Xbox Live broadband usage

tommy21

As a soon to be owner (this week:)) of an Xbox, I just wondered does anyone keep track of how much broadband usage occurs per gaming session. Obviously this will vary from game to game but I wanted to get an idea. My download limit is 50gb a month so worried it won't be enough for serious gaming!

OnTheBalls

I think it's something like 5 hours or 4.5 hours per GB. To be honest I game constantly and download ****loads gigs of stuff from torrents and rapidshare share everyday! Probably way over the limit. Eircom don't give a **** though so neither do I. Although the pirate bay isn't working for me anymore? Anyone any idea what thats about?

tommy21

OnTheBalls wrote: »

I think it's something like 5 hours or 4.5 hours per GB. To be honest I game constantly and download ****loads gigs of stuff from torrents and rapidshare share everyday! Probably way over the limit. Eircom don't give a **** though so neither do I. Although the pirate bay isn't working for me anymore? Anyone any idea what thats about?

Well despite living in the middle of the city centre (Cork) and that a parallel street has it, I can't get any line broadband, be it Eircom, Chorus or whatever due to split lines. So I get mine via satellite which is more expensive but works well and is my only option. Never gone over before so worth testing lol. Pirate bay has been blocked by Eircom so you can't access it if your with them. Still 5 hrs per gig is pretty good, can anyone confirm?

EGriff

I can't confirm but i heard its more like 100MB per hour, so would be 10 hours per gig.

tommy21

So far we have 100mb per hour and 200mb per hour - any additional? Cheers

robinph

It's probably not even anywhere near either of those guestimates if all your doing is playing multilayer games. You'll get through more of your download allowance from other data downloads on the PC or other items you download via the Xbox marketplace.

50g is plenty and you'll not get anywhere near that limit just from gaming.

Ricky91t

This is an issue i have,If i could figure out a way to monitor it cheaply i will :pac:

greenman09

Wats the best provider for xbox live internet conn. Have eircom but find them bit expensive. Wat im asking isd the conn speed 1MB or 2MB. Working off 3MB conn atm

Y2J_MUFC

I'm not sure how correct those guestimates are. Gaming has very, very little effect on helping you reach your download limit. I've had all day gaming sessions that used less than 250mb (and that was with at least one other playing for an hour or two on a different 360).

Just to give you an idea, a 10 min match on FIFA08 was about 4mb for me. If you played 6 matches (without counting time going through menu's, setting up your teams, half time, extra time etc), that would be 24mb for the hour of non-stop gaming.

Its the movies, tv shows, games, demos, dlc that will drive you over your 50gb limit

dunworth1

tommy21 wrote: »

Well despite living in the middle of the city centre (Cork) and that a parallel street has it, I can't get any line broadband, be it Eircom, Chorus or whatever due to split lines. So I get mine via satellite which is more expensive but works well and is my only option. Never gone over before so worth testing lol. Pirate bay has been blocked by Eircom so you can't access it if your with them. Still 5 hrs per gig is pretty good, can anyone confirm?

as far as i know you cant do gaming properly with a satellite broadband connection due to ping bring too high. you need a low ping to be able use gaming online

tommy21

Y2J_MUFC wrote: »

I'm not sure how correct those guestimates are. Gaming has very, very little effect on helping you reach your download limit. I've had all day gaming sessions that used less than 250mb (and that was with at least one other playing for an hour or two on a different 360).

Just to give you an idea, a 10 min match on FIFA08 was about 4mb for me. If you played 6 matches (without counting time going through menu's, setting up your teams, half time, extra time etc), that would be 24mb for the hour of non-stop gaming.

Its the movies, tv shows, games, demos, dlc that will drive you over your 50gb limit

the legal ones you mean of couse? Cheers for the info

tommy21

dunworth1 wrote: »

as far as i know you cant do gaming properly with a satellite broadband connection due to ping bring too high. you need a low ping to be able use gaming online

Jesus I hope not! I don't think this is correct, broadband is broadband after all and I would not suffer a contention ratio (if that's what its called?) unlike say an Eircom user.Anyone shed any light?

edit: sigh, you may in fact be right. Did some research which says generally its awful for gaming. I may sell Xbox after all if it ever comes!

thegoth

OnTheBalls wrote: »

I think it's something like 5 hours or 4.5 hours per GB. To be honest I game constantly and download ****loads gigs of stuff from torrents and rapidshare share everyday! Probably way over the limit. Eircom don't give a **** though so neither do I. Although the pirate bay isn't working for me anymore? Anyone any idea what thats about?

Yes. Eircom have banned it. Switch to BT Ireland

kaimera

thegoth wrote: »

Yes. Eircom have banned it. Switch to BT Ireland

dont you mean vodafone?

event

tommy21 wrote: »

Jesus I hope not! I don't think this is correct, broadband is broadband after all and I would not suffer a contention ratio (if that's what its called?) unlike say an Eircom user.Anyone shed any light?

edit: sigh, you may in fact be right. Did some research which says generally its awful for gaming. I may sell Xbox after all if it ever comes!

do you have wireless or satellite?

you said satellite but i dont think any satellite provider has a traffic cap of 50gig

who is your ISP?

tommy21

event wrote: »

do you have wireless or satellite?

you said satellite but i dont think any satellite provider has a traffic cap of 50gig

who is your ISP?

You know what I'm not sure! My ISP is http://www.novanetworks.ie/ They clamped a square dish to side of my house so assummed it was satellite? I've sent them email, awaiting response.

Jev/N

IIRC it uses more upload than download so it all depends if your ISP takes that into account in your cap or if it's just a download cap?

naughto

try using 02 broadband if u are in there coverage u will be able to play xbox live i have it and i have no problems whats so ever u just need to make sure u chage the setting,if u check u tube under the heading 3g mobile and xbox live i no i said i was using 02 but chevk 3g as u will get a better number of replys .pm me if u still need help

tommy21

I received the following response from my provider:

"Thank you for your email. Our service is not a satellite broadband service. It is delivered by terrestrial (ground-based) base stations. (Just as well as I am bad enough with heights servicing these ones!).

Satellite has horrible latency (about 400-500ms) due to the distance the signal has to travel. Our wireless system has VERY low latency (even lower than DSL/phone broadband). I just did a ping test from our "head-end" where we join the fibre network, downstream to your house and the round-trip time is about 4.3ms. Upstream to the internet is about 13.6ms (to the BT DNS server as an example). Therefore your latency is only about 18ms to the internet. To an average game server out in the world, it will be more but the point is your broadband connection has about the lowest latency you could get, so get ready to set the Xbox on fire!"

SOUNDS GOOD TO ME

TheChrisD

Sounds as if the rep who dealt with your e-mail definitely knows what he's talking about and has had some past experiences with laggy games

NilByMouth

click on this link and do a test it will tell you what your upload/download speeds are like and whats your ping is as well
www.speedtest.net

as for the pirate bay being blocked by eircom.It is easily worked around.Do a quick search of this site and you will find out how:Dalso its gone legit as a website so you will have to go else where for illegal downloading im afraid

tommy21

NilByMouth wrote: »

click on this link and do a test it will tell you what your upload/download speeds are like and whats your ping is as well
www.speedtest.net

as for the pirate bay being blocked by eircom.It is easily worked around.Do a quick search of this site and you will find out how:Dalso its gone legit as a website so you will have to go else where for illegal downloading im afraid

That was my result from speedtest - does it back up his claim? Sorry I've not much info past daytoday usage of computers!

edit: from online gaming I know that ping is good at least

dunworth1

tommy21 wrote: »

That was my result from speedtest - does it back up his claim? Sorry I've not much info past daytoday usage of computers!

edit: from online gaming I know that ping is good at least

that should be fine for online gaming

Ricky91t

tommy21 wrote: »

I received the following response from my provider:

"Thank you for your email. Our service is not a satellite broadband service. It is delivered by terrestrial (ground-based) base stations. (Just as well as I am bad enough with heights servicing these ones!).

Satellite has horrible latency (about 400-500ms) due to the distance the signal has to travel. Our wireless system has VERY low latency (even lower than DSL/phone broadband). I just did a ping test from our "head-end" where we join the fibre network, downstream to your house and the round-trip time is about 4.3ms. Upstream to the internet is about 13.6ms (to the BT DNS server as an example). Therefore your latency is only about 18ms to the internet. To an average game server out in the world, it will be more but the point is your broadband connection has about the lowest latency you could get, so get ready to set the Xbox on fire!"

SOUNDS GOOD TO ME

I wish my ISP were that enthusiastic about anything :pac:

tommy21 wrote: »

That was my result from speedtest - does it back up his claim? Sorry I've not much info past daytoday usage of computers!

edit: from online gaming I know that ping is good at least

And that is one hell of a good ping,During peaking hours I could be playing my xbox on treble that and off peak about double..

I'm also on a wireless ISP but it seems yours supply a far better service for gaming!

NilByMouth

Nothing wrong with your connection at all thats fine for online gaming.

As some one above said it will be the downloading of music/films that will eat up your download limit.

Happy fragging:D

tommy21

Ricky91t wrote: »

I wish my ISP were that enthusiastic about anything :pac:



And that is one hell of a good ping,During peaking hours I could be playing my xbox on treble that and off peak about double..

I'm also on a wireless ISP but it seems yours supply a far better service for gaming!

Its looking good so! Yeah well lucky for me as its the only broadband I can get living in the centre of Cork City!

tommy21

NilByMouth wrote: »

Nothing wrong with your connection at all thats fine for online gaming.

As some one above said it will be the downloading of music/films that will eat up your download limit.

Happy fragging:D

Tell me about it (re the second)!

NilByMouth

Another thing before you start p-laying online is that you will probabaly have to set your routers security firewall setting to low(normally set at medium as default)for you to connect to xbox live.

Dont worry about it as long as any of the pc's in the house have their firewalls on you will be safe enough

faceman

tommy21 wrote: »

Jesus I hope not! I don't think this is correct, broadband is broadband after all and I would not suffer a contention ratio (if that's what its called?) unlike say an Eircom user.Anyone shed any light?

edit: sigh, you may in fact be right. Did some research which says generally its awful for gaming. I may sell Xbox after all if it ever comes!

As long as your ping is less than 130ms you should be grand.

When i had Breeze with IBB I had ping on average of that and lower and never had any issues with gameplay.

Use www.speedtest.net to test your connection.

PerrinV2

Is there anything up on the xbox website about usage?

TheMooseInNam

PerrinV2 wrote: »

Is there anything up on the xbox website about usage?

Nothing has ever been officially said about usage of bandwidth within XBL (I think). However, I can track usage through my router and here's a breakdown for the various usage rates to expect.

Firstly, you will stream data up and down at the same time when using XBL for online gaming. Take this into account, as some ISP's have a download limit but don't include the upload in that, others do.

On an average multiplayer game like CoD if you connect to someone else's server, you will use a download and upload bandwidth amount of aprox. 6-10 Kbps each way even if you are in party chat. It's an extremely low amount of data and without doing exact calculations, would probably take over a day to download just 1 gig of data, probably longer.

What would increase the amount of data being transferred would be the following:

1. Playing a game where you are the host of the server. Being the host can require up to ten times the bandwidth but generally 20-60 Kbps depending on the game. Basic broadband packages are generally no good for hosting as they usually only have about 12Kbps upload speed.
2. Downloading Game Demos, add-ons and map packs, of course. However, you'll always be told what size the are, first.
3. Using the XBL Vision camera to video chat.

Hope this helps you out a bit.

PerrinV2

Ok kool,could anyone estimate how much you would use up in say 5 hours of cod,not hosting of course.

TheMooseInNam

PerrinV2 wrote: »

Ok kool,could anyone estimate how much you would use up in say 5 hours of cod,not hosting of course.

125 megs every 5 hours or so, just on download, the same on upload. I wasn't too far off, that's 40 hours play per gig and twenty hours per gig if your ISP includes upload in your monthly cap.

Creasy_bear

OnTheBalls wrote: »

I think it's something like 5 hours or 4.5 hours per GB. To be honest I game constantly and download ****loads gigs of stuff from torrents and rapidshare share everyday! Probably way over the limit. Eircom don't give a **** though so neither do I. Although the pirate bay isn't working for me anymore? Anyone any idea what thats about?

eircom charge you €2 for every gb you go over.

Check your bill, if your going over believe me eircom will be charging you for it(as they were with me)

Download the usage thingy off the eircom website, its handy for keeping an eye on it.

CR 7

Creasy_bear wrote: »

eircom charge you €2 for every gb you go over.

Check your bill, if your going over believe me eircom will be charging you for it(as they were with me)

Download the usage thingy off the eircom website, its handy for keeping an eye on it.

Is that after they switched you to NGB? As of my last bill they're not charging me for going well over it, I'm in an area that won't be getting NGB for quite a while.

PerrinV2

Also just wondering does anyone know of some program you can use to monitor your broadband usage?

dunworth1

there is a feature on dd-wrt with can monitor internet use by all devices on your network

but dd-wrt only works with some routers

http://www.dd-wrt.com/site/index

other programs can only monitor the computer its installed on.


also to note 1 hour of online gaming only uses approximately 4.6mb