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raymor · 11-14-2009, 04:03 PM

Here are five reasons that you get less bang for the buck with satellite, and why
it makes sense to have HD TV over satellite but not fast internet.

While it's true that with both cable and satellite one or a few TV channels are dedicated
to internet bandwidth, the use that channel very differently. For cable, your cable line
goes down the block to a switch. In the box at the end of the block, it's converted from
a TV style cable to a high speed network cable capable of carrying many users.
So that one channel worth of TV cable has to serve a couple hundred users. In other
words, the switch, or CMTS, is just like a cable modem turned backwards - it
accepts a screw in cable from the subscriber and converts the signal to an internet
style cable which has plenty of bandwidth. Other groups of uses can use the same
channel with no interference because they are connected to different switches.
For more info, Google CMTS.

With satellite, there are no switch boxes in the middle of the sky. When the satellite
sends out a radio signal, it's being sent to every subscriber in the country. That
slice of the channel is yours alone and no one else can share it without interference.
That's because the satellite doesn't have a separate antenna pointed directly at your
house - it just sends out the youtube video into the air for it to be picked up by
whoever requested it. That's probably the biggest reason satellite doesn't provide
the same bang for the buck as cable - because with cable you and I can both use
channel 37 for internet without interfering with one another.

With the TV channels, all 3 million subscribers get the same show on that channel, so
it makes much more sense to use some bandwidth for that. In other words, let's say
a TV channel takes 10 Mbps. That's 10 Mbps to serve millions of users. Your internet
connection is yours alone, so providing a 10Mbps connection would be using that
10 Mbps to serve ONE customer instead of serving millions of customers with a TV
channel.

There are a couple of other reasons you get less for your money with satellite.
It costs about $300 million dollars to build, launch, and support a satellite.
Only once you have a satellite can you start putting internet equipment on it.
The cable company can just put that equipment on a rack which costs $200.
If YOU spent $300 million of your money putting up a satellite capable of a
couple hundred megabits, wouldn't you want to have a shitload of customers
sharing that bandwidth to try to get your money back?

The next two reasons have to do with how far away the satellite is.
A geostationary satellite, the kind used for satellite TV, is 22,223 miles high.
That's about the same distance as going all the way around the world and
returning to where you started. In order to use the internet, your satellite dish
has to send a signal to the satellite 22,000 miles away. If you've ever played
with a walkie talkie, you know that a $30 piece of equipment can only send a
signal about 1/4 mile, and that signal doesn't have enough bandwidth for a
quality sound, much less video. Imagine how expensive it would be two give
you a transmitter capable of sending clear video 22,000 miles! That's upload,
you say, we're talking about download. True, but they way the internet works,
in order to download you have to upload 1/8 as much. So for an 8 Mbps download
you have to be uploading 1 Mbps of error correction and such. If you wanted to
have equipment capable of sending a high bandwidth signal 22,000 miles, you'd
pay $15,000 to get set up.

Lastly, there's latency. You may be familiar with using "ping" to measure one aspect
of the quality of an internet connection. A good internet connection might have a
35ms "ping time" - the time it takes to send a packet to some site, such as youtube,
and have it come back. With satellite, you have to send that packet 22,000 miles
up in the air, then the satellite sends it 22,000 miles back down to youtube, then
you tube returns it 22,000 miles to the satellite before the satellite sends it back
down to you, another 22,000 miles. In total, the packet has to go 88,000 miles round
trip from you to youtube and back. Radio waves travel at the speed of light,
186,000 miles per second. That means it takes the signal about 1/2 second to make
the round trip. That's 500 milliseconds - more than ten times as slow as what
we expect from a good connection. There's nothing the satellite provider can do
about that because light, or radio waves, can only go one speed. There's no way
to hurry them up and make them go faster than the speed of light. With ground
based systems, each packet only has to go, to the closest mirror of the site.
Since satellite signals have to travel fifty times as far, they take longer. That doesn't
matter as much for video, as it does for loading a web page full of thumbnails, but
it does mean that satellite internet kinda sucks and there's nothing anyone can do
about it.

11-14-2009, 04:03 PM
raymor Confirmed User Join Date: Oct 2002 Posts: 3,745	Here are five reasons that you get less bang for the buck with satellite, and why it makes sense to have HD TV over satellite but not fast internet. While it's true that with both cable and satellite one or a few TV channels are dedicated to internet bandwidth, the use that channel very differently. For cable, your cable line goes down the block to a switch. In the box at the end of the block, it's converted from a TV style cable to a high speed network cable capable of carrying many users. So that one channel worth of TV cable has to serve a couple hundred users. In other words, the switch, or CMTS, is just like a cable modem turned backwards - it accepts a screw in cable from the subscriber and converts the signal to an internet style cable which has plenty of bandwidth. Other groups of uses can use the same channel with no interference because they are connected to different switches. For more info, Google CMTS. With satellite, there are no switch boxes in the middle of the sky. When the satellite sends out a radio signal, it's being sent to every subscriber in the country. That slice of the channel is yours alone and no one else can share it without interference. That's because the satellite doesn't have a separate antenna pointed directly at your house - it just sends out the youtube video into the air for it to be picked up by whoever requested it. That's probably the biggest reason satellite doesn't provide the same bang for the buck as cable - because with cable you and I can both use channel 37 for internet without interfering with one another. With the TV channels, all 3 million subscribers get the same show on that channel, so it makes much more sense to use some bandwidth for that. In other words, let's say a TV channel takes 10 Mbps. That's 10 Mbps to serve millions of users. Your internet connection is yours alone, so providing a 10Mbps connection would be using that 10 Mbps to serve ONE customer instead of serving millions of customers with a TV channel. There are a couple of other reasons you get less for your money with satellite. It costs about $300 million dollars to build, launch, and support a satellite. Only once you have a satellite can you start putting internet equipment on it. The cable company can just put that equipment on a rack which costs $200. If YOU spent $300 million of your money putting up a satellite capable of a couple hundred megabits, wouldn't you want to have a shitload of customers sharing that bandwidth to try to get your money back? The next two reasons have to do with how far away the satellite is. A geostationary satellite, the kind used for satellite TV, is 22,223 miles high. That's about the same distance as going all the way around the world and returning to where you started. In order to use the internet, your satellite dish has to send a signal to the satellite 22,000 miles away. If you've ever played with a walkie talkie, you know that a $30 piece of equipment can only send a signal about 1/4 mile, and that signal doesn't have enough bandwidth for a quality sound, much less video. Imagine how expensive it would be two give you a transmitter capable of sending clear video 22,000 miles! That's upload, you say, we're talking about download. True, but they way the internet works, in order to download you have to upload 1/8 as much. So for an 8 Mbps download you have to be uploading 1 Mbps of error correction and such. If you wanted to have equipment capable of sending a high bandwidth signal 22,000 miles, you'd pay $15,000 to get set up. Lastly, there's latency. You may be familiar with using "ping" to measure one aspect of the quality of an internet connection. A good internet connection might have a 35ms "ping time" - the time it takes to send a packet to some site, such as youtube, and have it come back. With satellite, you have to send that packet 22,000 miles up in the air, then the satellite sends it 22,000 miles back down to youtube, then you tube returns it 22,000 miles to the satellite before the satellite sends it back down to you, another 22,000 miles. In total, the packet has to go 88,000 miles round trip from you to youtube and back. Radio waves travel at the speed of light, 186,000 miles per second. That means it takes the signal about 1/2 second to make the round trip. That's 500 milliseconds - more than ten times as slow as what we expect from a good connection. There's nothing the satellite provider can do about that because light, or radio waves, can only go one speed. There's no way to hurry them up and make them go faster than the speed of light. With ground based systems, each packet only has to go, to the closest mirror of the site. Since satellite signals have to travel fifty times as far, they take longer. That doesn't matter as much for video, as it does for loading a web page full of thumbnails, but it does mean that satellite internet kinda sucks and there's nothing anyone can do about it. __________________ For historical display only. This information is not current: support@bettercgi.com ICQ 7208627 Strongbox - The next generation in site security Throttlebox - The next generation in bandwidth control Clonebox - Backup and disaster recovery on steroids