Performance
SES Broadband provides an always-on connection and German consumer magazine, SatVision declared the SES Broadband (then ASTRA2Connect) speed "Good" with a score of 83.3%, while PC Magazin found "The speed of the data transfer is what you'd expect from 1Mbit/s access. Our tests rushed through the ether at about 115Kbyte/s."
What Satellite and Digital TV magazine concluded that the service "provides a reliable speed and quality of connection".
Since these tests, the maximum download speed has been increased and now stands at 10Mbit/s, with a maximum upload speed of 256kbit/s which puts SES Broadband on par with practical terrestrial broadband connections.
Potential drawbacks of satellite broadband systems include the lack of security of the download data (which can be received by anyone within the satellite's footprint) and the delay inherent in the connection – as both upload and download data must follow the route from the ground to the satellite (located some 35,785 km (22,236 mi) above the Earth) and back, there is a minimum total delay or latency (depending on the location of the receive site) of about 0.5 seconds.
SES Broadband data transmission features two-way TCP encryption to provide security, and data compression, TCP-acceleration, and HTTP pre-fetching (at the server and subscriber ends) to alleviate the effects of satellite latency.
Digital Fernsehen magazine's tests of SES Broadband (then ASTRA2Connect) found that "two-way connection via satellite is unsuitable for lovers of on-line games. The ping times measured are too long for this application, with values of 578ms-589ms". However, PC Magazin's tests found: "The echo (Ping) times were around 650ms. For large downloads, that is insignificant and while surfing on the Internet, it's easy to accept a half-second 'time to reflect'."
Read more about this topic: SES Broadband
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