Satellite Internet Advice

[Blacktharne]

I live in the country...I'm about 5 miles outside of a small town (5000 people) where both cable and DSL are available...SBC owns and upkeeps the phone lines in the area and they tell me I am too far from the home-center (or something) to get DSL and that a $300,000 intermediate station would have to be put up in order for me to get DSL...They can't tell me when or if this will happen...

I'm considering purchasing a satellite system from DIRECWAY...My primary question is: Are satellite systems conducive for online gaming? At one time, I was told by someone in a forum they were worse than dial-up becaue satellite connections transmit data in packets/bursts which cause major latency/lag problems in a gaming environment - I don't know if this is true or not...I would really like to hear from someone with a satellite system that games on it...

Also I would be really steamed if I put down $600 for the equipment and in a few months I hear that SBC is deciding to expand its DSL service into my area...Though I have lived here for a year and consistently call them to see if they have any plans to do so, and I really doubt they do...

If anyone has any reliable projections on the short-term future of broadband availability that would cause me to second guess purchasing satellite (i.e. the WiFi thing, though I'm 60 miles away from a major city), I'd appreciate hearing it...

Thanks in advance for reading this and helping me out

Thought of one more question: Is it possible to use a router (without any performance loss, just as you can with DSL or cable) with satellite systems

 

[n0cmonkey]

They don't work for online gaming. The ping times are too high.

 

[Boscoh]

The newest Direcway 7000 series modems have some kind of hardware accelerator built into them. It's supposed to reduce the effects of latency on things such as VOIP. It works great for that. I have a genera idea of how it works, not exactly though...or if it will help for gaming. We use them for on-shore and off-shore rigs to provide phone and data connectivity.

I believe the DW7000 uses a technique of intercepting a TCP session at the satellite provider's first ground facility. The ground facility fools both sides of the connection into thinking that it is the originating or destination point for the TCP session. This cuts off some of the latency, and keeps TCP from thinking the network is congested and slowing the transfer rate because the ACK's are sent almost immediately. This is my very limited understanding of how it works, but it does work well for some applications. I dont know if it will work for games though, because games are based on true latency moreso than bandwidth. While this technique might cut out a little true latency, I think it helps improve the bandwidth more than it does the latency.

 

[Zap]

Satellite = bad for gaming.

Router = will work with SOME satellite equipment, thing is that some of the equipment hooks up to USB and thus won't work with routers, basically check with Directway first.

5 miles from town? Got any friends living on the edge of town facing you? If so, run a point-to-point wireless connection between you two. 5 miles is not too difficult as long as you get the right antennas and get high enough off the ground. Technically speaking you'll need your antennas to be about 35' off the ground if you have PERFECT line of sight (no trees, buildings or anything else in-between), but you'd probably want a bit more for "just in case". I'd go about 30' (typically longest telescoping mast) off the tops of the tallest buildings on either side. Use 24dbi gain parabolic antennas on either end.

 

[Blacktharne]

Thanks for the replies guys

Zap, I'm surrounded by large trees on all sides, so I don't believe the wireless connection is feasible...

Changing the direction of the thread a bit...The main game I'm interested in playing is Everquest 2, I am currently able to play it on dial-up. I am able to connect at 40kpbs max and often its a bit less than that...I run the game fairly well, but I frequently run into major "lag spikes" (I'm unclear on the exact definitions of a lot of the terms used here) where I try to interact with things in the game and nothing happens on my end and then anywhere from 10 seconds to a minute later everything catches up in the span of a second. I'm guessing that the best way to characterize my connection problem is a lack of a consistent connection...

I've asked around on other forums, and multiple people have told me that they play the game on a 28.8 connection without the problems I've described above...This leads me to believe its either my ISP, my modem, or my the quality of my phone lines...

Can there be that big of a difference between ISPs? I'm currently using AT&T dial-up services, but I would switch in flash if I thought it would make a difference...

I don't believe its the quality of my phone line, because the folks I mentioned above who play via dial-up all contend that their phone lines are quite old as well...

My modem is a GTW V.92 Voicemodem #2 (I'm not sure what the #2 is about) according to my device manager...I have no idea if this is a good modem or not...

My other specs on my computer are as follows:
2.66 Ghz processor
1 GB RAM
ATI X800 graphics card


So, if anyone has any insight as to why I have such problems playing on dial-up and others seem to have very few problems relative to me, then I'd appreciate hearing them

Thanks for the help

 

[Silversierra]

Just a thought, in my area we can get wireless internet from an isp, they say that their range is 10miles, and the connection speeds they have are
384k / 128k
512k / 128k
768k / 256k
1MB / 384k
2MB / 512k

 

[Zap]

Originally posted by: Blacktharne
Zap, I'm surrounded by large trees on all sides, so I don't believe the wireless connection is feasible...

Just got to get over the trees with a higher mast, or with a crank up tower.

As Silversierra said, see if there are WISPs in your area, then you don't have to worry about putting up equipment for yourself. Unless dreadfully oversold, WISP connections can be fairly low latency and they are almost always syncronous, meaning you'll get 128k or 512k or whatever they sell both ways - perfect for gaming (though not as good for leeching P2P).

With your dial up service, you can try a few things. Check with other ISPs for free trial periods, or perhaps ones that don't have contracts so you can try a month at a time. Also, try to manually limit the connection speed to below what you normally get. Those "lag spikes" are probably when line noise exceeds the limit for your 40k connection - line noise amount is not static (pun intended 😛 ) meaning the amount of line noise will change over time - can be minutes, as you've experienced. I haven't had to do this in a long time, but you may be able to specify a connect speed or maximum connect speed. Back in the day, we used to do this with "S" strings for the modem. The point of slowing it down is to keep it below the speed that the most amount of line noise you may get will not impact.