The Equator and internet service??

[rockhillmanor]

Does being closer to the equator have anything to do with internet service?

Up North it could be raining, sleeting, snowing cats and dogs and I ALWAYS had internet service.

Here in Florida, EVERY time it rains you loose your internet connection.
Heck if it's raining hard enough you can't even buy your lottery tickets because they go down too!

Think it has anything to do with being closer to the Equator and how the satellites revolve and/or their position.? :?

[MrWizard]

Verizon, Sprint, AT&T, cricket, Walmart, boost, T-Mobile
It is all cellular, no satellite

The USB stick is a cellular device period...
End of story

Satellite internet uses a dish

This has run its course, all possibilities have been discussed

[pianotuna]

Who do you pay for using the dongle? (i.e. what you called a usb plug)

rockhillmanor wrote:

It's a USB plug, like small thumb drive. I plug it into my laptop and voila I have internet. There is no phone connection, no antenna, no cable hook up nada nothing just my providers USB plugged into the laptop.

I used it Full timing for over 6 years and had access everywhere I traveled. Even in the rain!! Except now in north central Florida.

Sooo you are saying my internet IS satellite and considered radio?

[joebedford]

rockhillmanor wrote:
It's a USB plug, like small thumb drive. I plug it into my laptop and voila I have internet. There is no phone connection, no antenna, no cable hook up nada nothing just my providers USB plugged into the laptop.

Yeah, there's an antenna in there - perhaps more than one.

I'm positive you're using terrestrial radio, not sat. for your connection to the internet.

BTW, who is your ISP? We'll ask them about their network.

[rockhillmanor]

2-way Satellite Internet (HUGHES, Exceed, And a few others) are also radio and subject to storm interference.

X2
My neighbors here have Hughes and they get dropped when it rains hard.

OP here.
I'm not a full blown techie but in answer to what I use to access the internet:

It's a USB plug, like small thumb drive. I plug it into my laptop and voila I have internet. There is no phone connection, no antenna, no cable hook up nada nothing just my providers USB plugged into the laptop.

I used it Full timing for over 6 years and had access everywhere I traveled. Even in the rain!! Except now in north central Florida.

Let me mention for those that have never been to Florida. It rains in solid sheets of water. Being from up North I have never seen anything like it! Perhaps the "density" of the rain is what makes the difference from other parts of the US regarding being an interference?

Sooo you are saying my internet IS satellite and considered radio?

[wa8yxm]

There is internet service, internet service and internet service and still more internet service... The differences is how is it delivered.

Fiberoptic: Faster than, as they used to say "Greased Lightening" it in fact IS greased lightening. Light down a fiber optic thread. Very reliable, not much can interfere with it fairly immune to lightening and radio interference (A direct strike on cable can melt it is all) This is the internet of the Future. GOOGLE and AT&T have lots of fiber. But this is also "hard wired" internet.

Cable (Coxial) your Cable TV company offers, Not as fast, more subject to RFI and lightening,, Uses teh same cable that brings your TV.

Twisted pair (DSL) slower still see Cable for interference, uses the telephone lines.

Cellular.. Often faster than DSL but may (or not) be slower than Cable, This is all RADIO. so RFI and storm interference is serious.

2-way Satellite Internet (HUGHES, Exceed, And a few others) are also radio and subject to storm interference.

2-way RADIO internet (I-2000 or I2K forget which is an example) Also a radio service subject to the same issues in a storm.

If you are using Park Wi-Fi (I am) then the park gets service via one of the above methods.

Then it delivers via RADIO, so again it's subject to the same storm issues.

[Chris_Bryant]

Sam Spade wrote:

Chris Bryant wrote:
Find a single ISP using a sat link for a bunch of users- you will not, because it does not exist.

So you have surveyed EVERY little podunk ISP in the whole country and none of them find that connecting their few customers to somebody else's backbone by sat or a long radio haul is the best solution for them ?? Somehow I don't think you really posses that knowledge.

Boy, you just keep digging it deeper, don't you. Just in case you have forgotten:

Sam Spade wrote:
ALL electronic communication is likely to use a satellite somewhere in it's transmission path; even some fairly short trips that you would never believe.

That is simply, 100% wrong. Unless you are an end user with a sat uplink, it simply is not done, for all of the reasons I, and other have patiently pointed out. Now, if you want to change your story to include terrestrial radio- I said nothing about that.

FWIW, while I'm not an expert, I have been online since well before the Internet, on the Internet before it was publicly accessible (via a University shell account, back when a lot was gopher:// ), had my website (hand coded) since 1999, have a good friend who had a T1 line and 150 phone lines in to his garage. I also am subscribed to, and sometimes even read, a number of IT professional magazines. So I am not totally without a clue- the clue train stops at my door every day (in deference to another early adopter).

[Sam_Spade]

Chris Bryant wrote:
Find a single ISP using a sat link for a bunch of users- you will not, because it does not exist.

So you have surveyed EVERY little podunk ISP in the whole country and none of them find that connecting their few customers to somebody else's backbone by sat or a long radio haul is the best solution for them ?? Somehow I don't think you really posses that knowledge.

I don't in fact know that it happens either but just as some end users find sat the only practical choice, I see no reason that some small service provider might not come to that same conclusion.

The symptoms of a failed radio link are very distinctive and when it repeats over and over again there is no other logical conclusion.......as the OP reports.

[Chris_Bryant]

Sam Spade wrote:

Chris Bryant wrote:


You're not serious are you?

I am absolutely serious.

When the symptoms are:
A little rain has no effect, not matter how long it goes on but when the clouds get real tall and dense or the rain falls REAL heavily, then there is an outage.....that magically starts working again when the clouds or rain thins out and NOT when the rain actually stops......indicates a loss of radio signal and NOT a signal degradation because the receiving equipment is a little damp.

Well, that is exactly what happened to me, and after much work, it wound up being bad hardware at my closest dslam, where the coax goes to fiber, and is about 3 miles from me. I assure you there are no satellite links in that circuit.

Now it *may* be that some ISPs use a microwave link, but that is usually the "last mile" to the end user, and not a main line.

Then.....the end links are not multi-routed. There is only one path from me to my ISP. When you set up a particular system, you get to define how far that end link goes and at what point it joins the big network.

And none of them are via satellite. Bottom line is it is simply too expensive, and will never be anything more than a link for an end user- not at all part of the Internet. Find a single ISP using a sat link for a bunch of users- you will not, because it does not exist.

[Sam_Spade]

Chris Bryant wrote:


You're not serious are you?

I am absolutely serious.

When the symptoms are:
A little rain has no effect, not matter how long it goes on but when the clouds get real tall and dense or the rain falls REAL heavily, then there is an outage.....that magically starts working again when the clouds or rain thins out and NOT when the rain actually stops......indicates a loss of radio signal and NOT a signal degradation because the receiving equipment is a little damp.

Then.....the end links are not multi-routed. There is only one path from me to my ISP. When you set up a particular system, you get to define how far that end link goes and at what point it joins the big network.

IF.....a given system is set up so that the end link goes 500 miles to a hub for that provider......or 5000 miles....and it has only one path to get there, there is no reason that link can not be a radio system of some kind, including sat. Now it might piss off a few gamers but I still don't believe that there is any guarantee for minimum latency and no guarantee that a sat will not be used in your end link path.

[AllegroD]

OP, What is your internet connection? It helps to talk about what you have and are using to see if you can do anything to help your problem.

[AllegroD]

Sam Spade wrote:

joebedford wrote:
If I had a two second round trip delay (to sat and back) I would call it unusable

Delay for what exactly ??

It often takes 2 seconds or more for the data to start coming back after sending a request.....for most anything on any site.
Once it starts coming it blasts through.....usually.

Distance, Handshake, packet verification, encryption, authentication, equipment.

Reading
More reading
Let me Google that for you.

[2oldman]

Sam sure isn't giving up easily, but it sounds like he's guessing. The person who is losing an argument is usually talking the loudest.

[Chris_Bryant]

Sam Spade wrote:

Chris Bryant wrote:

Easy- bad terrestrial equipment. A bit of moisture in a connection is all it takes.

there are still miles of "dark" fiber optic cable wating to be used,

And what kind of bad equipment is that which dries out immediately when the rain stops ??

You're not serious are you? Do you understand QAM modulation? Do you have a clue as to capacitance, reactance, the effect of moisture on those properties, and how they affect data transmission?

Guy Who Wants To Argue wrote:
Then are you saying that every little town in West Texas, just for instance, has a boat load of "dark fiber" upon which they can draw ??

Sorry, but you obviously both have no clue as to what you are talking about, and simply want to argue (spell checker just gave me choice of obviously and obliviously- smart spell checker).

Satellites simply are not part of the Internet, period. You have to understand how the Internet works- I type this, hit send, these bytes are broken in to packets, each packet has an address, and each packet makes its way to the address- but not all together, and not via the same route. This is *not* like phone service, where you are physically connected via copper to the person you are speaking to (though that's not so much, these days). You send a few packets via satellite, and they are late enough they are sent again. Latency is a real issue, and will nearly always be routed around. IOW, a satellite connection would never be used, with the exception of the end user.

[Sam_Spade]

Chris Bryant wrote:

Easy- bad terrestrial equipment. A bit of moisture in a connection is all it takes.

there are still miles of "dark" fiber optic cable wating to be used,

And what kind of bad equipment is that which dries out immediately when the rain stops ??

Then are you saying that every little town in West Texas, just for instance, has a boat load of "dark fiber" upon which they can draw ??