http://www.linkscape.net/ looks promising. they can add customized satellite coverage areas to those shown in the map (phased array satellites?). they also offer voice and fax as well as internet.
And how far did you get from shore during that cruise?
Hi all,
I would suggest 3G/Cellular or WiMax technologies as they are long range, fairly high bandwidth and with some intelligent networking and some co-operation or ownership of land based facilities could be bound to provide very resilient communications. They are also fairly cheap.
If repeaters are required I don’t know if energy requirements would be a problem or not but surely a bouy with a mast and some energy generation facilities would be just the thing. All it would need is something to keep track of it. Even then with the height of a sea stead, a mast on land, some fairly basic technologies could be used to provide good connectivity.
I was interested in getting some sponsorship to try a blue water WiMax experiment out in Egypt using WiMax and being boat based.
If you could drop a fiber along a major shipping/cruise line route with buoys regularly spaced with 802.11 access, I’m sure they would be willing to pay for the high speed access you could provide them. Could this be a profit center for the seastead?
Doesn’t seem cost effective, when satellite bandwidth is available. We can’t forget that constant Internet access is not a requirement for most shipping, it’s a luxury.
Have you ever used a satellite link? Latency is horrible. Without a terrestrial link for at least the control packets, it is almost unbearable. Forget voice calls. Requirement? No, but not a luxury either.
As for not cost effective, you are likely right. But it is still worth exploring. Having an excellent internet connect opens many business opportunities.
You may get what you want, but will you want what you get?
How many radio buoys would you need for a 200Nm link, and what kind of latency would this result in?
I still think aerostats with directional antennas is the way to go. Of course you could put aerostats on buoys to reduce the distance if you still need to make several hops to bridge the distance.
It would be great if someone would write up a summary of all the approaches proposed, and their pros/cons, to be a section in the book.
I work as a systems engineer on the network for a certain war-torn nation’s newly rebuilding ministry of defense under a Coalition contract.
Brother, it’s ALL satellite. All the time. One leg up, and one leg down, and a leased line from Europe back to the States. With 30 plus remote sites that all need Active Directory replication, Windows updates, Antivirus updates, Email, file sharing/transmittal, VoIP, etc… This is one reason why I am a voice of skepticism on this thread about High Speed Internet in remote regions of the Ocean. It is going to be SLOW. It is going to be fragile (redundancy COSTS.) It is going to be expensive.
Today is a good day:
Pinging yahoo.com [68.180.206.184] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 68.180.206.184: bytes=32 time=665ms TTL=40
Reply from 68.180.206.184: bytes=32 time=661ms TTL=40
Reply from 68.180.206.184: bytes=32 time=656ms TTL=40
Reply from 68.180.206.184: bytes=32 time=666ms TTL=40
Ping statistics for 68.180.206.184:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss)
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 656ms, Maximum = 666ms, Average = 662ms
People who are serious about this need to understand the difference between bandwidth and latency issues.
Some applications are not nearly as bothered by latency as others. Video/Audio links across a satellite are not perfect under the best conditions. Most people’s issues with satellite latency stem from this and from gaming. The vast majority of Internet usage doesn’t suffer horribly from latency, but bandwidth can be expensive and still leave you with a crappy link.
Never been to a small island with net access and never used satellites… So i really don’t have a clue about this topic, and it is one of the most cruical problems for me, and for many people who are seriously planning to buy seasteads in near future i guess. Lets assume there is a small island, or a permanen seastead in remote pacific or in the middle of atlantic oceans, what is the best upload speed money can buy?… as i said i ve never been to a really small island with net access but been to average-large ones with 8-16mb(in mediterranean tho). But what i wonder is; isn’t there any method to get an upload like 20mb+ to a remote island or a stationary seastead (even if you are willing to invest millions on it)?
If there is no real solution to net in maritime voyage, it basically means whole seastead fantasy i’ve been having just collapsed, since my dream was to build a seastead capable of hosting a company like youtube,veoh,megavideo,rapidshare etc…. I was planning to support software and media piracy on the globe muhaha 
. I just happened to understand why it was taking me soo long to take American Visa… I guess we middle easterners(though my family roots has nothing to do with this geography, still…) are always thinking everything in the wrong way (fact) must be a result of the economical structure and society here, easy money is simply…easy.
If there is no real solution to net in maritime voyage
If you are talking stationary then undersea cable (expensive, expensive, expensive) or linked aerostats (not so expensive) are the only way to go. Both solutions require a land-based station for the other end of the link, to link up to the existing net. With this solution you could get VERY high speeds and very low latency.
If you are talking mobile, then satellite is the only option available. It cannot do low-latency applications well.
Could you pm me a link about linked aerostats (for global net connectionpurposes) with detailed info please.
This comes close to being a good receiver IF there’s a hotspot within ~9 miles: http://5milewifi.com/ We’ll eventually have such a booster on our boat.
If you’re looking at stable-track marine satnet, these companies (KVH and SeaTel) are the quality high end: http://www.mobilsat.com/marine-satellite-internet-andTV/Marine-internet/ With this, you’re talking the cost of a good new car PLUS a nice monthly FU payment for service.
http://seagypsies-mikeandkatie.blogspot.com/
Taking our cue from the Eskimos, we boat people have over 30 words for “leak.”
nagydani 2 years, 6 months ago.
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