I sent a draft of this review to DirecPC for comment. They had no comment.

Early in 1999, I published Parts 1 and 2 of the "The Great Broadband Internet Hoax". In Part 1 I described my unsuccessful attempt at signing up for broadband service - in spite of alleged availability, ISDN, ADSL and cable modems do not serve my neighborhood and neither the phone company nor the cable company could provide an estimate when they would be able to. I am hardly alone - about 90% of homes do not have broadband service today and market research firms estimate that it will be 2003 or later before even half of U.S. homes have such services available. (See also this CNN story.) 

Eventually I selected DirecPC, "Turbo Internet Access Via Satellite". While there have been good experiences using DirecPC, there have also been many bad experiences. As a wireless fanatic, I really wanted to help promote wireless Internet access and promote satellite-based Internet access. Based on my experiences from February 1999 to November 1999, I can not recommend DirecPC as a good solution. In fact I cancelled my own account with DirecPC over poor performance and poor customer relations.
 
 

Summary of Basic Problems with DirecPC updated January 17, 2000 1. Inconsistent and unreliable performance. While performance does at times meet expectations (200 kbps up to the advertised 400 kbps performance), there are many times where the speed was equivalent to my telephone modem (based on numerous performance measurements).  2. DirecPC technical support is awful. When the DirecPC network slows to a crawl, or fails, a call to technical support always results in the same directions: uninstall the DirecPC software, then re-install and re-register the system for network access. Or a statement that you must have an interrupt conflict. Unfortunately, DirecPC's technical support is apparently handled by an outsourced third-party and they apparently have no information on current network operations center status. In one case, where performance was awful for more than 2 1/2 weeks, it took them 2 1/2 weeks to finally admit that it was their problem, not mine. This after I'd spent 30 hours following their pointless advice to uninstall, re-install the software, and even upgrading my system from Windows 95 to Windows 98. Not once did DirecPC technical support provide me with a correct answer. Not once. 2.1. Related item: Each time that you install DirecPC, the DirecPC installer decompresses the installation file into a temporary directory (they don't tell where the files have gone). Due to a defect in their installer, the installation program never deletes the temporary installation files! After following tech support's instructions a few times, I actually ran out of disk space and had to trace the file locations myself. 2.2. Related item: Each time that you install DirecPC software, the software creates a large number of "keys" in the Windows system registry. When you uninstall the software, the uninstall program fails to remove the no longer needed keys. The result is that after doing numerous installs and uninstalls (which all users are eventually required to do), the system registry will be filled with useless data by DirecPC. 3. When you sign up for DirecPC, you must agree to their Fair Access Policy (FAP). The FAP allows them to throttle your usage to the extent that DirecPC makes no guarantees on network access or performance. In fact, the FAP says that they can cut your network access at any time, according to unspecified rules that they will not reveal to you. So you have no way of knowing if your own use will make the service useless. 4. Compounding the poor technical support, is that the software for the system appears to be written in India by Hughes Software Systems. India has some fantastic software developers and firms. That is not the problem. The problem is that Hughes appears to have problems managing remote software development, turning around defect fixes quickly, and acknowledging when the software is defective. 5. DirecPC will use up more than 50% of your CPU cycles! It appears that DirecPC software polls the receiver card at frequent intervals, rather than rely on interupt drive software. For example, I had the SETIAtHome screensaver running on my computer with DirecPC software installed. It took about 180 hours to process a single segment of data. When the DirecPC software was removed, the SETIAtHome program takes about 70 hours. Many others have reported similar findings on the alt.satellite.direcpc newsgroup. Conclusion: the DirecPC software is using 50% or more of your CPU time, always, 24 hours per day. 6. Overall rating: Not recommended. You might consider DirecPC if you have no other alternative - ever. A quick review of the alt.saltellite.direcpc newsgroup shows that customers who now have alternatives (cable modems or DSL) are switching to wired services. For ordinary web surfing, a 56k modem and 40 kbps or better landline connection is just about as fast. For file downloads, DirecPC sounds nice in theory - except that they reserve the right to reduce your download speed, as needed, to manage their limited bandwidth. And they do. But they won't tell you when they've done this, nor will they tell you what you need to do to avoid this throttling. As a result, the service is unpredictable.

Internet Access Performance - When Its Working

I originally setup DirecPC 2.0 in February of 1999. At that time, once I had setup and debugged the system, 

I found Turbo Internet to meet my expectations. Generally, the system was delivering the content quickly and downloads were often in the 200 kbps to 440 kbps range. I downloaded a 34.5 megabyte Mac OS 8.6 upgrade, in less than 18 minutes. This, though, was before the "FAP" policy had apparently kicked in - more on that later.

In October, DirecPC introduced version 2.1 software. Immediately, Internet access speeds dropped to less than what my landline telephone modem delivers. DirecPC technical support, while friendly, always suggests that the problem's are on your computer even though in this case and others, dozens of other users were posting the same complaints on Usenet newsgroups. 

During this 2 week period, I went to extraordinary lengths to debug the problem including removing and re-installing the 2.1 software. Moving from version 2.1.0.27 to 2.1.0.31. I tried removing everything and installing 2.0.1 again (but the performance problem still persisted). I read Microsoft Windows update notices at the Microsoft web site and concluded that perhaps my original Windows 95 Build 950 release had a number of unfixed Windows networking bugs. So I upgraded my system to Windows 98, followed by the Windows 98 Update 2. Then I re-installed the 2.1 software again. Still no improvements. I fiddled with PCI bus BIOS settings. I verified the problems by timing various web site access speeds using both DirecPC and my 28.8 landline modem - and the landline modem won in nearly all cases. I called tech support and they merely suggested random things to try. 

The day after I wrote them asking to cancel my account, they sent email finally admitting that they had network congestion problems on their Gateway 66 (whatever that is) and that engineers were working on the problem. This was two weeks after users began reporting the problem! According to online posts from other users, callers who had been given the run around about PC configurations where now having their receiver cards decommissioned and then re-commissioned - after being re-commissioned, the cards were popping up on Gateway 71 and are alleged to now be working fine again. But DirecPC was still, in general, not telling the customers that the reason was due to DirecPC network problems - instead, the company wasted enormous amounts of customer and tech support time chasing bogus failure scenarios in end user systems.

Setup and Installation

Back in February, I began the setup by first installing the PCI-based receiver card into my PC and installing the DirecPC software from CD-ROM. It took about 45 minutes from unpacking the box to having the satellite receiver card installed inside my computer and the software installed and configured – your time may be longer as I am experienced with this.

DirecPC, like most small satellite systems (DirecTV, DISH) sells an antenna installation kit separately from the main product. The installation kit includes coaxial cable and more mounting hardware options. I chose not to buy the installation kit since I already had extra RG-6 coax laying around and the basic product includes the mounting bolts I needed to install to my wood frame house.

If you’ve read my review of DirecPC 1.6, you’ll know that installation should be straightforward. With DirecPC 2.0.0, I ran into significant installation problems. After installing the antenna and routing the coax cable, I was unable to locate the satellite signal by adjusting the antenna to the correct elevation and azimuth angles. No matter how hard I tried, I could not find the signal. This surprised me because I’ve never had a problem finding a satellite signal before and DirecPC satellites are pretty easy to locate.

At first I assumed maybe a tree across the street was blocking the signal, even though my measurements indicated it should not be blocking. So I uninstalled the antenna and moved it to a completely new location. Still, no signal. I tried some RG-11 coax instead of the RG-6 - just in case my RG-6 had gone bad. Still, no signal. 

I spent quite a bit of timing debugging the problem and eventually concluded there was a problem with the Low Noise Block (LNB) converter mounted on the antenna – I wondered if the microwave feed horn was polarized wrong? Sure enough, at the DirecPC web site I found a technical support note regarding conversion of antennas from the failed Galaxy 4 spacecraft to the GE1 satellite. The instructions documented a change from horizontal to vertical polarization. Sure enough, the LNB that came pre-configured with my DirecPC antenna was set for the wrong polarization! After about 20 minutes disassembling, rotating the microwave feedhorn and reassembling the antenna, I found the signal in about 10 seconds. Unfortunately, the product had been provided to me in a defective state. You probably will not encounter this problem; if you do, at least you’ll know how to fix it right away. But it got things off to a bad start in that I spent most of a Saturday and Sunday debugging their product defects. 

The Software

After locking on to the satellite signal, the software configuration requires a few final steps of dialing into the Hughes Network Operation Center (NOC) to complete the registration process. The original DirecPC 2.0.0 software was riddled with defects and included some unfortunate software incompatibilities (for example, it did not work with Netscape 4.5). DirecPC has since fixed those problems. As part of initial configuration, the software dials the telephone modem to register the system with the network operations center. The 2.0 software was so buggy, that this step had to be run over and over again to complete without hanging the computer! I even had to re-install the software, per directions from DirecPC tech support - several times - before it ran to completion.

The normal installation puts an automatic startup application into the Windows | Startup folder so that the DirecPC software will automatically start when you boot your PC. For my usage, I chose to remove this icon from the startup folder and to start the software manually by double clicking on the DirecPC "Navigator". You can launch access by double clicking on the "Nav" icon in the Windows tray – and then double click on the icon again to disconnect. Or you can right click to see a pop-up menu of choices.

Usage Issues

Normally, you'll use DirecPC just as you use any other Internet access service, using your web browser, FTP and email programs. I have encountered two issues that seem to be related to how DirecPC gateways your Internet requests between your ISP, the Internet and the satellite. 

I use the FTP file transfer protocol to download files from my own web server and other locations. A few months ago, I was unable to FTP files from my server or other public servers. The problem has to do with security precautions that have been instituted to prevent unauthorized access to files. Specifically, the Windows 95 FTP client program would also issue the error message "425 Can't build data connection; connection refused" whenever I attempted to GET or PUT a file using FTP. The solution was to upgrade to a newer FTP client package (I'm using WS_FTP) which supports passive mode (PASV) file transfers and firewall/gateway support. Using the new FTP software, I can once again transfer files. Judging from comments made in newsgroups, many DirecPC users have encountered this problem - obviously, DirecPC needs to do a better job informing their customers about this common issue. I suggested many months ago that they post the free-to-download WS_FTP software on their site, or at least a link to it. They still haven't done that.

From June until October, I was unable to access the http://www.junkscience.com web site and others. Finally, DirecPC fixed their network problem that prevented access. When I first reported this back in June, I received one email from a DirecPC support technician agreeing that he was seeing the same problem and "engineers were working on it" and then when I later asked about progress on fixing this, I received a second email from another support technician insisting that it works fine and that the problem is on my end. Go figure? Mysteriously, in October, it starts working again. 

Turbo Webcast and The Electronic Program Guide

DirecPC 2.0 is accessed through an Electronic Program Guide feature. Basically, the EPG is your control center from which you access the Turbo Internet, configure and access Turbo Webcast web sites, and the Turbo Newscast feature. 

When the EPG is launched, it opens two browser windows – one to display the DirecPC "splash screen" and the other to display the EPG. Once up and running, you can access and surf the Internet at high speed by selecting Turbo Internet. Alternatively, you may also "subscribe" to Webcast "channels" - web sites that will be delivered to your PC automatically, periodically broadcast over the satellite. (The EPG itself is an Internet application that is updated automatically like any other Webcast channel). The standard installation for DirecPC automatically launches the EPG, WebCast, NewsCast and Turbo Internet features. If you don't want these features, you are best off removing the DirecPC startup icon from the Windows folder and then manually launching the Turbo Internet Navigator and the Newscast server, when or if you want them. You can also open the Electronic Program Guide manually by using this unpublished URL within your browser:

http://dpcwebcast.hns.com/welcome/default.htm

(Prior to version 2.1, I was also able to access this URL from a PC connected to DirecPC via a proxy server. This was pretty neat since I was actually using my Macintosh for this. Since the EPG is a Java application, it ran fine on the Macintosh. I could not get this to work remotely on any PC after 2.1.)

Turbo Newscast

A brief note on Turbo Newscast. DirecPC provides "Personal News Server" (PNS). Like any news group reader, you configure the PNS and select the newsgroups you wish to monitor. Thereafter, the PNS is left running in the background and the satellite broadcasts newsgroup updates all day long. Your local PNS intercepts only the newsgroups you are interested in and saves the messages to disk. To read messages, you’ll use any newsgroup reader (I used both WinVN and Outlook Express) and point it at the PNS’s local IP address of 127.0.0.1 (or "localhost" if that works for your PC). Reading newsgroups is quick since they are already stored on your system. The Turbo Newscast version 2.0.1 did not work reliably, if at all, with Outlook Express; that problem was fixed in version 2.1.

In my last few weeks of using the system, Turbo WebCast and Newscast were working very well. It should be noted, however, that DirecPC discontinued the transmission of all newsgroups. This too, however, was something they denied for quite some time. And to this day, while the newsgroups show up in the Newscast list of newsgroups, postings to them are never transmitted. There is no way of knowing which newsgroup will work and which do not. They have also allegedly discontinued posting lengthy articles within newsgroups. This affects particularly those newgroups that were used for distributing software updates, shareware programs, image and audio files.

The Fair Access Policy

DirecPC originally offered an "unlimited access" policy during certain off-hours. This policy resulted in some users downloading tens of gigabytes of data every month. Over half of the network bandwidth was being consumed by a tiny percentage of users – and resulted in all customers encountering poor network performance. Consequently, DirecPC implemented the "Fair Access Policy" or "FAP" as it became known. The FAP is implemented by algorithms at the network operations center and detects what DirecPC has determined as an inappropriate use of network resources. 

Basically, there is not enough bandwidth for everyone to tie up 400 kbps continuous transmissions all the time, 24 hours per day, through limited transponder bandwidth. Like all consumer-priced high-speed networks, the network bandwidth is shared amongst many people. Some times you are staring at the screen, some times you are jumping from short web page to short web page, and occasionally you are downloading large files. If, however, a number of users decide to, say, copy entire 500 megabyte audio CDs over the Internet, or download a 600 megabyte Linux distribution, a group of these users literally would take over the network bandwidth. The FAP detects this type of operation and automatically reduces the performance for those who are attempting to use all available resources.

FAP is not necessarily a bad idea - most consumer broadband services have or will institute similar FAP download restrictions (in fact, most of the big cable modem services already have) since their business models don't accommodate delivering T-1 performance, 24 x7 hours, for $30 per month (or whatever). DirecPCs' implementation of FAP, however, has had numerous problems. First, initial customers were sold an "unlimited use" service. Second, DirecPC never announced and even refused to admit that they had a FAP policy in place (even though users could see it impacting their network access). Finally, when DirecPC eventually admitted the use of FAP, they steadfastly refused to tell users about the limitations. In effect, users subscribe to DirecPC but have no way of knowing when FAP will kick in or even what they are buying per month in terms of bandwidth. DirecPC can throttle your access speed to any level they want and you won't know when or why it is happening.

FAP occurs in at least 2 situations:

1. If you exceed an unspecified maximum download per day, your account is "FAPped". According to user reports, earlier in 1999, this was alleged to occur at about 70 Mbytes of downloaded data. Once this limit was hit, your download speed would be cut in half. Then, upon reaching around 140 Mbytes, the speed would be cut in half again. Normal speed would not resume until you had been "offline" for a sufficient number of days. Users had no way of knowing if they had been FAPped. Recently, users report that FAP appears to kick in after about 50 Mbytes of download has occurred.
2. Another kind of FAP occurs when you attempt to download a file during hours when the satellite's transponders are busy. For example, before canceling service, I downloaded a 9 Mbyte Windows 98 Update from Microsoft. After transferring between 3 and 4 Mbytes of data, incoming data paused for perhaps 30 to 45 seconds, and then resumed, sending another 1 Mbyte or so, followed again by a long pause. This is a sign that the transponder had exhausted its bandwidth so they were now throttling individual downloads and other access. In this mode, the goal was to keep small web page accesses coming quickly, while larger file downloads would be delayed. This optimizes the system for web page access.

Because of these issues with FAP, a class action lawsuit was filed against DirecPC alleging breach of contract, consumer fraud, and other issues. In the last week of October of 1999, DirecPC customers received a mailing announcing a proposed settlement that addresses the FAP issue - sort of (I'll skip the details - but it is significant that the customers had to file suit against the company). The settlement includes publishing details of FAP and enlarging the FAP size by one-third. However, many users reported that the the FAP was recently cut from about 70 Mbytes per day to 50 Mbytes per day. Enlarging that by one-third merely moves the FAP back where it had been. If this is true, then the proposed settlement is dishonest.

Summary

My initial system setup was time consuming and frustrating due solely to defects in the microwave feedhorn and the riddled-with-defects version 2.0 software that came with the system. The entire time, tech support provided no useful advice and never did identify that the problem was in the miss-built feedhorn. Their standard mode of operation is to blame the user or the PC system in which DirecPC is installed.

After about a month of putting up with the buggy software, 2.0.1 was released and the system worked well, with some outages, until October's 2.1 "upgrade" surprise. Since version 2.1, network performance is on par with a 28.8 landline modem. DirecPC's tech support recommended replacing the 2.1.0.27 release with an even newer 2.1.0.31 release on their ftp server. However, due to the bugs in the 2.1.0.27 release, I couldn't download the new version using DirecPC! I ended up spending 90 minutes using my landline modem to download the newer software. And it made no improvements. After two weeks of stone walling, the day after I sent them email requesting cancellation of service, I received an email admitting that they had technical problems on their end. Like duh? If the company's policy had been one of being honest with customers, they would still have me as a customer. Based on my experience and the experience of others who've posted comments in the alt.satellite.direcpc newsgroup, standard procedure is to stonewall and deny any problems.

It is true that most fast Internet services are having serious rollout and customer service problems and hassles (see the other links on the main page). Some, however, seem to be having more problems than others are.

I know that DirecPC staff read this web site so I have some practical advice to them:

1. Improve the DirecPC web site to provide system and network status.
2. Improve the web site to provide useful technical support information. Microsoft and other vendors put their knowledge bases online, why not do that for DirecPC?
3. Provide FAP information to customers so that customers know what they are buying. While the newest user agreements inform users that their access may be throttled, this still does not tell users what they are buying in terms of bandwidth.
4. Have tech support communicate honestly to customers when they have problems. Don't play the "blame game" of telling customers it's their own computer's fault. It seems that the tech support staff do not get regular network and system status reports themselves (in part because they do not work for Hughes but for a third-party outsourced tech support business) - and have no way of knowing when genuine problems lurk in the network back end. If DirecPC would merely communicate their technical problems internally, they would not have to waste so much of their tech support staff time and that of their customers. 
5. After the 2.0.0 software mess, followed by the problems that occurred after installing 2.1, Hughes Network Systems (and many other companies) need to get serious about practicing software engineering, instead of software hacking. It is possible to produce "zero defect software", delivered in a predictable fashion (although virtually no one in software development practices this).
6. Finally, 100% of this falls on the shoulder of HNS management. They and they alone are responsible for setting corporate policy and setting priorities. So far, Hughes tends to play funny games with its customers, claiming that FAP did not exist, and once they did, refusing to tell customers what the limits were. Tech support seems to be kept in the dark about system and network performance issues. Honesty really is the best policy. If Hughes had admitted problems in 2.0.0 software up front, or in the 2.1 or gateway issues right away, they would still have me as a customer.