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Author Topic: Work from home question about internet  (Read 3985 times)

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Jerseygirl1322

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    Work from home question about internet
    « on: March 29, 2017, 10:26:40 PM »
    Hello,

    I want to apply for a job working from home however in the job advertisment it states you need hard wired internet and I have satellite.  ADSL just isn't available at my home.  Will they be able to tell my internet is satellite?

    When I rang about the position the lady asked about my internet speed but not what internet i have.

    Can anyone help me please?  I don't want to waste my time or their time if it is a hopeless cause.

    Thanks
    JG

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    Re: Work from home question about internet
    « Reply #1 on: March 29, 2017, 11:14:10 PM »
    Hello, let me try to answer your question to the best of my ability.
    I have been working in the electronics field for many many years and now I am retired. One of the things that I had to do was to help other people with computers and the Internet and things like that. In my activities I have one time had some work experiencing cable TV and later I had some opportunities to be involved in satellite communication. My basic background was in radio broadcasting and at one time I was a licensed broadcast engineer.
    The reason for stating the above was so you understand that I have some years of experience in different kinds of activities that are considered to be important in modern-day technology. I suppose the job your applying for is a job-related to the new technological trends that have been occurring throughout the world. More and more business activity is going to be conducted over the Internet in one form or the other. Perhaps the work at home job you have relates somehow to the expansion of Internet technology in general. Possibly some kind of a marketing operation that depends on reliable Internet connections.
    Now then, having said that, let me offer an opinion. Most, almost all, employers will offer a job only upon a personal interview. In all my activities I have never received a job without actually having a face-to-face interview with the person that was going to hire me. Now that might change, but I don't think were quite there yet. Direct person-to-person interview is critical to  an employer in making a decision that may cost him time and money. So far, the Internet offers more risk than gain when trying to hire people.
    What I'm trying to say is this, you may find an advertisement over the Internet and make application by e-mail or even by a voice chat, but in the end of aface-to-face interview will be part of the deal. If they were to offer you a job without a face-to-face interview, I would be very reluctant to take such a job. I would not want to work with someone that I had not actually talk to directly. Otherwise, the individual might be using the distance as a blind to what he really had in mind.
    Now then after saying that, let me make some other remarks. Satellite Internet is excellent for download speeds and it can be very very reliable under most conditions. However, the upload speed is horrible. The upload is almost always through some type of telephone DSL connection. A few rare instances are satellite systems that have an upload provision. Upload satellite communication is very expensive and requires very sophisticated equipment. The only experience I've had in satellite communication was when  the download was from the satellite but the upload we always did through ordinary telephone wires. In other words, a video chat interface is almost impossible using a telephone upload link unless you have an a very expensive and reliable DSL connection.
    Without more details about your particular Internet connection, I would say it is not suitable for a video chat system. Here's my reasoning. A very reliable DSL connection costs almost as much as a satellite connection anyway, so there's almost no point of having a satellite download when you have a very good DSL connection. Also, what seems to be the trend now is to go toward more use of fiber optics and cell phone relays. In some areas the cell phones towers are directly fed by fiber optics and then the cell phone tower can make a wireless connection to your home at remarkably fast and reliable speeds. You might investigate to see if some type of 4G LTE service is available in your area. If so, it likely is more reliable and more suitable for an application that requires you to have video chat with the people you're talking to. Yes, I am guessing. I am guessing that the job would require you to interface with other people. With all the technology we have available to us, person to person contact is still the best thing there is. In fact, social media is so popular because it comes close to the direct  presentation between two people. I'm imagining that they are asking you to sell some product or service by doing face-to-face interviews with people using video chat. Please correct me if I guessed wrong.
    This is not intended to discouraging you from finding a suitable career that suits your needs. Rather, I am just trying to warn you about the pitfalls of making a quick decision about what sort of career you want to seek. Technology has many, many possible openings for people that wish to make the effort to do their best. Now having said that, even very ordinary jobs outside of modern technology still can be very productive and very rewarding depending on a person's circumstances and their personal temperament.
    I do hope this is been some help to you. And by the way, most of this post was done was speech recognition, which is one of the advantages we now have with modern technology that could be done very well several years ago.
     :)

    BC_Programmer


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    Re: Work from home question about internet
    « Reply #2 on: March 30, 2017, 12:26:57 AM »
    Work from Home usually includes connecting to an Office VPN network, in order to actually do work; that is, it makes it as if you are part of an "office LAN" and can use resources like say server shares and such. The reason why an ad might suggest a hard-lined Internet Connection is because Satellite and VPN are actually rather incompatible, which tends to result in a VPN connection over satellite performing very, very poorly- we're talking Dial-Up speeds.

    Just for reference, I work from home and one of the "requirements" provided initially was to have a room I could use as a dedicated office. I didn't say I did but I didn't say I didn't- I just made it work. I moved my computer setup to a place with lower noise even if it was a common area, and "got away" with it.

    Fact is, they are going to hire you largely based on how applicable you are for the Job. When, after the otherwise amazing interview, he asked if I had a dedicated office area, for a few moments I thought "there it is, well better luck next time I guess" and was thinking the same thing regarding wasted time. Thankfully I just answered that I did I made it work. I mean, it's not like they are going to personally review your work area or something.

    Your situation sounds somewhat similar (perhaps a bit more extreme in how important a VPN connection is likely to be). It's not entirely unservicable, but it might be one of those things you have to make work out on your own. It may also depend a lot on specifically what sort of work is being done over said VPN.
    I was trying to dereference Null Pointers before it was cool.

    Jerseygirl1322

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      Re: Work from home question about internet
      « Reply #3 on: March 30, 2017, 02:25:43 AM »
      Thank you BC Programmer! That helped me understand.  I'm going to apply and hope it all works.  It's call centre work from home, mostly phone and chat.
      My satellite speeds are fantastic and it's more reliable and faster than the adsl in my area.

      Thanks for your reply, I really appreciate it. :)

      camerongray



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      Re: Work from home question about internet
      « Reply #4 on: March 30, 2017, 03:12:56 AM »
      Will the calls be done over the internet?  If so, Satellite may prove to be an issue here.  With Satellite broadband you can get high speeds but the "latency" is very high, this is the time it takes a bit of data from your computer to get to the other end and back (due to the signals having to travel to a satellite and back down to earth).  With normal internet browsing and downloading files it doesn't make a huge difference but it'll be very noticeable on calls as a delay between the person saying something and you hearing it.  Think of a news report from a distant country where they are interviewing someone where there is a large delay between the person in the studio talking and the person abroad responding.  Have you tried any sort of calling over your internet connection before (e.g. Skype), do you/the other person notice a significant delay?  Live chat will probably be fine over satellite but for calling, you would probably be better off getting an ADSL line, even if you just use it for that - A slow (but low latency) ADSL line would likely handle calls better than a fast (but high latency) satellite connection.

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      Re: Work from home question about internet
      « Reply #5 on: March 30, 2017, 07:07:56 AM »
      What  Camerongray said is true.
      Every phone call will have a time delay of about a quarter second.


      Jerseygirl1322

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        Re: Work from home question about internet
        « Reply #6 on: March 30, 2017, 04:22:35 PM »
        Is there anyway around that???

        Long shot but thought I'd ask  ;)

        camerongray



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        Re: Work from home question about internet
        « Reply #7 on: March 30, 2017, 06:18:20 PM »
        Unfortunately not on a satellite connection. The bulk of the latency is down to the sheer distance the signal has to travel to/from the satellite.

        Jerseygirl1322

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          Re: Work from home question about internet
          « Reply #8 on: March 30, 2017, 11:12:13 PM »
          Hey again,

          Can anyone tell me how to test my latency? Is that the ping??  What is a good speed? Or what speed would I need?
          Thanks for answering my endless questions!!

          camerongray



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          Re: Work from home question about internet
          « Reply #9 on: March 31, 2017, 04:12:33 AM »
          The result from speedtest.net will give a good enough indication.  For phone calls you ideally want to keep it below 150ms, anything more than 250ms starts to become quite noticeable to callers.

          strollin



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          Re: Work from home question about internet
          « Reply #10 on: March 31, 2017, 06:14:15 AM »
          If they are willing to hire you and only your satellite connection is the issue, you may want to see if there are alternatives to satellite for you.

          I've worked remotely for the past 10 years or so and only in the last 2 years have I had a "wired" connection as my "main" connection.  For the 8 years prior, I lived in a rural area where there was no cable or DSL available.  For part of that time I used a cellular connection to work remotely and that worked well but unless you have an unlimited data plan, it can get pretty expensive.  Another alternative I used was what is called "Wireless Internet".  It's basically long range wifi where a small directional antenna is placed on your roof and pointed to a transmitter miles away.  I used that method the longest.  It was pretty reliable but expensive.  I've also worked remotely from hotels/motels using their wifi.  All of these alternatives worked well with VPN and remote meeting software.

          Since you will be working from home, one of the questions that you should ask during the interview is whether or not they will pay for, or at least subsidize, your internet connection costs.

          Good luck in your job hunting!