Internet in the boonies.

[Beastboss]

I have recently moved to an area that doesn't have DSL or Cable. I have a droid phone and wanted the input from someone that knows. Could I run FFXI with that tether for a month with 5gig limit? If this isn't possible, what is the possibility of using satalite. There seems to be lots of these around, but I have heard that they tend to be too unreliable to run games. Please, help me out with your advice and knowledge. Thanx.

[sruon]

Satelites have terrible upload rate, with huge ping, only good point is the download rate.

5 Gb limit should be enough if you do plan to use your phone, FFXI uses like... a 56kb (dial-up) speed connection.

[sav]

Satelites have terrible upload rate, with huge ping, only good point is the download rate.

5 Gb limit should be enough if you do plan to use your phone, FFXI uses like... a 56kb (dial-up) speed connection.

Satellite is indeed awful, not only is the signal unreliable, a lot of compamnies with funnel your speed starting with high speed at the beginning of the month all the way down to 28.8kb in some instances. I've tethered my droid and used solely for browsing and ffxi, it should work fine with the 5gb limit as long as you don't have to do any updates.

[Akucaen]

Oh no, it's even worse than that for satellite. Hughesnet (which has been HEAVILY advertising in the area I'm moving back to soon (also thank fuck for dark fiber in the ground ._.; )) has daily caps. They'll give you 1.5Mbps down for the first 250MB, then shape you down to 56k for the rest. If you keep capping your daily limit, they'll eventually restrict you to dial-up speeds as a "learning measure" for days at a time. (I'm not joking, this was in the literature they sent.)

So on top of the horrendous ping time, you're paying pretty much twice the cost of a cellular dataplan for an extra 2.5GB a month total. The whole thing reeks of Iridium-style marketing. It's a practical system for emergencies and "absolutely need coverage here," but at a consumer level, it's stupid.

[Beckwin]

yeah Hughes net seems terrible. luckily at my folks there's a smaller provider in the area called WildBlue and they're.... not as bad as hughes.

still not great for gaming though.

[Kurp]

What are the upload/download speeds like using a Droid phone like that? Is it laggy or is it similar to being on wi-fi with a cable link to an ISP? Any drawbacks to it other than a monthly data transfer cap?

My dad has been looking at a few options to get better internet in a rural area than the awful dial-up he has now. We've been looking at a few available options, but haven't thought of this. A 5 GB monthly limit should be plenty. Maybe this is the best option as all he'd need is a new phone, a router/adapter/ or whatever they use to connect devices, and a bit more expensive monthly plan.

[noblemountain]

I have Hughesnet...there is cable available on the road, but it doesn't extend down the side road I live on to our property. They want 3k to run it ~300 feet. I wish I would have known a bit more about Hughesnet before I signed the contract. They don't tell you about the daily limits and I didn't do enough homework as I was just upset at the cable company at the time. It really is my only option, but it sucks. I can't play any online games...my xbox won't connect at all, times out every time. My ps3 takes forever to connect and I can download updates/dlc, but only at 2 a.m. since the free download time is like 1-6 a.m. We may be getting a total upgrade on the property, as in installing towers with repeaters and a t1 or cable (not sure yet) so our cameras have a better connection than the 256k line they have now. If that happens I'll be able to use our wireless connection again, but I'm not holding my breath since that will take time.