With most DSL ISPs going out of business and the current batch of broadband providers offering such poor service, I was wondering what people are using for data and online brokerage connectivity.
Where I live (the sticks) the only broadband option is satellite, which i use. It isn't as fast or broad as the others but in my case it was the best I could do. I'm mostly satisfied with it but if DSL were ever offered I would ditch the satellite dish in a heartbeat. Best regards, Jim
DSL has only just made it to my town, (Bloomington, IN) and that only from high priced out of town providers, so I have not tried it yet. I have 2 seperate connections on two non-networked PC's: 1) 128K ISDN run through a 3Com Office Connect Lan Modem - the modem is great, my ISP has has some connectivity problems but once my B channels are up I can stay connected using Ping Plotter and the ISDN is then very stable. I don't know how well the ISDN would handle large amounts of streaming data because I use my other connection for that. I would be interested to hear comments regarding ISDN and heavy data flow - whether that scenario might slow down order entry? 2) @Home Cable - this service is variable: very fast at times, slow sometimes, can not connect at times. I run QQL (quotes, charts, L2, etc) with this connection. I would not feel comfortable depending soley on @HOME.
Airspeed: I am considering satellite dish and would be interested to know why you would dump yours if possible.
White 17- The most significant problem is the latency created by the great distance the signal has to travel. I did a bunch of pings to various places and sometimes the delay can be a second, two, sometimes three. The system I have is Starband which, unlike Direct PC, uses my dish to send my stuff back to the satellite so you have an extra 25k miles to add to the mix. It is all land line after that. This makes the satellite almost useless for games and the like...I'm not a gamer but my son is and he likes the phone line better. On the upside, the bandwidth is more than I need for trading stocks and on days when the market gets rockin, I'm glad I have it. I've done comparisons and on busy days the dish can be noticeably faster than the 56k modem. Then there are large file downloads and here the satellite really rocks!! One of the things that took some getting used to was the second or so delay when requesting web pages...but when the bits do start flying, the page loads very, very fast! Regarding all of the usual options most people have, my understanding is that dsl is the way to go...wouldn't have any of the latency problems and has greater bandwidth as well. But I don't have those options where I live...I'm talking *really* rural here...and the dish was the way to go for us. $70 a month for fairly high speed internet plus 150 channels of television I mostly don't watch. I feel I'm getting my $'s worth. Hope this answered your question. Trade on.. Jim
Airspeed; If you don't mind, where is really "rural"?? I'm in western alaska town. pop=450. Best speed on land line is 33.6 and it leaves here on an at&t dish anyway. Pings usually run in the mid 700's but sometimes jump to 1200 on specific hops. You can email your answer if you choose. Thanks
Thanks for the interesting feedback. I had been considering satellite but was concerned about latency. The biggest problem I'm having with DSL is the latency and reliability. I use a national DSL ISP but they have an extremely poor network (with too much backhauling of traffic). And routing problems cause a lot of outages. Ping times to rjt.com today was in the 2000 range.
p2- If makes you feel a bit better, here are my average ping times from rjt.com using the dish. 1. 1524ms 2. 902ms 3. 813ms 4. 1822ms For satellite, those are pretty good times. I've seen it take 2 seconds to get to my broker (IB) Aloha, Jim
Da*n, I knew I would forget something. I believe it was White who asked me just how far out in the sticks I live no have no cable or dsl. Well, I called my telco yesterday and, you're not gonna believe this, but here goes: I am so rural that I can't even get an ISDN line ouot of here, dedicated or not. So friends, the dish is my only option--late quotes and all. Jim
I can believe that!! My biggest connectivity problem is connecting my modem to that oatmeal box with the string.