SL and satellite

Cross-posting to tech form.

I live in the country. I mean, seriously live in the country. Cable is not an option, nor is DSL, or FIOS.

Satellite (other than dial-up) is our one and only option which means wireless.

We had a satellite ISP whose service was down more than it was up, so I finally had a new satellite ISP come out Friday and install their equipment. Wonderful service! Fast rezzing, fast graphics, no lag...everything is perfect except...I can't teleport off my sim. I can teleport ON my sim, but not OFF of it. In fact, I can't even SEE a sim next to me. I also have a Sprint card and when I go to it, I can teleport, and I can see the sim next to me.

A phone call to Linden Labs gave me "Wireless - not supported, call your ISP". A call to my ISP gave me "you're within acceptable ranges on download and ping, and we don't block any port except peer-to-peer".

Obviously, not being able to teleport is a distinct disadvantage in this game. I can log off, and log back on to a different sim, but, fairly inconvenient.

With the help of a friend, I've tried various settings in my router (Linksys WRT54G), including setting it up as a DMZ...nothing blocked at all anywhere, to no avail.

Has anyone encountered this issue?

I also live deep in the woods and the only option is very expensive satellite for "broadband." I have had for the past 3 years used satellite connections for SL. Because of satellite data download limits in order to maintain my SL business it was necessary to purchase 2 seperate systems....(a true addict)

I have service with 2 different ISP's in that time. Hughesnet and Wild Blue. Their service varied greatly.

With hughes it was great at first, I soon learned they had oversold their service and the speeds at peak time (when everyone in the world is on) was terrible and the system was unuseable for SL most of the time. 500 for equipment for pro service 80usd a month

The other ISP is Wild Blue. Very good service most of the time its even possible to run their connection networked with a couple of computers connected to SL. In fact when my contract with hughesnet ran out and hughesnets equipment broke for the 3rd time out of warranty and they wanted 250bucks for a new modem..I thought and called wildblue and asked them to install another of their good systems.

Now I have 2 systems from Wild blue with both systems at the best most expensive 1.5mbps download plan. Its VERY expensive


Anyhow....


Its a primitive connection compared to where I work has a 10mbps cable connection. At the best of times with a satellite your fastest speed is 1.5mbps. That is pretty good if you are on cable or dsl but with satellite speed is a relative thing when it takes time form the time you click on someting to go from your mouse to a satellite 22,000 miles up then back down to the central office then to the web. Then data has to do the same thing coming back. The time it takes to travel is called latiency. Regular surfing of the web is fine for satconn but MMORPG's are if'y at best, especially action games such as WOW, Evercrack, and even Secondlife.

Satellites will work but you have to go for the top plan from your carrier and even them there will be certain issues sometime.

I've actually considered Wild Blue, but my concern is that they DO throttle, and there are two of us on SL every evening, and all day on the weekends. I'm afraid we'll run into their throttling system....and then I'd have to throttle someone myself. Have you hit it?

And "latency" is what LL is blaming this problem on, but the provider says my latency is within the acceptable range.

What are you doing, living in a place so primitive you can't get broadband?

Move.

I'd swap broadband for this . . .

http://i32.tinypic.com/wjzzgh.jpg?

Pep (as long as I could get The Sports Channel and it had a magic icebox for the beer)

I wish. But really Lin, I live on a lake...despite the hour long drive to work, and the crappy internet service...I really do love it

lol

I know right... I drive in my car along country areas.. or places built on a little island jutting from the mainland and I think wowo what a great place to live... then I think.. gee I wonder if they got cable..... I could not live where no cable ran.. and being from florida during hurricane season.. sattalite is NOT an option.....

No advice, Honey, just sympathy for you. My parents had a satellite connection until very recently and when I visited them doing anything on-line - much less SL - was a chore. The connection was achingly slow, and far too unreliable for SL, which requires a more or less consistent connection to do anything and to avoid being logged out. I'm sorry you are stuck with this. Maybe DSL will come to your area soon ...

I used ot have Hughes but I switched to Wild Blue. I am happy.

Both Hughes and Wild Blue have a FAP, or Fair Access Polociy, or throttle. Whatever you want to call it. The one I have with Wild Blue is 17GB in any 30 day period. I have not hit it. Two heavy SL users would almost certainly hit it, I think. I am a moderate user, and I run at about 10GB per month.

When I had Hughes, I hit their throttle all the time, because it was based on a calendar day. I think it was 400MB per day. That is the main reason I switched to Wild Blue.

As for your TP problems, I have no idea. Works OK for me. How is your packet loss? If it is often non-zero, try reducing your bandwidth. I keep mine around 400Mbps. Also, during peak hours, you might have to throttle yourself even more.

Try testing your bandwidth at a good site such as SpeakEasy.net when you are having problems, and when you are OK. See if there is any pattern of issues. For example, when Speakeasy says I am getting 1.5 Mbps, SL works great. When it says I am getting .4Mbps, SL sucks. (Not SL's fault in this case.)

I also have a Sprint card, so I could fall back on that for times when I do just want to be sitting at home working on inventory or whatever, to keep the usage down.

SpeakEasy gives me fantastic numbers on this new service..1.5 down, 400 up, I can live with that. My ping is 60, which I thought was ok. But LL says latency, ISP says no latency. I can do *everything*...except see neighboring sims and teleport. *sigh*

Haven't checked packet loss...will look tonight. Hubby is picking up a new router to try *just in case*.

God...now I'm jealous.

Um...lay cable to the outside world?

Believe me...I'd pay for it lol

Ahh Fap (fair access policy)

In the beginning as a new SL addict along with my wife who was a budding SL addict we hit fap within a couple of months of the start. Trying to use SL on FAP speeds of less than dial up is not going to work.

I contacted wild blue so see what I could do to increase the amount of data i was allowed only to be told that I was at the max. They would not allow 2 dishes at one address at that time for some strange reason. Why would it matter if you wanted to have 100 of them as long as you can afford it. 80 bucks a month plus eq per.

My only option was to contact another satellite ISP. Unfortunately it was Hughesnet and I totally did not do any reasearch on their business. I should have.

Hughes FAP was a pain but reset itself fast I could hit the 450MB limit very easy in SL building while listening to music, sometime in about 5 hours.
Then I would hook up to the other that my wife was using and finish the day. Come back 24 hours later and the hughes net worked again.

Wild blue's Fap is 17000mb for the most expensive plan. I havent hit it lately but I have learned what i can do and what i cant do to keep myself able to use it...NO MUSIC, NO DRAW DISTANCE OVER 120m NO WALKING FROM SIM TO SIM EXPLORING.

Basically I stay on my islands and build quietly at altitude and chat with friends. If I want to hear music I listen to the local radio station.

But hey its still better than watching HeeHaw reruns on tv

Hm, ok, I can do all that on my Sprint card, and still teleport, it's just incredibly slow...however, it does eventually get there.

I wish I knew how much bandwidth we were using in the house now.

And interesting that I have found this:

http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-9558

This is NetMeter, a program that can measure the amount of date downloaded on that machine. With it you can really see how fast things add up.


http://www.softpedia.com/get/Network-Tools/Bandwidth-Tools/NetMeter.shtml

Thanks, greatly appreciated.

It is not possible for satellite to not have high latencies, it is a feature of the technology.
When your ISP says "within acceptable tolerances" they are meaning for most types of internet access. They are also not being very truthful. Where I live the satellite services specifically say not suitable for online 3D games.
There is not a satellite based internet service in the world that can get around this issue.

OK, but I've been on wireless for the past 18 months, and never had this issue. Fortunately, the description of Second Life, with which none of the engineers was familiar, was intriguing enough that they're rallying around to try to find the problem....YAY!

OK I did not realise you had been using it before, the technology is definitely marginal for SL use though and that is why LL say about it being unsupported, some find it works fine and some not, it is definitely not easy to predict and it is almost certain that latencies are the problem.
I would say that there is a high likelihood some equipment has been replaced at your ISP that is causing higher latencies than before.

Anyone have any experience in SL with the satellite broadband offered by ATT or Dish Network if I have to choose between the two? It would be only one user during various hours.

Thanks for any help you can offer.

Depending how far away the nearest DSL or cable endpoint is from you, you might want to investigate a wireless repeater for that last part of the connection. People have managed to do that with something as simple as a wireless router and an empty Pringles potato chip can (which has a metallic liner), but there are better pre-made setups.

If you think about it, the reason you can talk to the satellite 20,000mi away in the first place is the dishes at both ends (your house and the satellite) focus the radio waves in a very concentrated direction. Cell phone towers do not have to focus as hard, they only concentrate on horizontal, since few phones are found above the tower, and your phone gets away with a tiny antenna since it is just a few miles to the tower.

For a wireless data link of 1-10 miles, a small dish at both ends should be enough, assuming local hills and trees are not in the way. It's at least worth checking into.

DISH satellite is provided by Wild Blue, and is better than HughesNet for SL, in my opinion, primaroily due to the more intelligent way WB computes the FAP.

lee