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"Line of sight" broadband

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  • 17-04-2007 9:14am
    #1
    Padna
    Closed Accounts Posts: 26 ✭


    I was thinking of getting Digiweb's "Metro Lite" broadband package. A colleague at work told me to avoid "line of sight" services, as they were not suitable for "streaming" - e.g. watching live broadcasts of sports events. He said that the transmission is batched rather than continuous with these services. He had experienced this with Irish Broadband and thought that Digiweb was likely to be similar. So he recommended me to opt for a service through the phone line instead.

    What do you guys think?


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    #2
    Sponge Bob
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 25,234 ✭✭✭✭Sponge Bob


    I think he was describing half duplex or full duplex operation there . Its certainly true that IBB were often half duplex pre 2006 but I would say that Digiweb Metro and IBB breeze woukd easily support streaming and that glitches would be handled by the adaptive buffering in the software on your pc.

    Metro Light, at 1mbit would not deliver as good a picture as the 3mbit services that you could get from those carriers, I would therefore recommend that you consider 3mbits not 1mbit.

    Avoid clearwire like the plague


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    #3
    dathiultaigh
    Closed Accounts Posts: 140 ✭✭dathiultaigh


    Padna wrote:
    e.g. watching live broadcasts of sports events. He said that the transmission is batched rather than continuous with these services. He had experienced this with Irish Broadband and thought that Digiweb was likely to be similar.

    Steaming media traffic is nearly always batched rather than continous i.e. it uses UDP protocol which is connectionless rather TCP so it does not matter if you are using DSL, Cable, Wireless ,whatever ... if the protocol UDP is used to stream the media it will be "batched". This broadcast protocol is set by the tranmission provider not the ISP so there is no other way to change this protocol other than changing it on the streaming server.


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    #4
    watty
    Registered Users Posts: 32,417 ✭✭✭✭watty


    As long as your connection has got Line Of Sight, then Metro is not distinguishable from good DSL or good Cable.

    Infact the 512k upload (on 3M package) is good enough for me to watch my own video stream remotely (DVDs or satellite or Off Air Analogue TV).

    I set up unicast to specific IP, so no point anyone out there try to get a peek!

    A good qualiity 1M is ample for most streaming. Real Living room Broadcast quality IPTV needs though about 4Mbps or more. I re-encode satellite as the "native" MPEG2 BBC can exceed 6Mbps.


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