[LUNI] Best ISP for gaming

[Chad Perrin]

Carey Tyler Schug wrote:
> I don't think Satellite would be good for gaming.  The satellites are, 
> IIRC, 22,500 miles up to have an orbital period of 24 hours, so that 
> they will always appear to be in the same position in the sky.  That's 
> 45,000 miles up and back to get a signal to you that there is a little 
> dwarf in your room.  And another 45,000 miles back after you say to 
> throw ax at the dwarf.  At the speed of light, that's 90,000 or almost 
> half a second, plenty of time for that little dwarf to throw HIS ax at 
> you and kill you.
> 
> If you're downloading a 3 megabyte service pack to fix the security 
> holes in windows, the extra half a second doesn't matter, and if you're 
> downloading a bunch of small things, they can overlap so you only lose 
> the half second once.

Very true.  Satellite broadband internet has the potential to have far 
greater downstream bandwidth than DSL or Cable can provide (though most 
satellite ISPs throttle it back to comparable speeds), but it suffers 
two problems: Weather can easily disrupt your signal, and there's the 
issue of latency.  You can get more information per second, but all the 
information starts arriving late.

In fact, latency on satellite broadband is often worse than with dialup.

--
Chad