[jfindley]

Consistent 30ms would be pretty excellent, and make it useful for many things. Consistent 50ms, similarly. It starts to get a bit more of an issue at 80ms or 100ms, but my worry is more that jitter may be huge, and 30-100ms is a huge jitter window that could limit usefuless not just for games, but also many other things such as voice calls.

[krageon]

A 100ms ping is perfectly playable in everything except twitch-based shooters. In voice calls you will notice it, but it won't get in the way like say a 1-2s delay would (like you get if you phone from one end of the world to the other). It's really a very good result bearing in mind that this can work absolutely anywhere.

[phinnaeus]

Fighting games, too. Most gamers know to avoid wifi, much less a wireless ISP.

[ricardobeat]

I don't think that's still true with 802.11ac. My Wi-Fi adds only 1 or 2 ms latency. There is way more jitter, but it doesn't really matter if the total is always under 10ms.

[gameswithgo]

wifi doesn't add any latency, inhernetly. nor in practice with actual equipment

[andruby]

The shared medium (frequency spectrum) is what can add latency. If a device wants to talk over Wifi but another device is transmitting it has to wait. This introduces (variable) latency, aka jitter.

Here's an anecdotal example for you, in practice with actual equipment:

1) Mac pro via ethernet to router:

    # ping -c 5 -S 192.168.1.88 192.168.1.1
    PING 192.168.1.1 (192.168.1.1) from 192.168.1.88: 56 data bytes
    64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=0 ttl=64 time=0.413 ms
    64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.396 ms
    64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=0.417 ms
    64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=0.553 ms
    64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=4 ttl=64 time=0.514 ms

    5 packets transmitted, 5 packets received, 0.0% packet loss
    round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 0.396/0.459/0.553/0.063 ms

2) Same machine via wifi over Unify AP to router:

    # ping -c 5 -S 192.168.1.72 192.168.1.1
    PING 192.168.1.1 (192.168.1.1) from 192.168.1.72: 56 data bytes
    64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=0 ttl=64 time=2.992 ms
    64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=4.136 ms
    64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=1.873 ms
    64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=2.293 ms
    64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=4 ttl=64 time=2.552 ms

    5 packets transmitted, 5 packets received, 0.0% packet loss
    round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 1.873/2.769/4.136/0.774 ms

That's an average of 2.3ms extra latency, or 6x higher.

[Thlom]

I speak a lot with customers on satellite phones more or less every day. When they are calling from a BGAN terminal the latency can be a problem. Latency is around 1000-1500ms. But when speaking on a VSAT Ka-band terminal the latency is less of a problem. Data latency is around 600-800ms on VSAT. So I doubt latency of 100ms would be a problem at all. Most VOIP solutions have some mechanisms to reduce the perceived latency.

[dmd]

I'm struggling to imagine a network path that could induce a 1-2 second delay from one side of the world to the other. Even at just 50% of c-in-vacuum that's only a tenth of a second.

[wasmitnetzen]

There's a lot of active gear introducing delays between those ends. Pinging www.govt.nz, which is about 17000km from me and as close to the antipode as I can find in a quick search, pings at around 300 to 400ms, so only at about 15 to 20% of c.

[dmd]

Huh. My nearest land antipode (from Boston, MA, USA) is Perth, and I get about 150ms ping to there. Regardless, even 400 ms is a far cry from 2000 ms.

[CodesInChaos]

A ping is a round trip, so you have to double the distance.

[ls612]

Even in an FPS unless you are trying to play at a pro level or something 100ms will be barely noticeable. Your reaction time is already probably over 300ms

[joshspankit]

One thing that may be a game changer: inter-satellite relaying. With the whole network, Starlink client to Starlink client latency might actually drop.