This post is just a little FYI for anyone considering Wildblue satellite internet. A public service announcement if you will. (i.e. rant)
Wildblue satellite internet used to be the best thing since Reece peanut butter cups...now it's just a lame obscure chocolate filled with something horrid that you couldn't help but try, and now you just can't get that taste out of your mouth.
I'm one of the legion of people who have no access to traditional broadband. DSL is 4 miles in any direction, cable is across an apparently impenetrable hiway (doesn't matter anyway because the cable provider in my area doesn't provide internet access), and the wireless isp providing access to nearby counties is unwilling to commit....so I turned to Wildblue. It was cheap, and had amazing reviews.
For about 5 months the service was incredible. Ping times were in the 500-600 range which is bad by dialup/traditional broadband, but amazing by satellite. I could play games online, I could do everything online. And then...they signed distrobution deals with everyone under the sun. ATT/Dishnetwork/etc. Within a month, the network was overloaded. They launched their own satellite to provide a huge increase in capacity. A reasonable provider would slow down on the advertising and new signups until the new bird was online (supposedly sometime this march).
But no... More and more users flood the network, and they take drastic measures to squeeze us all in like cattle. They introduce new traffic shaping rules and decrease the networks reliability, and pile more people onto their rickety network.
Pings are now 2000-4000ms...or 2 seconds to 4 seconds. Can you imagine? If I were to try to play a game, from the moment I fired my gun, 4 seconds would elapse before it was registered. But...that point is moot because about 30-50% of all packets sent on the WB network are taken to a back alley and executed...ne're to be seen again.
"Satellite connections are not for gaming" the fanboys cry out. I agree. The latency is too high for any FPS or anything requiring quick reflexes...but RPG's etc are fine with that amount of latency. But...that point also is moot. A network knows no difference between a 'game packet', a 'VPN packet', a 'ssl ebay packet' etc. All those packets need consistant communication, eg. 'no dropped (back alley executed) packets'. So, needless to say, not only can you not game on Wildblue, you can't use websites that are encrypted, you can't shop, you can't online bank, you can't use iTunes for music.
Well...you CAN...but the odds are 50/50 you'll get a "request timed out" because the poor packets are lying bleeding in the backalley. Even when the poor packets make it unmolested to their destination, they are probed so many times by the "traffic shaped/cram em in" network...they often are quite lackadaisical in their travel. So dialup (even 26.4 like mine) is often the best route.
What IS it good for at this point? Well...I use my modem to find a big file I want to download, then disco my modem, and use WB to actually get said file. (Modem? you ponder, yes...I had to reactivate my old dialup account because WB doesn't work.) With WB I download at an average of 30KBps. (Which is far under the service level I have been sold) If you were to watch the traffic (which I do) you'll see that it goes from 60+Kbps for a seconds to 5Kbps for a bit. Yet another sign of a fragile/geriatric/feeble/overloaded network.
So...I apologize for my lack of brevity, but the many months of inept service have given me much to opine upon.
Ahh, I feel better now. *Dials up the modem, hops in a 109-F4, and dreams of broadband*
