Satellite Internet and Gaming

[harrelld]

Living in a remote part of the county, broadband dsl and cable are out for me.
Does anyone know if the two-way satellite systems will work with internet playable games?
I was looking at Starband.

Edit - spelling

[myrkat]

Quote:

Originally posted by harrelld
Living in a remote part of the county, broadband dsl and cable are out for me.
Does anyone know if the two-way satellite systems will work with internet playable games?
I was looking at Starband.

Edit - spelling

Satellite broadband has horrible LAG (time from when you move left/shoot/etc. to what people see).

It is great for large file and data stream transfers, but the turn-around is pretty bad.

Unless this has somehow dramatically improved in the last year or so, I believe it is still problematic with lag times.

-myrkat

[NeoCORE]

I dont think satalite will ever be that fast... technically it takes around 150ms to get the the sat and 150 to get to the reciever, then if it is 2 way, the same again to get back, and thats discounting any internet lag...

Great for large files, not an option for gaming... some areas have net through your electricity line, have a look out for that

[brems]

Doesnt work well at all for gaming-and they mention this before you sign up. For large downlaods (keeping in mind your have a limit of 165 megs per shift or whatever)is truly amazing. We have dedicated high speed lines at work (354K) and direcway is much faster-its great if you live in a rural area (general surfing). Were still waiting for cable service-digital cell phones too.

[daryl]

The download limit is a Hughes-DirecWay limitation. Starband doesn't have a set limitation. I've downloaded over 2 GByte in 24 hours before with Starband (which I'm using right now). I'm also in an area where DSL or Cable is not an option. The ping time is about 3/4 of a second as there is additional delay with processing the signal at the satellite. I can download large files faster than people can with DSL, but for stuff like looking at this discussion group, DSL seems really peppy when I get access to it.

-- Daryl

[allbad]

one option which *may* be available is wireless. Here in central Texas, there are several rural ISP's who have begun offering wireless for around $40/mo. @ 128k. In fact, if you're the first in the area, they'll even work out a deal where you get free access @ 6Mb if you agree to maintain the tower (i.e., power it and keep it up).

[myrkat]

Quote:

Originally posted by allbad
one option which *may* be available is wireless. Here in central Texas, there are several rural ISP's who have begun offering wireless for around $40/mo. @ 128k. In fact, if you're the first in the area, they'll even work out a deal where you get free access @ 6Mb if you agree to maintain the tower (i.e., power it and keep it up).

We have a similar service in my area (Central California) and I tried to get it, but there was no line-of-sight... thankfully DSL arrived (phone co. finally built a repeater less than 9,000 feet away) so I am happily cruising 1.5mbps for $50/month.

Out here, the "freebie" of WiFi is only for landowners who have hills (taller the better). The power for those things must be pretty significant, though.

-myrkat

[hsetdc]

Quote:

Originally posted by harrelld
Living in a remote part of the county, broadband dsl and cable are out for me.
Does anyone know if the two-way satellite systems will work with internet playable games?
I was looking at Starband.

Edit - spelling

I'm down here in Georgia with you too and a close friend of mine just recently got a satelite Internet connection for the same reason. It will play online games if and only if you continue to use your dailup connection as upstream and the satelite as downstream. However, this does not increase your pings at all from that of a dailup user. You would not be able to host games any faster, only receive packets faster. Direct-Duo, the best signal in the Southeast, can reach speeds of 300kb/s downsteam but barely even 1kb/s upsteam. The friend whom got the Internet connection had the sole intention of playing EverQuest, a MMORPG, a completely online game if you don't know what I'm speaking of, and was unable to even reach the performance of a 14.4k modem. It runs about $100 a month if you don't pay for all the equipment for the first year if you haven't looked into it. If you can continue to use your dailup connection for upstream, it is well worth the speed increase since the majority of home users are held back with downstream anyway. Another factor you may be thinking of is the disconnection aspect. The equipment from Direct-Duo has the feature of kicking in the satelite upstream if your dailup disconnects so that you never go linkdead.

[myrkat]

OK, so we are all clear that "SATELLITE" and "INTERNET GAMING" are oxymorons at least, and mutually exclusive at best?

-myrkat

[happyday]

But i wouldn't recommend wireless either. From what I have learned in competitions and my CCNA Class is that wireless connections are still somewhat unreliable. I don't know if it is possible for a single user to do this...but it works fro small offices of about five users. I don't know the cost either, but here goes.

I would see if there is a possibility to get an ISDN connection and VPN it using something like PPPoE. Now that might just be a load of bunk, but if you go ISDN, they can give you speeds that would satisfy what yoe want (different speeds, different prices.) It comes through the phone lines, and it would probably be remarkably cheaper and more reliable.

that is based on what I have learned in my CCNA class which is design for COMMERCIAL networking, so I don't know if it will work, but it might be worth researching.