posted
I heard there have been changes recently to how the Ethersat service is managed.
I subscribe to the Ethersat Connect plan (768kbps/2056kbps plus / 60:1 / $250 a month) and as of a few days ago I now never see more than 256k/900k. This is a significant performance change downward from the time I've been using Ethersat (Feb 2007 to present.)
Anyone else using Ethersat care to contribute their current plan and performance data? I'd be interested to see the numbers.
posted
I haven't measured my service for a while because I haven't casually observed any performance issues.
I will begin measuring and monitoring and report back in a few days. I will post a spreadsheet on my website.
I use FTP as my measuring tool. TestMy.net would be my second choice. De you have a preference? I could never get MotoSAT to agree on a standard testing process.
posted
Current plan EtherSat(128/1024).For the last couple of months, bandwidth up has been averaging around 100. Bandwidth down has been averaging 400. Pings have always been steady at an average of 550. Have I complained about my speed down, you bet, and I have to be reminded that I'm on a 60-1 ratio. Wayne, I was actually waiting for you to say something about your speed, especially down. I'm a little surprised at the dramatic change in your upload speed (who uploads?). I figured out last week that to reach the 1meg speed down I would have to buy in to your plan, for me it is not worth the extra $100 a month and that's all I would expect (1meg down).
I have come to terms with my current plan and it's capabilities. As long as I have a steady connection up and down, then I am content.
What bothered me, was what occured last week when the NOC had a weather issue. Maybe I don't know the industry well enough but shouldn't there be redundancy as far as NOC's are concerned? By the way, thank you MotoSat for the email letting me know why I was offline. This timely info is quite helpful.
One day I hope never to see advertised speeds up and down for any type of bandwidth provider (too misleading). Rather, publish the speeds we will be getting and allow the marketplace (consumer) to make an informed decision. How society has allowed providers to sell product in this way has always amazed me. I remind myself of the same concept everytime I buy a hard drive, you never get the advertised space, you always get less, and the bigger the hard drive the more space you lose.
Remember you are in a 60-1 ratio. And everyone else is probably downloading movies.
-------------------- F3/D3 3.9.4/iDirect3100/123W/40'EuroTrans 2003 Enterprise Server/10 Workstations/Blackberry 8830 Tethered to MBR1000 Where In The World Am I (click here) Posts: 272 | From: Boca Raton | Registered: Mar 2005
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Choose "Washington DC" as the SES Americom (Onsat's sat transmission provider for their Ethersat service) downlink is in Maryland and Washington DC is the closest both in terms of geographic distance and internet topography.
Before the recent changes I would regularly get 768 up and at least a couple to few megabits down, especially if/when I were using it in the off-peak hours. Now I haven't seen anything over 256kbps up and just under 1000kbps down no matter the time of day.
quote:Originally posted by David Dee: What bothered me, was what occured last week when the NOC had a weather issue. Maybe I don't know the industry well enough but shouldn't there be redundancy as far as NOC's are concerned? By the way, thank you MotoSat for the email letting me know why I was offline. This timely info is quite helpful.
Unfortunately, somtimes we just have to let mother nature take her course. I constantly have to remind folks (users and other engineers in the shop) that we have no control of her. There was a POWERFUL storm that zoomed thru the Norhtern VA/DC area about 4-5 days ago, that must be the one you are talking about (late last week). I was watching it on radar as most of my IA-6 and NSS7 capacity radiates from Mountainside (Hagerstown MD). If it is a gullywasher, we are along for the ride.
M
-------------------- Mike Posts: 567 | From: North Carolina | Registered: May 2007
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posted
PS. My sister is a Director within HQ Speakeasy. Did you know they were bought out by BESTBUY? I think we are going to see a new voip router on bestbuy shelves very soon.
-------------------- Mike Posts: 567 | From: North Carolina | Registered: May 2007
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I have spoken with both David and Wayne regarding the speeds.
I hate to go back to the basics here, but the plans advertised is $149 per month, 1024x128, now, worst case scenario if I had 60 users sharing that package, divide 1024x128 by 60 users and then it’s pretty much self explanatory.
Speeds are not guaranteed on shared plans and it’s always “up to” speeds in a shared network, however, one of the great things about EtherSat is that you can buy more if you really need more. The real purpose of the $149 and $249 products are to make sure that EtherSat’s customers can always get online and then they can increase the bandwidth to 2MB if they want. The major focus of EtherSat is to provide an OnDemand service for redundancy, emergency management and other situations where the customer needs a whole bunch of bandwidth for some stated period of time.
MotoSat has made this service available to some of its customers that are not particularly focused towards “OnDemand” business. If it’s not fast enough for you then you can always by a higher level of service. We can do that with the same equipment.
Now I have spoke with Wayne on this because he said the originally when the service was brought online he was getting speeds upwards to 3 Megs and 700 Up.
Now, that’s pretty good for $149 per month, but not what you should expect.
Let me again explain why the sudden changes on speeds. When the sites were setup on the NMS they were never organized in their respective channels, i.e. 60-1, 25-1, and so on.
EtherSat has reorganized all of their accounts in their respective channels now, so you will see a bit a decrease because now you might have up 60 users sharing 1024x128. If the channel is being fully utilized, of course you will see a decrease on the performance.
Second, I have been monitoring Wayne’s Performance, and if in fact we leave his unit on an open channel he will use every single bit of it, which is not a concern if in fact he was
paying for 3 Meg Down and 700 UP, which would be over $30,000 per month and since EtherSAT currently has no FAP, happy days for. him
Until last week we didn’t know that Wayne was broadcasting his wireless to large group of users, on sizeable scale public events, which is not part of the EtherSat agreement.
Common sense would tell me, that if you share 1 Meg Down on an already 60-1 ration, connection with 100 users or so, performance might be a problem.
We went ahead and upgraded his plan, 2056x768, now, he has bit more to work with, from my last reports on his usage shows an average of about 900 to 1000 K down and 350-400 up. Still pretty good for that channel, and this is during peak time.
Remember, speed tests can be tricky, I would recommend a ftp speed download and upload, as John explained, they are a bit more accurate, but in the same note, you will never get the same speeds on such test because satellite and network performance will vary.
EtherSAT is a MotoSAT service offering and we do all management and changes in house. We have no other service offering that gives us that capability. It is actually an awesome benefit for all our users. I have made my self available to work with anyone that’s having speeds problems, I will go as far as putting the remote on less utilized channel, still same plan, but less users, We work with as much as possible to make sure you get a fair share of the bandwidth.
As far over subscription, EtherSat has overbuilt the system to support emergency management services so none of the channels right now are at full capacity.
All of our $149 Accounts are setup on two separate channels, neither of these have 60
users yet, or are even online all the time due the fact that this plan is really reserved for emergency vehicles.
Now, we do monitor these channels, and if one of the EtherSat network managers see a remote that’s paying $149 or $249 and month pulling 3 Megs down real time, they are instructed to QOS the remote down to a fair amount of bandwidth allowed on that plan. The next step is a FAP but I hope EtherSat does not have to go to that.
In the case of David, his account is now placed in the proper channel, with the correct amount of bandwidth being distributed, and I will extend the same type of courtesy as I do with all the users, if you there are performance issues, give us a call, we will work with you and much as possible. You can always pay to get into an increased speed channel.
As far the HUB experiencing weather related issues, is beyond our control. It’s just part of the nature of weather and satellite communications. EtherSat does have redundant capabilities but not at $149/$249 per month. If you are a government service and have the funding then talk to us about what you need.
We will continue to improve our network operations to make sure everyone get’s the agreed to performance. The EtherSat team at MotoSat will continue to make ourselves available if you need to have any adjustments made.
We have provided our regular numbers and even after hours as an open link to communicate with EtherSAT direct.
Mike, again you have posted extremely accurate information regarding the NMS operations, I’m always very impressed with your answers, thank you.
Thanks everyone,
Franco.
Posts: 64 | From: Salt Lake City | Registered: Jun 2007
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I think there needs to be a little clearing up of misconception here.
regarding your recent statement:
"Until last week we didn’t know that Wayne was broadcasting his wireless to large group of users, on sizeable scale public events, which is not part of the EtherSat agreement."
I'm not sure where you got the idea that I'm making /my/ sat internet connection available to a large group of people. I assure you I am not.
I am currently sitting in my bus in Reno NV and we have exactly two clients using the network, my wife and myself. Mostly it's just me as I am a power user of network services.
At the yearly Burning Man festival (8 days long, ends on Labor Day) there is a public network -- a 10 megabit terrestrial internet service -- which provides free access for everyone (SSID: 'internet") -- for all 40,000+ folks that attend the festival. This network supports approximately 1000± concurrent NAT/DHCP clients at any time.
That is not my network.
My satellite based internet subscription is 90% of the time used only by myself while I'm in my coach. On occasions I do extend my network to small high value workgroups I am working with and at the Burning Man festival that workgroup is the Burning Man executive team, that user base being approximately a dozen people, who primarily use it for business email and chat during the event.
We deploy this private connection so that the executive team doesn't have to contend with the 40,000± users on their public network out there.
Not sure how that would be a violation of this user agreement you referred to in your most recent message -- I assume that am in fact not in violation of any agreement.
As you had recently cited my noncompliance in this very public forum I hope you might find the time to now clarify publicly that I am not if in fact that is the case.
posted
Forgot to note earlier that until this thread I was under the impression that Ethersat was an Onsat service, not a Motosat service. This is hopefully good news for the subscribers that with fewer men in the middle a higher quality of service might be achieved and sustained?
I do apologized, I don’t believe I have word that sentence very well, I don’t believe We have any issues with compliance at this point and thank you for clarify the you Usage application, We really don’t have an issue with connection being shared, but the network Is monitored and look for certain things that might cause problems such P2P, bit torrent and others. EtherSAT is in fact a MotoSAT product, without getting into a lot details, a deal was work Out between the two providers OnSAT and MotoSAT, to created a product that Benefits both companies while providing the end user with a in house option for high end Bandwidth, with that said, as you stated, it does allow us to provide a more direct contact With ours customers and their needs for basic services and on demand bandwidth. It has worked great so far, and we believe it will continue to grow, having this in house capabilities Customer can get their MotoSAT hardware, bandwidth package, VOIP and support at the Same place, reducing the numbers of calls, hassles and third party providers run around.
Franco.
Posts: 64 | From: Salt Lake City | Registered: Jun 2007
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All I can say is THANK YOU! I appreciate the explanation. I now have a much better understanding of MotoSat's capabilities and the industry in general.
Service today has been remarkable. Please don't bill me for the better service!
Mike's a ringer, wait till he get's out in the real world, just kidding.
-------------------- F3/D3 3.9.4/iDirect3100/123W/40'EuroTrans 2003 Enterprise Server/10 Workstations/Blackberry 8830 Tethered to MBR1000 Where In The World Am I (click here) Posts: 272 | From: Boca Raton | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
Of all the satellite systems I've used these last five+ years (Starband in a fixed config (2002) and Hughes, Unasat & Ethersat on Motosat hardware (2003-present) I have to say that the iDirect platform certainly pleases me the most.
I am very much looking forward to bumping up my service on an as-needed basis... the service level offerings mix is very alluring.
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