The Equator and internet service??

[rockhillmanor]

Does being closer to the equator have anything to do with internet service?

Up North it could be raining, sleeting, snowing cats and dogs and I ALWAYS had internet service.

Here in Florida, EVERY time it rains you loose your internet connection.
Heck if it's raining hard enough you can't even buy your lottery tickets because they go down too!

Think it has anything to do with being closer to the Equator and how the satellites revolve and/or their position.? :?

[Sam_Spade]

joebedford wrote:
If I had a two second round trip delay (to sat and back) I would call it unusable

Delay for what exactly ??

It often takes 2 seconds or more for the data to start coming back after sending a request.....for most anything on any site.
Once it starts coming it blasts through.....usually.

[Chris_Bryant]

Sam Spade wrote:

So, let's get back to the original quesion:
IF, as some of you claim, Internet service NEVER routes via satellite, how do you explain it going out of service every time there is a heavy rain ?? Some of that might be explained by a crappy provider who doesn't have battery backup during power failures but not all.

Easy- bad terrestrial equipment. A bit of moisture in a connection is all it takes.

And secondly, how many ISPs are there who give a latency guarantee ?? I suspect none.

AFAIK, online gaming is the only thing that really cares about that and I'd bet that users who still do that in real time are a TINY number......if any at all.

You would be wrong about that- there are huge real time online games.

However- the main reason traffic does not travel via satellite is cost- there are still miles of "dark" fiber optic cable wating to be used, it makes zero sense to pay for the bandwidth via satllite.

Now- there are some LEO (Low Earth Orbit) satellite schemes that do phone and data, and have acceptable latency, but they are a different matter entirely.

[John___Angela]

joebedford wrote:
If I had a two second round trip delay (to sat and back) I would call it unusable unless I was in the jungle 1000 miles from civilization or at the south pole. I think MOST users would also find it unacceptable.

We used various satelite phones all the time in the Canadian Air Force. The delay was annoying. After a while you develop techniques for dealing with it but yah...annoying.

[joebedford]

If I had a two second round trip delay (to sat and back) I would call it unusable unless I was in the jungle 1000 miles from civilization or at the south pole. I think MOST users would also find it unacceptable.

[Sam_Spade]

Ed_Gee wrote:

WRONG, There are at least two major undersea fiber cables connecting to CONUS....and more by simple relay.

I learn something new almost every day.

So, let's get back to the original quesion:
IF, as some of you claim, Internet service NEVER routes via satellite, how do you explain it going out of service every time there is a heavy rain ?? Some of that might be explained by a crappy provider who doesn't have battery backup during power failures but not all.

And secondly, how many ISPs are there who give a latency guarantee ?? I suspect none.

AFAIK, online gaming is the only thing that really cares about that and I'd bet that users who still do that in real time are a TINY number......if any at all.

[Ed_Gee]

Sam Spade wrote:

Ed_Gee wrote:

Not true. There are a multitude of undersea fiber cables coming in to Florida.

And exactly how many of them carry domestic traffic to and from the rest of the US ?? Clue: none.

WRONG, There are at least two major undersea fiber cables connecting to CONUS....and more by simple relay.

[Ed_Gee]

.

[Dutch_12078]

Sam Spade wrote:

Ed_Gee wrote:

Not true. There are a multitude of undersea fiber cables coming in to Florida.

And exactly how many of them carry domestic traffic to and from the rest of the US ?? Clue: none.

I've read that GlobeNet has undersea fiber running between Tuckerton, NJ and Boca Raton, FL running at 1.36 Tbit/s, but test to 5.76 Tbit/s. It's been in place since 2001. There's another GlobeNet cable running between Brookhaven, NY and Hollywood, FL, that's controlled by Internet backbone provider Level3 that went into service in 2000. I don't know if those would be considered "domestic traffic" carriers though.

[fla-gypsy]

I never have a problem with connection. I live in N Florida. Seems to be your providers.

[2oldman]

joebedford wrote:
It rains a lot in Florida. The have to keep moving the sats. so they don't get wet.

That is some major rain! 🙂

[joebedford]

It rains a lot in Florida. The have to keep moving the sats. so they don't get wet. When they move them it takes a while for the spectrometers to re-lock up their encryption so your internet goes down.

Or, no.

[Sam_Spade]

Ed_Gee wrote:

Not true. There are a multitude of undersea fiber cables coming in to Florida.

And exactly how many of them carry domestic traffic to and from the rest of the US ?? Clue: none.

[Nick-B]

Florida is closer to the orbiting 'mothership' so there is considerably more interference.

[pianotuna]

Hi Chris,

Iqaluit Nunavet has no land line access of any kind. All internet back bone is via Satellite. This leads to some interesting problems, because twice per year (around the equinox) the geosynchronous satellite, ground dish and sun all are in a straight line. The sun "drowns out" the signal, so there is a 2 hour gap where only locally based internet is available.

There is also (very expensive) satellite phone internet with birds in low earth orbit.

Chris Bryant wrote:
And- no part of the Internet is via satellite, unless you have a sat internet provider. It's all fiber optics- satellites have far too much latency.

[DutchmenSport]

"Not true. There are a multitude of undersea fiber cables coming in to Florida." ... any of them coming from Indiana? :B