Forum Discussion

Professor

5 years ago

Online Distance/Lag Calculator

There have been numerous discussions talking about lag time in these forums, but never something that allows you to actually figure it out. So I started the process of throwing together a simple javascript-driven page that allows you to calculate the overall signal distance and lag time: Distance and Lag Time Calculator.

Basically you just enter your satellite. either your gateway or beam#, and your location. It's supposed to auto-fill your location if you leave it blank, but it doesn't work just yet... in progress. It's been quickly thrown together so I haven't prettied it up yet. Mostly in the process of getting the guts to work the way it should.

Not sure what the admins think of having something like this available. I may be wrong, but I'm pretty sure the underlying information is out in the open somewhere.

Leave it up? Take it down? Slap me for having too much time on my hands? Other comments?

general discussion is not a support area

Liz
Moderator
5 years ago
Woah Mark! This is cool. I sent this over to our engineers for their input.

-Liz
- MarkJFine
  Professor
  5 years ago
  I may work on it some more, like adding drop-downs for the top two lines, and maybe splitting out the gateway and beam instead of using the same input box. I'd really like the location thing to work too.
  - C0RR0SIVE
    Associate Professor
    5 years ago
    Hmm, have you thought about trying to pull the BeamID and Satellite ID from the modem it self, then add a field to request "real" latency from a webservice?
    
    Also, mind if I either jack your script and put it on my site, or link to that script from my site?
GabeU
Distinguished Professor IV
5 years ago
What's interesting is that the the latency calculation is the same for both my actual location and my browser calculated location, which is about 50 miles from here. It's 50 miles away, but pretty much the same distance from the satellite as my actual location, so it makes sense.

I expected it to be more off, as my browser generated location isn't usually this close.
- MarkJFine
  Professor
  5 years ago
  50 out of 95,000 or so isn't going to be a big change... 0.05%
  - GabeU
    Distinguished Professor IV
    5 years ago
    MarkJFine wrote:
    50 out of 95,000 or so isn't going to be a big change... 0.05%
    Thought it's 50 miles away from me, it's just slightly south of due east, so it's actually pretty much on the same distance arc from the satellite. I'd be surprised if the actual difference in distance to the satellite was more than five miles.