I'm looking for opinions on Starband service and equipment or Direcpc. Anybody have any experience with either? Thanks
The only info that I've been able to confirm is that the cost thru Dish Network is around $70/month + equipment & installation. Not as competitive as I had hoped! I did pick up a few tidbits of info from TechTv, mainly that starband was having some difficulty trying to attain the speeds they had advertised, but I was unable to confirm this thru other sources. I'd be anxious to hear any info you or anyone else has.
Grizz; thanks for the response. As to the cost, I currently pay $70/mo for a crummy 33.6 dial-up. The best available in my community until now. There is one individual here with the Starband system running and he says the only complaint he has is that they take the system down a couple times a week for some sort of tech adjustments. That wouldn't be so bad but they don't pre-announce when that downtime will be. This person says the speed is great but that is, of course, relative to what we've had in the past. Thanks again.
During the football playoffs, I happen to visit Circuit City and the Oakland Raiders was playing another team. All the TVs had the game on. However, I noticed one TV was 3 seconds behind. I asked the salesperson why that TV was 3 seconds behind. His response, "all TVs are hooked to cable except for that one which is hooked to satellite". Data has further to travel via satellite than cable. Something to think about. MGB
MGB; thank you for the observation. That is something to think about. Unfortunately, there is no cable available in my community and all phone traffic in and out is carried by satellite anyway. The phone lines are very poor and I'm trying to eliminate them if possible. Thanks again
I don't have any first hand experience with Starband, but I am a DISH NETWORK customer. There is a delay betwwen live TV and Satellite TV, typically about 1 1/2 seconds. The satellites are in a geo-sync orbit above the earth (in other words, so high up that even though they are in orbit, they never seem to move in the sky - about 22,500 miles up). Starband is 2 way, so what ever delay there is (1 1/2 seconds), there will be the same going back, so I would guess it would be about 3 seconds total round trip - a big difference for a fast moving stock as seen on Time and Sales and L2, then you are attempting to get fills with a direct execution broker. I have experienced problems when my QCHARTS data feed is running a few seconds behind my broker (cyber) using a land based DSL and I'm trying to short a stock and can't get in. On file downloads (audio, video, etc.) that do not require constant 2 way communications, there would be no real problems. For 2 way dependent applications, there would be a noticeable difference. Depending on what type of trading you are doing, it might not be a big problem. You might consider changing the type of trading you are doing to one that would be impacted less with the blips that always occur along the way.
Big Ed: Thanks for the input. I only trade options and a couple years ago our town had a connection that ran at 1200 baud. I managed ok with that but of course we get more and more spoiled with every increase in speed. All that to say I could function ok with a couple seconds delay as I'm not chasing or fleeing from fast moving stocks. Thanks much
I've had Starband service for about two weeks. I had problems the first few days, Starband said they had more poeple sign up than their system was prepared for. Things have gotten better since then. I'd say the average speed during the day is about 400k, and about 150k and up during peak hours. I don't yet know how well level2 software is going to run on it. I have heard that Starband doesn't want any "bandwidth hog" type of activities, like level2 software, running on it. I'm going to give it a try anyway. I'd say that it's a whole lot better than the 56k dailup I had, and if you can't get DSL or cable, then it's the way to go. The only downside is the installation and equipment costs which can be $650 to $700. Maybe this will help you.
ASHTRAY; ???? Thats what I was looking for ! I don't use L2 so not a problem. Those costs are acceptable considering my location and available alternatives. Thanks all respondents very much.