My satellite internet service sucks Please Help

[mpascual42]

Where I live the only way to get internet service is with satellite, which is fine for general use but try to game online and the experience is hell . My ISP does not support online gaming, I am a avid gamer and short of selling my house and moving closer to town  (not really an option) is there anything that can be done to make high speed internet access a realization for me. Please help. PS Linus tech tips is one of my favorite shows I enjoy the banter and find a lot of useful information, keep it up Linus and crew. Thanks in advance, Michael.

[ddennis002]

9 minutes ago, mpascual42 said:

Where I live the only way to get internet service is with satellite, which is fine for general use but try to game online and the experience is hell . My ISP does not support online gaming, I am a avid gamer and short of selling my house and moving closer to town  (not really an option) is there anything that can be done to make high speed internet access a realization for me. Please help. PS Linus tech tips is one of my favorite shows I enjoy the banter and find a lot of useful information, keep it up Linus and crew. Thanks in advance, Michael.

Where are you located and who is your current ISP?

[mariushm]

Satellite as it is right now is not gonna work for gaming because of the big distance between you and the satellite.

The way it works is you're sending a request through a modem to the ISP which may be some distance away from you, their server processes your command by making that connection to that website or service through fiber cables, they get the data and then send it to the location which has a big antenna that uploads your data along with other people's data to the satellite and then you download that data from the satellite. 

 

So instead of being a direct connection between you and the game server in another country, you could have you - isp - game server - back to isp - to location that uploads to satellite - satellite - down to you

 

Imagine you're in France,game server is in US, the center that uploads data to satellite is in UK .... your data will travel

France > ISP in France > US > Back to France ISP > UK > Satellite > You

 

As the satellite is thousands of km above your head, it will take tens of ms for data from Earth to reach the satellite and that much to come back to you... can't work around that delay, without lowering the satellites which shortens their life because they're pulled down by gravity so they have to use their fuel reserves to go up.

[Mooshi]

This is why an apartment forever ago didn't work out. When I found out the only internet option was satellite or dial-up, I nope'd out of there.

 

If you live somewhere where this is your only option, you move or deal with it.

[akio123008]

Perhaps a point-to-point wireless setup could work.

[harryk]

In order of increasing cost:

- Do nothing, play games that don't require an internet connection

- Go somewhere that does have internet to play games such as a friend's place or Internet cafe or library etc.

- Use a 3G/4G/5G wireless hotspot if the cell service is good enough

- Install a high-gain cellular antenna to improve the connection

- Install a microwave link or other LOS system to connect you to the network

- Install fiber from your house to the closest node

[Donut417]

3 hours ago, mpascual42 said:

Where I live the only way to get internet service is with satellite, which is fine for general use but try to game online and the experience is hell . My ISP does not support online gaming, I am a avid gamer and short of selling my house and moving closer to town  (not really an option) is there anything that can be done to make high speed internet access a realization for me. Please help. PS Linus tech tips is one of my favorite shows I enjoy the banter and find a lot of useful information, keep it up Linus and crew. Thanks in advance, Michael.

Firstly there is no way to polish that turd (Satelite internet). It will have high latency and shit data caps. 

 

Im going to guess you live in a rural area. Your pretty much fucked on good internet service, probably forever. Because its not economically viable for them to wire up an area with low population density. SOOOOOO, Id check in to either Fixed wireless or LTE services. See if any of those options exist in your area. Either way you will still have higher latency, but not as high as satelite internet. Speeds might be around the same, though there still might be data caps, so you will have to plan accordingly. 

 

Outside of that, DONT LIVE IN RURAL AREAS. Move to the city where you can get a decent internet connection. 

[amdorintel]

just dont game, or download games onto your pc and game that way.

[Roswell]

Most rural areas these days have access to wireless ISPs (WISP) or fixed home wireless from cellular companies like Verizon or T-Mobile that don't have data caps. I would look into those options for your area.

[Kisai]

8 hours ago, mpascual42 said:

Where I live the only way to get internet service is with satellite, which is fine for general use but try to game online and the experience is hell . My ISP does not support online gaming, I am a avid gamer and short of selling my house and moving closer to town  (not really an option) is there anything that can be done to make high speed internet access a realization for me. Please help. PS Linus tech tips is one of my favorite shows I enjoy the banter and find a lot of useful information, keep it up Linus and crew. Thanks in advance, Michael.

 

Nope. Satellite internet is incredibly not useful for anything except large data transfers because it's super-high latency. If there is cellular internet available, and it's at least 4G LTE, that would be a better experience.

 

LTE, latency and bandwidth is usually better than most peoples Cable internet connections.

[amdorintel]

no one knows where the o.p. is located, but i love the assumptions that its in rural usa/rural north american continent, lump canada in there with usa *shrugs*

 

typical

 

8 hours ago, mpascual42 said:

Where I live the only way to get internet service is with satellite, which is fine for general use but try to game online and the experience is hell . My ISP does not support online gaming, I am a avid gamer and short of selling my house and moving closer to town  (not really an option) is there anything that can be done to make high speed internet access a realization for me. Please help. PS Linus tech tips is one of my favorite shows I enjoy the banter and find a lot of useful information, keep it up Linus and crew. Thanks in advance, Michael.

where do you live?

[cole0622]

have you tried to isolate internet access to just your gaming pc?

[Roswell]

1 hour ago, Kisai said:

LTE, latency and bandwidth is usually better than most peoples Cable internet connections.

That's really not true at all: https://www.speedtest.net/global-index

 

LTE latency is also nowhere remotely close to stable. Jitter is all over the place and first hop transit time is awful.

[mariushm]

If you have line of sight with other locations that have better internet, there are options for you.

You can use directional antennas to create a point to point connection between your place and the other location, and maybe pay a monthly or yearly sum of money to the owner of that other location to allow you to have the antenna on his land and power the modem using his electricity (a dollar or so a year's worth of electricity)

Wireless can work long distances (cheap stuff up to 20-30km, more expensive stuff up to 100km)  if there's direct line of sight and the antennas are installed on some solid pillars (or a tree) so the antennas won't vibrate/move/whatever under the wind.

 

There are also radio modems which can work for very long distances with low latency but the bandwidth is typically very low.

For example this one goes up to 50km with 2ms delay but bandwidth is only 32 or 64 kbps .. that's  8 KB/s : https://www.omniinstruments.co.uk/radio-gsm-telemetry/radio-modems/wdm9000-radio-modem.html

 

If the distance is short, there are converters which convert ethernet to cheaper cable (phone line or coaxial)

up to 1000m : ethernet to vdsl2 : https://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-110VDSLEXT-Ethernet-Extender-Single/dp/B002CLKFTG/

up to 2400m : ethernet to coaxial : https://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-EOC1110K-Ethernet-Unmanaged-Extender/dp/B00AMCKN80/

 

at most, there are ethernet to vdsl adapters, which can convert ethernet to work on two copper wires.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

3 hours ago, Vitamanic said:

Most rural areas these days have access to wireless ISPs (WISP) or fixed home wireless from cellular companies like Verizon or T-Mobile that don't have data caps. I would look into those options for your area.

Actually, even here in the SSA, that is not true.

[Donut417]

4 hours ago, Vitamanic said:

Verizon or T-Mobile that don't have data caps

Caps and Overages, NO. But they do have a data threashold that if you go over they start Depriotizing packets. Also Im a T Mobile customer, the coverage they have in Rural areas is non existent at best. If I drive 10 miles south of where I live, I have no service. T Mobile's service is great in the metro area, outside of that your pretty well FUCKED. I myself live, work and stay in the metro Detroit area so I have service. So the OP's real choices are Verizon (Whos network is buckeling under "Unlimited" data) and AT&T who are a bunch of bastards. 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

26 minutes ago, Donut417 said:

...AT&T who are a bunch of bastards. 

So is Verizon. Their tech "help" is completely useless.

[Donut417]

4 minutes ago, Lady Fitzgerald said:

So is Verizon. Their tech "help" is completely useless.

T Mobile is the only company I have had good customer service from. Both in the store and calling in. 

[Roswell]

1 hour ago, Lady Fitzgerald said:

Actually, even here in the SSA, that is not true.

I said most, not all. Verizon claims LTE coverage for 99% of addresses, so I assume that leaves about 3 million or so without access to LTE. How many of those 3 million are covered by a WISP? I don't know. But with those numbers in mind, -most- still have options outside of satellite.

 

There's also always the option of getting a T1 line. While a bit expensive and slow by today's standards, it covers just about anyone with a working phone line and beats the hell out of satellite or dialup.

[Donut417]

12 minutes ago, Vitamanic said:

Verizon claims LTE coverage for 99% of addresses,

Just because you have coverage, it doesnt mean its any good. Verizon is having network issues since bringing back "Unlimited" data. I hear people bitching all the time about the network being slow. Also you dont go by what any of the carriers claim. T Mobile claims that New Boston Mi has service when it clearly does not. 

 

15 minutes ago, Vitamanic said:

There's also always the option of getting a T1 line.

Funny enough I went to AT&T's site to see how much one of these babies cost. Just was curous. Can you beleive they dont have T1's or any type of T connection listed on their business site. The only thing I found was scalable Fiber internet from 10 Mbps to 1Tbps. Though I did see sites that claim that T1's cost around $200 to over $1000 a month. So I wonder if that means AT&T no longer offers this service, in favor of LTE and Fiber, or if you just have to call in to find out. 

[Kisai]

5 hours ago, Vitamanic said:

That's really not true at all: https://www.speedtest.net/global-index

 

LTE latency is also nowhere remotely close to stable. Jitter is all over the place and first hop transit time is awful.

Depends where you are. LTE here is faster and lower latency than legacy cable.

 

The two at the top, is Telus Mobility (LTE) and Telus (DSL) with 28ms ping for the LTE and 6 for the DSL

The third is Telus (LTE) 17ms

The fourth is Verizon with 78ms via a Guest WiFi at the office.

The fifth is Telus (LTE) with 28ms

The sixth is Shaw Cable with 11ms.

The 234Mbps is Shaw with 10ms. (this is the one cropped at the bottom)

 

If I turn LTE off, the ping jumps up to >50ms

 

That is still nothing compared to satellite latency.

[Roswell]

27 minutes ago, Donut417 said:

Just because you have coverage, it doesnt mean its any good. Verizon is having network issues since bringing back "Unlimited" data. I hear people bitching all the time about the network being slow. Also you dont go by what any of the carriers claim. T Mobile claims that New Boston Mi has service when it clearly does not. 

 

Funny enough I went to AT&T's site to see how much one of these babies cost. Just was curous. Can you beleive they dont have T1's or any type of T connection listed on their business site. The only thing I found was scalable Fiber internet from 10 Mbps to 1Tbps. Though I did see sites that claim that T1's cost around $200 to over $1000 a month. So I wonder if that means AT&T no longer offers this service, in favor of LTE and Fiber, or if you just have to call in to find out. 

Look, I'm not saying fixed LTE or Verizon doesn't have issues, all I said was that it may be an option. Seems like my original reply is really getting dug into for no reason.

 

As far as the T1 stuff, $200 sounds about right these days from a budget provider. You can go with pretty much whatever provider you want, regardless of who provides your landline, I think? 

[Roswell]

4 minutes ago, Kisai said:

Depends where you are. LTE here is faster and lower latency than legacy cable.

 

The two at the top, is Telus Mobility (LTE) and Telus (DSL) with 28ms ping for the LTE and 6 for the DSL

The third is Telus (LTE) 17ms

The fourth is Verizon with 78ms via a Guest WiFi at the office.

The fifth is Telus (LTE) with 28ms

The sixth is Shaw Cable with 11ms.

The 234Mbps is Shaw with 10ms. (this is the one cropped at the bottom)

 

If I turn LTE off, the ping jumps up to >50ms

 

That is still nothing compared to satellite latency.

Well, you can't lump in DSL and guest WiFi accounts with "faster than most cable connections". They're not the same thing.

 

The latency on speed tests mean little, no idea what the route is. You need to run a tracert and find out your first-third hop latency to see what it is before exiting your ISP's network to enter a backbone. More importantly though, jitter is still an enormous issue with LTE.

[Kisai]

31 minutes ago, Donut417 said:

Just because you have coverage, it doesnt mean its any good. Verizon is having network issues since bringing back "Unlimited" data. I hear people bitching all the time about the network being slow. Also you dont go by what any of the carriers claim. T Mobile claims that New Boston Mi has service when it clearly does not. 

 

Funny enough I went to AT&T's site to see how much one of these babies cost. Just was curous. Can you beleive they dont have T1's or any type of T connection listed on their business site. The only thing I found was scalable Fiber internet from 10 Mbps to 1Tbps. Though I did see sites that claim that T1's cost around $200 to over $1000 a month. So I wonder if that means AT&T no longer offers this service, in favor of LTE and Fiber, or if you just have to call in to find out. 

It costs them as much to install a T1 line as it does to install an OC24 (1Gbit) It's the expensive equipment on the other end that has to be leased that makes it insane. If you ask for a T1 line, what will happen is they will run 550nm fiber line and then install a T1 "router" to connect to whatever equipment you have that expects a T1 like a Cisco 2900.  Or you can bypass this by having the equipment on both ends of the fiber be something else. Replace the line i/o cards in the router and it saves them, and you, money.

 

[Kisai]

2 minutes ago, Vitamanic said:

Well, you can't lump in DSL and guest WiFi accounts with "faster than most cable connections". They're not the same thing.

 

The latency on speed tests mean little, no idea what the route is. You need to run a tracert and find out your first-third hop latency to see what it is before exiting your ISP's network to enter a backbone. More importantly though, jitter is still an enormous issue with LTE.

Of course they're not. But I'm not in a position to run the same speed test software on the bare fiber lines. 

 

Basically, HERE, Fiber>LTE>DSL>Cable for bandwidth. LTE's consistently lower latency than cable given the same targets, Cable is not. Most people do not have both a Cable and a DSL/Fiber connection on top of having LTE. People usually complain, quite a bit, about Shaw being god-awful for playing games on, and a lot of that can be attributed to the highly asymmetric upstream connection.

 

LTE on the other hand, I had LTE even when LTE first became available, and it was absolutely amazing seeing triple-digit bandwidth and single-digit latency, but that was also back when almost nobody was on the Rogers LTE network.

 

To which I still recommend LTE over satellite. You might actually be able to get a playable connection (heck, most of Australia only has wireless via NBN, IIRC) despite having the worst gaming experiences to US-based games.