Satellite Internet, how is it?

[Isaiah]

What do you think of satellite internet? Does anyone have it? It is not good for gaming, is it any good for internet phone calls?

Isaiah(who can not get DSL or Cable )

 

[artemedes]

If you have a radio shack locally you may want to see if they can demo it for you. I tried it at one in Wichita Kansas and it seemed slower than a 56k modem. It might be worth a short drive to see if you can try it out for yourself.

 

[Shmorq]

Do they cap the amount of data you can download per day? I remember hearing about that.

The reason why I heard it was slow is because of the delay in having to beam the signal to the satellite and back to Earth which is a pretty large number (0.7 seconds???) even for RF.

 

[Skunk]

Its absolutely no good for gaming. Its got cable equivalent download speeds, but its dialup for upload. Which means high latency lines, as in 300 ping + usually.(Theres a difference between latency and throughput) If you are only surfing/email general stuff its ok but if you are a gamer i'd stay away from it due to the high latency.

 

[Shmorq]

They do have 2-way satellite modems, but the pings are still high due to the aformentioned delay of sending the signal up to a satellite and back down again.

 

[nnnyyy]

A friend of mine had the Sprint service when it first started. The download speeds were great, but now its a different story. Only gets about half of what he used to get and its very unreliable.

 

[cookj]

I have direcpc and it`s MUCH better than my old 56k modem.There are some problems,such as haveing to hit refresh alot when surfing the web,but the pages download much faster than the modem.The download speeds are great,I downloaded 3dmark2001 in under 10 minutes(I think about 38 mb).I wouldn`t get the one that uses AOL as the service provider.bigboa.com sells the system for about $135 shipped.

 

[Rand]

The downloads are quite fast, roughly equivalent to Cable. But it's dial-up for uploads at 33.6k.
Also it's horrible for online gaming because of latency issues, as in about 300 ping + at best.

 

[Isaiah]

would it be any good for internet phone calls?

 

[stockjock]

I don't own one...but I do have satellite in my office...the biggest problem is when the weather sucks.....forget about connecting. It's even bad when we just have a real cloudy day....I love my cable at home...thats the best I've seen...

 

[wyvrn]

Internet phone calls are full duplex, and much depends on your sound card as it does your internet connection. Some sound cards are half-duplex, so using them for Internet phone calls is like using a cb radio, only one person can talk and be heard at a time. I doubt the latency of the satellite signal (.7 sec) would be enough to make phone calls unbearable, but it may be like making a phone call to another country with bad lines. I have no experience on it though, as I have never used it for that purpose. Surfing and streaming media on the satellite is great though

 

[PliotronX]

If you're a gamer, do not even consider satellite internet. The raw latency in travelling from the satellite to your local (what is it, Central Satellite Office, you know, up in the hills or something), which then bounces to your dish taking approximately 500ms. Add to that the fact that you have to use a 56k to upload and you can tack on another 100-200ms. 700ms is best-case, mind you. With satellite, you're looking at average pings no lower than one whole second. You'd have to use a very large RWIN setting to take advantage of the bandwidth, but there is no getting by in games with those pings..