Thebes said:
One thing with Satellite is that you have unavoidable latency. This means there is a pause between clicking and when you get your data back. When I had Starband the pause was about a second, perhaps a little more. The theoretical minimum is around 2/3rds of a second and my DSL is under 1/8th of a second. So if you play twitch internet games dsl is definately the way to go. The latency gets to be a royal pain with secure servers.
I'm not familiar with synchronous satellite. Actually, CHRIS, I would love if you could pm me with what the VoIP system was and how well (or not) it worked. When I tried VoIP over my Starband I had serious trouble with the uplink speeds, I also found the low uplink speeds of my system a bother for my uploads. This was months ago and on a completely different system as is availible here.
Yes, because of the distance that the signal (packets/frames) has to travel, satellite connectivity has latency. Lately, satellite latency is largely compensated for by simply having fewer hops to the internet backbone - basically one hop to the satellite and one hop down to the NOC (Network Operating Center) and one hop into the internet backbone (that is if you use good providers). For myself, I do not usually find latency a problem, given that bandwidth chosen is suitable for the type of application. I don't really play fast games, so cannot give you my experience on that..
Asynchronous, in satellite terms, simply means that the up is slower than the down - but in real life, one does not see or experience this (for stock trading fine, for games, no experience with this). The momentary hesitation on the up, is more than compensated for by the minimal amount of data usually being sent up to request something and the speed of the download. With synchronous services, the up is the same as the down - similar to DSL in that respect.
VOIP async is a pain in the butt. With voice, the digital encoding is dense and a bandwidth hog and with a slow up, the delays get even longer - sometimes several seconds. With synchronous services, it now has come into its own. If one is using an async setup, you need to have sufficient bandwidth, and very good pointing and cross pol numbers to make it work well. It is quite easy to understand, as it is point to point. You have a host unit, say in the US that enters the POTS (terestrial telephone infrastructure) via DSL or other connectivity. Then you have a remote unit (say in the DR) that simply acts as if it is an extension on the first unit. So, if you make a call from the remote, you dial as if you're physically at the host unit. The cost of your call from the remote, to the host is free and from there, you pick up the costs of the call as you enter the POTS. With synchronous satellite services, it is easy to use stuff like net2phone and similar apps.
The other interesting thing is that some satellites are now becoming oversubscribed. We had one customer that we had to change to another satellite, as their voip just did not work and we could not figure out why. We changed to a less used satellite and it works well. So, up to now in the development of this technology, there was lots of space on the satellites, now, space is becoming scarce.
My best type of configuration for this technology is to use terrestrial lines up to a point, then have satellite earth stations around this terrestrial node and then spread the connectivity with wireless from there. Ideal for the Caribbean Islands with the notoriously bad infrastructure and service levels.