http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r19289095 en Wed, 11 Nov 2009 03:30:06 EDT Wed, 11 Nov 2009 03:30:06 EDT http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,19289261 firefly : Also, if you don't want to stay up all night downloading stuff just install a download manager software to schedule downloads while you sleep. Or stay up and do your downloads at night on the weekends if you don't have to work.

I use Linux most of the time, so I use "Downloader for X" on it. But I've used LeechGet on my Windows XP machine and liked it. I've also heard Flashget is good on Windows as well. Just go to softpedia.com or download.com and find yourself a good download manager to schedule downloads.
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Ron Paul 2008 For President
www.ronpaul2008.com]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,19289261 Fri, 19 Oct 2007 17:32:22 EDT http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,19289095 firefly : Patrick, the person you talked to did not explain all of the service plans to you correctly. The 1GB limit only applies to the very basic Bronze service of 256Kbps for $29.95. So yeah if you buy the lowest service plan they offer, you won't get that much, but even with the Bronze plan you still get the Midnight Madness free time which doesn't apply to your monthly limit. So with Midnight Madness you could easily pass the 1GB barrier.

Here is a copy of part the RUP (reasonable user policy) that Skyway emailed me:

Bronze - 29.95 approx. 256kbps

Silver - 49.95 approx. 512kbps

Gold - 59.95 approx 756kbps

Platinum - 79.95 approx 1.5 Meg

All Speeds are approximate due to age of computer, memory amount (Control/Alt/Delete, then Performance Tab), condition of phone lines and other factors.

You can also go to support.skywayusa.com to view Skyway's Reasonable Use Policy, which is actually used by all satellite internet providers.

Bronze RUP Policy
100% 200MB 256K
75% 400MB 192K
50% 600MB 128K
25% 800MB 64K
MINIMUM 1000MB+ 64K

Silver RUP Policy
100% 500MB 512K
75% 1000MB 384K
50% 1500MB 256K
25% 2500MB 128K
MINIMUM 3000MB+ 128K

Gold RUP Policy
100% 500MB 768K
75% 1000MB 576K
50% 1500MB 384K
25% 2500MB 192K
MINIMUM 3000MB+ 128K

Platinum RUP Policy
100% 1000MB 1.5M
75% 2000MB 1.12M
50% 3000MB 768K
25% 4000MB 384K
MINIMUM 5000MB+ 256K

We also have a new program called "Midnight Madness"; this offers customers free bandwidth time, in their allotted time zone, meaning, anything downloaded during those hours, are not counted against your usage.

So on the Bronze plan you will have access to your full speed of 256Kbps down until you've downloaded 200MB then your speed will be reduced to 192Kbps until you've downloaded 400MB then your speed will be reduced to 128Kbps, etc. But this is for the usage being counted without applying the Midnight Madness free time. So if you saved all of your big downloads for Midnight Madness free time then that usage doesn't apply to your monthly service plan limit. Also that 1GB limit only applies to the lowest service plan of the Bronze package.

I have the Gold plan of 768Kbps for $59.95 so I get 2.5GB per-month before my speed is reduced to 128Kbps. But don't forget about the Midnight Madness free time, so actually I could download many gigabytes a month without it affecting my 2.5GB monthly limit. Last night I downloaded a 700MB Ubuntu 7.10 Linux install cd image during Midnight Madness free time and that download did not go against my monthly limit, nor did it reduce my speed either. The download went fast and great. You just have to work the system according the your service plan. I personally recommend getting at least the Gold plan of 768Kbps if you can swing the payment, but that's just my opinion.

Hope this helps clear up any confusion about the several different service plans Skyway offers.


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Ron Paul 2008 For President
www.ronpaul2008.com]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,19289095 Fri, 19 Oct 2007 17:06:29 EDT http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,19288473 patrick1853 : I gave Skyway a call today to ask about their download threshholds.

According to the person I spoke with, the monthly limit is actually 1Gb. The woman originally told me 200mb, but was corrected by someone in the background. The catch to that is, once you have used 200mb, you drop to 75% of your speed. The speed incrementally drops off by 25% from there.

I'm pretty sure I could run through the 1Gb pretty quick, so I guess I will stick to my $4.95 dial-up for now.]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,19288473 Fri, 19 Oct 2007 15:28:54 EDT http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,19287037 Bcdee : Well, that is what I was told. If you find out something different, let me know.

This was my first "broadband" experience, and I had no idea that there was any difference between getting it from Verizon, Cable, or Satellite. I just thought broadband is broadband is broadband, and you pay a different price for various d/l speeds. What a rude awakening when after my 2nd day day I became aquainted with those three little letters FUP that ruin everything. If you are new like me, before you order satellite service, you might want to familiarize yourself with the company's FUP "Fair" Use Policy. and make sure you can live with it before signing on the dotted line.

Like you said, What's the point? You can d/load 5-15mb/day with dial-up in no time at all. Just put a meter on your activity like I've done and then visit a few web sites and see. And FORGET video clips, the mere mention of that word video sends them in a tailspin, suggesting that you stay up all night to take advantage of their "midnight madness" where you can d/l to your hearts content. Sorry, but I work real hard to stay ASLEEP after midnight.

]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,19287037 Fri, 19 Oct 2007 11:49:20 EDT http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,19286363 patrick1853 : Wow, 200mb/month makes that pretty much useless to me. Are those numbers correct? What would be the point of even having the service with low of a cap?]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,19286363 Fri, 19 Oct 2007 10:00:43 EDT http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,19282995 Bcdee : Hi Patrick,

It's a good deal if you're only interested in writing a few emails/day and visiting a couple of websites. After that you have reached your daily allotment before they cut you back to dial-up speeds. I can do that in less than half hour a day, so the rest of the day I might as well have dial-up.

I was told yesterday that the bronze pack gives you 200mb/mo.
and the other two more expensive, your allotment for the month is 500mb. Math it out, either one is so stingy as to not be realistic. Thats what I think so far.]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,19282995 Thu, 18 Oct 2007 19:22:25 EDT http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,19282474 patrick1853 : I would be interested in hearing if you are happy with Skyway's service. I am contemplating signing up with them and wouldn't mind hearing your thoughts.]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,19282474 Thu, 18 Oct 2007 18:00:45 EDT http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,19260555 Bcdee : So far so good today. No hanging pages. I'm thinking about a continuous speed monitor. I like BBMonitor, but it's kind of pricy for me at 30 bucks.

The only thing I did different today from yesterday is I changed the dial-up phone number to one I felt was maybe not as busy. Don't know if that has had anything to do with it or not, since I'm not very "techie"

Jo ]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,19260555 Mon, 15 Oct 2007 13:37:28 EDT http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,19260501 firefly : I understand Bcdee. When I did have the weird up and down speed problem, sites would take forever to load up too. After doing the unplug/plug trick, it would usually fix it. Only 2 times so far, the initial unplug/plug trick didn't work, so I would do it a second time and then it corrected the problem. I think the sat. modem just loses it sync with the satellite randomly so you would experience slow page loads and wild speeds. That's what happened to me. But since I now know that unplug/plugging the modem, reboots and resyncs the connection, this seems to fix the problem. That's why I now have got into the habit of unplug/plug the modem after every use and it works great.

Let me know how it goes.
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Ron Paul 2008 For President
www.ronpaul2008.com]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,19260501 Mon, 15 Oct 2007 13:27:39 EDT http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,19259478 Bcdee : Well Firefly, I'm going to try your "fix" if/when it happens again. So far this morning (unlike yesterday morning) everything is loading just fine.

I think my problem is a bit different than what you described, in that the extraordinary time it can take to access a page is that it will just kind of hang for what seems like an eternity just trying to access the page. Once it locks onto a page, the loading is quite good to super fast. This is why I can get good throughput rates on a speed test even after it took 10 minutes for it to start that page. Does this make sense?

As for upgrading to a faster plan, hey! If I could afford that I would have had Wild Blue or Hughes Net years ago.

As it is, this plan is good for "po' folk" like me who can only cost justify an additional 16 bucks/mo. to have a much faster connection. $16./mo because I can dump the $5/mo. dial up isp and dump the $9/mo Callwave. (I have a 2nd land line for catching calls) Bottom line is if I can eliminate the long wait that happens sometimes, I'm very happy with 250-350kbps vs 45-50kbps on dial-up.

]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,19259478 Mon, 15 Oct 2007 10:21:33 EDT http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,19258424 firefly : Oh and one more thing, just to give an example of that wild up and down download thing I used to have....
On the third day of Skyway service, I noticed very slow browsing speed, so I ran 3 speed tests, first was 58Kbps, second was 62Kbps and third was 90Kbps and that was on the 768Kbps I was paying for. Another example would be first test 92Kbps, second 650Kbps, third 300Kbps. This is what I would refer to as my wild up and down speeds.

Now I use the unplug/plug in power cord trick and I now have the speeds I mentioned in my above post, which are normal speeds for my 768Kbps plan. So what I do is, when I go to use the Skyway service, I plug in the Skyway modem power cord, bootup the PC, connect and surf for hours, download stuff, etc. When I'm done, I shutdown PC, and unplug the Skyway power cord until next use. I use a Linksys wireless router so I can unplug and plug the Skyway power cord without having to reboot the PC as well. Doing this procedure has fixed the wild up and down speed problem. Just a few bugs in that modem firmware. :D

Oh, and FYI, I have WPA encryption etc., on the wireless router so nobody is leeching off my connection, so that was not what was causing the weird speeds before.
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Ron Paul 2008 For President
www.ronpaul2008.com]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,19258424 Mon, 15 Oct 2007 02:45:23 EDT http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,19258355 firefly : I believe your plan is the 256Kbps plan. I have found that IMHO the toast.net speed test is unreliable. I use testmy.net and choose the 1496kB download test for measuring speed. Anyway, I have the 768Kbps plan and I always run 3 speed tests in a row to determine my speed range. I noticed that my first speed test will usually be around 250-400Kbps, second test will be 500-650Kbps and third test will be 650-750Kbps depending on network conditions. So my usual browsing is around the 250-400Kbps range because browsing doesn't require your full speed potential. But if I decide to download say a 200MB video file, my speed will start off at around 400Kbps and reach almost 750-768Kbps in about 5-10 seconds after starting the download and depending on how fast the download site will furnish the file to me. I believe this is how Skyway traffic shapes their network, depending on what your doing. So I don't browse at my full speed of 768Kbps since I don't need all of that for browsing, but if I'm downloading a large file then the network will sense this and open up my full connection speed of 768Kbps. You're really paying for a connection "up to 768Kps" or in your case "up to 256Kbps".

I would guess that on your "up to 256Kbps" connection, your browsing speed will be around regular dial-up speed, but if you try to download a large file, then it will ramp-up your speed to around 256Kbps. If I'm not mistaken, 256Kbps, is considered barely broadband. Personally, if I were you, I would upgrade your plan to the 768Kbps service, and then you would see a real difference.

The wild up and down download speeds I experienced seems to be caused by flaky modem firmware. Unplugging the sat. modem for 2 minutes usually fixes it right away, and reboots, and resyncs the modem to the satellite. Ever since I started unplugging and plugging back in the electrical cord after I use the service, the wild up and down speeds have been corrected. Maybe a future firmware update will fix this, but taking a couple of minutes to unplug/plug modem is a easy fix, so I'm happy.

I would recommend not getting anything less than the 768Kbps plan if you want a good Skyway experience IMHO.
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Ron Paul 2008 For President
www.ronpaul2008.com]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,19258355 Mon, 15 Oct 2007 02:00:31 EDT http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,19257922 Bcdee : I just read your post, very informative. I just got up and connected yesterday. Install was a breeze for me. However, today I have experienced d/load times from 20 seconds for a heavy graphics website, to TWENTY-ONE MINUTES to access a mostly text forum like this one.

First thing this morning, when I first logged on, almost nothing would load. then about an hour later, everything loaded fast. I'm new to b'band, so I didn't know if this is normal, but if it is, think I'll take my old reliable $4.95/mo. unlimited usage dial-up back thank you. In fact, there were times today when I just had to unplug the lan and go back to dial-up. I'm on the basic 29.95 plan, and when it's working, toast.com reports throughput from
235 to over 300. (that is AFTER the 2-5 minutes it can take for Toast.com to come up in the first place) FRUSTRATING!!! ]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,19257922 Sun, 14 Oct 2007 23:41:32 EDT