Satellite signals have to travel to space and back. With geostationary satellites the round trip alone exceeds 0.5 seconds. Low Earth orbit satellites such as Starlink are usually fast, but latency fluctuates and the link can drop briefly at the moment routes are reassigned.
Why Connecting from home, a ship, or a plane over GEO or LEO satellite internet, or over in-flight Wi-Fi that uses satellites → Effect GEO satellites sit at about 36,000 km, so the distance itself is long. LEO systems reassign the terminal–satellite–ground station path at short intervals, with a brief burst of delay and loss at each reassignment → On screen GEO: heavy input lag on every action. LEO: fine most of the time, then stutter and teleporting at regular intervals
Primary owner External (External) · Also Game team (Client development), Game team (Server development)
Game team action items
Client: lengthen the interpolation buffer automatically to match jitter, send inputs redundantly to survive brief loss, show connection quality. Server: account for satellite latency when setting timing windows and lag compensation limits, use timeouts that don’t kick players over gaps of about 1 second.
External action items
Tell players that satellite internet can have high latency or periodic spikes, and advise a wired terrestrial connection for competitive content where possible.
Ballpark numbers
At geostationary orbit (36,000 km altitude) the signal takes 260 ms one way just to cross space, so the round trip exceeds 520 ms (ITU-T G.114). For LEO Starlink, official data (15-second averages) put the US peak-hour median at 33 ms, with even the worst 1% (p99) under 65 ms (2024). Measurement studies found that latency shifts each time routes are reassigned every 15 seconds, along with brief outages under 1 second. In 2018 in-flight internet measurements, satellite-based connections averaged 750 ms round trip.
On the graph
Outliers only · RTT/jitter (by satellite ISP ASN)
Where to look
Check whether the client IP’s ASN belongs to a satellite internet provider, and plot the RTT distribution and time series of that provider’s players separately. Ping the server for a few minutes straight from RIPE Atlas probes in that ASN, or have the player leave ping running and measure the interval between spikes
Confirmed if
GEO providers: RTT always above 500 ms. LEO providers: normally tens of ms, with RTT shifting or brief drops about every 15 seconds
Ruled out if
Not a satellite provider but RTT always high: “Propagation delay (physical distance)” or “Detour routing.” Irregular spikes: points to Wi-Fi or mobile signal
Check with
Infra tools (no game code needed)
Learn more
LEO satellites are close (one Starlink hop takes 1.8–3.6 ms), so typical latency can be similar to a terrestrial connection. If the point where the ground station hands traffic to the internet (PoP) is far from the game server, though, the path gets longer by that much, and routing through laser links between satellites adds more latency. Measurement studies attribute the 15-second fluctuation to route reassignment that happens at the same moment worldwide; it is unrelated to switching between satellites. In-flight Wi-Fi latency varies widely by technology (satellite or ground-based cell towers), and systems that use geostationary satellites have the same long round trip described above.
Sources
ITU-T G.114: One-way transmission timeITU One-way propagation delay planning values for satellite links: 12 ms at 400 km altitude, 110 ms at 14,000 km, 260 ms at 36,000 km (geostationary)
Improving Starlink’s LatencyStarlink US peak-hour median 48.5 ms→33 ms, slowest 1% (p99) over 150 ms→under 65 ms (2024); one satellite hop 1.8–3.6 ms; routing over laser links adds latency, and so does the distance from the ground station to the internet access point (PoP)
A Multifaceted Look at Starlink Performance (WWW 2024)ACM Starlink reassigns routes every 15 seconds at the same moment worldwide; at these boundaries latency and throughput fluctuate and brief outages under 1 second occur (unrelated to switching between satellites); terminal↔satellite↔ground station latency about 40 ms
Probe Selection (RIPE Atlas REST API)RIPE NCC Select RIPE Atlas probes by country, region, ASN, or address prefix and run ping and traceroute from them