SatSig topic:

Linkstar DVB-S Question

(Read 3302 times)

Nov 2^nd, 2007 at 6:17pm

I have an offer for 768 down and 256 up DVB-S Linkstar at 1:1 for US $2500/month on Express A4, does that seem like a good price?

The equipment will include a 1.8m dish and a 4 WATT BUC. The only thing is Express A4 is only 18 deg above the horizon for me, will that matter much?

I want to be able to stream some web cams, VoIP and gaming etc, will the Linkstar DVB-S at 1:1 be able to do that?

Nov 3^rd, 2007 at 9:54pm

James, your intention to find the cheapest service is, of course, understandable, however cheapest usually never means good. You already got screwed by one network operator. I'm pretty sure you're going the same way if you'll put price on top of everything once again. Just for example, see: https://www.rscc.ru/en/satellite/models/model03.html
(the asterisk notice about A4)

It has been launched in 1999 if I am not mistaken. It's hard to find the actual launch date nowadays but I'm pretty sure for the late 90's (has RSCC asked everybody to remove that info from Google?). There's no such thing as free lunch generally speaking. If you're not going to require the service for long time, A4 may probably be a nice idea to save your cash as RSCC currently dumps that bird as fast as they can and that's a nice opportunity for short-period bandwidth lease until the bird will fly out of your antenna beam. Additional point to consider - how reputable the company is? How long they're in the business? Are their replies have the feel they know what they're speaking about?

If you still decide to go the cheap way, ask about what SLA (Service Level Agreement) they provide. Do they guarantee network uptime and/or latencies? If yes, what's their refund policy in case there's an outage? Ask them what happens if they fail to deliver a service within the agreed characteristics range, will they refund? If yes, how much? Once you get answers, check the SLA document to make sure it contains all the clauses to protect you and get them to sign it. I think that's the best I can recommend in this situation.

Nov 7^th, 2007 at 9:21pm

Dear James

I have been in the satellite Industry ever since it began and thats around 23 years , Maxim is right you will get what you pay for ! .

AM4 is a C band Satellite and when I installed C Band Antennas in the Middle East C Band was so prone to interference we could harly belive it, not occasional but 9 out of every 10 installations would suffer from it , we even had to put Dishes below ground level and erect fences and all sorts of things to avoid the problem .

Ku Band is a higher frequency and much less suscpetible to TI and on teh whole we rarely see any problems at this level.

I pay RSSC around $3750 a megabit for Ku Band bandwidth then I have to process it and cover the cost of hosting and so on so its impossible to offer much less than $5000 a meg , on HX we can do better around $4500 per meg but look before you do anything do your sums , Bandwidth is an Arithmetical equation , add up the devices you want to run and then add more for overheads because you can bet your bottom dollar most manufacturers will be economical with the real data rates the devices use and then divide the number of devices into your upstream and down stream , the answer will be the available bits .

My guess is for what you want to do you will never be able to acheive it on Shared as its streaming so you need dedicated and if you want decent signals you need Ku Band , dont waste your money on C band it will be a disaster , especially as you have already indicated to us you think there is local TI.

We are looking at how we can best help you and whether we should send a dish out , we will get back to you but anyway as regards C band my advise is forget it .

Best Regards