PSI3

Just moved house and can no longer get Broadband via conventional means, anyone have opinions ( first hand if possible ) of the reliability of BT or other Broadband Satellite.
Thanks

Simon

suba

one thing for sure, satellite broadband = expensive!

have a look at ispreview.

boxst

Hello

A few people that I know have satellite broadband. I got involved with all of this as I ran the local campaign to get broadband in my town (successfully!).

Satellite is reliable, although it drops speed and (rarely) connection during heavy rain.

The problem with it is that it's slow (in ping terms). So once you have found the file you want, the speed is great. But general web browsing is terrible as each page will load and then have to connect again for all the images.

Steve.

chiark

Problem with satellite, as mentioned above, is latency. It can provide gigabits of download (or whatever) but ultimately there'll be 250ms of latency for data to travel from the satellite to the ground.

There are schemes that make use of a standard land line for uploading data to reduce latency; if you do use it for gaming, or anything other than streaming media, latency will kill you on satellite alone

pblakeway

we use sat. broadband for people who cant get regular at home and have found the above 2 comments to be spot on.
VPN connections also seem to have a bit of a problem with the latency issues.


However if you only need it for downloads its fine.

chiark

if only we could find a way of breaking that pesky "speed of light" restriction...