I have suspended my service to the max allowed by Hughes while on
vacation.
I have to decide whether to pay $65 a month for service that I will
not be using or have it shut off and later turned back on.

My question to the group is: how difficult and how much will I be
charged to turn it back on?
Can you reccoment anyone in particular?

Many thanks
Joe

joe@tittiger.com wrote:
> I have suspended my service to the max allowed by Hughes while on
> vacation.
> I have to decide whether to pay $65 a month for service that I will
> not be using or have it shut off and later turned back on.
>
> My question to the group is: how difficult and how much will I be
> charged to turn it back on?
> Can you reccoment anyone in particular?
>
> Many thanks
> Joe
>
Um, this seems like a question HNS should be able to answer for you.
Unless you're running really old hardware. But AFAIK, all of the really
old DirecPC one-ways were decommissioned a year ago last December and
everyone migrated to a DW3000 or better.

The reason turning off old hardware could be a problem is that if HNS
were phasing out a service, it might become impossible to have it
recommissioned once its turned off.

But for everything from a DW3000 and up I don't believe that is the case.

The trick is how long can you stay off-the-air and still be able to be
recommissioned on the same satellite? It would require a truck roll if
you had to re-point the dish on a 2-way. On a 1-way its cumbersome, but
you can do it yourself.

A good question for the HNS folks. You stand a good change of not getting
a satisfactory answer to this one tho. I suspect the odds of a re-point
increase in proportion to the time you remain dormant.

Good Luck,
Dave

On Wed, 31 Jan 2007 02:40:25 GMT, David Spain <nospam@127.0.0.1>
wrote:

>Um, this seems like a question HNS should be able to answer for you.
>Unless you're running really old hardware. But AFAIK, all of the really
>old DirecPC one-ways were decommissioned a year ago last December and
>everyone migrated to a DW3000 or better.

So far as I know, it is impossible to commission a 3000, and about as
close to impossible as you can get to commission a 4000, so turning
off either of those should be considered a permanent move.
Don Bradner
donb (not don) at arcatapet.com
Posting today by Satellite from
Quartzsite, AZ

Don Bradner wrote:
> So far as I know, it is impossible to commission a 3000, and about as
> close to impossible as you can get to commission a 4000, so turning
> off either of those should be considered a permanent move.

Don,

I have an old 4000 modem. If I wanted to get it commissioned, could I buy
the additional brick that turns it into a 4020 and still get it
commissioned?

Dave

On Thu, 01 Feb 2007 16:26:35 GMT, David Spain <nospam@127.0.0.1>
wrote:

>I have an old 4000 modem. If I wanted to get it commissioned, could I buy
>the additional brick that turns it into a 4020 and still get it
>commissioned?

That falls in the "maybe" grey area. I don't believe Direcway/Hughes
ever had a direct plan for the 4020, and I'm reasonably sure you
couldn't get anywhere with them. VARs could possibly have some billing
IDs for business plans on the 4020, but they would activate with
reluctance.

The bandwidth cost of a 4020 (to Hughes or the VAR) is roughly three
times what a 7000 runs.

Since you can get a used 7000 pretty cheaply, and it will upload at
2-3 times the speed (downloads around the same) for less per month,
why would you consider a 4020?
Don Bradner
donb (not don) at arcatapet.com
Posting today by Satellite from
Quartzsite, AZ

Don Bradner wrote:
> On Thu, 01 Feb 2007 16:26:35 GMT, David Spain <nospam@127.0.0.1>
> wrote:
>
>> I have an old 4000 modem. If I wanted to get it commissioned, could I buy
>> the additional brick that turns it into a 4020 and still get it
>> commissioned?
>
> That falls in the "maybe" grey area. I don't believe Direcway/Hughes
> ever had a direct plan for the 4020, and I'm reasonably sure you
> couldn't get anywhere with them. VARs could possibly have some billing
> IDs for business plans on the 4020, but they would activate with
> reluctance.
>
> The bandwidth cost of a 4020 (to Hughes or the VAR) is roughly three
> times what a 7000 runs.
>
> Since you can get a used 7000 pretty cheaply, and it will upload at
> 2-3 times the speed (downloads around the same) for less per month,
> why would you consider a 4020?

Because at first glance, since I already have the 4000 hardware, it would seem
on the surface to be easiest to try to upgrade to a 4020 since that would
appear to leverage the hardware I already have to the max. However, as you
note, the per month charges to run a 4020 through a VAR might eat up that
advantage in just a few months, depending upon the expense. It depends on how
cheap I could get a DW7000 I suppose. Granted the performance would be better
on a 7000.

The only way I'd consider satellite would be through some sort of business
plan or maybe an upgraded "pro" plan. Residential wouldn't make the grade.

Dave

While we're on the subject:

> Don Bradner wrote:
> The bandwidth cost of a 4020 (to Hughes or the VAR) is roughly three
> times what a 7000 runs.
>>
>> Since you can get a used 7000 pretty cheaply, and it will upload at
>> 2-3 times the speed (downloads around the same) for less per month,
>> why would you consider a 4020?

Can you elaborate on this one a bit for me? At face value the two statements
seem contradictory.

Surely the bandwidth cost of 3x for a 4020 isn't due to its lack of 2-3x
speed of uploads. And with download speeds the same where is the 3x BW
cost of the 4020?

I'm suspecting that its because the 4020 uses an older slotting algorithm
and isn't as efficient at BW sharing as the 7000. Is that the case? Never
having owned the 3rd brick for a 4020, rumor had it, it was using a commodity
IBM PowerPC (405GP) chip to do the software processing, whilst the 7000 uses
custom ASICs. Could the slower processing speed of the 4020 also have an induced
extra cost to Hughes and/or a VAR?

Dave

On Mon, 05 Feb 2007 22:58:28 GMT, David Spain <nospam@127.0.0.1>
wrote:

>While we're on the subject:
>
>> Don Bradner wrote:
>> The bandwidth cost of a 4020 (to Hughes or the VAR) is roughly three
>> times what a 7000 runs.
>>>
>>> Since you can get a used 7000 pretty cheaply, and it will upload at
>>> 2-3 times the speed (downloads around the same) for less per month,
>>> why would you consider a 4020?
>
>Can you elaborate on this one a bit for me? At face value the two statements
>seem contradictory.

The download side (where most bandwidth usage is) is the issue. The
4000 is only capable of BPSK, Binary Phase Shift Keying, where there
is one bit (2 states) of data possible for each symbol (cycle).

The 7000 uses QPSK (Quaternary), which is 2 bits of data (4 states)
per symbol.

The 7000S uses OPSK (Octal), also called 8PSK, which is 3 bits of data
(8 states) per symbol.

Satellite transponders are paid for by symbols, so the more data you
can load on a symbol, the less it costs the provider.
Don Bradner
donb (not don) at arcatapet.com
Posting today by Satellite from
Quartzsite, AZ

Thanks Don!

That makes it quite clear.

Dave