VSAT Internet from Liquid Telecom tested
Satellite Internet connects users without risk of cable theft or worry about coverage area. Those fortunate enough to find themselves in an area with ADSL or mobile broadband services generally don’t consider satellite Internet as an option. It is expensive compared to more ubiquitous data connections, but those in less developed areas of the country currently have little option but to opt for satellite Internet.
A Very Small Aperture Terminal (VSAT) is one way users can access satellite Internet services. A VSAT dish antenna is generally smaller than 3 metres in diameter and accesses satellites in geosynchronous orbit.
For home use, VSATs are usually pointed at satellites in a special type of geosynchronous orbit known as geostationary orbit. This means that the antenna doesn’t need to adjust, or track the satellite, as the satellite remains stationary relative to the Earth.
MyBroadband was offered the opportunity to test Liquid Telecom’s VSAT offering and over the course of a few weeks we put it through its paces.
Liquid uses the Eutelsat W2A satellite positioned on the equator at the 10 degrees East longitude line. The satellite operates in the Ku frequency band between 14 and 14.5 GHz.
According to Liquid, coverage is available in every region in South Africa and installations can be done quickly as they keep stock locally in Johannesburg.
Installation
Installation takes half a day or so depending on how the dish is to be mounted.
A “non-penetrating” mount is available, but unfortunately it wasn’t an option for us as there wasn’t enough space to put it down. According to Liquid the non-penetrating mount needs a 2m x 2m area.
The bigger problem was that there was no line of sight to the satellite from the ground. This meant that the antenna had to be mounted high up on a wall and it was secured there with four bolts.
Performance
Latency isn’t a satellite connection’s strong suit. The problem is the distance a signal needs to travel from the VSAT to the satellite and back down to the earth station, and vice versa.
This means that requests take a long time to reach a server on the Internet, but download and upload speeds could still be high once a connection with a server is established.
Liquid stated that they use a form of TCP acceleration to reduce the effects of the delay and improve latency.
Tests to a number of servers at various locations usually yielded pings of above 800ms.
The lowest ping we achieved was to the Speedtest.net server in London at 651ms. The average latency to the Namesco Speedtest.net server in London hovered around the 800ms mark. The highest ping result we received was 1281ms.
Other tests conducted with Ookla’s Speedtest.net service revealed some interesting results.
When Speedtest.net first loads, the default server selected is in Zimbabwe. Location-aware services such as Nokia’s Ovi Store also refused access to content when connecting to it from the satellite connection.
Liquid explained that this isn’t because the earth station is in Zimbabwe, but due to the location with which their public IP addresses are associated. According to Liquid, their earth station is based in the UK and can supply customers with public IP addresses from any country, including South Africa.
Testing against servers in Johannesburg (both Vodacom and Cell C’s servers) and Midrand consistently yielded download speed results well below 1 Mbps. Speeds ranged from 0.5 Mbps to 0.9 Mbps with an average of 0.65 Mbps.
International servers yielded far better results, with tests on Palo Alto’s Speedtest.net servers running at speeds of 0.77 Mbps to 1.27 Mbps. London’s results were even better, running from 1.33Mbps to 1.91 Mbps.
This suggests that far better backhaul capacity to the UK and the U.S. west coast is available than to South Africa.
Liquid offered that the possible cause could be that the connections from their earth station to the Speedtest.net servers hosted in South Africa might not have sufficient capacity, rather than insufficient backhaul being available to South Africa. They added that they deliberately chose to put their hub in London so as to be closer to high content websites.
Upload speeds across the board were fairly low, ranging from 0.06 Mbps to 0.09 Mbps (or 61 kbps to 92 kbps).
All testing using Ookla’s service was conducted as consistently as possible at various times of the day and under various weather conditions. At each instance tests were conducted against servers in Johannesburg, London and Palo Alto.
Weather effects
Those familiar with satellite services such as MultiChoice’s DStv paid satellite television broadcasting service will know that bad weather can have a significant effect on it.
While VSAT is relatively resilient, we found that during heavy hail and electrical storms the terminal would lose its connection to the satellite.
Very little impact was felt on the performance of the connection on overcast days, however.
“Real world” tests
YouTube videos were streamed for some initial indicative testing. When there are little or no other demands on the connection, videos streamed without having to buffer.
Single-threaded downloads from sites such as those of Ubuntu and Adobe achieved speeds of between 1360 kbps and 1760 kbps. Files downloaded over the BitTorrent protocol ran from 800 kbps up to 2000 kbps.
FTP uploads to a South African server ramped from 40 kbps to 104 kbps (5KB/s to 13KB/s measured). Upload usually had to run for ten seconds or more to reach the maximum speed.
SSH uploads were tested on the same South African server using the SCP tool and yielded an average upload speed of 96 kbps (12 KB/s measured).
Pricing and service information
| Bronze | Silver | Gold | Platinum | |
| Monthly Usage | 0.5GB | 1GB | 5GB | Unlimited |
| Setup Charge | R 10 000 | R 10 000 | R 10 000 | R 10 000 |
| Monthly Charge | R 1 100 | R 1 465 | R 2 930 | R 7 339 |
| Additional GB | 600 | 600 | 450 | – |
| Contention Ratio | 50-1/40-1 | 50-1/40-1 | 25-1/20-1 | 10-1/8-1 |
| Upload Speed | 400 kbps | 400 kbps | 400 kbps | 400 kbps |
| Down load speed | 2 Mbps | 2 Mbps | 2 Mbps | 2 Mbps |
Conclusion
While latency is a specific weakness of satellite Internet, the service performed admirably on the download front.
Upload speeds were a little disappointing, as upload speeds below 128 kbps tend to make connections unsuitable for services such as voice over IP (VoIP). Based on the results we saw, commercial end-user VoIP services like Skype should still work, though some delay and degradation in quality should be expected.
The pricing of VSAT may be expensive when compared to services like ADSL and mobile broadband, but Liquid’s pricing is actually very competitive when it comes to VSAT services.
Those who need broadband Internet and fall outside Telkom’s ADSL service areas or the coverage areas of mobile broadband operators would do well to consider Liquid’s VSAT offering.
VSAT Internet from Liquid Telecom tested << Comments and views
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