said by PDXPLT:When WB was first deployed, they had latencies of several hundred milliseconds. Not DSL and cable, but tolerable. Then on a day referred to as "Black Friday" by WB early adopters, they changed the polling algorithms, and the latencies went to the 2+ second range you see now. They did this to jam in more subscribers on the cheap.
Most of the latency you see at your folks place is not due to satellite hop, but due to how WB schedules the packets.
The point I was trying to make though is even before "Black Friday" the latency will still too high. I actually used the service before they incorporated their modified form of DAMA and it was still a terrible alternative to DSL or cable. It is simply not possible for satellite to ever be a good solution for internet.