Replies

1. Don't know.

2. Weather can affect a dish greatly. I have a Dish 500, and when it rains or accumulates snow my signal drops.

3. Not sure what directway is. Is it a DirecTv system? If so, then you should be able to replace the dish and keep the recievers. If it is not, expect to replace everything.

4. Anything over 15000' from your nearest telco station is unreliable and would not be supported by the ISP. Even >10000' is worrisome for most ISP's since they have to listen to you bi***.

5. Gaming is affected by latency.

6. If you intend to have an always on connection, I would recommend a hardware firewall/router (Linksys/Netgear/etc) (don't lose the software firewall to protect against trojans). Other than protecting your network from hackers, just make sure you tweak your network settings to allow the highest throughput.

Lastly, I recommend you spend some time at DSLReports. There are many discussions, tools, and guides to help anyone through the mess that is broadband. You can especially find help in deciding on your ISP and latency.

Good Luck!

5. Gaming is affected by latency.

AMEN.

The lower your ping, the more teenagers you can blast into gory smithereens and the studlier you appear when internet gaming.

Give me a ping of less than 20, and I can reduce a teenager with twice my talent to tears.

. Weather can affect a dish greatly. I have a Dish 500, and when it rains or accumulates snow my signal drops.

Spray some Pam on the dish face, it will keep the snow and ice to a minimum. It just slides off of the dish. Thick thunderclouds is the only thing that interrupts our Directv.

I look at the site sometimes....it seems like everybody only reports if they have a gripe though. I have seen complaint after complaint with Swbell's DSL service. I have not had much in the way of problems....I have never had a slow connection and only have gotten kicked off like twice.