[emcgill]

Hello,
My parents have Direct TV and when I was over there the other day I watched a infomercial on Direct Way. I was wondering if anyone can comment on this service. It is really my only broadband option, as far as I am aware, as I am out in the boonies.
What I do is mainly surf and manage web sites. I do upload a lot of pages/images.
I would also like a comment on how online multplayer games such as Warcraft 3 play on this satilite connection.
And probably most importantly, I have 2 windows machines and 2 Macs. I am sharing my dial-up between all these computers. I would like to share the direct way connection in the same way.
I realize direct way does not have Mac software, but this does not bother me due to the fact that I can simply hook it up to my windows pc. My windows pc is running Windows XP. My other windows is running Windows ME, and this Mac is on OS 10.2.6 and the other is on 10.1.
Hopefully someone out there is doing what I would like to do with direct way...I am just wondering if it would work.
thanks,
Eric

[Nobody]

emcgill: read my post in this thread. http://www.macworld....sb=5&o=&fpart=1
It does not have a fast upload however only 128kbps at the very best, it will work ok so long as the files are not to big. I uploaded 6megs to my site and it took about 10min or so.. It is also not good for games because of the high latency. It can be very fast for downloading and browsing though.

[emcgill]

Thanks jeffsg4mac. I guess a search for direct way won't turn up hits on direcway /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif
I think I will go ahead and give it a try. Have you tried playing video games online with it yet? I mean, it has to be better then playing games with dial-up. Right?
Thanks for your help
Eric

[Nobody]

I don't play online games so I would not be the one to ask. Everything I have read says it does not work well but they did not say it would'nt work, I am sure it would be better than dialup. I am fairly pleased so far, but it will be better when they release either the software for the mac or offer the DW4020 at a reasonable price. It is the only high speed solution if you live in the boonies like us.

[emcgill]

I guess I don't play to many online games, just warcraft 3 about twice a month maybe. I am so tired of dial up that I have to do something about it.
I think I am just going to order it, and see what happens.
Thank you for all your help. The main thing was just the networking question.
Thanks!
Eric

[d00d]

The lag is worse with satellite than with a modem last I knew. Just think of it this way: with the phone line, you travel over a very short distance over the phone line. The rest of the way is high speed network path. You travel pretty directly along the earth's surface to your destination. With satellite, all packets have to travel from the earth, to the satellite and back. That's a huge lag time. The only way it could be better is if the bandwidth requirements for the game cause an inordinate amount of queueing delay which is avoided with the addition of more bandwidth. However, satellite is a pretty terrible internet connection to play online games with overall.

[emcgill]

Thanks for the info, d00d. I thought that might be the case.
I suspect the connection will allow me to just about double my production, so playing a few games of warcraft 3 are something I can probably live without.
Thanks to all
Eric