Direct Tv DSL

[whaleyman]

does anyone know if direct tv dsl is any good or not. im thinking of going with them....HELPPPPPPPPP lol

[Soporific]

From what I understand satellite uses a land line to send information up. i.e. page requests, etc. And uses satellite for the down link portion. The problem from what I've heard is that the latency in receiving the information down is somewhere in the neighborhood of 500 to 1000 milleseconds. This is fine for web pages, but if you are playing an online game it's massive lag. Also, I'm no expert but I've also read that this latency is unavoidable as the requests have to be "beamed" up and down and it physically takes time to travel through the air.

~S

[Old Fart]

The latency is a real thing, but the reason for it is not beam up/down, it is the way your connection is managed. Look at your connection as a clock face. When you sync with a satellite, it rotates the window for communication around to all users connecting it. When you connect, you are given the 12-2 segment of the clock as a window by the satellite. It will send and recieve from you only when the hand sweeps around to that area.

When its not in that area, the packets are stored and bursted down to you. Throughput can be as high as .5Mb per second, but your round trip time for a request (latency) will be much higher than someone on Cable or DSL, because they are not subject to the communications 'window'

[Kip Patterson]

In addition to any latency resulting from the way the satellites are managed, the minimum latency is 430 milliseconds for the round trip up and back.

Kip

[master7]

My friend has DirecTV DSL. The only bad thing he's had to say about them is the @directvinternet.com long email your stuck with.

Everything else is good though.

[Soporific]

Old Fart,

Thanks for the info.

~S

[MikeyMan]

DirecTV does offer it's own DSL service via ILECs (local telephone company, in your case, Verizon) and now taking new Worldcom ADSL orders, again. If Worldcom is in your Central Office, you are able to get the new 1.5mb/768k ADSL line compared to the Verizon 768k/160k. Some users have been reporting download sync speeds of 836kbps in Verizon land.

What the previous posters are thinking of the other Hughes company, DirecPC, which is a satellite connection.