iridium 9555 for webpage download?

[yzlian]

hi, does anyone know how long it takes an iridium 9555 to download a typical full webpage (with some graphics and some text on it) to a computer on the high seas? is satphone cut-off frequent? if cut off, need to download from beginning again? thanks!

[labatt]

A long time - we had the predecessor and it was good for e-mail transfer, basic web pages, but full web surfing was not a possibility and it would usually time out before the full page would downloads. The speed of the network is the same regardless of the phone. There is web compression software you can get that will partially strip out stuff and compress the rest of the page, but it's still an issue.

[Zanshin]

I don't surf the web with my Iridium 9555, I just download mails and no attachments. I guess it gets around 2400 Baud when the conditions are good. You can do the math on typically graphic-heavy web pages and compute how many minutes it takes to load a page.

[sailingdog]

Unless you're talking a high-speed, broadband B-Gan or similar satellite phone terminal, you're really not going to want to try and surf the web at all using a satellite phone. Sat phones generally charge by the megabyte, and as Zanshin said, are likely limited to 2400 baud at best most of the time.

I'd point out that when 2400 baud was standard, text-based BBS's were the norm. Websurfing didn't really become all that feasible until 28,800 baud modems came available, and most modern websites are designed for broadband access, which has become pretty standard. I can't think of the last time I used even a 56,000 baud modem to connect for anything, especially given the prevalence of WiFi, ADSL, Cable and FiOS connections.

[hellosailor]

yz, the guidelines often given to web designers were that your page had to dowload in less than 30 seconds (sometimes 15 seconds) because somewhere in that time period, folks just won't wait any longer and they will go away. That's not just for web pages--people waiting for elevators in office buildings show the same tolerance, and they bitch to the management if the elevators take any longer.

The problem is that web pages today are full of pointless glitz and while designers may still follow the same 15-30 second rule, they are designing with broadband users in mind, and no satphone is going to compete with that. Same thing with email, all the client tools default to HTML pages, which are 5x larger than plain text emails.

If you need communications on the seas, the choices are limited and Iridium is one of them. If you need higher speeds, you're going to pay dearly. Otherwise, you wait for coastal access to cellular and WiFi systems to work with the internet and all the bloatware people are sticking on it.

[yzlian]

ok thanks a lot guys. i'll quit thinking about downloading webpages w/ satphone. i'll learn to get grib files with it instead. cheers! yz

[speciald]

I spoke with Globalstar yesterday. The first 6 new satellites are ready to go active and they have 2 more launches of 6 more replacement scheduled in the next few months. By next Spring, all 18 will be active to be followed by more launches later in the year. I use Globalstar data with an accelerator designed for Firefox and, even before the new launches, was able to open websites. Globalstar when it works is faster and cheaper than Iridium. Offcourse, it doesn't have world-wide coverage and has a big hole in the center of the Atlantic.