How Good is Satellite Broadband?

radderfire

radderfire

radderfire

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Living in the country appeals to me, but I think I might miss my 6MB broadband connection, so how good is satellite broadband in comparison?

Thanks and rgds :cool:
 
I was under the impression that it was still relatively quick download speed wise, but latency for gaming was a bit rubbish.

Been a while since i read up on it so things may well have changed since then
 
Rubbish is the short version.

It's typically expensive, latency will be horrible and there's no way round that, it's a technical limitation. Bandwidth varies between providers and exact solutions but it'll never be fantastic at a reasonable price.

To be honest if you can get broadband at all, you'd be better finding an ISP who's willing to bond multiple lines. Obviously you have to pay for each line so it's not cheap and bonding still doesn't work great but it'll likely be better than satellite.
 
Quite a lot of latency, very expensive / per unit of bandwidth and for unidirectional systems (which are a lot cheaper than bi-directional) require an upload line eg dialup, ISDN or other ADSL.

The main advantage is that it'll work anywhere. Literally.
 
It wont be good at all!

Latency is the biggest issue and will be several seconds long even in perfect weather.

Packet loss in bad weather.

You're better off going with a landline. Even if speeds will be sub 1Mb.
 
I don't think there will be that many places left in the UK where you can't get some form of broadband, even if it is super slow!

Living in the countryside you have to give up a few technological luxuries. You'll have to go find some real man on sheep action! :eek:



:p
 
before we got adsl i used satelite ,, you needed a dial up to connect into despite mentioning lag and bad weather i didnt ever get drop out except when the supplier i used didnt pay there bills..

you can setup like a normal wired/wireless sytem router etc, i used skystar2 card then used a usb sat modem, also need a sky dish


downloads were great i was on a 2 meg connection but inital connections burst in at 8 meg slowing down

you get what you pay for and it was £15.99 for dial up and £60 a month for sat bb today i think its even more as less people to use it.

very expensive
 
It has come down in price a lot, off the top of my head you could get it for £30 ish a month now for two way.

Worth looking into before dismissing it like the others above.
 
I remember when my parents first moved out into the sticks a about 8 years ago, a 64k ISDN uplink and a 512k satellite down link was the best they could get for the princely sum of something like £200 a month!

DSL arrived about 5 years ago and they can now just about get a 1Mbit service, sometimes it syncs in at 1.2Mbit on a good day! :)

It is provided by Zen though so it's a very good 1Mbit and has been very reliable (6Km line). Quite funny really considering it was a new build and the whole house has a GigE network and even has fibre running to the office/garrage 120m down the bottom of the drive!

There are people around offering more cost effective satellite based systems these days, though my advice based on experience of it would be just get a landline based service if you can.

Even a 512K DSL connection will be better than most of the cheap satellite based services, especially if you want to do anything remotely time sensitive such as online gaming or use VoIP.
 
Duke said:
It has come down in price a lot, off the top of my head you could get it for £30 ish a month now for two way.

Worth looking into before dismissing it like the others above.
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can you find a link to that please 2 way for £30 a month id go back to that as i only get slow adsl....
 
for big downloads and streaming it's acceptable, but in general web browsing latency is the real killer becasue of how http works. I'd suggest looking at ADSL, multiple bonded lines if you have to. If you can't get that and all you do is general browsing, a 128Kb ISDN line would be a far more pleasant experience than a two way satellite link.
 
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on a side note there a lot of rural exchanges with fibre links nowadays (work as an engineer) so it depends how rural you go. I was actually surprised how many 'villages' have their own exchange.

so just because you dont live in a town/city some places can get v good bband service, dont expect LLU tho lol
 
Lived in London last year and our standard BT 8mb (i think) broadband never got above 2 and was usually on half a megabyte, useless for iplayer etc.

My mum has exactly the same package back at home (village, countryside) and it maxed out at 8 pretty much all the time.
 
G1BB0 said:
on a side note there a lot of rural exchanges with fibre links nowadays (work as an engineer) so it depends how rural you go. I was actually surprised how many 'villages' have their own exchange.

so just because you dont live in a town/city some places can get v good bband service, dont expect LLU tho lol
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there's nothing wrong with the exchanges at all, it's simply line length which kills broadband in rural areas. 6 miles is a long way in a city, you have to be really unlucky to be that far away from an exchange but out in the sticks it's not so far (particularly given that cable routing is usually less optimal...)

It's a problem for sure, there will be some benefit from the next generation DSL technologies (ie. you might get current generation speeds at great distances) and there are still trials ongoing on long line optimization but I expect it'll be a long time before it gets rolled out.

If you're desperate and have a business based need, E1s are surprisingly cost effective these days, I've just seen a solution go in with E1s to a few fairly remote sites in Yorkshire and the cost was really very reasonable (I mean we're still talking hundreds a month but much less than I was expecting).
 
Stupot_ said:
Lived in London last year and our standard BT 8mb (i think) broadband never got above 2 and was usually on half a megabyte, useless for iplayer etc.

My mum has exactly the same package back at home (village, countryside) and it maxed out at 8 pretty much all the time.
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But that's partly because you were with a rubbish ISP with a congested network. With some ISPs you will do better in the countryside because the backhaul from the exchange will be less congested as there are typically less users per exchange. But for that to work you need to be close enough to the exchange to get a decent sync speed...
 
bigredshark said:
But that's partly because you were with a rubbish ISP with a congested network. With some ISPs you will do better in the countryside because the backhaul from the exchange will be less congested as there are typically less users per exchange. But for that to work you need to be close enough to the exchange to get a decent sync speed...
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Hehe yeah I know BT is useless but it just goes to show that the same package can massivly vary, i.e perhaps a bit silly to base a house move on ;)
 
Stupot_ said:
Hehe yeah I know BT is useless but it just goes to show that the same package can massivly vary, i.e perhaps a bit silly to base a house move on ;)
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Absolutely true, it's a hard thing to judge really. I hate the idea of basing a move on getting a decent internet connection but I'm vaguely aware in the back of my head now I'm thinking about moving to the countryside that I do need a decent internet connection for my work...
 
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