I need to host a website locally because of some database sharing issues with the database on my LAN. I can't get DSL. Can't get cable. The only local ISP that offers wireless wants to charge a co-location fee (way too much $$). So now I’m thinking of using DirecPC from www.satcast.com. They are planning on having a 256kbps upload speed soon (of course that’s on a perfect day with nobody else using it, ha ha). I’m not expecting heavy traffic it’s just for my members to connect and get some data. The members are very loyal and would understand the delay due to the bandwidth. I know there’s no static IP but I know a way around that using another service (DNS2Go). DO YOU THINK IT’S WORTH TRYING? HAS ANYONE ELSE DONE THIS BEFORE?

Interesting :) If uptime is not important, I would go for it. Just be careful of heavy rain, it always knocks out our stat picture.

I have the DirecPC 2-way service right now.

Download speeds are excellent, however I've never gotten very good upload speeds. I often see as low as 20 kbps, and if I'm lucky 50 kbps. I've heard that they're planning on working this out, and perhaps when the 256 kbps solution comes into place everything will be fine.

Here's a good forum for DirecPC information:
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/sat

I've used satellite 1 way service before, and it wasn't a very good experience all around.

I've also heard some horror stories about 2 way satellite service, mostly revolving around upstream latency / bandwidth issues. One fellow I know only uses his satellite for big downloads, and then uses a dialup modem for his day-to-day browsing activities because the upstream speeds were slower than a dialup. :o

The biggest problem you would have with running a website off a DirecPC is the response time from when a request is sent and when you receive it. If you have had any experience with sat. internet you would notice it takes a really long time to connect to a website / FTP site but once you connect its fast as hell. Thats just because of the pure logic behind the whole thing. You are bouncing a signal via waves which are def. not going to travel as fast as a direct connection via fiber. You have to go from your sat. to the sat in the sky back down to the hub back to where you are trying to connect opposed to if you had a direct connect you would go your computer -> hub -> other comp. (in a very simplified way of speaking).

Just try pinging a sat. connecting, its usually like 1000 ms ping times or something sick like that.

Thanks everyone for all the info! I'm already familiar with sat. internet because I’m currently using a 2-way Starband system. It’s great for surfing and downloading files (FTP) but when it comes to sending files it’s a dog. I’m hoping that this upgraded (DirecPC) upload speed of 256kbps will be enough to get the job done. Of course this is what they advertise, if I get 120kbps I’ll be happy!

If you want to be half way respected in regards to the service you provide I WOULD HIGHLY suggest you do not use sat. Im trying to figure out why you would want to use it in the first place, if its because high speed inet access isnt available to you where ever you are, i would suggest traditional wifi inet access from a local isp over sat. plus you could get a dedicated ip and reasonable upload speeds, pricing should be similar as well.

With all due respect, you are using the wrong tool for the job.

"Instead of searching for a better hammer, figure out why you are trying to use a hammer to attach a bolt".

I.E. -- by your own statement, you have a small database that contains member info that needs to be accessed once in a while by remote people that are not sensitive to bandwidth or 100% availability.

Sounds like you need to write a little web-based data access program and put the database on a private-shared website host that is password protected.

You can get to the db from the net and so can your "users".

Many many tools are available to do this type of db app, even notepad and some scripting would work fine.