Update 6/21/07: Shambhala has decent wired and wireless connectivity; we're in good shape!

Details:

- Currently have 1 DSL line (1.5mb down, .5mb up) and planning to add a second line before StoryField

- Confirmed there is wireless access throughout our primary meeting space

- Dining Hall is also wireless

- Lodges are not wireless but have hard-wired access

- Some outlying lodging has no access

- The data pipe is shared amongst all guests, staff, and business activities. Usage increased 5x in the past 2 years, so they're adding the second DSL. Hope to segment bandwidth for things like Skype calls.

- Up time is greater than 99% - highly reliable service.

- Plenty of extra equipment on-site if we need it for special configurations (like a hub and ethernet cables for a hard-wired news room or Skype computer).

Implications:

- Basic web and email access should be no problem.

- Basic photo uploading should be fine.

- Extensive video upload / download would bog down the pipes.

- Skype (or equivalent) should be fine if we limit it to voice.

- It's possible to fill this pipe, but "general web and email use" (sans video) should not be an issue

I'm time limited right now, so am posting some raw email of initial research results. I asked a local Seattle techie list for insight about satellite connectivity for a conference in remote Colorado.

Here are the responses so far:

From: "Aryeh Goretsky (home)"

Date: May 14, 2007 2:01:10 AM PDT

To: seattlist@xmail.lockergnome.com

Cc:

Subject: Re: Needed: Satellite internet recommendations

Hello,

Have you checked with any of the ISPs in the region to see if they can

provide a wireless connection of some sort? I did some subcontracting

for Old Colorado City Communications <http://www.oldcolo.com/>, a WISP

in Colorado Springs, and they did things like provide WiFi connections

for conferences. In Woodland Park, another WISP named McAfee

Communications <http://www.mcafeebroadband.com> is providing access

for the region, which is fairly mountainous. Even if neither is active

that far north, they may be able to recommend an ISP who can bring a

connection into the conference property.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

From: Joseph Heck

Date: May 11, 2007 12:51:25 PM PDT

To: Seattlist

Subject: Re: Seattlist Needed: Satellite internet recommendations

Reply-To: Seattlist

I've worked a little with uplinks from around the Seattle area. INMARSAT has fairly high latency and jitter in the connection, costs a couple grand for the terminal site, and tends to be expensive and fairly low bandwidth. There's a nice wikipedia article on them at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadband_Global_Area_Network

The geosynchronous orbit made for 3-4 seconds of latency in some cases - we got it working, but it wasn't amazing or fast.

We also fiddled with low earth orbit links from GLOBALSTAR. The biggest trouble was getting a line of site from Seattle - I'm going to assume similiar issues will exist for you in the mountains of Colorado unless you're in a large plateau or on a summit. We also had some trouble keeping a streaming connection (VOIP) running with GlobalStar. Stateless stuff worked reasonably well (http requests), but stream transmissions were troublesome. Definitely better latency though.

It's been over a year since I did any uplinks, so my knowledge is also dated.

-joe

Other options, unsure how they're related to the above info:

http://www.wildblue.com/

http://www.hughesnet.com/

http://www.starband.com/