2 way Satellite ISP and Data Service

B

Beebers

There is an old thread on this topic but technology might have changed since then .....

I live out in the sticks and daytrade futures. I do have a phone line there. Later I got Starband as my ISP which initially was good but went bad pretty rapidly. I later switched to Direcway which has kept me real happy for the past 18 months or so.

But, and this took me the longest time to figure out, I had a heck of a time getting reliable data. The various services, software providers and ISPs blamed my computer for freezing up. I had to upgrade software, hardware - to make a long story short, it took me about 6 months to get a decent infrastructure down and the culprit of it all was the data service provider.

My current setup consists of:
IB for trading. They often went offline in the past, but in the past year they have been very reliable.
Tradestation for data. Even though TS will lag when the going gets tough (I daytrade futures)I can confirm the data with IB. TS is the only data service which has worked consistently with Direcway. Qcharts, Esignal, DTNQ would freeze up in the past.

I got 3 computers networked with a router.

The big drawback of TS is that their data for currencies is totally inadequat (ony 14 pairs I believe), and Eurex data (e.g. DAX) is not provided. I would love to use some other dataprovider in order to get more currency pairs and the German DAX.

Of course, TS keeps on promising that they will provide that data, but promises are just promises.

Any ideas would be welcome.
 
DTN satellite might be the way to go for data. They just transmit the whole market to you. With that they give you a reduced price on DTNIQ internet feed for history. You still need internet for connection to the brokerage. I recall reading that the satellite does not send every tick, only when something changes, and the volume total at the end of the day may not be the same as with another feed, I have no experience with it myself, I just read a lot of posts about it and considered it because I am in the sticks as well but we got DSL and Cable finally.

Search the posts at purebytes.com for more info.
 
Hello:

I am looking into this alternative myself. I am building a home on land that does not have pay TV service just yet, and the cell phone service is not good. I have been introducing myself to neighbors and asking them what they do for internet and cell phone services. Although none are in a related business, some have satellite TV service and they report the following:

1. The service is pretty good. On this site, I remember people indicating that satellite would occasionally go out during bad weather. No one has reported that here even during inclement weather (cloudiness, overcast, rain, thunderstorms, etc.)

2. The indicate that the speed is reasonable although I have not been able to quantify it yet.

I look forward to any comments others might have.

Steve
 
Not direct experience but I think S&P Comstock also have satellite delivery, but get a trial first as it is institutional pricing and I have seen bad data that originates with them.

Vendor lying is a big problem as a problem can be anywhere between their servers and your PC and it does not help when troubleshooting if 2 links in the chain are lying. Been there. I have also upgraded PC and then spent a lot of time troubleshooting TCP/IP stack etc etc only to find out that it was the data vendor all along, that they knew they were the problem but chose to lie through their teeth. This has happened to me more than 3 times now. Same with ISP's.
 
I used Direcway for 1 year. It's better that dialup but that's about it. It's speed for download & upload are satisfactory. The problems I encountered were with latency, meteorlogical disturbances ie: heavy rain, thunderstorms, snow and sometimes unknown interuptions on pefectly sunny days, maybe sunspots I don't know. What I do know is I ended up on the phone with my broker way too many times to deal with my lost connections. IMO it is not suitable for daytrading but perfectly adequate for swing trading and most other internet uses.

I now have wireless internet provided by a small local company and I'd never go back to Direcway.
 
Yes, I forgot about wireless DSL. If that is available it might be a very good way to go. I was looking into that about the time DSL became available in my area. It is high speed and reliable. You need line of sight to the transmitter and the providers will work with you on your antenna installation, you may need to put it up pretty high if you are far from the source.
 
I have DirecWay satellite ISP and I've traded with it for years (IB).

But my trading systems are automated and mostly just fire in limit orders. I sometimes update as many as a couple thousand symbols, but I just snapshot them every minute or so. And usually I have to only handle less than 800 symbols. Typical max speed for me is (new DW7000 modem):

:::.. Download Stats ..:::
Connection is:: 1079 Kbps about 1.1 Mbps (tested with 2992 kB)
Download Speed is:: 132 kB/s
Tested From:: http://testmy.net/ (server2)
Test Time:: Sun Dec 25 06:25:07 PST 2005
Bottom Line:: 19X faster than 56K 1MB download in 7.76 sec
Diagnosis: Looks Great : 16.77 % faster than the average for host (direcpc.com)

:::.. Upload Stats ..:::
Connection is:: 202 Kbps about 0.2 Mbps (tested with 579 kB)
Upload Speed is:: 25 kB/s
Tested From:: http://testmy.net/ (server2)
Test Time:: Sun Dec 25 06:27:18 PST 2005
Bottom Line:: 4X faster than 56K 1MB upload in 40.96 sec
Diagnosis: Awesome! 20% + : 188.57 % faster than the average for host


I do have to send in orders manually on occasion and I've never noticed a latency problem. But then I don't try to trade futures on every tick.

As others have mentioned there are frequent outages, however. If your install is good and the dish mounting is strong, then only snow or very heavy rain will knock you offline. Most of the time the problems are with Hughes messing around with the satellites or the Network Op Centers (German Town, MD and Las Vegas). But this kind of thing does seem to happen frequently.

The bottom line is that Sat ISP is nowhere near as reliable as even a poor cable or DSL service. And if I had any other choice except slow as hell 22.6 dialup, I'd take it. For us out in the sticks it works "good enuf", and it's all I got.

There is a new Sat service called Wild Blue. It might be better, but it's still satellite...

Re: Steve46 (Sat TV) - I've had DirecTV satellite TV for years and years. A great service IMHO. Very reliable and tons of programming. Lots of people at work have dumped their cable TV and gone with DTV or Dish Network.
 
Choad, I totally agree with you.

I am in the same situation, out in the sticks in northern Idaho.

I know of some people who have had frequent outages, some because of Direcway messing with the satellite, some maybe because of poor installation.

I have had no such problems. This stuff works when it snows thick flakes, less reliably in strong rain. It is surprising then when it suddenly goes down during beautiful weather. A backup dialup is a must.

If I would have a choice I would most definitely choose DSL, but I don't have that choice.

As for trading, I dropped some trading methods because I would get lousy fills (fast scalps).

maxpi, thank you for your ideas as well.
 
I would like to mention this for anyone who may be motivated to learn more.

I have heard that on NPR (National Public Radio), there was a show a while back, about a young man living in a rural area in the southeastern part of the country near the appalachian mountains. His community had no DSL service and only sporadic dial up service if I remember correctly. What he did was to establish a non-profit organization, and put together a broadband system. He wired it together with the help of a few friends and it is (apparently) very functional and easy to access for all in the community.

I do not have details but am interested in find them out. If I learn more I will post.

Thank you
Steve
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top