DirecWay installed yesterday

[Heath]

After much research, I had DirecWay installed yesterday. After minimal usage, I'm very happy with it.
The system I had installed uses the new DW6000 modem. From what I understand, this new modem makes all the difference in the world compared to the older one and two-way DirecWay systems.
One of the nicer things about this system, is you don't install ANY software on your computer. The modem is really more of a router or internet server. All I had to do was run a network wire(Cat 5) from the DW6000 into my computer's network card and open Internet Explorer. It was a piece of cake.
The place the DW 600 really shined, was with my home network. Once Direcway was running on one of my machines, I unplugged the DW feed from the computer, fed into the internet port on my network router, and all 3 of my networked computers had access to the internet.
I did have to adjust some setting on my router, but Netgear(the router brand) has a great customer service group and they walked me through the changes in less than 10 minutes.
All in all, it's proably too early to make any overall judgments. I've read a lot of poor reviews of DirecWay, but I've never read a poor review from a DirecWay customer with the DW6000 modem.
DirecWay was the only choice I had where I live, but I happy with it so far.

 

[MikePA]

Heath, congrats on DirecWay! /forums/images/graemlins/cool.gif

<font color="blue"> I did have to adjust some setting on my router, </font>
I'm curious, what changes did you have to make?

 

[Heath]

I only had to change 2 settings. The setting I had to change had to do the the MAC address. The router MAC address was originally set to 'Use default MAC address'. I had to change it to 'Use computer MAC address'.
I also had to change the IP address of the router becuase the default IP address of the router was the same as the IP address of the DW6000.
Once these 2 things were changed, everything worked great.

 

[GaryM]

That's with Direct TV right? I'll be getting the Dish 2way system in January or February at my new place. I hope I have the same experience with Dish.

 

[MikePA]

Thanks for the info. I was just curious. /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

What kind of speeds are you seeing?

 

[Heath]

The speeds I'm seeing thus far are hovering between 500-800 kbps downstream and less than 75 kbps upstream. The speeds come from a ping application that is on the direcway homepage.
I don't completely believe the slow upload results though. I loaded about a dozen photos to Yahoo last night and they seemed to upload rather quickly, so I think that I'm achieving better upload speeds than the app is actually telling me.

 

[Heath]

I don't fully understand the relationship between DirecWay and DirecTV, but I get the DirecWay and DirecTv bills seperately. I know that you can use the DirecWay dish to receive DirecTv, but I didn't go that route. I already had the oval directv dish before I ordered the DirecWay, so I just had them put the direcway dish in next to my directv dish. I believe it's another $150 to have the directv provided over the direcway dish. In addition, directv told me that would not support ANY of my directv hardware if I used the direcway dish for my directv service.
Becuase of this, I believe Direcway and Directv are different entities.

 

[Glenn9643]

I hope you enjoy the system. I've been using the dial-return satellite system for several years through aol. Recently aol opted out and transferred the satellite customers to Hughes Direcway and at that point I opted out of aol, since with the direcway hookup I had their dialup number. Went to 1and1.com and got free web hosting and space for 3 years, registered a domain name, and set up email accounts there. I've been satisfied with the dial-return setup, as it's much faster than my old dialup and we don't have DSL available. You might check this forum for assistance tweaking your system: http://www.dslreports.com/forum/sat

 

[PineRidge]

<font color="blue"> After much research, I had DirecWay installed yesterday. After minimal usage, I'm very happy with it.
The system I had installed uses the new DW6000 modem. From what I understand, this new modem makes all the difference in the world compared to the older one and two-way DirecWay systems.
One of the nicer things about this system, is you don't install ANY software on your computer. The modem is really more of a router or internet server. All I had to do was run a network wire(Cat 5) from the DW6000 into my computer's network card and open Internet Explorer. It was a piece of cake.
The place the DW 600 really shined, was with my home network. Once Direcway was running on one of my machines, I unplugged the DW feed from the computer, fed into the internet port on my network router, and all 3 of my networked computers had access to the internet.
I did have to adjust some setting on my router, but Netgear(the router brand) has a great customer service group and they walked me through the changes in less than 10 minutes.
All in all, it's proably too early to make any overall judgments. I've read a lot of poor reviews of DirecWay, but I've never read a poor review from a DirecWay customer with the DW6000 modem.
DirecWay was the only choice I had where I live, but I happy with it so far.
</font>

I'll have to keep an eye on your updates. I have used the original DirectWay for about 2 years. We live way out so I didn't have too many other choices to make. Anyway I haven't been unhappy with the system. The most annoying part is using a tree trimmer pole wrapped with a rag to knock the snow build up off in the winter. (dish is on the roof) But even that is no big deal. I have been a happy camper. Maybe this summer I'll hook up some heat tape to the dish for auto-defrost. /forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif

 

[OkeeDon]

<font color="blue"> The system I had installed uses the new DW6000 modem. From what I understand, this new modem makes all the difference in the world compared to the older one and two-way DirecWay systems.
</font>

That's great news, since I'll be going with satellite once I get the house built. All my research up to now was that the satellite modem had to be hooked into a computer, which was then used as a server for the 'net. I was concerned with that, because I use my Linksys cable router/ethernet/wireless switch for my firewall, and run without security on the home network in order to do file sharing.

Does the DW6000 have a firewall built in, or are you using the firewall in your network router?