Internet / Email Access via Iridium

[goboatingnow]

Have you measured throughput or are you quoting something?

my own installation has again and again shown far more "effective" throughput using Iridium then SSB ( both Ham and marine, ICOM-7000 and ICOM 802) I just wish iridum was cheaper. Anyway , I 'm going to dumop iridum and go to Fleetbroad band, 4K5 cost, ( still cheaper then good SSB) , 12 dollars per megabyte at 150 Kbps ( actually realisable throughput) , that price includes a Voice phone as well.

Dave

[nhschneider]

Has anyone had any experience with UUPlus? On another forum one user said that it was much better than Ocens but it's almost twice as expensive.

[osirissail]

In order to use Iridium of Globalstar at their very slow speeds it is necessary to reconfigure your browser.
- - In Internet Explorer you go to Tools>options>advanced and turn off just about everything not necessary and most importantly the show pictures/graphics (and turn on "placeholders"). Most of the time downloading is used to load graphics, adverts, etc. By turning most all of that extra stuff off you convert your browser back to "basic" internet text access. This allows you to load pages and send/receive emails before servers time out.
- - I don't think you can do this with any other browser than I.E. and even with all the "extras" turned off some websites are built using frames and graphics instead of text so they would not be accessible. Welcome to the modern world of computing, where "more complicated" is the rule, and simplicity is a dirty word.

[goboatingnow]

ive never successfully used IE over iridium to web browese anything other then the most dumbest of sites, mainly before my bank account broke from iridum costs!.

There no way it really can be used to browse anything in practice

Dave

[osirissail]

Which is quite true - browsing the web is really not an option with Iridium or Globalstar. Modern webpages and search systems just take too much time especially when there is a huge amount of stuff that comes up which is of no interest.
- - What is possible is to open a specific site and download information such as NOAA weather fax charts or Grib files or download/upload your emails (not read them, download them). Bank financial statements, credit cards charges/balances can be accessed if the bank website is done with "text" and not graphic frames. I have a personal war going on with my bank website officials over their desire to make the bank access "pretty" instead of useful.

[Beausoleil]

Using Iridium or Globalstar for WEB ACCESS (that is, using the HTTP protocol) is a non-starter - even if you disable image downloads or use a text-only web browser like Lynx. The reason is because, as pointed out in an earlier post in this thread, the latency of a satellite hop can be detrimental. Plus, even webmail sites like GMail, Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, etc - are just not optimized for extremely slow bandwidth connections. Even though they may be optimized for mobile access (like your cell phone), they're assuming you have at least 2G or 3G speeds, not 2400 bits/second.

"Well", you say, "Iridium satellites orbit at only 485 miles, not 22,500 miles like Inmarsat, so the signal delay isn't nearly as bad". Well, there's more to it than that. With Iridium, you may have to make several up/down trips to get to a satellite ground station, but most likely the satellites will relay your signal directly through other Iridium sats (they're the only service orbiting which can do this right now). While better than multiple up/down link hops, there's still delay involved.

And that delay triggers a problem built into the TCP protocol (from TCP/IP) which is used to transport HTTP, POPmail or IMAP protocols. TCP tends to treat all errors like congestion, and if there's too much latency in the connection, it may ramp down it's transmission rate and really screw things up. Programs like OCENS and the like will implement SCPS (Space Communications Protocol Suite) and do some fancy compression and session handling, which fixes the problems for plain TCP/HTTP/POP, etc.

If you try to use your normal Windows XP/Vista/7 TCP/IP stack and Internet Explorer and Outlook to access e-mail, you don't get all the fancy processing to minimize delay and bandwidth problems.

Finally - for all you guys still using the term "baud" - that's horrendously outdated. Baud is not equal to bits/second - it's defined at symbols per second. Not since modems like the old Bell 103A FSK modems operating at 300 bits/second has baud equaled bits/second. To get faster speeds, we switched to phase-shift keying (PSK), and encoded more than one bit per signalling shift. Therefore, a V.22 1200 bps modem actually transmitted at at 600 baud. When you're limited to a 4 KHz-wide audio channel (or a 64kbps digital channel), you run up against a wall above 600 baud for a full duplex channel. Pedantic, I know, but let's strive for accuracy, shall we?

[osirissail]

Over the years before Wifi, I used Globalstar in the Caribbean very effectively to get on the web and get NOAA Wx charts and to up/download emails to Earthlink via their webmail site. It worked okay after turning off all the "extras" and graphics in I.E. But back then it was about $0.40 a minute to connect and there was a limited "'window" of satellite reception that lasted from a few minutes up to a maximum of 20 minutes before you lost the satellite you were locked on. It took about 10 to 15 minutes to get the weather charts, download/upload emails and download bank information on checking, credit cards, and savings. It worked but it was a pain in the butt.
- - But since WiFi came along my Globalstar is sitting "unloved and unused" in its charger. I haven't used it in 3 years even though I still pay a few dollars a year to stay "in the system" just in case I need it.
- - Even back then before Wifi, my friends with Iridium were envious of my Globalstar speed - kind of like a snail being envious of a turtle. Most of them sold their Iridiums and moved to Globalstar. But by then Wifi was debuting and we all moved off satellite data links to Wifi which was free.

[barnakiel]

I used Iridium for e-mails via a client (Outlook Express) and it worked mostly fine (old iridium phone, modem, external antenna). But if you are trying to check your e-mail thru the web interface you are wasting you time.

IMHO Iridium (this set up, not the newer triple antena gadget) is not good enough for browsing the web. But it does work fine with normal clients to get the e-mails, faxes from NOAA, gribs, etc..

b.

[richardhula]

What about using Telnet to access your POP3 email account. A bit clumsy if you don't have dedicated program to do the login/display messages but possible using built in Windows Telnet Client (you may need to activate it first - Control Panel>Programs and Features>Turn Windows Features on or off).

I imagine the overheads will me minimal.

[Paul Elliott]

Originally Posted by richardhula

What about using Telnet to access your POP3 email account. A bit clumsy if you don't have dedicated program to do the login/display messages but possible using built in Windows Telnet Client (you may need to activate it first - Control Panel>Programs and Features>Turn Windows Features on or off).

I imagine the overheads will me minimal.

Compared to webpage email Telnet would certainly be quicker. But it's still going to use TCP, and as Luis and Beausoleil have described there are still lots of handshakes, the TCP protocol will likely see the delays and errors as congestion and slow down the transmission rate, and there will be no clean recovery from dropped connections.

When I got my satphone I originally tried Microsoft Outlook to access my POP3 mailbox, and the connection (even when it didn't freeze or drop, which was often) was painfully slow. Switching over to XGate and its optimized protocol made a staggering difference -- from virtually unusable and very slow (slow = expensive), to reliable and reasonably fast.

[Waylee]

I just did a transatlantic using Iridium and Ocens and worked very well. Also, did a blog using Sailblogs.com and was able to post photo and blog entry via Ocens very easily. Plus you have the phone communications. Very handy. Q

[Feral Cement]

Let me see if I'm getting this right -

Accessing my G-mail or Yahoo or Hotmail won't work well or cheaply on a satphone because I have to go to a website and download a webpage that encompasses my Inbox, plus a lot of crap.

Use of Outlook improves things since the mail is the only information that is accessed. Are there other (better, faster, cheaper) programs to accomplish this?

Globalstar says they have 9.6kps out of the box, with a free 5X compression software. Is this sufficient to "beat the clock" whether for upload/download timeouts or intermittent satellite accessibility?

Is Ocens the only company that offers a fee-based service that overcomes this hurdle? Is there additional or better software that can be installed? $20 a month starts to add up, along with sat service, 3G cell service, etc.

I gather that the laptop is fast enough, and the satphone on-board communicates well enough with the laptop, but the signal to and from the satellite is the source of dropped e-mails and timed-out transfers.

One silly question - will a sat phone work inside the cabin with only the fiberglass companionway hatch between me and the heavens?

Thanks for tolerating my limited understanding of these systems.

John

[Paul Elliott]

John,

I would hope that the Globalstar email solution would work well, but I have no experience with it.

Look at Global Marine Networks (XGate, which I use and like), and UUPLUS (whom I have not tried) as alternatives to OCENS. I believe that OCENS is essentially re-branded XGate, but that may be ancient history.

Many people report good results with a hand-held satphone belowdecks, but you will probably have better performance with an external antenna. I've used the small "hockey puck" roof-mount antenna, and the larger "mushroom" antenna on the stern rail.

[Gudgeon]

I have used skyfile it works fine for sending receivng email. I used outfitter satelitte for service. They have prepaid plans and monthly.

[Feral Cement]

Gudgeon - Which satphone service are you using? Why/how did you make that choice? Do you mostly use voice or text/e-mail? Are you happy with it? Any problems?


Paul -- XGate is ~$20/mo, another recurring charge on top of satphone airtime and 3G cellphone internet, plus the equipment costs. There is so much shareware floating around that I'd expect someone to make the program available for next to nothing with no recurring charge. Do you see any other options?

Thanks,

John