Cutting off eircom for satellite broadband good idea?

GreyFox115

Hey I live in a small village with eircom line package 8MB with 100GB limit but I have never seen the line get to 8MB im very luck to see it get to 5MB even. So I was thinking of swaping to Onwaves 10MB satellite broadband deal with unlimited download. The only thing that worrys me is the latency for games I do near everything on the net heavy downloading and online games to online films.

The results of my current BB is here.

NOTE: Im testing from Cork to Dublin when I try to ping other servers outside Ireland it jumps to around 240MS ping.




I was looking into this package thats in the link below anyone think im improving my BB or or just shooting my own foot here.

http://www.onwave.ie/packages/broadband

watty

You would be mad.

There is no such thing as unlimited Satellite. Read the fine print. I bet that is for 3am or something, not 8pm.

The 10Mbps is hugely contended, or will be. One small Rural Exchange can have far more capacity than the satellite has for all of Ireland.

The very best ping will be 550ms. 600ms to 900ms isn't unusual.

watty

Galway from Limerick via Dublin


Kingston on Hull, England


Madrid, Spain


Rome


Philadelphia, USA

cgarvey

GreyFox115 wrote: »

So I was thinking of swaping to Onwaves 10MB satellite broadband deal with unlimited download.

Watty has pretty much covered this. According to OnWave's Fair Access/Usage Policy, they use a sliding scale to determine how much to throttle your connection. As you describe yourself as a heavy user, pay attention to their rather crippling scales in their PDF. Unlimited at dialup speeds is no fun.

Satellite is an expensive resource, so the bandwidth/caps will always, always be much lower than more traditional broadband. It will always be much more contended than any decent traditional broadband. I'd be surprised if you got 10Mb at peak time now, nevermind as more customers join. It's quite reasonable to not expect any peak time speed increase over your under-performing 5-8Mb DSL line.

Finally, pings will rule out any FPS type games. You'll be kicked off most servers, and those that let you stay will be painful (for you and for other players). There's no getting around that ~600ms+ minimum latency (which often goes well above a second, depending on where your game servers are located). Skype will be awkward, but probably usable for voice. Think awkward like the 1980s calls to America where it took half the phone call to get used to the conversation flow (and when was your time to talk!). Check any reviews for OnWave, as many (most?) satellite providers shape/block traffic (like P2P) to ease contention.

GreyFox115 wrote: »

anyone think im improving my BB or or just shooting my own foot here.

The latter, I'm afraid

bealtine

GreyFox115 wrote: »

im very luck to see it get to 5MB even. So I was thinking of swaping to Onwaves 10MB satellite broadband deal with unlimited download.

You'd be insane to even consider swapping reasonable broadband for satellite nonsense. The hourly limits alone should be enough to warn you off the idea.
The other guys have outlined the ping issues and the fair use policies.

PogMoThoin

Some things not mentioned are the 24 month contract and de-installation fee after. It would be madness, satellite is not broadband

watty

8Mbps packages
Your 5Mbps is worse than my 7.5Mbps (Both 8Mbps packages)
But the DSL phone line average is closer to 3Mbps. Which believe me is far better than any alleged "8Mbps Unlimited" Satellite package. They don't actually lie. But it's very sharp advertising and unfortunately it's likely the Consumer that gets cut, not Onwave.

Shows how useless Comreg and ASAI and NCA are.

GreyFox115

Thanks for the warnings guys I guess I will just stay with what I have till fibre cables get put in my area. Very unlikely lol