Wirless Internet Options for Gaming - Good or Bad?

[Atheras]

My area doesn't have DSL or Cable...so for the time being I'm stuck with Dial-Up....as if that wasn't bad enough, I can only connect at 28.8k.

There are two options in the area though, one is satellite that uses dial-up for the send signal, and the satellite for the return. I've heard these are terrible for gaming due to the insane distances that the signal must travel from the satellite (and I would imagine the extreme variances in speed of the send and recieve).

The other option is what my internet provider (the only one in this area I might add) calls "Wireless DSL" with a tag name of SkyWire. It uses a radio signal to connect to a nearby tower, and provides DSL like performance (384/128 or 384/384).

In references to either of these, are they good for gaming? In particular FPS games, and MMORPGs?

For a link to details on SkyWire gohere.

For a link on the satellite information (CrossFire) go here..

Any help would be appreciated...as I'm trying to get out of the narrowband hole that I'm in....if anyone has suggestions on other possible technologies please feel free to let me know and I'll see what I can find for my area (again, DSL and Cable are not available right now....)

Thanks!

 

[eklass]

it completely depends on packet latency.. aka ping time... for a good dsl connection you can get 30ms or so.. a good 56K connection would be in the area of 250 or so... i had satellite, and it would not work for games, period.. the ping time is something like 2000ms (2 seconds)... as far as going RF, it's probably better than satellite, but i have no idea. see if they have a trial period.. if they do, ping a few sites that are garunteed to be fast, like google.com or yahoo.com and see what kind of ping times you get. it should give you a rough estimate of how well it would work in games... course you could always fire up a game too and try it out

 

[AgaBoogaBoo]

You may even want to find out if there is someplace where you can go and try it out. It seems pretty good except for one thing, the one time $1395.00 charge. If you have the money and really need to get out of narrowband, by all means do it. If I were you though, I'd give the satelite thing a shot. Your downloads will be fast but your uploads won't change. This may help out a little since in some games the upload/download rates are equal, so this way the download stress is off the line, thus, allowing the whole speed of the phone to be used for upload.

Also, note the following:
1. During thunderstorms and cloudy conditions, your speed will probably slow down (download atleast) if it doesn't stop completely.
2. If I were in your position, I'd freak. :disgust: