Internet in Iraq and Afghanistan

[turkish]

Hi all,

I'm hoping to get a lot of responses on this.

Even though we're drawing down in Iraq, lots of servicemembers are still in Afghanistan, and deployments continue. I understand that to avoid long lines, heavy restrictions on use, and poor functionality, groups of people will go in together to rent satellite equipment costing lots of money.

Can anyone with experience in this expound a little for me? I would like to drum up support to see if we can get subsidization or donations for what we here stateside take for granted. There's no good reason a soldier should have to wait in line for an hour to video chat with his kids over a poor connection for only a few minutes.

Thanks!

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[backrow]

I understand that to avoid long lines, heavy restrictions on use, and poor functionality, groups of people will go in together to rent satellite equipment costing lots of money.

The places I've seen this done are at the large COB's or larger bases where you can set stuff up and not worry about moving it. It is satellite based internet, and even that is still slow.

Some bases have upgraded commercial internet through providers like SniperHill which allows you to have internet in your CHU or other living space.

Not sure the time it would take to put into whatever venture you are thinking about would get the end results you are really looking for, but go for it if you have not much else to do these days.

 

[pgg]

It's easier than you might think, and the cost isn't too bad if you have 10+ people sharing the system.

I set up and admin'd private networks in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Short version is that 5 yrs ago when I set up the last one you were looking at around $3K for hardware and $300+/month for service. Prices probably aren't too different now.

At its peak I had about 200 people sharing a $4000/month bill and we got dialup speeds, more or less, with 60-80 simultaneous users (with usage policies and aggressive proxying and throttling individual hogs). Everyone thought it was worth their $20/month share.

How much detail do you want?

 

[NavyFP]

Currently in AFG. We have wireless on my FOB that is free. CO will not permit us to have our own sat connection. Not completely satisfied with the wireless. Can't use my Magic Jack. Voice Skype is OK, but get frequent drops. Phone Skype is fine to hear the person your calling, but breaks up my part of the conversation. Can only download from a hard wire site and there are only 4 lines for 1500 people. Not ideal.

 

[pgg]

Currently in AFG. We have wireless on my FOB that is free. CO will not permit us to have our own sat connection. Not completely satisfied with the wireless. Can't use my Magic Jack. Voice Skype is OK, but get frequent drops. Phone Skype is fine to hear the person your calling, but breaks up my part of the conversation. Can only download from a hard wire site and there are only 4 lines for 1500 people. Not ideal.

By far the biggest problem I had wasn't technical or cost in nature, but worthless POS busybody comm wankers whose feelings were hurt that some stupid doctor was able to put together a relatively cheap, basewide network that far outperformed their official morale internet tent. They tried multiple approaches to getting us shut down, mostly sketchy arguments about OPSEC. The only reason their network wasn't an equal OPSEC "risk" was that the goddamn thing hardly ever worked.

The **** I had to put up with, you wouldn't believe. It still pisses me off to this day. I had equipment STOLEN by comm guys from other bases who were passing through and "confiscated" it for "security" reasons. Not like I could just stroll on over to Best Buy and pick up some extra network switches ...

Fortunately, when my CO saw his Marines sitting outside their tents, TALKING to their families through their laptops, he was supportive. I still get a warm fuzzy when I remember him bitching at the comm weenies ... 'doc can get the men phone calls home by internet from outer space and you idiots can't even get CNN piped to the TV in the COC' ...


I left Iraq in Spring 2006. Private networks were widespread and had CENTCOM level approval, with certain very reasonable restrictions. I have no idea what the situation is these days, or if it's even necessary to roll your own.

 

[turkish]

@pgg-

So $20 a month for dialup speeds...what about individual speeds of 256mb/s download, which is the minimum considered "high speed" or broadband here in the states? In actuality, most people with high speed service are closer to 700mb/s, at which point services like video chat become useful. What would that (have) cost?

Do you have any contacts currently in-country who could give us the current state of affairs?


@NavyFP- Is there any way to appeal the CO's decision on personal wireless networks? Like if someone from outside the military came through higher channels, would that likely produce a change?

 

[pgg]

@pgg-

So $20 a month for dialup speeds...what about individual speeds of 256mb/s download,

Not a chance. Even though my experience is 5 years out of date, tech hasn't advanced that much. Basic satellite packages available then were split into two broad categories, the standard shared/oversold capacity, and dedicated/guaranteed bandwidth.

It's more money for less speed that what you get at home. $20/month represents a pretty large economy of scale. A small group could expect to pay more like $40-60/month.


At that time, for roughly $300/month you could get a 10:1 oversold 384 kbps down 128 kbps up connection. Meaning that you and 9 other ISP customers shared the same 384/128 slot. This meant that you could BURST up to 384 kbps but sustained transfer was far less. In practice this is usually OK, since 90% of casual internet use is a few seconds downloading (web page load) followed by many seconds of idle (reading the web page). Where the hurt is felt is in sustained transfers - file downloads, and streaming media. Sometimes during off-peak hours you could get more out of it. Our ISP would throttle us on rolling 8-hour windows for constant use. After a certain period of constant downloading, the speed would get chopped back to slower tiers to preserve performance for other customers.


We eventually upgraded to $4000/month for a dedicated 1024 down, 256 up connection. The dedicated packages aren't 10:1 and you can saturate that line 24/7. That doesn't sound like a lot, and if you want to stream media or download movies, it's not. But it works for web, email, chat, and even voice. VOIP uses surprisingly little bandwidth.

The key is reasonable expectations and bandwidth management. Web, email, chat, and voice will work ... pretty well. Movies, no. Photo-intensive recreational web sites , no. You NEED a web proxy, preferably a transparent setup. If you have more than a few trustworthy non-abusing people, you NEED some manner of port blocking and automated, individual user web throttling. These things aren't too hard to set up if you're fairly computer literate and have some time to learn. QOS capable hardware is a huge help too if you're going to use any latency-sensitive.


Not all satellite ISPs are created equal. Hughesnet (DirecTV affiliate) had service over there but it sucked in many ways (1:30 overselling for starters, and ridiculous transfer quotas). We used Bentley Walker which is a UK-based company, no complaints ... except the $900 shipping fee to get our 1.8 meter dish and system delivered to the airfield at Bagram. And I guess that's not too bad, for flying something that big and heavy into a war zone.

 

[Zulu451]

Like everything else in life, internet connection in AFG is all about location, location, location.

In BAF, the Letterman barracks all have wired internet connections that you pay the 100$ / mon and you get pretty decent internet and can Skype all you want.

Out in FOB-istan, this is a different story. Our FST purchased the satellite equipment and we each paid about 400$/ 3 months for the service. The connection was slow and really only decent in the early morning when everyone else was asleep. We had to put limits on the video downloading and if someone was using too much bandwidth they would get busted. Overall, not too bad though. Made the world a lot smaller place.

It was also nice that when the brigade went on "rivercity" (blackout), like when a soldier from the brigade gets killed, we didn't have to turn off our service.

 

[pgg]

We had to put limits on the video downloading and if someone was using too much bandwidth they would get busted.

Software for automated individual user throttling was essential to keeping ours running well. We put no limits on what anyone did, but people quickly figured out that if they tried to download a large file, they'd get the first MB screaming fast and the next MB would take about 20 minutes.

It was also nice that when the brigade went on "rivercity" (blackout), like when a soldier from the brigade gets killed, we didn't have to turn off our service.

Yeah, this wouldn't fly anywhere we were. Rule #1 for any private network was that when the FOB went to blackout, EVERYTHING was shut down.

 

[colek]

Software for automated individual user throttling was essential to keeping ours running well. We put no limits on what anyone did, but people quickly figured out that if they tried to download a large file, they'd get the first MB screaming fast and the next MB would take about 20 minutes.



Yeah, this wouldn't fly anywhere we were. Rule #1 for any private network was that when the FOB went to blackout, EVERYTHING was shut down.

What package did you use to throttle the bandwidth and manage users. I assume you were using a linux box. I need to do this exact thing in AFG.

 

[pgg]

What package did you use to throttle the bandwidth and manage users. I assume you were using a linux box. I need to do this exact thing in AFG.

Primarily squid set up as a transparent proxy with delay_pools enabled. Firewall blocked most streaming media of the day but I had to put IP and domain blocks on a couple of sites it missed. In Iraq our sat modem and ISP had some QOS features that helped with latency sensitive things like VOIP. In Afghanistan we didn't have any QOS feature available from the ISP so I did some client-side only QOS at our firewall ... didn't work too well but it helped a bit.

delay_pools was the lifesaver for keeping the web abusers in check.