Satellite Internet

tralev

Folks live out in the boonies, getting tired of using dial up.

Can't get cable and definitely can't get DSL. So what's the deal with satellite internet? I remember it used to only offer download, you still had to be connected to a phone line for upload - I'm assuming this is still the case?

wunderbar

no, there is upload on satelite now, but it's shitty, slow, and overpriced for what you get.

If it's your only option, then it's your only option, just be prepared to pay through your teeth for it.

focused7

Have you looked into verizon wireless or sprint wireless internet access? I believe verizon's is something like $60/month for unlimited.

alcoholic_engineer

My parents have it: wireless is a better option but you have to be line of sight pretty much to the transmitter and so we couldnt get it.

Satellite is faster then dialup by quite a bit, but by no means is it high speed. It takes a few seconds for a page to upload and I am willing to bet that if you wanted to fileshare you would be screwed.

If you can afford it though I far prefer it over dial up. It takes 3 minutes to check my e-mail accounts as opposed to 20 on dialup.

Horseshoe

I use Hughesnet. The download speed is very good, but there are other very important drawbacks.

Your latency on satellite will be up around 2 seconds, because the signal has to go up to a geosynchronous satellite and then back down to earth.

This basically makes online gaming where reaction time is a factor completely impossible. Some games it can work with though, I was pretty good at Guild Wars in spite of this because of the way combat works, the builds that I used, and a healthy amount of anticipation.

Something that pretty much all satellite companies that I've heard of have: a "Fair Access Policy". This means that you can only transmit a certain amount of data without getting cut back to what is essentially modem speeds. Hughesnet does it on a per day basis, Wildblue does it on a per month basis, there may be variations there.

FAP sucks if you download a lot of stuff. Look into what a company's policies are before signing up. Hughesnet, for example, will give you unlimited download and upload from 3am EST to 6am EST. So if you have a download manager on your computer, you can set it to use these times. You can also use your task scheduler to run your windows update at this time too. If I'm up late (luckily I'm on PST so it's only 12-3) I download shit for the PS3 at this time.

Uploading is verah verah bad. Incoming connections don't work very well, that's just kinda how it is. If you use a VPN network to work from home, satellite may give you problems. P2P file sharing like bittorrent works not so well... you can get but you can't give very much at all.

It's a bitch, but less horrible than having dialup out in the sticks. Where I live, I can only pull like twentysomething kilobaud because our telephone lines are so old and crappy.

edit: also, you don't have to have a phone line. that's only for certain tv satellite companies i think.

That_Guy

I am just going to copy paste my response from the last thread we had on this.

ThatGuy wrote:

I am going to jump in here and suggest and Data Card for those of you not wanting to fuck with dial-up or satellite. All of the major cell companies have them. Since I work for AT&T I am personally vouch for our network's ability to play MMOs, even over EDGE. Look around, though and field test cards from the big 3 (AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon). All three carriers offer a 30 day trial for their service. Though you will have to pay for the service you used, the trial period is the best way of finding out who will work best for you. The last bit of advice I can offer, is to not have each company's connection clients installed on the same computer. The respective company's clients carry software with them that do not get along with others. I am unsure of the others, but I know that AT&T has a "clean uninstall" utility that you can use to remove just about everything the software installed.

Monkey Ball Warrior

The distance of the satellite isn't so much the issue (the theoretical minimum latency due to the speed of light to and from geosynchronous orbit is only around 280ms. You could play WoW on that).

The real issue is all the conversions and bottlenecks and queuing that has to take place to make it all work in the first place.

alcoholic_engineer

That_Guy wrote: »

I am just going to copy paste my response from the last thread we had on this.

ThatGuy wrote:

I am going to jump in here and suggest and Data Card for those of you not wanting to fuck with dial-up or satellite. All of the major cell companies have them. Since I work for AT&T I am personally vouch for our network's ability to play MMOs, even over EDGE. Look around, though and field test cards from the big 3 (AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon). All three carriers offer a 30 day trial for their service. Though you will have to pay for the service you used, the trial period is the best way of finding out who will work best for you. The last bit of advice I can offer, is to not have each company's connection clients installed on the same computer. The respective company's clients carry software with them that do not get along with others. I am unsure of the others, but I know that AT&T has a "clean uninstall" utility that you can use to remove just about everything the software installed.

I may be completely mistaken in my understanding of how those cards work, but they require good cell connections and of a various type.
At least in my area no one has decent phone connections. Whenever we have guests who try and use their phones you see them jumping around trying to get enough connection to be on the network. Some people get different levels of suckage depending on provider. So if you dont have a decent cell connection of a specific connection quality it wont work.

Just something to consider