Any experience w/ satalite internet?

[Techno]

Hello,

At the end of the month I will be moving from Tampa FL to ZephyrHills FL. The Land I bought is in the middle of woods (which I like) however it being so remote, the only thing that my house will have is electricity and phone service.... nothing else. There are no plans for the cable company (Road Runner) or phone company (DSL) to go out that far as i'm the only one there. So, my only options is dial-up (56K) or Satalite Internet (as I will have DirecTV, I can get DirecWay). It says it has a 1 second latency and is not recommended for games such as FPS which I can understand, however I am still a bit of a gamer (FFXI, WOW, EQ2, ect....).. I'm wondering if anyone has any experience w/ satalite internet and although they say satalite internet isn't recommended for gaming, is it ok enough for FFXI and WOW? Is there much of a problem with it??

Thanks!

 

[n0cmonkey]

If ping times matter, satellite internet isn't for you. ISDN or dialup teaming are your best options. I haven't seen a worthwhile satellite setup yet. They're all scams.

 

[bluestrobe]

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid=27&threadid=1558660

 

[Colebert]

i have setup starband installations for business clients. based upon the knowledge i gained from the installation, i could NEVER recommend it to anyone, as an individual. ...and its useless for pretty much any corporation, also.

the only reason the company wanted me to set it up was because they couldn't even get PHONE SERVICE at this location (i.e., its on a mountain far away from civilization.) They actually use a cell pack (think: BAG PHONE) to get enough juice to catch an analog cell signal.

its a two way connection and they even uncapped it for us. uncapped, its very fast (like cable/dsl download speeds). but what no one mentions is that the ping times are absolutely rediculous. absolute QUICKEST ping time is 750ms, with the average over a second. About 5-10% of the packets actually TIMEOUT.

furthermore, you can't run any applications across the link. even uncapped, VPN would never work because of the large volume handshaking that goes on. latency just makes it impossible. in fact, most normal applications will simply timeout across the line. VOIP is out, too.

basically you can surf the web and check email. you can get a fast link with satalite, but who cares? the ping time will drive you insane.