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Review by (hidden by request)
Posted: 7.6 years ago
(review was emailed from domain aftermind.com)
 San Jose,Santa Clara,CA
 $89 per month (12 month contract)
 "Cool looking roof art. Fast and useful."
 "Expensive. Up/Down times somewhat slug-like."
 "Worth it if you cannot get a fiber to your kerb."
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Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
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Where we live there are two ways of getting an internet connection – the phone line (dirty, can get up to 21K baud if you hit it just right) or satellite. The Earthlink Direcway dish has been on our roof for 6 months now – I would give it an overall “good”, but it is short of a “great” due to technical issues.
1) Long waiting list to be installed – these folks were BUSY. We waited almost 3 months before an installer could come out. The guy was great tho – put it up, turned it on – worked first time.
2) Latency is noticeable. Since the satellites are really really far away, the speed of light is perceptible – it takes a while for the signal to make it up to the satellite, down to the ground station, to internet, to the site, from the site, to internet, to the ground station, to the satellite and to our dish – you do notice the latency. When the data comes, tho, it comes in really fast bursts (compared to the 21K modem) of 400K, which makes the latency less painful than you might imagine.
3) Down time. Here is where we have had the real issues. Email connection goes away quite frequently, the satellite signal will be lost on very rainy days (which is normal) but will be lost for no reason at all on some days. In 6 months of service, we have lost connection for a total of 24 hours or so – not a lot in internet terms, but it always seems to happen at the weekend and/or when you need it most.
4) Price. At $69 for the service – pretty good value. They host our domain/site for an additional $19 – cannot complain about that at all.
Overall we are very satisfied with the connection and with the support from Earthlink. It has been a lot less painful than Northpoint & Rhythms so far…
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Earthlink Satellite powered by DIRECWAY
