Does Xbox Live work with satellite internet?

If I got satellite internet, would I be able to play on XBL? Right now, my only chance of getting "high speed" internet is by either satellite or wireless internet. A friend said that he would give me the satellite internet equipment for free if I wanted it. The only reason for me to really want to get it is just for XBL. Any help or suggestions would be appreciated.

I can't guarantee 100% that all ISPs work, but satellite internet does indeed work with Xbox Live, and many providers in addition to the ones listed on Xbox.com function properly.

I have SBC Yahoo DSL and it works great. Games rarely ever lag, and I only have a 1.5 Mbps connection.

Satellite isnt good for XBL. Satellite doesnt recieve signals fast enough for it to be good for gaming. The game would be really laggy. I dont suggest you even try, id save the money.

I'm sure cable is better if you can get it, but as I said, Murc, my modest SBC Yahoo DSL connection works great for Live, and I rarely have any lag whatsoever. It's definitely worth it.

At any rate, if you get the service hooked up., Jericho, you can try out Live via a trial card so that you won't waste money if Live is laggy on that particular ISP.

I'd call up Microsoft for a 100% correct answer.

doesn't satellite download throught the dish but upload throught the phone line? If so, no it wouldn't be very good for xbl.

I think I read somewhere it doesnt work ... but I cant remember, best to call M$.

People... I have been using SBC Yahoo DSL for 3 months now and my Live experience has been great. It may vary depending on your ISP, but satellite based internet definitely works for Live.

[quote name='Matt Young']People... I have been using SBC Yahoo DSL for 3 months now and my Live experience has been great. It may vary depending on your ISP, but satellite based internet definitely works for Live.[/QUOTE]

DSL is completely different from satellite internet. DSL runs over phone lines, using a different frequency from voice communication to avoid interfering with phone conversation. http://computer.howstuffworks.com/dsl.htm

Satellite internet, as its name suggests, uses a satellite dish to transmit and receive data to and from a satellite orbiting the earth. The data is sent from the satellite to a ground-based hub, which connects the signal to the ISP's servers, and then, the Internet. http://computer.howstuffworks.com/question606.htm


[quote name='delahappy']doesn't satellite download throught the dish but upload throught the phone line? If so, no it wouldn't be very good for xbl.[/quote]

At first it did, but newer dishes both transmit and receive through the dish, which vastly improves upload throughput.


I used satellite internet for a few years before we got DSL at my parents' house. We started off on the receiver-only satellite dish (uplink through phone line), then switched to the dish that transmits and receives.

Satellite internet is very fast in terms of throughput, but the latency is very high. Consider this: when you enter a web page address in your browser, your computer sends a request out to the internet to retrieve the web page. The request eventually makes its way to server for that web page, and the request tells the web server the IP address of your computer so it will know where to send the data. The web server then transmits the data to your computer. Latency is the wait period from the time you send the request to the time the data first arrives at your computer. The throughput (a.k.a. bandwidth) is how much data can be transferred to your computer simultaneously. The reason that the latency is high is that for satellite internet, the web page request you send out has to be beamed up to the satellite, sent down to the hub from the satellite, sent to the web page server from the ISP's servers, and then backtrack back to your computer. The distance covered by the signal going up in the sky to the satellite and back down to the ground is very high, hence the large latency, or delay.

That said, because of the high latency, I would not recommend satellite internet for gaming. It would be very laggy. DSL would be fine, cable would be better, but satellite has too high a latency.

Well, I'll be damned. Whenever anyone has talked to me about satellite internet, they've always referred to DSL. I didn't know there was a difference. My mistake. Sorry about that. At least someone finally corrected me.

[quote name='Matt Young']Well, I'll be damned. Whenever anyone has talked to me about satellite internet, they've always referred to DSL. I didn't know there was a difference. My mistake. Sorry about that. At least someone finally corrected me.[/QUOTE]

No problem. I was really confused at first . I couldn't understand why you were saying that satellite internet works well for gaming, but that you have DSL. Then, after reading your post right before mine, I got the notion that you thought that satellite internet and DSL were the same thing. I didn't mean to come off harsh; I just wanted to clear up the differences and demonstrate why satellite internet isn't good for gaming.