Although the use of wireless, satellite-based internet is now availabe from companies like Clear Internet, this method comes with unavoidable latency issues. Two primary problems that affect wireless Internet are signal stability and signal strength. Signal stability will depend on temporal environmental changes and other signals present in the air. Signal strength mainly depends on the distance the signals have to cover and obstructions along the path.
In case of geostationary satellites, the signals cover a distance of around 22,236 miles to the orbit before returning to earth. Even though the signals travel at the speed of light (186,000 miles per second) the distance still results in notable delay between transmission and reception. Assuming there are no other delays, it still takes about a quarter of a second (250 milliseconds) for the signal to travel to the satellite and back.
The theoretical minimum for receiving internet packets is twice the delay. When you factor in delays from other normal sources, it takes between 1000 and 1400 milliseconds for the signals to travel to the satellite and back to earth, which makes latency a significant issue.
Signal stability also leads to latency issues because there is always a need to add more processing to compensate for the signal instability. Although the signals always travel at the speed of light, the interaction of hardware and software in processing them leads to more delays. While further fine tuning can lower the latency, the theoretical minimum will still be higher than for wired Internetconnections.
Latency creates some pertinent problems, particularly in gaming and VoIP communications. Even if people’s voices do not have a robotic sound, callers still have to grapple with odd silences as the signals travel to their destinations. Have you ever watched television communications where one speaker has finished speaking while the other still waits, leading to awkward silences? The same applies to such VoIP calls as Skype. Gaming also becomes less natural as players wait for signals to travel back and forth.
Obviously, wireless internet access is going to become the norm over the next few years. Technological solutions to these latency problems are on the way. You can learn more about the convenience of portable internet solutions atwww.clearwirelessinternet4g.com and see what the future has to offer.
