of speeds you are getting...
can you go to a site like:

Speedtest.net - The Global Broadband Speed Test
Speakeasy - Speed Test
testmy.net - speed test and broadband tools

and test your speeds and post the results.

thanks

 

[u2builder]

HI, I tried the testmy.net and got this result on the third test. Below is a quote from that site:

"Hey , I tested my download speed at testmy.net - speed test and broadband tools. I got 604 Kbps or 74 kB/s (I tested with a 579 kB file). If you don't believe me you can go to testmy.net and validate the score. testmy.net - Member Stats ! This email was sent to you by your friend , from a web based form on testmy.net. Go to testmy.net and see if your download speed can come close to 604 Kbps. Hey, you may even be faster than ... then it will be your turn to brag "

What is interesting is that the first test was about 250 Kbps, the second was around 400 and the third was 604 Kbps which is actually higher than my plan of 512. I used their "smart test" file.

I just ran it again and got 384 first time and then 572. Here it is in another format. This test was at 4:15 on Sunday when I would think traffic would be fairly heavy.

:::.. Download Stats ..:::
Download Connection is:: 572 Kbps about 0.6 Mbps (tested with 579 kB)
Download Speed is:: 70 kB/s
Tested From:: testmy.net - speed test and broadband tools (Main)
Test Time:: 2007/12/16 - 4:15pm
Bottom Line:: 10X faster than 56K 1MB Download in 14.63 sec
Tested from a 579 kB file and took 8.297 seconds to complete
Download Diagnosis:: Looks Great : 19.67 % faster than the average for host (ses-americom.net)
D-Validation Link:: testmy.net - Member Stats
User Agent:: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; .NET CLR 1.0.3705; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727) [!]


I have not used this test site before by I have used "Myspeed Lite PC" and observe a similar increase when I run the test multiple times. I would say that I am usually in the high 400's after a couple of tests. I also notice when I actually download a file that shows the little papers flying that it does the same thing: starts at 20 kBps and goes to 40 or 60 and levels off.

My uploads are by dial up of course, and they are very slow: 24kbps. I have a little program that tracks uploads and downloads and the ratio of the past two days has been 24.1 down; 4.6 up.

Basically it is not nearly as fast as my high speed connection at work, but it is a heck of a lot faster than dialup, and it stayed up through the big snowstorm this weekend. But I think the really nice thing is we were finally able to go wireless and my son and I can be on the computer at the same time.
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[Jared Twomey]

hmm, thanks for responding... i'm actually impressed... download speeds were better than i expected.

 

[ed71]

Is there some place to get some good information about Skyway their page gives nothing.

 

[u2builder]

Try Support Homepage provided by SkyWay USA This is their technical site. It has links to other sites. I took me a while to find it. I think they should have one site that links everything, but the one you tend to find is the sales site. I did not find the above site until after I had installed Skyway.

I am a week in and things are still going well. It works really well on some sites like this one, which was almost impossible to visit when I was on dialup. The bigger the download the better it works. On simple sites it is not all that much faster than dialup, but it really speeds up flash sites. I have noticed that at peak times it sometimes slows down to a crawl for a short period, then speeds back up. I suspect that every once in a while a bunch of people download at the same instant. I seem to notice that any download seems to accellerate as it progresses. This may just be my imagination, but the speed tests I have run seem to confirm it.

All in all it beats the heck out of dialup.

 

[u2builder]

Hey, here is something I noticed that probably applies to all the Sat systems. I downloaded a little useage meter, and what I noticed was that my computer was up loading and downloading at a low level even when I wasn't doing anything. I downloaded Ad Aware and it found 600 spyware programs (data miners) on my computer! These little buggers may be using up my RUP if the computer is left connected for a long period of time. I have read some people think they are being charged for RUP even when they swear they haven't used their computer. I have removed all these spies, but still see a small background useage. I think it is something to be aware of.

 

[retiredTech]

I just installed SkywayUSA. I had only dail-up @ 24k. Here are the test results from testmynet
Your connection is: 5159 Kbps or 5.2 Mbps
You downloaded at: 630 kB/s
You are running: 90 times faster than 56K and can download 1 megabyte in 1.63 second(s)
Member Ident: CompID:1982887322295
Test Time:: 2008/01/08 - 12:52pm
Test Browser and OS info: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; FDM)
Test ID: SHYPZROL5 (if this is a screenshot go to testmy.net to see if this is fake)
Diagnosis ^info^: Awesome! 20% + : 838 % faster than the average for host (ses-americom.net)
This was tested from a 5983 kB file and took 9.5 seconds to complete

 

[Dgenx321]

I have to doubt that test.

There is no way you are geeting 5mbs off a sattellite internet.

 

[Dgenx321]

Try this one.

Speakeasy - Speed Test

 

[retiredTech]

Ok Speakeasy results:
Last Result:
Download Speed: 571 kbps (71.4 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 72 kbps (9 KB/sec transfer rate)

 

[Jared Twomey]

I just installed SkywayUSA. I had only dail-up @ 24k. Here are the test results from testmynet
Your connection is: 5159 Kbps or 5.2 Mbps
You downloaded at: 630 kB/s
You are running: 90 times faster than 56K and can download 1 megabyte in 1.63 second(s)
Member Ident: CompID:1982887322295
Test Time:: 2008/01/08 - 12:52pm
Test Browser and OS info: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; FDM)
Test ID: SHYPZROL5 (if this is a screenshot go to testmy.net to see if this is fake)
Diagnosis ^info^: Awesome! 20% + : 838 % faster than the average for host (ses-americom.net)
This was tested from a 5983 kB file and took 9.5 seconds to complete

ha.... yeah, thats a little off. Your real speeds actually look ok though. I was considering selling Skyway and I think I may be sold finally. Speeds seem pretty good from most experiences i've heard

 

[Dgenx321]

Ok Speakeasy results:
Last Result:
Download Speed: 571 kbps (71.4 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 72 kbps (9 KB/sec transfer rate)

Thats your real speed.

 

[Stargazer]

I was thinking about selling it a few years ago but they did not have local dialup in the area and by the time you had to use your own dialup service plus pay for theirs it made the service that much more expensive. Good dialup can be had for $10 now plus they give you what - about a $5 discount if you use your own ISP? The good thing about it is that it is a lot simpler to setup and cheaper startup than with the two-way systems. It would probably have better ping through dialup than it would through satellite as well. I have done gotten into the wireless internet business but it would be a nice filler for areas that cannot get my wireless service. It would be nice if I could use something like this to share broadband access in areas that I cannot get a link from my towers to or not enough customers in an area to afford the cost to make the link then later make a link if enough customers in an area signs up.

 

[lumpkin666]

Stargazer, in your area, what's the biggest obstacle to getting wireless to your customers? Ours still seems to be trees, as we don't have tall buildings or many hills/mountains here. If they ever come out with technology that will reliably transmit through wet leafy trees, that would be awesome.

We are working on GEO data systems that allow us to know if a customer can get a link to a tower without going to his location. We can lay out the elevation and project obstructions based on the geographic data we have for our installation areas, but that data still doesn't account for trees, unfortunately. If it weren't for trees, we'd hardly ever have to send anybody out for a sight survey.

 

[mrt2o]

Good dialup can be had for $10 now plus they give you what - about a $5 discount if you use your own ISP?

Has anyone on here actually got the discount for providing their own dial-up. I have AOL and it will not work with skyways modem. They said that because AOL uses a proprietary dialer, it all sounds like jibberish to the Skyway modem. Never mind the fact that skyways example for the discount, on page ...15 line 6 of the user guide that I have, mentions AOL specifically for people who wish to provide their own dial-up.

Even though I was promised my Skyway service for 24.99 a month with AOL as my dial-up, they could not get it to work and told me I would have to pay the $29.95 if I wanted to go online. No option out!

Do not be confused like I was. Using your own ISP for the dial-up means that your dial-up provider will have to be able to access skyways modem, speak skyways language, and dial skyways number. Every time you go online. Not just when the sat is down! You can imagine what AOL had to say to me about that when Skyway told me to call them for help, that it was an AOL problem.

Just curious if anybody got it to work for them maybe you could explain to me how and save me a little money.

I am however glad that someone is getting good speed on the weekend.

 

[retiredTech]

I have only had skyway a couple of days. So far it works as expected Except for the evenings(ie 7-10pm). It is much slower in the evenings and often doesn't fully load pages. I'm sure that it is because of the number of users at that time.
mrt2o, if you want to save money, why do you have AOL? Isn't AOL priced higher than many other ISPs?

 

[Dgenx321]

AOL is a rip off.

 

[mrt2o]

AOL cost me $12.00 a month and I get a score of stuff that I like with it.

Has anybody got the Skyway discount for providing there own dial-up? I want to know how to do this with aol.