HughesNet

Bucklin · 01-03-2009, 08:55 PM

Does anybody here have this ISP? I'll be in the market for a rural ISP sometime in the next few months and, so far, HughesNet seems to be the best option as far as the bandwidth needed for gaming goes. I was wondering if anyone could give me an opinion on it and what I could expect moving from the broadband-spoiled lands of suburbia to the desolate bandwith-desert of rural America.

Any other ISP suggestions would be great, too. I'm moving to Virginia in two months (at the minimum) and don't want to lose one of my biggest hobbies.

**Bamboo** · 01-03-2009, 10:53 PM

Are you talking Satellite internet?

Acreo Aeneas · 01-03-2009, 11:14 PM

Bucklin, your best bet is to ask over at Broadband Reports. The users and techs over there could give you a better impression.

**Bamboo** · 01-04-2009, 12:07 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Acreo Aeneas

Bucklin, your best bet is to ask over at Broadband Reports. The users and techs over there could give you a better impression.

That is why I asked, just to make sure what he was asking about.
Here is a link to the forums about the different sat providers.

I was actually working at a park in Northern VA and kept pushing them to get internet for the staff that lived onsite. The stupid bitch they put in charge of getting it done (a office person) didn't listen to my advice and went with WildBlue Sat service. It sucked ass.

One of the main reasons we got it was so that during storms we could look at the weather online and see what was going on so we could keep our visiting school groups in shelter and other stuff. Guess what happens to Sat. service in a bad storm or even just think clouds/fog. No or crappy service.

And forget gaming on it. Ping time was beyond belief. I'm talking about when I would run speedtest.net, my ping would be between 1,300 and 10,000. I'm not joking. Now, once the data got back to your computer the page would load fast. But from the time you clicked on a link to the time that fast page load would happen could be 10 sec. or more. No way you could game on that, as the guy your shooting at would be on the other side of the map by the time you fired.

So, just saying, if it is a absolute LAST LAST LAST resort, it would be better than dialup, but not going to work for gaming.

And last time I was trying to fix the constant outages, even on clear days, the forums I linked to were full of very unhappy customers.

stickyjeans69 · 01-04-2009, 12:11 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bucklin

Does anybody here have this ISP? I'll be in the market for a rural ISP sometime in the next few months and, so far, HughesNet seems to be the best option as far as the bandwidth needed for gaming goes. I was wondering if anyone could give me an opinion on it and what I could expect moving from the broadband-spoiled lands of suburbia to the desolate bandwith-desert of rural America.

Any other ISP suggestions would be great, too. I'm moving to Virginia in two months (at the minimum) and don't want to lose one of my biggest hobbies.

I used to have Hughesnet .......the download rates are good 130kb/s or so

Your ping is going to be between 700-1000. the delay between you and the sattelite is Horrible for gaming, so you may as well be wasting money

.....think about it for a second....you're sending a Radio wave.....to space.... and then sending it back to earth. it's not the Quickest signal

**Bamboo** · 01-04-2009, 01:31 AM

Actually, you are sending it from your computer, to the dish, up to space, down to their home base, then out to the site like CNN.com, then back to their base, then up to space, then back to your dish, then back to your computer to process.

That equals mega mega ping!

ScratchMonkey · 01-04-2009, 05:54 AM

It's not just space. Space is only 200 miles up. You're sending it to geosynchronous orbit, 36,000 miles up. And back down, and up, and down again. So 144,000 miles before the answer gets back to you. Even at the speed of light, that's a huge chunk of time in game terms.

**CingularDuality** · 01-04-2009, 10:54 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ScratchMonkey

You're sending it to geosynchronous orbit, 36,000 miles up.

Almost!
Clarke orbit = 36k kilometers = 22k miles

But I thought satellite ISPs were telephone uploads and satellite downloads? They've got residential satellite transmitters now?

**Bamboo** · 01-04-2009, 11:21 AM

Yep. The only lines we had went to and from the dish. And the funny thing it there are 2 lines, and after the guy installed it and left, we couldn't get internet working. I switched the 2 wires running into the box, and it started working.

ScratchMonkey · 01-04-2009, 12:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by CingularDuality

Almost!
Clarke orbit = 36k kilometers = 22k miles

Damn metric system!

So what's light's travel time over 88k miles? (I fear I'll get the arithmetic wrong.)

Acreo Aeneas · 01-04-2009, 01:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ScratchMonkey

Damn metric system!

So what's light's travel time over 88k miles? (I fear I'll get the arithmetic wrong.)

What does radio signals have to do with the speed of light? (Or is this a separate unrelated question?)

**sordavie** · 01-04-2009, 01:41 PM

Radio waves travel at the speed of light...

Light and radio waves are both electromagnetic radiation, just at different frequencies.

Acreo Aeneas · 01-04-2009, 01:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sordavie

Radio waves travel at the speed of light...

Light and radio waves are both electromagnetic radiation, just at different frequencies.

Oh, I didn't know that. According to Wikipedia, the speed of light (in the vacuum of space) is exactly: 299,792,458 meters per second.

I'm guessing air doesn't slow down the rate by much. The caption below the picture in the above Wiki article says "99.7%". So I'm guess the latency comes from the time it takes each point (satelite, base station, etc.) to process the signal?

=Sarc= · 01-04-2009, 04:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Acreo Aeneas

Oh, I didn't know that. According to Wikipedia, the speed of light (in the vacuum of space) is exactly: 299,792,458 meters per second.

I'm guessing air doesn't slow down the rate by much. The caption below the picture in the above Wiki article says "99.7%". So I'm guess the latency comes from the time it takes each point (satelite, base station, etc.) to process the signal?

Do the calculations and it's mostly travel time.

Going up to the satellite and back down is about 0.24s if it's 36k km in orbit. Add on the time for the packet to travel through the Internet and it adds up. It's not unbelievable to see pings in the 700-1000 range.

Acreo Aeneas · 01-04-2009, 05:24 PM

Hmm, well, he's better off with a landline if he can somehow find DSL service.