Satellite Interwebz?

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It really looks like Satellite might be our best bet for internet here, I was looking at wildblue which is satellite both ways up and down but there is still a latency:( Anyone have any experience with satellite? I'm thinkin its gotta be better than dialup(especially the 26k we get up here heh) and at the very least get us back able to play the game. I am not sure we could tank and heal with the latency.
 
When I had it years ago it was good download but it was the upload that was bad. What I did was use Dial up for up load and it wasn't to bad, but still not broadband
 
I was just reading the Hughesnet page and they offer faster speeds, but it gets insanely pricey above 2mb down and caps at 300k upload. They claim satellite adds a half second delay but that seems low, I was expecting more delay than that heh.
 
There use to be a law against a contant upload to a satalite by civilians. So they had to pulse the data, rapid connect and disconnects... but that was 8-9 years ago.
 
Satellite has improved it's latency somewhat. I think at good times it's around 900ms, which I've played for 4 yrs on dial-up averaging that.

However since Wotlk has come out dial-up latency is really killing me especially tanking. I'm having troubles keeping threat built up as there is a delay between instant cast spells at times of 3-4 seconds. Which for myself the main problem is the limited bandwidth available with dial-up which will not be an issue with satellite.

Have you considered wireless internet through your cell phone company, I know Verizon/Alltel offer it here between $59-69 a month with comparable speeds and ping times to DSL. It essentially means plugging a mini-antenna into your USB port and playing that way. I've considered it myself but I can't afford $69 a month right now or the foreseeable future. However I think satellite runs between $69-99 a month plus whatever installation costs are, it may be an option worth looking into.
 
I have verizon and don't get very good phone reception up here, but there is an alltel antennae right next to my house heh. I would be worried I would sign up for it and end up not getting a signal.
 
we used hughesnet at my old house for a while and it wasnt horrible but when the weather got bad sometimes no internet for you!
actually before we moved we had radio internet which was about double the speed of the satellite and worked actually pretty well.
 
CGamer said:
Satellite has improved it's latency somewhat. I think at good times it's around 900ms, which I've played for 4 yrs on dial-up averaging that.

However since Wotlk has come out dial-up latency is really killing me especially tanking. I'm having troubles keeping threat built up as there is a delay between instant cast spells at times of 3-4 seconds. Which for myself the main problem is the limited bandwidth available with dial-up which will not be an issue with satellite.

Have you considered wireless internet through your cell phone company, I know Verizon/Alltel offer it here between $59-69 a month with comparable speeds and ping times to DSL. It essentially means plugging a mini-antenna into your USB port and playing that way. I've considered it myself but I can't afford $69 a month right now or the foreseeable future. However I think satellite runs between $69-99 a month plus whatever installation costs are, it may be an option worth looking into.
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you'll never get around the 46k mile round trip form sat station to sat to you..you are always going to have nearly 1000 msec latency just form the sat hops..that doesn't include the internet latency...you can try to game on it..but the latency is going to be far worse than dialup.
 
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Wildblue... yeah, it took almost a year to fix a billing error they made. The closed our account, copied it, and still charged us even though we weren't even using the satellite. Plus the connection gets bad where's there plenty of clouds. I know, because we used it in the middle of nowhere dry Texas. xD

Just don't expect anything blazing fast.
 
could also give at&t a shot with their 3g...although i had very mixed results in houston. they had great speeds on things like the online bandwidth tests, but when it came to WoW, they pretty much sucked. if you do go down that route with either carrier and if you happen to have a laptop with WoW on it handy...do it in the store and see before you take it home with you
 
yeah...but they don't really cover gaming...they're just general bandwidth results...really need to try it with the game. then again, most providers are giving 30 day warranties so you can validate coverage and all of that stuff.
 
as long as it's 3g the latencies aren't too bad..isdn or so..however the cell providers all run 5 gig caps with heft overage charges..speeds are low end dsl and higher depending on signal and distance.
 
i was getting 1.5s ping rate while actually on 3G , using WoW...but my download speeds were fantatic :)

i'm pretty sure they're throwing some QoS stuff in there that interferes with gaming
 
I currently use Hughes Net Satellite service, because it's all we can get where I live. It's definitly an upgrade over dial up but no where as nice as high speed broadband. It's pretty reliable, however it does slow down quite a bit in the middle of the day. Probably due to the extra use of the satellite. On average I would say I run about 800-900ms in WoW. Good download speed but pretty bad upload speed. There's another downside. If you're into downloading videos, music or anything else you may get restricted to how much content you can download. I currently have the fastest speed I can get with Hughes Net, but if I go over 500mb of download in 24 hours they knock me down to dial up speeds as a punishment. They want you to use their satellites evenly, basically because they overload them with customers.
 
I have read similar reports from the satellite forums on people that do game over satellite, even read a thread about a husband and wife that both do WoW and Vent at the same time and they didn't seem to have too much trouble. I am still not sure I would want to be a main tank and main healer with that lag so I may have to level up my hunter and Beth already wants to go shadow lol
 
Well my brother (Xymnas) and I both play at the same time and both run vent. We don't really have a problem with it. And as far as being main tank and a healer, you might have some issues getting aggro right away. You'll get about a half a second to a second of lag time. But my brother tanks on his druid and he doesn't usually have that much of a problem. You just got to plan ahead and know that you're going to get that lag. You get pretty used to it, you'd be surprised how much you can do to counteract the lag. And if you were the top healer you might end up dropping below one or two people, but you still shouldn't have a problem. Satellite internet is definitly playable, you're just not going to be that good at PvP or the best DPS/healer.
 
Well good because you'll be worse with satellite haha... It's really hard to play a melee class in PvP with satellite. On your screen they look close enough to hit, but in reality they're not. Same with ranged, they look far enough away for me to shoot my concussive shot, but they're actually meleeing me lol.
 
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