Quote:
Originally Posted by mattp1984
We are running on satellite Internet, and average about 10kbs on a good day.
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Usually, the problem with satellite internet is that while the bandwidth is ok (ok-ish) the latency is terrible, and to the casual observer that looks like terrible bandwidth. I'm not quite clear whether that is what you've got, or whether you have a poor (the technical term is probably cr*p) provider which manages to turn these underlying characteristics into poor bandwidth.
Ideally, you would try to get some information; what do your ping times look like, does dig show any sign of caching, does ftp work better for downloading data than http? How does your data flow look? Any sign of a 'picket fence' pattern is suggestive of latency/name serving problems.
If it does seem like lousy latency, probably you best first move would be to cache name look-ups (some people in remote locations for whom satellite is they only way they are going to get bandwidth find it is worthwhile running a name lookup over dial-up paired with a main data flow over satellite...that should show you how bad it can be, because you won't often find dial-up reccomended as a performance enhancing measure).
In an ideal world, your ISP would have a local cache of look-ups. You are probably very aware that this is not an ideal world, but it wouldn't do any harm to ask, just in case they have one and you are not set up to use it. Otherwise the DIY option isn't too bad, just remember you don't have to use BIND.
I think that its only after investigating the nameserving/latency stuff that you will find it worth investigating dual channel bonding, or whatever.