Long story short... we had Verizon FiOS at our house up in urban Northern Virginia... it was super fast and had absolutely no drama ever. IIRC it was $130 a month.

Back in February I got called to the family home in a rural area along the Chesapeake Bay to help take care of my dad and then later my mom who were in the final stages of life. I have lived here 98% since. High school has been virtual for my son and we have been getting by with a variety of inferior internet access products.

This past week we had the trifecta of failure.

The internet hotspot on my phone failed on excess use (i.e. they claim Unlimited but at a certain volume they throttle you back to absolute nothingness).

The local internet through some type of radio antenna failed because the owners of the various cell towers elected to change out their equipment based on customer demand or lack thereof. We have had this service for at least a decade. It is no more.

Wife went to town to buy a wireless modem from either the AT&T store, Verizon store or Walmart Straight Talk store. There were no modems available she said.

Keith who provides internet to us and explain how the existing service had collapsed brought out a wireless router modem (about the size of a large box of Pop-Tarts with ears. It has a hundred and twenty volt plug in and that is all).

Keith explained that although it is a T-Mobile network router modem all data strength is the same. We have no T-Mobile cell phone service in this area but all data is the same share... strengthen... or something like that.

So far the service has been amazing. Something like 300 GB per month for $130.

I inquired about moving this device from location to location and from house to house for our needs. Keith said absolutely you can do that in fact that is why it makes sense for a lot of customers. They don't have to carry different internet services at the different homes they have.

I also asked if I could hardwire this device into my car through an inverter and have my car become a mobile hotspot. He said absolutely that was a great idea.

I am sure many of you are way ahead of the curve on me on this technology. I was thinking we were going to have to use satellite Communications on our place in West Virginia, but I'm not sure, this may just work fine. We are in the testing phase now. Keith is a great guy and there is no contract. I love small town customer service. Drop me a p.m. if anyone has further questions or would like a picture of the device we have.

You can now sign up for STARLINK, which is partly available and will be fully up within months, for $99/mo.

We use a Verizon Mifi hotspot at the house. It doesn't cover the entire house so it does get moved around, but it works well.

Have you read their privacy policy? Specifically, the information they collect?

I have not. Are they any worse than Google, Amazon, Microsoft, eBay, Facebook, Twitter...?

5G is “supposed’ to be equivalent to land line Internet, but what they don’t tell you is once a ton of users are on your same antenna you all shard that bandwidth so it can go down dramatically (speed / bandwidth) - however when there are only a few 5G devices it’s going to be smoking fast.

Satellite, DSL, and Cable (only Fiber Optic is a bit different) all have the same issue of sharing bandwidth across a user group... so it comes down to engineering and how you area is fed.

With most of the local companies going bankrupt in RURAL area they tend to suffer a lot...

I have no idea about the last three, I don't use them. But take Amazon for example. They don't "collect" information on your credit cards or purchases. You willingly give them the information by using your credit card to purchase things, using their service. You do that because you get something in return. Do you want your internet provider collecting information on your credit cards and purchases?

What makes you so sure your internet provider doesn't?

We'd both have to ask Stryker. He's the self-appointed expert on all things computer.

with Comcast and soon to be Charter putting data caps in place, is Starlink unlimited internet?

if so, its going to be a game changer if it delivers on its promised speed

The Internet provider can tell where you are going (DNS lookup is how you find a website when you type it’s name www.something.com)

BUT they can’t see what you are sending... because the payloads are encrypted (provided you have that Lock symbol infront of the website name).
That’s because each device gets a “key” the very first time you go to that site, and unless someone in the middle grabs a key per device, per users... they can’t un-encrypt the payload.

They can see the number of flows, type of flow, ... but can’t see what’s in the payload.

Other questions ?

Just use a web browser with a VPN. Something you should do with any ISP anyway.

One of the things that has caused me to not get a piece of property farther out in the county is lack of good enough Internet coverage and speed. I need to be able to telecommute from home some days during the week and need solid service. Maybe something like Starlink may make it possible soon?

A VPN just shifts what DNS, and DHCP (where you get your Internet IP address, and how you find addresses) from...

In other words you are letting a 3rd party have access to where you go, vs. your ISP... Regulatoraly VPN providers don’t have the rules and ISP does so that might let them track a heck of a lot more than you think !!

I use Amazon gift cards for purchases, a + is getting fuel points from Kingsoopers (local Kroger) often X2 or X4, add up quickly. Filled up my diesel for 0.99cents a gallon this week.

I do the exact same thing. I take 5 gallon cans to maximize the discount - which is limited to 35 gallons. A buck off a gallon adds up over a year.

A true VPN is an encrypted tunnel, not a proxy masking your address info.

the ISP - CAN NOT SEE YOU CREDIT CARD NUMBER !!

It’s part of the encrypted payload and only the website & you computer can decrypt... Good God man!
Go back and read what I wrote about what the ISP can see... a few posts up.

Couple of points here:

ALL methods of transport share a common path that is sometimes bandwidth limited. With coax cable, it's a total of 990Mbps to a particular area or neighborhood, with each tap sharing the common feeder. With satellite, it's a transponder of a given capacity (usually 200Mbps), further limited by backhaul at the hub. For DSL, it's an independent unshared line until it gets to the DSLAM (either a neighborhood node, or a Central Office)- after that, it's shared. Fiber Optic is not different. In the case of GPON, it's a total 2.5 Gbps down shared amongst up to 32 subscribers, then to the OLT, where it's aggregated into a shelf which typically has a 10Gbps backhaul. There can be upwards of 5,632 subscribers sharing that same 10Gbps backhaul.

At the end of the day, your "contention" (that's the term used for over-subscription) is based on how the ISP builds it's network, and how many subscribers per node in a given area.

At my ISP (the one I work at), we have some nodes fed by 10Gbps with only 5 subscribers, and others with 200 subscribers sharing that 10Gbps backhaul. Once back to the Central Office(s), the entire footprint is aggregated into several 10Gbps links to the internet, and a few 100 Gbps links.

Also, not all of the "Internet" is located outside your local ISP's network. At my ISP, we colocate with Google, Bing, Azure, Amazon, and Netflix servers (in other words, to watch a Netflix movie, your traffic stays within our local 10/100Gbps network, and never travel to Tier 1 providers on "the Internet")

Jake,

I was part of a very large ISP did everything from Dial up Internet to the full Montey and a big chunk of VoIP, before that I “helped” hand .mil net to the college yahoo’s, that became the Internet. I have somewhat of a security back ground and wrote a bunch of the IT compliance crapola that is not in NIST and other places. When we (a small group of us) introduced cloud and distributed compute to Telecom they / we called it NFV.... (Network function virtualization).

But - Thank God Al Gore showed up - BWHAHahaha...

There are crap loads of marketing and mis-information out there... the real stuff isn’t hidden, it’s just not well understood and gets lost in the noise.
These days I’m a tech consultant on all this jazz.... that is when they can pull me away from gunsmithing.

Read that ISP's privacy policy and get back to me. Maybe they just don't know how to write one. And I don't really care if they can see the number or not, they have no business collecting data on my purchases and transferring it to others. I don't need the spam, and text messages on my cell phone about a universe of schidt I have absolutely no interest in.

The technology simply doesn't work that way.

edit: think of it this way, the ISP may see the traffic, but like listening to a radio scanner, all they would hear is scrambled noise

I support about 1,000 computer enterprise network. MCSE, CCIE, CISSP etc. After I got off active duty, I did some reserve duty projects installing Siprnet fiber and equipment in some military base buildings. There's no such thing as perfect security but there's a few things people can do that make it a pain in the azz to compromise you and just move on to the next sucker instead with no security. Most of the time, common sense is a person's best defense. Not going to stupid web site or clicking on stupid email links etc.

I cut my teeth on SIPR and JWICS... 99.999% of security breeches were not caused by intrusion, but users clicking on stupid [bleep], downloading porn, etc.

Smoke pole -

Your ISP may have your CC # from when you paid them... (i.e. your CC # and info are on the ISP admin for billing and such website)
BUT they can’t see what you enter in at a different site

The FCC ISP regulations on PPI, PCI, and HIIPA (personal, credit, and health information) reguardless of how they can get it cover’s both cases and legally they are required to tell you want they share with others when you give them information on your account.

But these are 2-3 different things
1) You are their customer and they have records
2) There are records of how you used thier system (like who you called in a phone system... that information is accessible)
3) Then there is the content of the phone calls / internet sessions - on the Internet side some information is “in the raw” (un encrypted), but most a lot of it is encrypted.
What I said is that CC info along with most of anything you are logged into and shows that Lock picture in front of the address in your browser is encrypted and they can’t get it.



However - they still can’t de-encrypt you session between a bank, and you... or any website and you... so they can’t get at that CC information.

I was the poor technical bastard that had to explain all this crapola to non-techies... You are bring up old memories

I can't remember the acronym, but I'm not aware of any ISP (I've only worked for 3) that actually processes credit card payments. They all contracted with a third party company for that. In fact, when a customer service agent needed to take a customer's information, the customer was transferred to the 3rd party company. WAY too much regulatory compliance and liability for an ISP to actually handle that stuff themselves.

Unless it's a man in the middle exploit but the presumption was that you're hitting a legit web site as opposed to some browser redirect.

Yep... the man in the middle, and high Jack website hacks work great... and.... but you have to know how to do it... OK I should shut up now.

Those are real And serious risks...

Back to real life... So do you guys think that satellite base ISP service (like a Starlink) will get to the point where I can do telecommuting farther out in the county and still be able to do live video conferencing etc?

IMO, the big unanswered questions are contention and price.

You work for Spitz?

No, a bit bigger than them

That’s PCI compliance (bank & credit card).

The smaller ISP’s tend to outsource it and there are 1,800 plus smaller guys - the big 3-7 ISP’s have their own billing systems and purchase credit card software, mostly because we already had it for long distance dialing back in the day.

There are a TON of compliance spec’s these days -
Data breach compliance for example - There are HUGE $$. penalties for not reporting those (this is why the banks, and stores all of a sudden public ally announce breaches)

I used to write industry standards on this stuff...

All good.

Your problem here is going to be the delay of satellite, it’s normally a 200-300 millisecond delay which can really screw things up...
That and bandwidth once they get a good amount of customers up in your area.

Hardwire then?

For me, it's okay if there's a net price increase over regular cable internet for example. Even at double the price, if it allows me to telecommute 2 days a week, the cost saving in gas in my truck from the remote county will more than pay the difference.

Traditional geosync sats have 600ms round trip... the new Starlink sats are in extremely low earth orbit, with latency more in the 20-30ms

Ironbender-LOL, the companies I could work for narrow down quite a bit at this point.... I used to work for ACS, now for a Co-Op

LoadClear go to this link and look how Viastat did on thier Tests.

https://www.fcc.gov/reports-researc.../measuring-fixed-broadband-eighth-report

When you go to the link search for “latency” ( which means delay... we used round trip delay).

I was one of the “industry technical leads” that wrote how to do the standard testing... yes we used round trip delay...
I don’t want to lose folks with long haired tech stuff.. but the key performance indicators are the entire path not just the radio link delay... This test shows the results.

If you read the latency section they talk about applications being impacted by geo satellite based Internet.

PM sent

You guys grew up professionally with this stuff. It's amazing to think that I never touched a cell phone or personal computer until after college. Probably true for 80% of the forum members. Goes to show how fast technology has changed over the last 30 years. I grew up as a Combat Systems Officer in the Navy so I used to supervise sailors, and shoot missiles, guns, torpedoes etc for a living.

On one of my ships, it was an old destroyer without a computer network, the Captain looked at me and said "CSO, I want a computer network." I looked at him and said "Sir, you realize that I know nothing about computers and the ship has no IT staff correct?" And he said "Yep, make it happen." I knew right then, my life was going to be hell.

I found 3 basement hackers in my department and the 4 of us learned from scratch how to design, install and run a computer network throughout the ship. It was brutal but we ran all the fiber, setup all the servers and workstations and got everything working over about 10 months. It was literally trial by fire but I sure did learn a lot that way.

I'm EXTREMELY familiar with latency on satellite networks. I've tested several pseudowire TDM CEmOE solutions over satellite on our company owned transponers on Udelsat owned birds. That report you referenced from 2017 is outdated. Those were based on geosynchronous satellites at a35,000 km orbit.

The new generation of Starlink sats are at 550 km orbits... a different animal altogether

Ha.. Kind of the same story on my end - I was a switch tech in the Airforce and had to take care of all the circuits & swith, main frame dumb terminals, and blah, blah,... Because I was an installation crew chief before I started doing regular base comm work I was considered a System integrator...

I think i was eating a tunafish sandwich when that exact same thing happened to me - Somebody can in and said we need a guy who knows compute & network to do X, Y, Z
... Aw hell ... here we go again...

The engineering and Rome labs guys kept pushing me to get out and get my engineering degree so I jumped out.
40 years later I retired from writing the standards on the crap we did way, way back when.

Funny part is the young guys tend to know what they read (or more frequently google), but not where it came from or why- so when it has to be modified.... what do they call it now “fast fail”... LOL