Satellite Internet In Iraq, need pre-planning/setup help

Hey everyone, first off i want to thank anyone that can provide useful and accurate information on the subject matter.

I will start with the situation. I am a soldier in the US army currently serving, in Baghdad Iraq. Me and sevral other people that live in my building are looking for alternative solutions for internet. We currenty have a provider giving us roughly 56kbps at $50 a month with a shady connection at peak times.

There are some things I need to know prior to ordering anything. First off I'm trying to gather all the knowledge I can about actually setting up the service. Over here there will not be any on site tech support. I have someone in commo that can point the dish in the right direction so that shouldnt be a problem. But other than actually setting it up there are sevral things I am not familiar with such as a 20:1 ratio vs 10:1 ratio, I am assuming that a 10:1 is better since it is more expensive at even lower download and upload rates. Also I have been looking at a 2 services, iDirect and Linkstar. Thier services are provided in the links. But I am unsure what each one will do for me, the "ratio's" and if the rated bandwidth is divided among the # of users on the system, and "dedicated bandwidth 1:1 CIR on request" I haven't the first clue as to what that really means or how it affects the service.

Basically I could go on for a good while on detailed questions and thoughts... I just need everything broke down so I can get speed and download/upload bandwidth #'s vs price per person for the people paying and ensure that I can setup and maintain the system. I also dont know what equipment would be needed to setup a username/password basis login with a limited bandwidth. As of right now we are going to try to provide this service to 20-30 diff people in our battalion.

I am going to assume that the ratios quoted are the over-subscription ratio that they are using the sat, so obviously a 10:1 ratio is better than the 20:1 ratio and you are more likely to be able to get the full bandwidth quoted more often as you are not sharing it with as many. Cir or 1:1 is commited information rate, meaning if you buy a 1024/512 connection you will get the 1024/512 and that the bandwith is reserved for your use, you'll probably pay out the nose for it though.

For AAA you can easily use a cheap pc, setup Mikrotik and either use the hotspot feature, or setup a PPPoE server, both of which will allow a username/password setup and bandwidth limiting.

Thanks for your service!

Thanks for the help Ddruid that answers a few questions. Does anyone know what i will be looking at when installing and setting up the service? also another big question is, if i have a service setup for 1024/512, that is the total bandwidth and not per user correct? im trying to weigh my bandwidth per person verses what we already have. Also if anyone knows anything about the two services i have linked, or any other services that may be available here.

You'll probably get a better response over at BBR's Wireless Service Providers forum: http://www.dslreports.com/forum/wisp several of the regulars have likely dealt with satellite as a backbone service before.