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.

:

[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.