Satellite ISPs?

Well this is an interesting predicament. We've got an employee that's getting married and moving off to the big town of Greensburg, LA (population 630, doesn't even have a traffic light) in St. Helena parish. Cable isn't an option (everything says Charter does cable there, but their site says they don't for that address), and we almost got DSL there but CenturyLink called back to say they couldn't make it past a creek or something.

So that leaves us with satellite internet access (or dialup LOL). Is there a provider anyone can recommend? She's going to connect to us by VPN and RDP into a terminal server. My boss has only found one provider so far that will ensure a VPN connection, and they want an install fee of $1,300 and $149/mo for a 2 year term.

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shodown

arwes wrote: »

Well this is an interesting predicament. We've got an employee that's getting married and moving off to the big town of Greensburg, LA (population 630, doesn't even have a traffic light) in St. Helena parish. Cable isn't an option (everything says Charter does cable there, but their site says they don't for that address), and we almost got DSL there but CenturyLink called back to say they couldn't make it past a creek or something.

So that leaves us with satellite internet access (or dialup LOL). Is there a provider anyone can recommend? She's going to connect to us by VPN and RDP into a terminal server. My boss has only found one provider so far that will ensure a VPN connection, and they want an install fee of $1,300 and $149/mo for a 2 year term.

When faced with a simular situation for a customer(well almost) we had them find a colo office where they could rent a cube. I don't know if thats availalbe in that area, but maybe a town near by where they could get a cube and net access and added a voip phone.

arwes

We've got another option, though I don't know if she'll go for it. I'm showing that she's about 45 miles away from our Baton Rouge branch office. If the ISP search falls through, we'll probably just ask her to suck it up and work from that office. She just doesn't want to put a ton of miles on her shiny BMW.

networker050184

I have looked into satellite internet when I was over seas and I can tell you it is not cheap. Not worth it for one person IMO.

Besides, 45 miles isn't that bad to commute. Shouldn't hit too much traffic in the backwoods anyway.

arwes

Yeah, I think her current commute is 25 miles one way, but early AM traffic in Baton Rouge is a nightmare compared to my town. I think Shodown has given me an idea! Our company is owned by several banks, and one of them is the Bank of Greensburg. They've got four locations there, so we'll check to see if they have any spare office space that we can use for her. And we've already got one employee set up with a VoIP phone (we've got a Toshiba CIX640) so that won't be a problem setting her up with that either. I love it when a plan comes together!

Bokeh

Is there a Wisp that covers that area? Here's a list of providers in La, might get lucky

Louisiana

tiersten

The latency from satellite internet would make using RDP or any other sort of interactive protocol nasty.

arwes

Well this is no fun. I suggested they use the bank location to have her work from there (and that location would have broadband access), and they refuse because of "concerns they have". They won't share those concerns with me, so at this point I'm wondering how far do you have to go to try to keep one employee? We're bending over backwards at this point.

msteinhilber

arwes wrote: »

Well this is no fun. I suggested they use the bank location to have her work from there (and that location would have broadband access), and they refuse because of "concerns they have". They won't share those concerns with me, so at this point I'm wondering how far do you have to go to try to keep one employee? We're bending over backwards at this point.

Quite frankly you've done your part IMHO and have exhausted all of the feasible possibilities. This employee should be willing to accept the fact that the world doesn't bend to their every desire and either buck up and commute or find a different job. Not much more you can do from your end, this employee should have done more research prior to deciding to move.

Paul Boz

I think I've stopped to get gas in that town before

1. satellite internet won't support the features you want without a lot of problems (VPNs get dropped, lost packets, etc). It is not a good solution for remote office workers and its definitely not a good solution down here in Louisiana. We get inclement weather (rain daily) that would most certainly make her unable to work.

2. Driving 45 minutes in to baton rouge is not an unreasonable solution. If her internet service costs the company $4900 over two years thats just not worth it for one employee. Getting to work is the burden of the employee. If she doesn't like putting miles on her shiny new BMW she should maybe look into not living in the middle of nowhere or get a new job that's more local.

dubbs112

Unless I am missing something why not just use an aircard? I would assume that she would have cell phone coverage where she is going to be. You can even get a broadband router for most pcmcia air cards that would allow you multiple connections.

I have a sprint one personally and use it a ton while traveling.

arwes

I think what you're missing is exactly how remote this area is.

I'll look into that about the router, but management has made their decision. AT&T offers EDGE connectivity in that area, and Verizon & Sprint/Nextel have zero coverage within several miles.

They've gone ahead with using WildBlue for satellite access. I'm going to go a different route in getting her connected up though. Most anyone else who works from home uses a IPSEC connection to get to the network. I'm going to set her up to use our terminal services gateway server since it uses SSL for everything and see if we get decent performance out of it. WildBlue says that SSL based VPNs work great with their service, it's only the IPSEC connections that have the major problems.

tiersten

arwes wrote: »

They've gone ahead with using WildBlue for satellite access.

According to this installers page, the WildBlue service has roughly 600-800ms latency for connections. That is pretty high if you're going to be using terminal services. It'd be usable but the user might get a little annoyed with the delays.

msteinhilber

I had two offices in the sticks that I supported that used Wild Blue. All of our remote offices are connected to corporate through a gateway to gateway VPN. Wild Blue could not sustain a solid VPN connection, and that was on a clear sun shining day - if it's raining and/or cloudy you'd be better off with dial-up. Now these were with IPSEC VPN's, I can see how an SSL VPN would work much better since it has a much lower overhead (5 octets to 50 or so with IPSEC or somewhere around there). Should be interesting to see how that works out, we would have tried SSL VPN's but we consolidated the offices with Wild Blue some time ago.

arwes

Just thought I'd update that the employee in question took her workstation home yesterday and got everything hooked up. She's been logged into the terminal server through our terminal services gateway server since around 7:30 AM and it's apparently working great for her. She said it's a little slow, but that's to be expected since her only experience with the terminal server has been working on it over our LAN. Still, color me surprised that it actually works.

/usr

Hopefully this ultimately works out for you and the employee.

In my personal experience with the few satellite internet installations I've ran across, even something as simple as surfing the web to download a driver is painfully slow, almost to the point of being unusable.

Best of luck to you!

tiersten

arwes wrote: »

Just thought I'd update that the employee in question took her workstation home yesterday and got everything hooked up. She's been logged into the terminal server through our terminal services gateway server since around 7:30 AM and it's apparently working great for her. She said it's a little slow, but that's to be expected since her only experience with the terminal server has been working on it over our LAN. Still, color me surprised that it actually works.

If she's happy with the speed then thats great and problem solved. There wasn't much doubt about it working. The only doubt would be whether she accepted the latency

veritas_libertas

arwes wrote: »

Just thought I'd update that the employee in question took her workstation home yesterday and got everything hooked up. She's been logged into the terminal server through our terminal services gateway server since around 7:30 AM and it's apparently working great for her. She said it's a little slow, but that's to be expected since her only experience with the terminal server has been working on it over our LAN. Still, color me surprised that it actually works.

Color me VERY surprised! My father-in-law had Wild Blue and whenever a cloud came over head it was gone! Also, there monthly download allowance rate is ridiculous. I hope you guys don't get overage charges on a regular basis.

I am glad it worked out for you.

shadown7

I'm glad it worked for her and I'm glad the company was willing to do that. I drive 120 miles a day (round trip) to work so I don't fell sorry for her not wanting to drive.

arwes

I'm glad it works too, but the sooner she can get reliable broadband the better.

The LEC offers DSL up to about 2 miles away from her house, but I don't know how far off any network upgrades will be. They recently merged with another company, and I know they said broadband is going to be their main focus but I don't know if they're going to do any more expanding before the dust settles.

tiersten

arwes wrote: »

I'm glad it works too, but the sooner she can get reliable broadband the better. The LEC offers DSL up to about 2 miles away from her house, but I don't know how far off any network upgrades will be. They recently merged with another company, and I know they said broadband is going to be their main focus but I don't know if they're going to do any more expanding before the dust settles.

Will they actually expand though? If they offer up to 2 miles away then it might just be that her line is just too long. They'd have to install a mini DSLAM somewhere to provide service for her area.