Some questions, help me please.

Hello, I used to have dial-up and I played Guild Wars on it fine for about a year and a half, and I don't remember any extreme ping issues, and it all seemed good except for the problem of downloading updates and such. So being a idiot I cancelled my dial-up service and got Hughesnet( A satellite ISP). I chose them, because they were my only other choice besides dial-up. However I didn't research them much, and after they installed my service I found out that the ping time of a satellite ISP is terrible due to the distance or the satellite from Earth, and the limits of the speed of light and such. So now I'm getting a average of 1,200ms ping in Guild Wars and it annoys me so badly. Back when I had dial-up I didn't notice any ping issues, but I never looked at the little box in the bottom right hand corner or the screen either. So my question is to anyone playing on dial-up right now is what is your average ping? Please tell me, because I'm considering going back to dial-up but I'll have to pay $300 cancellation fee to get out of my contract with Hughesnet, who are a bunch of crooks.

Please if your on dial-up playing Guild Wars right now, post what your average ping is.

Why not go to broadband?

That ping is close to normal for GW now.

Guild Wars has been really laggy. I couldn't stand last weekend and haven't gotten on since.

evil, not everyone lives in a city and able to get broadband.

Again, assuming perfect conditions, the minimum ping you can expect on satellite (this is assuming again....PERFECTION of signals and direct signals) is as follows:

TCP/IP three-way handshake started with remove host. (location Y). Sync Packet
Packet transmitted to Satellite = 26,000 miles
Packet switched and transmitted back to earth = 26,000 miles
Syn-Ack packet from Location Y transmitted back to satellite = 26,000 Miles
Syn-Ack packet from satelittel to X hosts = 26,000 miles
Host X transmit Ack packet to satelitte = 26,000 miles
Packet switched and transmitted back to Host Y = 26,000 miles

Assuming the speed of light as transmission speed, each trip would take approx 150ms. (141.53ms to be more exact)

So, 900ms total trip. That doesn't make for playable online games that are ping reliant (which most are)

Even assuming you could cut 2 of those systems out in a far more streamlined system, you are still looking at a min of ~600ms. Still, extremely high. Satellite internet cannot provide gaming level internet connections, because of the limitations of lightspeed. Once we figure out tachyon satellite transmission, you will be set.

Do you seriously believe he wouldn't go broadband instead of Dial-Up or SatLink if he COULD??

Of course I would get broadband if I could, but I've checked and I don't have those options. Anyway thanks for the help, but does anyone have any figures of numbers of about the ping I will get with dial-up? I was thinking 300-400ms, but I don't know much. So someone help me out.

Satellite ISP is BAD for gaming - cell phone signal ISP is barely any better (3G for example).

I used 3G for 6 months this summer and GW was not fun to play with it. 1200 ping or more was commonplace. For $300 I would keep HughesNet (it IS faster for general web surfing and downloading files etc) and you ought to be able to get a yrs worth of dial up for under $200... I haven't played GW on DialUP, so I can't say what the ping is, but I have friends that use it and they say it is just fine as long as they don't have to load any new areas very often.

Given that you used to play on dial-up without the ping being a big issue, I'd say that your ping on dial-up would probably have been somewhere in the range of 250-350ms.
(This is as close as you get to an actual answer so far. )

Thanks everyone for the advice, but I'm still probably going back to dial-up before the contact ends, because I just can't bear 1200ms ping on a good day. Plus satellite ISP's have a FAP(Fair-Access Policy) which is a limit on how much stuff you can download per day, and if you go over then your internet is slowed down by them so bad for a 24 hour period that even doing basic web surfing is a time-staking process, trust me I know I have done it before. I'd rather be able to leave my computer on all night while a update downloads on dial-up then to have to worry about going over my FAP and living with 1000+ms ping. So that's about it, and my advice to anyone is to never ever, ever choose any satellite provider as a ISP, especially HughesNet. If you have the choice of it, or dial-up go with dial-up.