jdMorgan - 5:00 am on Jul 12, 2004 (gmt 0)

vkaryl,

If you are simply hopping from page to page, and each page only takes one second to load (at whatever modem speed you've got), then the added half second is noticeable. For larger pages or file downloads, the delay gets swamped by the larger filesize and is less noticeable.

If you re-read what I posted, I said that click-surfing on satellite is slow, and big downloads are fast. Satellite is a high-speed, but high-latency connection. Whether you are happy with satellite depends a lot on your personal mixture of surfing vs. large-file downloading.

The satellite solution works OK for me, but I do notice that none of the satellite providers mention high latency problems in their advertisements. It is, in fact, the Achilles' heel of satellite, in that the connection delay is caused by the physical properties of transmission over long distance, and cannot be 'engineered' away.

I didn't expect such a negative response; I stated what I know to be true from direct experience, and a career in telecommunications. You can ignore my posts and opinions if you like.

danieljean,

When your browser makes a request, it goes to your satellite dish and up to the satellite. Then the satellite has to send it down to the earth station (ISP). From there it goes "onto the internet" to whatever server your request is directed to. That server sends a response back to the earth station, the earth station sends it back up to the satellite, and the satellite sends it back down. Four hops.

So it's 480 milliseconds in a vacuum, about 1.2 times slower in air, IIRC. I see typical ping times of about 600 milliseconds, as I stated, as compared to 50 on dial-up.

So what is "slow" is that for every "click" you wait anywhere from a half-second to two seconds. This is annoying; At least with a terrestrial connection, you usually see the page start rendering faster than that. But when you do a Windows update, or download the latest Firefox or Opera, then your browser makes one request, and yes, the data comes in quickly.

The high-atmosphere orbiting stations sound interesting, but my money is on LMDS, MMDS, and perhaps cellular solutions for now.

Jim