February 9, 2010 11:24
The raw rate of iridium is 15Kbytes per minute. Mor e importantly the latency in the link is between 1-3 seconds. That means that it takes 1-3 seconds to get back a response from a server on the internet.
When using standard internet programs such as e-mail and web browsing the link is "unbelievably" slow as you state above.
However, when using iridium aware compression software you can send/receive a lot of data efficiently. Using XGate you can send/receive approximately 10 2-10Kbyte files in about one minute. The actual time will depend on the compressibility of the data.
So... the system is quite usable when using XGate and MacWX to doing e-mail and weather.
--luis
When using standard internet programs such as e-mail and web browsing the link is "unbelievably" slow as you state above.
However, when using iridium aware compression software you can send/receive a lot of data efficiently. Using XGate you can send/receive approximately 10 2-10Kbyte files in about one minute. The actual time will depend on the compressibility of the data.
So... the system is quite usable when using XGate and MacWX to doing e-mail and weather.
--luis