NFT: Anyone have satellite internet, how is it?

Unless you're really remote, I'd look into wifi-WAN based internet access if your speeds are that bad with DSL.

I have a satellite link for work (for redundancy should both primary and secondary physical links be interrupted), and the latency sucks (as you'd expect). In addition, the bandwidth isn't all that great.

satellite internet several years ago as it was the only option for us, but I'd almost have rather had a modem.

Granted, it was back in 2005, but it sucked.

There are some satellite internet services that have pretty good throughput - close to what you get with cable internet in terms of MB/s. But the problem is latency between the time you request something and the time got start getting it.

Communications satellites circle the earth at over 22K miles. When you click on something, your request has to travel about 45K miles to reach your ISP. That's on top of whatever time it takes to transmit to and from the web server you're contacting on earth. And then another 45K back again to you.

This isn't a huge deal for a constant stream, like say watching Netflix. There's a short delay in the stream starting, but then it's constant. But web surfing requires constant requests back and forth, resulting in very perceptible delays.

Satellite latency is about 3-4 times greater than dialup latency, and dozens of times greater than broadband internet.

How can you have such limited options?

Satellite is great for TV, but just sucks for internet.

And the satellite contracts are horrible.... think cell phone contracts from 4 or 5 years ago. Big penalties if you bail early.

In comment 13243265 VTDAD said:

Quote:

How can you have such limited options? Satellite is great for TV, but just sucks for internet. And the satellite contracts are horrible.... think cell phone contracts from 4 or 5 years ago. Big penalties if you bail early.

I moved about 30mi from Syracuse, in the boondocks.

Speed is not too bad til you hit your limit and they choke you down to nothing. I used to hit my monthly limit the first week of every month. The price for a higher limit was outrageous.

If I had it to do again I owuld have used 4G.

downloads can be characterized as competitive; however the problem is these protocols when they cannot be buffered rely upon a transmit acknowledgment to advance the packet window. This latency is killer unless they have different designs these days. But you still have the physics problem of minimum 750ms. That is close to a second to respond to something for continous exchanges. Then you have fading that most DirecTV customers know and bitch about.

You would do better with other solutions unless you live on the moon. I would use MIFI and laptop before I would do that stuff.

Our cell service is pretty good, we have 4g, so I guess getting data via an AT&T home router would be better. Anyone have success with this method? How much data would nightly Netflix viewing eat up?

but storms will effect it