Is 384 K fast enough?

prexaspes · June 26th, 2002, 07:15 PM

My new microwave link is on the way. Be here in about a week. Trouble is picking my speed. Baseline is 192 K. Then 384 K (which I picked for now). Next step is 1 megabit. After that, I can deal with the company to get up to 15 MB for a price.

Is 384 K enough? Right now I on 56 K.

I pick up a Linksys wireless router with built in 4 port switch. Wireless handles 11 megabit. I'm excited, but will the broadband be broad enough?

**vass0922** · June 26th, 2002, 07:19 PM

384 should be enough for most purposes.
Unless you're a regular downloader of god awful huge files .. say downloading all 3 cd's for linux

(3x650megs)

Or if you have like 5 people all downloading movies/mp3s at the same time.
For the most part 384 should be enough IMO.
If anything give 384 a shot if its thats not enough jack it up to 1Mb .. however, I imagine there would be quite a price jump for that one

**originel** · June 26th, 2002, 07:20 PM

i would think so. although i would say 4 comps is the max you could use. it would be nice if they had a 700 something k or somthing in between, but what'r you gonna do. i'm on 384k cable with 2 comps and it does just fine (although i've never gamed on both at teh same time

)

prexaspes · June 26th, 2002, 07:29 PM

Well, the 384 K to 1 mb is a $20 per month difference...

I have been known to do some serious ftp-ing.

**originel** · June 26th, 2002, 07:34 PM

basically that speed will give you around 100k/sec downloads, and 1mb will give you around 400k/sec downloads (assuming your the only person on connected to a good site, blah blah blah)

**edwelly** · June 29th, 2002, 12:53 AM

My new microwave link is on the way.

what is that? -

-edwelly

prexaspes · June 29th, 2002, 12:22 PM

Prominet

Microwave link on top of my house. Comes with a modem. Line of sight connection. Plugs into my Linksys wireless router

**the jester** · June 29th, 2002, 01:25 PM

Is 384 K enough?

according to the law of ever-increasing-expectations, no

I want my data yesterday, and so should you

As soon as the consumer-collective says "oh great, thank you very much" the push for competition and innovation becomes secondary to full on marketing and consolidation of revenue

James Bond "The World is not Enough"
The Jester "The Bandwidth is not Enough"

**Blood_Luster** · June 29th, 2002, 02:22 PM

LOL The Jester...
I think it's fine, if you'r not a gammer(from what I rread uptop) I truly think you'll be fine...

**kwebb** · July 1st, 2002, 12:47 PM

basically that speed will give you around 100k/sec downloads, and 1mb will give you around 400k/sec downloads

Huh?

In theory 1Mb would be 125 KB. CLoser to around 100K is more realistic. 384 Kb would be 48 KB. Again after overhead degradation, around 40 KB would be a steller file download using a 384 Kb connection. Using kb as you did in your post a 1 Mb connection would really be closer to 800 kb in real world througput and 384 kb would be somewhere in the 300kb range. 8 bits in a byte.

**ocit** · July 1st, 2002, 01:04 PM

hows the latency on microwave ?

**kwebb** · July 1st, 2002, 03:03 PM

Radio waves travel at the speed of light. In actuality it is in a vacuum that this is accurate but even with atmospheric conditions RF travels at speed that make latency a non-issue with a good link. The longest link I have been apart of, with 802.11b equipment anyway, was 18 miles. Latency from bridge to bridge was around 5ms, 3 or 4 of that probably being hardware and cable runs and not the actual carrier.

prexaspes · July 1st, 2002, 10:31 PM

The transciever is a line of sight to the tower on a mountain-top. Latency shouldn't be a problem.

**muno** · July 2nd, 2002, 01:42 AM

It's not enough if you're starting a game of mp_beach_test (RtCW) and your downloaded demo is corrupted.
Heh, I got two different corrupted demos of rtcw in a row...
384 is sufficient for a lot, that is, if you're not in a hurry to get the linux cds.
But time we have, don't we? Like a megabit connection would be overkill, so would 24x burner

*rant*
-M

prexaspes · July 2nd, 2002, 05:15 AM

Hmmm... I have RTCW and a 40X burner... Maybe 1 mb it is...

**Detritus** · July 2nd, 2002, 06:41 AM

Microwave internet access is a wireless way to access the internet. It broadcasts and you use a specialized antenna to receive that broacast. Like advanced radio. Kinda cool IMO

edited for grammer... it is too eary in the morning to try to type

**MDdan** · July 2nd, 2002, 07:14 AM

Well, for $20 difference, I'd go with the 384. Is it enough? Can you ever have enough bandwidth?

As for gaming purposes, best way to find out is to ask someone who has it, or just wait and see. I would expect it to be much better than those crazy satellite setups for gaming. (not saying much there)

My brother has a line-of-site microwave setup, he's not much of a gamer, but he seems to like his setup. He had cable in the past, so he knows what a faster connection is like.

**kwebb** · July 2nd, 2002, 07:54 AM

Actually microwave isn't really "advanced" radio. It is just electromagnetic waves at higher frequencies and shorter wavelengths that the lower part of the spectrum, such as the typical radio waves that we are all familiar with. FM, UHF, VHF, etc... Just past short wave and just before millimeter and infrared if you were looking at a left to right chart with low frequency Radio waves being to the far left and Gamma rays being to the far right. Microwaves run from just below 1 Ghz up to 300 Ghz. I have seen literature that puts the start point higher at 1.6 Ghz but also charts that start Microwave at much lower frequencies. 1 Ghz seems to be a sweet spot.

Here's a couple of good links if any of you are interested:
Interesting to me because I was in the business for close to 5 years but pretty dry if your not all that interested.

http://www.gallawa.com/microtech/mwave.html

http://www.wa1mba.org/micros.htm

**mad1** · July 2nd, 2002, 08:48 AM

I have a 512K microwave link to the internet with 2 computers connected to a Linksys Befsr41 router.My download speed is 60K on a single computer, never tried both at the same time. When I had the 144k connection my download speed was 16K.
I do a lign of site connection from the antenna on the roof of my house to the antenna on the water tower 4 blocks on from my house.There are two different types of antennas with the service that I have.ONe is a 1' X1" square plactic sealed antenna and the other is a metal directional (higher gain).Started out with the plastic one and then changed to the directional one after the trees behind my house got their leaves.

Here is a link that may help,
dslreports

**kwebb** · July 2nd, 2002, 09:29 AM

Sounds like you had a sector panel originally. Technically a directional but usually much broader beamwidth than a Yagi or parabolic. Not very good idea for point to point IMO but if your close and it had high enough gain it'd work. So would an omni under the right conditions but still not a good idea as a remote antenna on a point to point.