Pike Lake, Saskatchewan
High speed internet
from 
JoeUser Forums
JoeUser Forums
Its been a few days since I've updated the blog here. In the interim time, I've been researching what options I have regarding high speed internet service out towards Pike Lake. I don't have to tell anyone about dialup...I've suffered with dialup connections for years, having always lived out away from major cities. Pike Lake is no different. Dialup here is better, but its still not suitable for how the internet pages are setup for anymore. In Arkansas, I was lucky to get 21,400 connection. At Pike Lake, its been closer to the "old" 56k standard. I've been on 49k and as high as 53k a few times. The big issue however is the dreaded dropped connection. Its so bad that over time, the whole internet access is virtually unusable.
In Arkansas, I tried satellite internet via Wildblue and while it was hands down a better choice compared to dialup, it wasn't without its downfalls. Being satellite, there was a fairly significant lag time or "ping" time associated with the uplink and downlink to the satellite. I'm not big into online games, but I've been told that the lag time makes the whole gaming experience just about unusable. I contemplated the Wildblue option and decided that, unless dialup was the only choice, I'd go another route. Fortunately, there is a wireless ISP out here called YourLink. Instead of a cable or phone line connection to the internet, my "connection" is made via radio link to a tower in Vanscoy.
The coverage area easily covers Pike Lake so I decided to give YourLink a go. After a wait of about 2 weeks for installation, I'm finally back in the world of "higher" speed internet access. So far, things have been working well. I have a small elliptical dish that points to the tower in Vanscoy. I’m not overly thrilled about having a tripod mount on my roof and the antenna on top of that, but in the spring, I hope to install some sort of 30 or 40 foot tower for my ham antennas, and then I'll be able to move the dish over to the side of the tower.
My Wildblue connection was about 500kbs connection. The YourLink connection shows to be about the same, but the perceived speed is much much higher because there is no lag time for the uplink and downlink. Overall, the feel I get from it compared to the Wildblue setup is that its much superior to Wildblue. I have done one speed test on Speakeasy and the results were better than the Value pack on Wildblue. I haven’t gotten around to doing ping tests to see how well its working on lag, so I'll do that sometime in the future.
So, time will tell, but for right now, YourLink beats Wildblue hands down as far as being a option for a rural connection for internet.
In Arkansas, I tried satellite internet via Wildblue and while it was hands down a better choice compared to dialup, it wasn't without its downfalls. Being satellite, there was a fairly significant lag time or "ping" time associated with the uplink and downlink to the satellite. I'm not big into online games, but I've been told that the lag time makes the whole gaming experience just about unusable. I contemplated the Wildblue option and decided that, unless dialup was the only choice, I'd go another route. Fortunately, there is a wireless ISP out here called YourLink. Instead of a cable or phone line connection to the internet, my "connection" is made via radio link to a tower in Vanscoy.
The coverage area easily covers Pike Lake so I decided to give YourLink a go. After a wait of about 2 weeks for installation, I'm finally back in the world of "higher" speed internet access. So far, things have been working well. I have a small elliptical dish that points to the tower in Vanscoy. I’m not overly thrilled about having a tripod mount on my roof and the antenna on top of that, but in the spring, I hope to install some sort of 30 or 40 foot tower for my ham antennas, and then I'll be able to move the dish over to the side of the tower.
My Wildblue connection was about 500kbs connection. The YourLink connection shows to be about the same, but the perceived speed is much much higher because there is no lag time for the uplink and downlink. Overall, the feel I get from it compared to the Wildblue setup is that its much superior to Wildblue. I have done one speed test on Speakeasy and the results were better than the Value pack on Wildblue. I haven’t gotten around to doing ping tests to see how well its working on lag, so I'll do that sometime in the future.
So, time will tell, but for right now, YourLink beats Wildblue hands down as far as being a option for a rural connection for internet.