The crew is thinking of chipping in and buying this set up. Some have CHECKED on it, in other words hearsay, and I don’t think their info is correct. One example is bandwidth amount, I went to there web site and it says 20GB between 2am-8am. Crew member was putting out unlimited use during that time. Another one was, after said amount of Bandwidth they throttle back. To my understanding it’s just cut off unless you call and buy more.
Most of the pay, kinks and such have all been agreed upon. I’m going to go to the store personally when I get off and find out some answers and get the stuff in black and white to bring back on the next hitch. I see a lot of boats with the system running around Fourchon.
For those that have this system what plan do you have and how do you control it. I was on a boat that got it just as I left to go to another boat. The had some kind of a thing/program that you could divide up the bandwidth up for each user. This prevented some jackA** from using all the bandwidth up because they felt they were entitled to download 15 movies on their $15. You use up your bandwidth your done for the month.
How does it work when off shore by the rig on Standby?
How many can use it. On the website for hughsnet it says up to 10 email accounts. Is that it? Is there a way around it?
I use my phone data while in port so no big deal as does the rest of the crew. Looking at using this for off-shore purposes.
Everyone is good on the cost, understands most likely we will have to replace the ant. every two years yada, yada, yada…
Looking also for the bad things that we may encounter but would rather only hear what you have experienced not what you heard or your opinion on how you THINK it will happen if you know what I mean. Negativity is always easier to bring up then a solution.
The boat I came off of was thinking of getting a motor to add to the ant. so it would track that satellite. Not for sure how that came out. I would ask them a lot of questions but it seems like we are never in at the same time.
Can’t speak for usage on a boat, but until about a year and a half ago I had Hughesnet at home. Some things may have changed since then.
From midnight until 0400 central time data was unlimited. This was so you could update your operating system or anti-virus or whatever. The rest of the day your speed and limit was based on your plan. I had 10 Mb/s speed and 15 Gb/month limit. If you go over your limit your speed will be throttled to 32 Kb/s. They sell what they call “Restore Tokens” that can be redeemed if you go over your limit. They also give away 1 restore token per month and can be accumulated up to a maximum of 5 tokens. Tokens purchased, for I think it was $25, can be accumulated without limit. The Restore Token (which is agonizing to navigate their website to use at 32 Kb/s) will reset your limit and speed to whatever you plan is as if this were the first day of the month.
Yes, they only give out 10 e-mail accounts, but that is more than enough for the people that usually use Hughesnet (ie: families). Tell the guys to get gmail or yahoo accounts.
I don’t know about data allotment, but there are some routers that will let you set that up. Speaking of routers, if I recall, the modem I had was wired only. You had to pay extra to connect “up to 5 friends” to one of their wireless modems. I just connected my modem to a router and let the whole family have at it with no problems. You just have to configure the router for a dynamic ip and be sure to turn off its DNS service (only the modem gets to assign ip addresses). And plug the modem into one of the numbered ports of the router as it will not work if you plug it into the WAN port.
A side note:
Since the dish is 2-way and involves a satellite, it is regulated by the FCC. Only a licensed installer can install the dish, they won’t just send it to you. I don’t know how this will affect you putting it on a boat, but it’s something to keep in mind.
We had it for about 5 years. Worked well offshore up to 3-4 feet. Manually adjusted to find sattelite. Gen 4 will not work. Need the older system. Look on ebay or I can send you info. If you get it get the business plan. They do throttle back bandwidth for heavy use. Resets after 8 hours. Cost for us was $214 per month no contract because we bought used equipment. Initial cost was about 1200 with first month Has to be setup ashore at someone’s home close to the coast nearest area you are working as there are different sattelites. We blocked download sites and skype due to high bandwidth and using up our daily gigabytes. Mostly for surfing and e- mail social networks. Customer service sucked if you had problems.
Don’t know what company you work for but ours had strict rules on allowing tech on to reset our azimuth and alignment to proper sattelite. So we gave it up. No auto trCker I am aware of but I would do it again if could get it set up even though we have company provided internet now. It is slow and basically for comms to office etc. let me know if I can give you any more info.
I had Hughesnet at home a few years ago. It really sucked. About 25% of the time it was slower than dial up, 25% of the time it wasn’t too bad, and 50% of the time it was maybe five times as fast as dial up, but nothing like you would expect for the cost. I had two different dishes and half a dozen Hughesnet technicians work on it, but it still sucked. Hughesnet service is really poor. I replaced it with cellular data MiFi which is at least 20 times faster and cheaper too.
[QUOTE=tugsailor;138184]I had Hughesnet at home a few years ago. It really sucked. About 25% of the time it was slower than dial up, 25% of the time it wasn’t too bad, and 50% of the time it was maybe five times as fast as dial up, but nothing like you would expect for the cost. I had two different dishes and half a dozen Hughesnet technicians work on it, but it still sucked. Hughesnet service is really poor. I replaced it with cellular data MiFi which is at least 20 times faster and cheaper too.[/QUOTE]
Not sure what costs to set up you are looking @, I put a a SeaTel system on my last boat, antenna alone was in the 6 thousand range, for a working used one (new about 25k), anyway we used 2 different providers over 2 years as once you have the antenna you can pretty much shop service, though contracts of 2 years will lessen the cost. We had 2 phone lines and a router involved (router was provided with service), I think w/o the extra phone line, (ours was dedicated fax) your cost may be $150 less a month. Our cost was $1,700/month for first provider and $1,280 with the second. We had what they call a shared bandwidth with 5 other ships (you didn’t know these ships nor did you have a way to know their whereabouts or types), however with 7 of us on board we were able to use the internet and never got into any overages I forget the amount of data shared between the 6 vessels but it was substantial. We could occasionally download movies but not very often, we had no problem skyping home most of the time. Sometimes yes it would slow down. We were able to watch some football games via illegal websites from as far away as the south Pacific which was a much needed fix when @ sea for 8 month stretches.
I would imagine it is a lot more expensive than what you are looking to spend but thought I would give my input on it for you.
We did have a small dish/dome Sailor Net I believe it was about 5-6 years before that when we were just fishing the GOM, Bahamas, Mexico, and Bermuda which was much less expensive but mostly only good for emails and that was it. I’ll be interested to see how your research goes and hope it works out for you all.
I do have a helluva an electronics man in New Orleans that has flown all over the world to work on my stuff for me the last 15 years and he sometimes finds good solutions @ good prices, if you have any questions about it PM and I will check w/him on it. He will be down on the boat next week doing a new electronics install with me and we can discuss. I know he does some of the tugs down that way.