If you are subscribed to Starlink (internet), what is it like when relying on satellite connection for both online live service play (as in multiplayer) and casual gaming? I’ve heard that star link internet sucks, is the subscription even worth the money? How well does satellite connection hold up in comparison to oceanic fiber optic cable internet? (Which is the most common form of connecting for the majority as it’s been around longer).

  • WhyIHateTheInternet@lemmy.world
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    24 hours ago

    I’m probably wrong but I recall ping times were like 200ms or something? I’ve played with worse but it wasn’t awesome. I’m too lazy to Google it though so grain of salt and whatnot

    • Kazumara@discuss.tchncs.de
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      2 hours ago

      Geostationary satelites at 38000±2000km distance take around 125ms up and the same back down for about 250ms for you to reach a server, maybe you were thinking of that. My uncle has that on his farm in Australia. It’s bad, you can’t have a good IP based phone call because the delay is too long, people keep starting to talk at the same time.

      Starlink flies in low earth orbit 450 - 500 km, so maybe up to 1500 km distance from you if its at the edge of reachability, for a worst case. That’s 5 ms, or 10 ms from you to the server. At those low distances the buffering overhead of their system will dominate like with Wifi. I don’t know how it works for Starlink specifically.

      I think the real killer issue for starlink and realtime tasks is the constantly changing latency, and the handoff between satellites.

    • KickMeElmo@sopuli.xyz
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      23 hours ago

      I use it (begrudgingly, but options out here suck), you’re wrong. It’s closer to 70-80ms at worst. Though it has definitely improved over time, it may have been worse during the early beta.

      • WhyIHateTheInternet@lemmy.world
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        23 hours ago

        That sounds more accurate honestly. I’ve never had it but read about it in regards to this years ago. Honestly that’s doable if you can swallow it.

    • TORFdot0@lemmy.world
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      20 hours ago

      You are probably thinking of ping times on the old satellite internet services. Those were terrible , barely better than dialup. Starlink is LEO so ping is much better