Viasat Latency | What is Viasat’s latency?

Latency is a measurement of time delay in any system. In this system it is the length of time a signal travels between the satellite dish mounted to your residence to the satellite in space that orbits the earth to a ground-based gateway which connects you to the internet. Each time it communicates between one to the next it travels about 22,300 miles traveling at the speed of light (186,282 miles per second). The round-trip is timed and is measured in milliseconds called ”ping”. The ping on satellite internet is usually around 638 ms, compared to a typical cable network with a ping of 30 ms or less. This kind of latency will be the same for any other internet satellite provider, but it will continue to get better and faster with technology constantly improving. 638 ms is just over half a second, so in many applications it will be able to work just fine. The only applications that you might have issues with are when playing first person shooting games where you need to make split second decisions and when using Virtual Private Networks (VPN). Games that tend to be slower paced, like turn based games, perform much better because you aren't relying on having to make an action at a precise time. When using VPNs there is information being encrypted and the speed cant be accelerated over the satellite link.