Internet Service Providers

[Bucnutz.wis]

Guy's,

Santa brought us a nice new HDTV for Christmas... and we subscribe to Netfiix. Problem is, I cannot download movies and such because my Internet speed is too slow... same with some of the video's posted on here....

Anyway, I'm in the market for faster service - I currently use Wildblue, a satellite service (I live in the sticks, no DSL or Cable available) other (line of site) broadband won't work either because we live in the woods.... so I am limited. I'm hoping there is some cellular service available but I'm pretty much a retard when it comes to technology..


Just wondering what type of service some of you are using and what your speeds are ??

http://www.speedtest.net/

Mine just tested out at:

Download = 0.56 Mb/s
Upload = 0.05 Mb/s
Ping = 1454 ms (whatever the hell this is ??)

I here you should have about 3.0 Mb/s to download movies ??

Wildblue's top end is 1.5 Mb/s for $80/month (http://www.wildblue.com/)

Thanks in advance for any input !!!

Bucnutz

 

[xrayts]

The cellular type services work well, but only if you have a good signal. Also, don't let them sell you on 3G unless you know it's available at your home. You may have to put up a tower so you get the "line of sight" broadband. The provider that offers it in your area should be able to tell you if it's possible.

 

[schmalts]

check into Alltel, In Neillsville my buddy hooks his phone up to his PC via USB and gets decent speed. Not sure if you get service where you are though

 

[Cornell2012]

Guy's,

Santa brought us a nice new HDTV for Christmas... and we subscribe to Netfiix. Problem is, I cannot download movies and such because my Internet speed is too slow... same with some of the video's posted on here....

Anyway, I'm in the market for faster service - I currently use Wildblue, a satellite service (I live in the sticks, no DSL or Cable available) other (line of site) broadband won't work either because we live in the woods.... so I am limited. I'm hoping there is some cellular service available but I'm pretty much a retard when it comes to technology..


Just wondering what type of service some of you are using and what your speeds are ??

http://www.speedtest.net/

Mine just tested out at:

Download = 0.56 Mb/s
Upload = 0.05 Mb/s
Ping = 1454 ms (whatever the hell this is ??)

I here you should have about 3.0 Mb/s to download movies ??

Wildblue's top end is 1.5 Mb/s for $80/month (http://www.wildblue.com/)

Thanks in advance for any input !!!

Bucnutz

According to that site, I've got 1.27 Mb/s down and .31 Mb/s up, and I'm able to stream netflix just fine. Netflix adapts to your connection speed relatively well, so though you should be able to get the streams (you might need to let it buffer for a bit first too...), the quality won't be all that great when streaming.

The big problem I see with your numbers is your ping. This is the amount of time it takes for an extremely small amount of information to reach somewhere else on the internet and return to your computer. Mine from that test was 188 ms. If your ping is 1454 ms, that means it is taking a full second and a half after you try to do anything on the internet until you get feedback on your computer. Ping times can make otherwise adequate internet seem slow, but unfortunately, that's not something that you can shop for, and cell connections have notoriously long pings.

 

[Bucnutz.wis]

That is good info Cornell - Thank You !! I need a good education here...trust me..

I was thinking something along the lines of what Schmalts suggested, but your saying that may not be much better as far as the Ping goes ??

Does the Ping vary from different locations with Cellular then ?? or is it a constant depending on the service provider ??

Perhaps then, my first attempt at better speeds should be to upgrade to Wildblue's top level and see if my Ping improves ??


I have my daughter running an experiment today - she is downloading her show "Wizards of Waverly place" from Netflix through her Wii (via internet connection). Once downloaded it seems to work fine for about 5 to 8 minutes, then it takes another 5 minutes or so, to download another 5 to 8 minutes worth, and so on...

Is the Ping causing this delay ?? Not necessarily the download/upload speed, correct ??

Does anyone have Cellular that can check their speed & Ping at this site ??

http://www.speedtest.net/

 

[schmalts]

another thing is to weigh in cost. If you can get a cell phone, ditch the land line, use it for internet, you may save some cash in the end.
I really want to ditch my land line but the wife is not happy with the idea yet. I pay Time Warner Roadrunner around $150 a month for phone, cable, and internet. and I would like to whittle that down.

 

[Bucnutz.wis]

another thing is to weigh in cost. If you can get a cell phone, ditch the land line, use it for internet, you may save some cash in the end.
I really want to ditch my land line but the wife is not happy with the idea yet. I pay Time Warner Roadrunner around $150 a month for phone, cable, and internet. and I would like to whittle that down.

Yep, that's another reason I'm researching this... except I can't get rid of my land line because we have a fax we need for our home business... I would like to upgrade my Cellular if I can use it for my ISP also.

We use wabbit ears for TV - surprisingly, the wife don't want the kid to have all the garbage that comes with Dish TV, I agree - but then again... I don't get OYOA then either..!!!

 

[Cornell2012]

Your ping time will be affected by all sorts of factors: your ISP, the server you are pinging from, the weather, the time of day, and any other of a million different things. For example, right after I did the post above, my ping to google servers was about half that to the speed test site. The four pings I sent ranged from 90ms to 120ms. There isn't really anything you can do to improve this.

As far as your daughter downloading the show on wii, that is a matter of your download speed, how much netflix buffers video, and somewhat your ping. If you had a faster download speed, you would be able to watch longer without buffering and the buffer would last longer. Netflix will not download the entire buffer for a show, which I've always found strange, but only does a few minutes in advance. Sites like youtube will download the whole video if you let it buffer long enough. As far as ping goes, it is most noticeable in things that try to get a bunch of small packets of data vs. fewer larger ones. I'm not sure how Netflix breaks up their video streams, so it might not have a huge impact.

Sorry if this is just adding more confusion, but the bottom line is that faster download speeds will help streaming, but if in the future you can get away from cell and to a hardwired connection, you will notice some improvements, even with similarly rated download speeds.

 

[Bucnutz.wis]

Your ping time will be affected by all sorts of factors: your ISP, the server you are pinging from, the weather, the time of day, and any other of a million different things. For example, right after I did the post above, my ping to google servers was about half that to the speed test site. The four pings I sent ranged from 90ms to 120ms. There isn't really anything you can do to improve this.

As far as your daughter downloading the show on wii, that is a matter of your download speed, how much netflix buffers video, and somewhat your ping. If you had a faster download speed, you would be able to watch longer without buffering and the buffer would last longer. Netflix will not download the entire buffer for a show, which I've always found strange, but only does a few minutes in advance. Sites like youtube will download the whole video if you let it buffer long enough. As far as ping goes, it is most noticeable in things that try to get a bunch of small packets of data vs. fewer larger ones. I'm not sure how Netflix breaks up their video streams, so it might not have a huge impact.

Sorry if this is just adding more confusion, but the bottom line is that faster download speeds will help streaming, but if in the future you can get away from cell and to a hardwired connection, you will notice some improvements, even with similarly rated download speeds.

Thanks again Cornell... I think I can wrap around most of that..

I did some more research on my Wildblue ISP and found I will run into bandwidth issues if I start downloading movies and such too.. I didn't think of this before.

I went to their forum and found most people b*tching about the fact that they are so limited to this with satellite ISP and that Netfix movies eat up tons of bandwith (1-3G per movie)

I also read that most Cellular plans have the same bandwidth limits and may be even worse than Wildblue's... ?? I attached Wildblue's fair access reference chart (notice how it say's nothing about movies in the "download combinations" examples)


I think at this point... I'm just going to upgrade and see how that goes. That will more than double both my speed and usage thresholds. I'll have to keep an eye on my bandwidth usage if we start downloading movies and such so I don't get whacked and have them slow down my connection to the point of dial up... but, I need to get this fixed so I can watch Randy kill stuff here on Hunt talk... I couldn't even get the sizzler video to start...

But your right, until I can get hardwired somehow, it looks like I'm going to be somewhat limited with my options.

I guess this is the part that sucks about living in the sticks...

 

[wgiles]

Communications satellites are in geosynchronous orbit at 22,236 miles above sea level. For a signal to originate at your place, travel to some other place and return to your place requires it to go up to the satellite, back to earth, back up to the satellite and back to earth. That's four trips of 22,236 miles or about half a second. If the signal travels line of sight or through land lines, the travel time would be a few milliseconds. Most data is transmitted in packets. The sender transmits the packet and the receiver sends back a signal that the packet was received properly. When the sender gets the acknowledgment, another packet is sent. This is known as handshaking. That is where ping affects download speed. I had never given this much thought before, but now see where physics could limit the speed of satellite internet. Satellite TV works fine because it's actually streaming, there's no handshaking. If you don't get the signal, your picture and sound break up. I don't have much use for a service that won't download the whole file before I open it. Netflix doesn't want to do this because they don't want you to make a copy of the movie. I periodically get updates from Apple for the Mac OS that exceed 1 GB. They take over 3 hours to download with my line of sight wireless ISP. I thought that those days were over when I went from dial-up to wireless. Faster computers bring larger and clumsier operating systems.

 

[Bucnutz.wis]

Satellite TV works fine because it's actually streaming, there's no handshaking. If you don't get the signal, your picture and sound break up.

That makes sense... but what is the difference between "internet data" vs. "TV data" that there is a limitation of bandwidth and difference in speeds.. etc.??? In other words, why does internet data need to handshake, while TV data doesn't ??

example - I pay $50/month for 75mb (within 30 days) of satellite "internet data" and some pay ~$50/month for endless "TV data" (only limited by the number of channels)

Netflix doesn't want to do this because they don't want you to make a copy of the movie

Makes sense... so they are the reason my connection is slow ??

Faster computers bring larger and clumsier operating systems.

Why can't the faster computers send the data differently so there is no limit in handshaking ??

 

[Bucnutz.wis]

You know.... at this http://www.speedtest.net/ site, comparing my speeds to the Wisconsin, National, and Global averages... this service really sucks..

Average speed for download:

My avg = .80 mb/s
Wis avg = 8.4
US avg = 9.01
Global avg = 8.22

Based on this, I conclude that Wildblue should be paying me $130 per month to use their service....

This mornings results:

 

[wgiles]

Most of the networking protocols assume that the data is really valuable and has to be delivered without error. The movies are transmitted as files and subject to the same accuracy protocols as any other file. I don't know enough about this to really answer your questions. Why is it that ten years ago, 4 meg of memory was enough for windows and now 4 Gig is just barely enough?

 

[Bucnutz.wis]

1 GB. They take over 3 hours to download with my line of sight wireless ISP.

Thanks - I'm just curious what limitation(s) you have with your line of sight wireless ISP...??

It's not unlimited usage is it ??

7.5 GB is my download threshold for a rolling 30 day period... so, right now I can only download 7 (1GB) files within a 30 day period or I'll get whacked or FAPPED as they called it on Wildblue's forum...

 

[wgiles]

I pay a monthly fee for my wireless ISP. I have never had any bandwidth issues, but I don't download movies. I'd have to check with them to see if there are any limitations.

 

[Bucnutz.wis]

Ok, I upgraded earlier this week and this is my speed now.... Ping didn't improve any. I also noticed it's only about half the speed in the evenings, I suppose because of peak usage..?

It is much faster, especially when watching video We're going to try a few Netfix movies this weekend and see what the improvement there will be. I now get 17 GB of download within 30 days... so, I should be able to download at least 5 movies a month if they are 3 G or less.

Also found out, Alltel is not in my area.. nor is AT&T or Verizon.. although Verizon's coverage map shows I'm right on the border of their 3G coverage..?

I can get Cellcom here though, and coverage looks to be pretty good... so there is an option with Cellular... but I'm going to stick with Wildblue for now and see how it goes.

I'll now pay $80/month for Internet and ~$70/month for land line phone w/ long distance for our fax machine.... so Schmalt's - your $150 a month is not so bad..

Thank you all for your input !!!