VSat internet Solution for Nortern Nigeria

[sdanyaro]

Do you know or have any information for an affordable and stable VSAT Internet Access solution that can be installed and used in Nortern part of Nigeria... I had a portable VSAT Internet Access system call BGAN by INMARSAT, one of the issues or problem with that system is the fact that the bandwidth is a bit too expensive for me since they charge per Meg of usage. Also if you need more information about that system, let me know. I am really looking for ideas, prices and most of all reliability... please let?s discuss!

This topic is from zezezee's "How can internet be really cheap?" http://www.hausafulani.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=559

[zezezee]

Hello there mallam danyaro, or rather, oga admin...hhehe....well, i think u have provided us with little info on ur vsat, but as u said, if we need more, just say it......

The service provider u r gettin ur bandwith from. The company actually providing u with the bandwidth itself should b selected carefully...some serivce providers have cheap rates, with very high downtimes, while some, have high rates with very low downtimes. So u have to carefully make a choice that will b viable to the bussiness/usage i guess. I would have recommended a company i knw that have considerable low price for their bandwidth at a reasonalable reliability. I will check n get back to u on this one inshaAllah. They gave a friend of mine i think 512/128Kbps for about $700/month....now i think thats farely reasonable, what do u think? and for an operational period of 3 months without a single failure....

from my experience with workin with a service provider, it is cheaper for u to subscribe to a local ISP i think....well, since i dnt knw wat u use it for, i cant tell again....

salams for now....

[gogannaka]

Bansani ba amma nowadays local(tv) sattelite technicians sell direct-on-pc (one way) for abt 50000 naira provided u have a data enabled reciever.For the data packets they offer subscriptions from companies such as AOL, netscape etc. the price i was told, ranges from $9-$15 per month.BUt actually i have not seen anyone that has tried it.
I know that multichoice provides 2 way access for 7000 naira a month and i've seen ppl that use it.

One disadvantage of vsat is that it is easily attacked by viruses and worms especially when it is used for commercial purposes.

[sdanyaro]

Thank you very much and inna fata anyi Sallah lafiya, zezezee & gogannaka

Also Thank you very much Zezeze for this your primer on VSAT?

I would prefer to use KU Band at this time to reduce the cost of equipment and since rain is not too much of a factor around here? I can bear the unreliability of the KU Band to offset the equipment price of the C Band? at least for now?

I am thinking of about 1.2 or 1.6 meter dish for the KU Bank... What bandwidth Up & Down would you recommend for these kinds of sizes? I would also like one that could be easy to upgrade the bandwidth with...

Which Service provider(s) would you recommend in terms of less hassle for the installation and support thereafter?

Yes I would really be interested on this service provider, but I would like to start with half or one-quarter of the bandwidth?(512/128)? please let me get pricing on 128/64 and 64/32 for a 3 months period? Also please how about the Installation and provisioning costs?

I do not have anything against local ISPs, and I actually prefer them for the installation and provisioning, but most of them have a bad reputation when it comes to the agreed bandwidth? and sharing more subscribers that their system can reasonable sustain? What is your experience regarding this? Who can you recommend?

[Ibro2g]

I dont get it, can these local dishes be tuned for internet? and yah, is there anything like free to air internet
lol :lol:  :P  arabsat internet? :?:

[zezezee]

Ohh Yes!!! Y not? but their gain might b a little bit low, because it is a function of how accurate the curvature on the dish is. Second issue is, the reciever for the TV dish has to be chaged to a transceiver because TV dishes only support one-way communition while internet dishes support two-way communication.

[lawsay]

GASKIYA MAGANA ANAN IS VSAT INTERNET SERVICE HAS PROBLEM IF U DON'T HAVE GOOD ENGINEER DAT MAINTAN IT BCOUSE VSAT AND WIRELESS NETWORK ARE NOT THE SAME VSAT ONCE RAIN SEASON START OS PROBLEM WILL START BCOUSE OF THE WHEATHER BUT FOR WIRELESS IS DIFFERENT AND THE BANDWITH IS COSTLY WHEN CUSTOMERS DOWNLOADING SOMETHING THE NETWORK WILL START SLOW BCOUSE THE BANDWITH IS MOVING DOWN THAT WHY IF I CAN MAKE ADVISE SO IS BATTER TO GET (ISP) IN ALL NORTHERN  STATE BCOUSE THAT ONE IS MORE CHEAPER THAN VSAT AND NO PROBLEM LIKE VSAT BUT IF U CAN GET THE BIGGEST VSAT WANNADA AKE AMMA FANI DASHI A BANK OR BIG ORGANISATION TO IS GOOD BUT VERY EXPENCIVE SUNAN TA C-BAND KARAMAR ITACE (KU-BAND)

[gogannaka]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6653067.stm

Will this in anyway help reduce the cost of acquiring internet access?

I pray to God that the satellite will not be like the cheap,'not so qualitative' Chinese product.

[gogannaka]

The Nigerian N40 Billion sattellite has malfunctioned.
The Sattellite has started its decent to earth after it suffered a power failure.

[gogannaka]

Resurrecting an old thread.

Does anyone know if the latency of a Vsat can in any way be reduced to less than the usual 500ms?
It seems microwave radios can sometime be faster than VSAT because round sessions can return in less than 10ms.
Internet is supposed to become cheaper and faster with the Landing of the Glo1 sub Atlantic fibre optic cable but still there's not much improvement.
If anyone has used VSAT in other countries please what is the average latency (for a 3.8m C-Band)?

[zezezee]

G-naka,

Salam! Kwana 2 - I suppose call you and catch up. A yi hakuri dani please.

Anyway, pn the subject. I think there are quite a few considerations to be made here.

1. The average 500ms RTT for connections over VSAT where you are might not be completely (certainly not actually) based on radio propagation delay. It is due to a number of reasons; error correction and re-tranmissions, propagation delays and serialization delays. Radio waves can generally have a propagation delay of about 150ms (last time I did a simple calculation) but this figure can drastically increase due to a poor transmission condition (geography, weather, noises, etc). Another one is serialization delay, which I think is least likely to be your issue there, as the manufacturer of your kit must have worked the most optimal frame sizes to minimize this. I think you are most likely having a noisy transmission channel issue!

Anyway, let me know if you have more questions and we can speculate some more.

Hope that helps abit.


[1] http://www.cse.wustl.edu/~jain/cis788-97/ftp/satellite_nets.pdf

[2] http://www.ittc.ku.edu/research/thesis/documents/pooja_wagh.pdf p29

[gogannaka]

Zezezee,yeah we need to catch up.

Thanks for the links.
I think the 500ms RTT is good enough for a VSAT. What i'm asking is,can it be reduced to like 300ms? or is 500ms the best a C-band VSAT(probably on a 3.8m dish) can offer.
If yes,then does it imply that data providers on HSDPA or UMTS (3G) cannot use a VSAT to achieve an average RTT of <200ms?
The average RTT for an MTN 3G datacard is 250ms.