What's new
  • SNBForums Code of Conduct

    SNBForums is a community for everyone, no matter what their level of experience.

    Please be tolerant and patient of others, especially newcomers. We are all here to share and learn!

    The rules are simple: Be patient, be nice, be helpful or be gone!

"running out" of satellite internet, roll my own accelerator?

ihatesatellite

New Around Here
I _hate_ satellite internet, but it's the only option I have at our cabin in the mountains. Because of the way WildBlue calculates your usage, it's very easy to go over, and then it takes a week or more before you get back to anything like useable internet speeds.

Since I have good internet access at our house in town, it seems like I should be able to leverage that to significantly reduce the amount of satellite bandwidth I need, and make it easier to stay under the stupid WildBlue thresholds.

I have open-source routers at each site (Tomato on one, DD-WRT on the other), and an always-on FreeBSD server at each site.

In the past few days I've installed squid on the FreeBSD server on the slow link, and Privoxy and Polipo on the FreeBSD server on fast link. I have Tomato (on the slow link) opening an OpenVPN link to the router on the fast link. I have Squid (on the slow side) using Privoxy (on the fast side) as a parent, and Privoxy is forwarding to Polipo (on the fast side) which is making the connections to the remote sites.

If I sketch it out, there are a lot of steps between my browser and an Internet site:

Code:
browser 
||    -running on 
wireless laptop
||    -connects to
freebsd server
||    -which is running
squid proxy (for caching)
||    -routes through
tomato router (vpn client)
||    -constant vpn link
{the internet}
||    -constant vpn link
dd-wrt router (vpn server)
||    -routes to
freebsd server
||    -which is running
privoxy proxy (to strip adverts)
||    -forwards to
polipo proxy (to reduce latency)
||    -routes requests through
dd-wrt router (internet gateway)
||    -standard internet connections
{the internet}

Code:
laptop        server        router                        router        server
--------      --------      --------      {        }      --------      --------      {        }
browser  <--> squid    <--> openvpn  <--> {internet} <--> openvpn  <--> privoxy       {internet}
                                          {        }                    polipo   <--> {        }

This is working, and seems to be making browsing faster, so I think it's reducing the satellite bandwidth I'm using, but I don't think it's making a huge difference. I'd like to use ziproxy (it will re-compress images to make them smaller), but it won't build on my (v9.2) FreeBSD boxes.

Can anyone offer comments on the way I've set things up? Any other ideas on ways to significantly reduce the bandwidth that basic web browsing requires?
 
Last edited:

Similar threads

Latest threads

Support SNBForums w/ Amazon

If you'd like to support SNBForums, just use this link and buy anything on Amazon. Thanks!

Sign Up For SNBForums Daily Digest

Get an update of what's new every day delivered to your mailbox. Sign up here!

Members online

Back
Top