11/25   Anyone ever taken a look at the following?
        http://www.adaptec.com/products/solutions/satellite.html
        Anybody here use it?  I'm looking at it as a possible way out of my
        medieval net swamp...  -John
        \_ GW = satellite for Internet use requires a phone line modem which
           sends requests to the ISP, which relays that to the satellite,
           which sends you the right info - nasty latency.  Seems like cable
           modems are most ppls sol'ns, with DSL for the $-laden. -jctwu
                \_ not in Switzerland.
                   \_ Specifically, our cable modem setup here is pretty bad,
                      since (a) our physical net is overloaded, and (b) they
                      are doing dynamic NAT instead of giving everyone their
                      own IP, so no netrek.  Thought that the adaptec card
                      hooked directly to a satellite tv-type dish by coax
                      cable.  Point the dish at the satellite and you're
                      on.  But then I don't know whether those things can even
                      transmit that far.  I don't think I have to go through
                      a provider, since that would defeat the whole point
                      of having a satellite network card... -John
           \_ DSL only for the cable-modem impaired. SJMercury had an article
              about a massive cable-modem rollout soon in the South Bay. The
              final sentence of the article: "This covers all areas of the
              SouthBay except San Jose." FUCK!
                \_ it'll collapse when they try to put that many people
                   on it.  They're selling bandwidth at a loss.  -tom
        \_ There is a DirecTV satellite over Europe. Maybe other supported
        ones too. I'll check. Your latency might be too bad for netrek, but
        bandwith for your porn downloads will be good. There is a
        right way to provide cable modem service and there is a wrong way.
        The way Austrian PTT does it for example is wrong. You sit on a
        shared Ether with the whole city, so it is much much slower than it
        could've been. I expect Swiss PTT to be similarly lame. -muchandr
        \_ That about covers it.  The thing that sounds cool about the
           satellite card is the high bandwidth, although you're probably
           right about the latency.  -John
           \_ out-and-back to geosynchronous satellites is over 500ms