Satellite Internet

I'm thinking about getting satellite internet because of the inabillity to get dsl or cable in my area. Does anyone have satellite internet and a good graphics card that can tell me how well it runs guild wars? I have heard rumors that 2 way satellite connections dont work too well running video games, and this frightens me from getting satellite because I use the internet primarily for gaming.

I don't have but from what I hear it's the way the upload and download speeds are done. Download is fast, Upload is slower.

What I do know is that it is faster then dial up and GW can be played via dial up.

Again I don't know if this help, I do now have satellite.

Yes, satellite connection is really bad for gaming because of the travel distances that it has to beam up to space to the satellite up there then bounce the beam back down to earth. Once it has the data you've request it has to beam back up and back down to your dish. The travel time when it beams up and down may course some sort of delays in gaming so it is better off get adsl or cable if they are avaliable in your area, but you said it's not avaliable in your area. You may have to try find alternatives. Satellite connection is expensive in terms of the satellite equipment and possibly the subscription fee too.

Satellite will be slower than 56k for gaming and most web browsing, but faster for downloading files.

I have satellite internet through Starband. The connection is certainly not ideal, but is very playable. Just be prepared for a delay between when you ask it to do something, and when it gets done (delay that will never go away).

Satellite is fine for browsing the net. It is NOT better for downloading files. Standard cable/dsl here are both 3Megabit connections. My transfer rate is rated at 500kbps down / worthless as **** up.

File download speeds:

Cable/DSL = 200-200kbps down
Satellite = 70kbps (on a good day)

Fair warning: If you are planning to put it through a router, you might run into trouble. Depending on whether or not yoru ISP offers a preconfigured router for their satellite service, you might have to jump through hoops to get it to work. I did, but I've heard stories of people who didn't.

Thankfully In a month I'm back at school on blazingly fast fiber lines. *sigh* couldn't come soon enough at this point.

Happy to answer other questions about satellite if you have any.

I had Satalite when i bought GW...

Normally Satilite isn;t ideal for gaming, but when i heard you can play by yourself in GW i figured if it didn;t play good online, i can play alone.

But to my surprise it ran alright. I had issues with commands and the enviroment ( alot of the times stairs, my character would go up, then it would repeat, it got annoying ) there was also delays, but it was still playable.

My suggestion is to stick with dial-up. My download on the dish was super fast, but i uploaded at 2kb. Somehow that was enough to play GW, but now i got cable and all those issues i had with the dish went away.

Also PvP was the only place i got the most lag. But i'd stick with dial-up since GW was made for that.

sattelite claims to have faster download speeds than 56K but approximately the same upload speeds...which works fine for surfing the web because web browsing ONLY involves downloading.(other than the request packet which is all of 2kb)....so you see a noticeable difference when surfing the web over 56K....however, online gaming consists of a constant stream of uploading and downloading data from and to the server....the 56K upload times(ive heard it can actually be worse)...is going to cause what you THINK is lag...however it's perfectly normal for a satellite connection.

bottom line: it's not worth the price of the connection if you want to game on it....it probably won't be noticeably better than 56K for gaming.

How Satellite Works:

Because it would take a rather uncomfortably large amount of power to beam a consistent signal into space for the satellite, you talk to it through the provider's central transmitter via dial-up. This much you already know.

The upload (all uploads are done at dialup speeds) is then sent to the correct server across a landline / other satellite / whatever. The server sends its response to your ISP, which relays this data to the satellite, which bounces it to your dish.

This process means that uploads and requests are relatively slow, while downloads are remarkably fast. However, this also adds up to what's called "high latency". Latency is the period of time between request and response, and is rather large for satellite internet due to the extra step of transmission into space.

High latency is generally not good for online games, which require a steady and fast stream of communication back and forth. You may notice some network-based lag, such as jerking/ teleporting/ repeating steps, but it will be playable.

-sam

That's not the issue. The issue is that it takes time to beam your packets up to a satellite, back down to the Earth, and then across the surface of the Earth. It does not take high upload or download speeds to play games, it just takes good latency.

ya...latency is directly affected by your up/down rates.

No, theclam has it right.

Latency != bandwidth

To put it simply: Your dialup has roughly the same latency as my cable internet (due to the speed with which electrical signals cross copper wire), but MUCH lower bandwidth.

Your satellite internet has roughly similar bandwidth to my cable, but MUCH higher latency. (due to the fact that there's an extra step)

Your bandwidth really doesn't matter worth a sheep fart when you're only sending very very tiny amounts of information back and forth, as it is with online gaming.

-sam

DISCLAIMER: Not totally accurate, but it helps to explain why satellite's slower with online gaming but faster with downloading stuff. Cable internet has much lower latency than dialup, but... let's use a diagram!!

LOW==============LATENCY==============HIGH
CABLE..............DIAL-UP.............................SATELLITE

Cable's fastest, satellite's slowest! Yay diagrams!

It seems that the better choice would be dial up for gaming, thanks for the help these are questions you really can't get answered from the satellite company as they would try to persuade you to their product. I think I'll stick with the dial up until the darn sbc company decides to reconize me as a customer.