Latency Or Satellite Shortcomings?
There is all this talk of distance affecting latency which doesn't seem to wash. If the signal has to travel 88,000 miles latency shouldn't be an issue when the speed of light is considered. Traveling...
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Latency is a measurement of time delay in any kind of system. In satellite communications, it’s the length of time that it takes a signal to travel from your home to the satellite in orbit above the Earth), and then down to a ground-based gateway which connects you to the internet. Each leg of that journey is about 22,300 miles, which sounds like a long way until you realize that our signal travels at the speed of light ( 186,282 miles per second). The whole round-trip is measured in milliseconds, often referred to as “ping.” The ping on satellite internet is usually around 638 ms, compared to ping of 30 ms or less on a typical cable network.
Edit: You say your latency improves at night. How are you measuring it? The most accurate method for measuring latency is by pinging a server. If you're using anything else, you're getting inaccurate data.
Each time a data packet ‘hops’ (that is, is handled by a device along the path) several milliseconds of latency are added. The physics involved account for approximately 550 milliseconds of latency, a limitation shared by all satellite providers.
In addition to transmission times, there are other factors that contribute to the total latency experienced by the end user, factors such as the network itself, IP/satellite translation overhead, speed of upstream connections, and traffic (congestion).
All of these variables combined contribute to and account for the differences you see in latency measurements.
- I'm aware and have taken all this and more into consideration.
How are you measuring the latency?
- Do my replies not show in the thread or did it simply not take? In case of the latter I'll paste it here:
First the latency is so bad it's noticeable without any tools. My web browsers agree with me with the multiple time outs
I have done the ping command from my Windows Command Prompt many times. They match what testmy.net produces on a whole.
All of my devices are wireless. However I have tested as protocol dictates with Ethernet wire connection and the radio off.
I'm not sure why you sent that link because it confirmed my introductory post on the "physics". They state they get 700ms where other providers 1700ms. That is what I get on a good night. Currently my ping showed 2245ms and testmy.net was a little higher. You say testmy.net is not accurate. I believe it to be "real world". From thier site:
TML runs on the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) (layer 4 - transport) where as normal ping runs on ICMP (layer 3 - network). ICMP is not used to exchange data between systems and has no way of interacting or detecting issues with the layers above it (layers 4 through 7). It simply can't give a full picture of what's happening on layer 4
It also read that other providers overbook If that is the case it solves the issue of late night latency improvement. I appreciate your edit you added because the paste of the latency topic is knowledge I possess.
I have done all the obvious and basic troubleshooting. However if you believe I've missed something I am open to any tips or diagnostic steps you have.
Would you know the data capacity throughput of the satellite? I believe it to be 200 Gbps. Not knowing how many subscribers there are leaves the overloading question unanswered. The gateway servers are probably adequate. Satellites on the other hand have severe restrictions. Chiefly weight. Launching a server farm into space is not possible or at the least not feasible. So hardware is limited because of this and other variables.
I could be totally off base with the satellite. Maybe it’s the terrestrial based hardware. I’ve noticed long load times of Hughsnet webpages no matter the ISP network I’m connected to. Except for their business level site that is. Even the app is painfully slow to the point it gives empty data fields if that. Once again on any ISP to include mobile provider. The latency is so bad I use my mobile hotspot if I plan on loading many webpages. I save Hughsnet for streaming. I go through my data in short order resulting in being throttled down to a speed never more than 1.1 even though I was promised 1 to 3 Mbps. That is an issue for a separate post.
I realize I’m being long-winded. I just want this fixed. I had to go through several months of poor downloads. Often below 1 Mbps. Dish was out of alignment.
