First of all if you want to want online movies from sites like YouTube, forget it. And don't even begin to think about sharing files.
You want to pull down the latest Ubuntu? Nope.
How about Open Office? Negative.
It will fail almost consistently around 80%. Well, I say "fail", but what really happens is that their equipment sends a termination packet so your download manager thinks it is done. If you try to download it again, you will trip their (cough) Fair Access Policy . Once you hit this threshold, you are penalized with a download speed of 2Kbps for 24 hours. I think you are only able to hack into WOPR to play Global Thermonuclear War at that speed.
To add insult to injury, to get the service you have to pay $500 for equipment and installation. The rate for the package I subscribed to was $80 a month. I was supposed to get 1.6 Mbps/250 Kbps...I never got it.
Here are the results of the internal speed test I got with Hughesnet:
- Date Download/Upload
(Ike takes my power away for 11 days)
09/13/2008 14:54:56 144/53
09/11/2008 00:46:44 943/161
09/11/2008 00:12:10 782/87
09/10/2008 23:33:21 44/86
09/10/2008 23:14:49 52/38
09/10/2008 23:11:03 94/28
09/10/2008 23:00:15 95/79
09/10/2008 22:58:50 92/57
09/10/2008 22:54:22 48/0.0
09/10/2008 02:15:10 1224/148
09/05/2008 21:28:39 1348/189
08/29/2008 23:15:01 437/55
08/29/2008 23:12:01 371/49
08/26/2008 22:03:09 507/74
08/26/2008 18:04:13 801/54
08/26/2008 11:09:07 1346/191
08/25/2008 23:31:17 545/63
08/25/2008 23:10:11 666/26
08/25/2008 22:10:57 1170/165
08/21/2008 22:16:07 520/134
08/21/2008 22:09:58 482/144
Mind you these are speeds just to get from my home through the satellite to the Hughnet network some 2000 miles away. Speeds to the sites outside their network were as low as 20Kbps due to oversubscribing.
Have a problem with your service? Get ready to go through a canned checklist of things to do to your computer (some of which can fuck it up) before their worthless techsupport staffed with Indians who have undergone American customs training even get close to helping you.
For someone like me who knows a few things about networking and computers, you will find this experience insulting to your intelligence. The technician with their watered down Indian accent with immediately apologize for your problem and set about trying their best to do absolutely nothing about it. And you'd better not mention Linux or their heads will explode!
To terminate this nightmarish service before the 24 months is up, you get the sheer joy of paying $300. WOOT! After fighting with two more Indians about why I didn't want to pay for service I couldn't use, explaining that they did not fulfill their end of the contract due to oversubscribing so I wasn't paying a fee, being put on death hold, and being hung up on once, I was still stuck with the termination fee and $500 worth of satellite equipment.
