Online gaming broadband

Padz13

Hey I'm recently moving house and therefore out of eircoms exchange, the only reason I have broadband in is for online gaming and as you can imagine I'm pretty upset that I won't have good wired broadband for downloading movies and Xbox etc etc , I'm not keen on the idea of these 3 mobile broadband and Vodafone mobile broad bands and def not the qsat as I hear its terrible !! So can anyone let me know if the 3 mobile or Vodafone broadband is any good for online gaming (black ops 2) thanks guys

Headshot

I suppose it depends on the area you are in but generally its not good enough for gaming

It shouldnt even be called broadband anyway

Where are you located now?

ElChe32

When I visit my folks place I bring my gaming laptop, they're on vodafone broadband and to be honest it's not too bad*, download and upload speeds aren't the greatest, but it does the job. Downloading game updates would be annoying as hell though on that connection.




*Can ping most UK servers 30-45ms (CS and CS:GO servers) BF3 Servers UK/FR/DE/NL between 40-65ms

Padz13

Headshot wrote: »

I suppose it depends on the area you are in but generally its not good enough for gaming

It shouldnt even be called broadband anyway

Where are you located now?

Thanks for getting back to me , I'm up in Donegal living outside carrigart which is well outside letterkenny, I know the people across the road from me have 3mobile broadband and they seem happy enough ... But I can't imagine them playing black ops and the such lol

Padz13

ElChe32 wrote: »

When I visit my folks place I bring my gaming laptop, they're on vodafone broadband and to be honest it's not too bad*, download and upload speeds aren't the greatest, but it does the job. Downloading game updates would be annoying as hell though on that connection.




*Can ping most UK servers 30-45ms (CS and CS:GO servers) BF3 Servers UK/FR/DE/NL between 40-65ms

Well that sounds a little positive , if I'm going to get it I'm gonna go for the best package that I can get ... And yea I can only imagine how **** it would be trying to download games and DLC to my Xbox !! So you reckon that playing games online ain't to bad then? Your on pc wonder if console would make a difference , and what Games have u played ? Thanks for getting back to me

Headshot

Have you looked into wireless broadband in the area?

iMuse

Padz13 wrote: »

Well that sounds a little positive , if I'm going to get it I'm gonna go for the best package that I can get ... And yea I can only imagine how **** it would be trying to download games and DLC to my Xbox !! So you reckon that playing games online ain't to bad then? Your on pc wonder if console would make a difference , and what Games have u played ? Thanks for getting back to me

You will have a horrible connection for gaming on mobile Broadband, If your playing Black ops you will be on a red, yellow (1-2bar) most of the time which is unplayable if you usually play on a green bar.

dickwod1

I have a 3 dongle and its basically a step up from land line - speeds are normally about 1 mbps rarely they go up to about 3 mbps when everyone else is in work! (Dublin 15).

Padz13

iMuse wrote: »

You will have a horrible connection for gaming on mobile Broadband, If your playing Black ops you will be on a red, yellow (1-2bar) most of the time which is unplayable if you usually play on a green bar.

Thanks mate , that's what I was afraid off !! Well I'm now refusing to move to that area which is causing problems at home now !! Broadband is as important to me as running water ... In a few years TVs and everything will prob depend on broadband !

SPAWKER

Does anyone on here have an xbox working on vodafone mobile broadband ?
trying to get it to work but without any joy keeps telling me something about MTU ?

Padz13

That's what in trying to find out and if you read some of the posts it's supposed to be terrible connection !!

_Rois_

Does anyone on here have totally reliable, good high speed broadband (outside the Pale!)? Who's the best to go with for gaming?

uncle_sam_ie

Headshot wrote: »

Have you looked into wireless broadband in the area?

+1 This is what I have. 20Mb and pings stay below 30ms. Fixed wireless is what you'll want if you game.

GarIT

Just so you know speed wont affect gaming at all, the ping is all that matters. No game uses more than 1mb so just make sure you get the best ping you can.

MichealKenny

As Headshot and uncle_sam_ie mentioned, fixed wireless is the way to go. If all you want is online gaming, you can get a fairly cheap 2mbps symmetrical package from nearly anywhere, ping times will generally be better than eircom dsl. Also, because it's symmetrical, you can get 2mbps upload, meaning you can pull host more often in games.

Edit: didn't realise this was a 1 year old thread.

_Rois_

Thanks guys, I'm looking at Eircom fibre broadband. Is anyone else with them? Any good? (as you've probably noticed this sort of thing is not my strong suit!)

BeerWolf

Vodafone Mobile Broadband:






Not best in the world, but still does online gaming nicely.

KIERAN1

GarIT wrote: »

Just so you know speed wont affect gaming at all, the ping is all that matters. No game uses more than 1mb so just make sure you get the best ping you can.

I wouldn't say that packets travel faster from your home with better internet speeds. If you had a head on shooting fight on a mutiplayer game with someone else, and you both pressed the trigger at the exact same time. I would bet the guy with the faster internet speeds would win.

GarIT

KIERAN1 wrote: »

I wouldn't say that packets travel faster from your home with better internet speeds. If you had a head on shooting fight on a mutiplayer game with someone else, and you both pressed the trigger at the exact same time. I would bet the guy with the faster internet speeds would win.

A shot being fired in an online multiplayer game uses 1kb of data or less, having a higher bandwidth will make no difference, latency (ping) is all that matters.

Nonoperational

_Rois_ wrote: »

Thanks guys, I'm looking at Eircom fibre broadband. Is anyone else with them? Any good? (as you've probably noticed this sort of thing is not my strong suit!)

It's very good.

red_bairn

GarIT wrote: »

A shot being fired in an online multiplayer game uses 1kb of data or less, having a higher bandwidth will make no difference, latency (ping) is all that matters.

It matters when he needs to download new content or a new game. So you would want a 10meg line or higher, so you aren't waiting around too long.

GarIT

red_bairn wrote: »

It matters when he needs to download new content or a new game. So you would want a 10meg line or higher, so you aren't waiting around too long.

That is true but when looking for broadband specifically for gaming the bandwidth would be an afterthought for me.

x43r0

GarIT wrote: »

That is true but when looking for broadband specifically for gaming the bandwidth would be an afterthought for me.

I'd go along with this too

I have pretty poor bandwidth but the exchange is literally outside my window so my ping is usually in the 10-30ms range which does me fine

KIERAN1

GarIT wrote: »

A shot being fired in an online multiplayer game uses 1kb of data or less, having a higher bandwidth will make no difference, latency (ping) is all that matters.

Again i disagree. Saying internet speeds don't matter is nonsense.

Some factors that might affect ping include: network protocol engineering, Internet connection speed, the quality of a user's Internet service provider and the configuration of firewalls. Ping is also affected by geographical location.

Internet connection speeds do matter.

1kb of data is too low. How long you play for? I play Battlefield 4 on the x box 1 64 player multiplayer (game mode conquest) For me know way is the game only using 1kb of data, when i am online.

Shot fired using 1kb of data only can you back that statement up with a source?

GarIT

KIERAN1 wrote: »

Again i disagree. Saying internet speeds don't matter is nonsense.

Some factors that might affect ping include: network protocol engineering, Internet connection speed, the quality of a user's Internet service provider and the configuration of firewalls. Ping is also affected by geographical location.

Internet connection speeds do matter.

1kb of data is too low. How long you play for? I play Battlefield 4 on the x box 1 64 player multiplayer (game mode conquest) For me know way is the game only using 1kb of data, when i am online.

Shot fired using 1kb of data only can you back that statement up with a source?

Just imagine if a game even used 1mb per second any average gamer would break their usage allowance. There is no way you need more than 1mb for online gaming. Ping is not affected by internet speed or by geographical location, the only affect location has on it is the relative location between both ends of the communication, internet speed has no affect on ping.

Do you have any idea what you are talking about? How on earth would the length of time you play for affect the bandwidth needed?

A shot being fired in an online game would only need a minimal amount of data, you could 50 lines of information into a kb easily, there is no way you need that for a shot.

Source? I'm a Software developer.

MichealKenny

KIERAN1 wrote: »

network protocol engineering

What exactly do you mean by that? a ping is an icmp request, I don't follow what you mean when you say 'network protocol engineering'


Hopped into a game of Arma 3 with around 50 people in the server.



My computer uses about 100kbps on it's own, so Arma was using around 80kbps up and down.

Hank Scorpio

KIERAN1 wrote: »

Again i disagree. Saying internet speeds don't matter is nonsense.

Some factors that might affect ping include: network protocol engineering, Internet connection speed, the quality of a user's Internet service provider and the configuration of firewalls. Ping is also affected by geographical location.

Internet connection speeds do matter.

This post makes no sense. Latency is what determines how accurate you are in game, having 1 or 100Mb downstream makes no difference.

Here's a source, I've been gaming online mainly FPS with different connection speeds/ISP's since 1997.

The end.

jantheman91

nuxxx wrote: »

This post makes no sense. Latency is what determines how accurate you are in game, having 1 or 100Mb downstream makes no difference.

Here's a source, I've been gaming online mainly FPS with different connection speeds/ISP's since 1997.

The end.

If you've played so much online (especially FPS's) you'd know that while DL is irrelevant, UL is not.

If you want to have the best chance possible online, you need both good pings, and a good upload.

MichealKenny

jantheman91 wrote: »

If you've played so much online (especially FPS's) you'd know that while DL is irrelevant, UL is not.

If you want to have the best chance possible online, you need both good pings, and a good upload.

only if the game is p2p based, if it uses dedicated servers, upload speed doesn't really matter.

jantheman91

MichealKenny wrote: »

only if the game is p2p based, if it uses dedicated servers, upload speed doesn't really matter.

Competitive Console FPS is P2P.

MichealKenny

jantheman91 wrote: »

Competitive Console FPS is P2P.

nuxxx has been playing since 1997 so I don't really think it was on his console.

jantheman91

MichealKenny wrote: »

nuxxx has been playing since 1997 so I don't really think it was on his console.

The OP who originally made the thread plays on console.

MichealKenny

jantheman91 wrote: »

The OP who originally made the thread plays on console.

Yeah, you see the thing is, the posts from OP are over a year old, then this thread got necroposted, and then people started arguing for some reason.

Hank Scorpio

Yes just to clarify I meant PC games like quake

Mindfulness

MichealKenny wrote: »

As Headshot and uncle_sam_ie mentioned, fixed wireless is the way to go. If all you want is online gaming, you can get a fairly cheap 2mbps symmetrical package from nearly anywhere, ping times will generally be better than eircom dsl. Also, because it's symmetrical, you can get 2mbps upload, meaning you can pull host more often in games.

Edit: didn't realise this was a 1 year old thread.

What do you mean by fixed wireless? What is that? Apologies for the newb question.

BeerWolf wrote: »

Vodafone Mobile Broadband:






Not best in the world, but still does online gaming nicely.

Are you likely to get those speeds no matter where you are in the country or do you have to be beside a mast?

MichealKenny

Mindfulness wrote: »

What do you mean by fixed wireless? What is that? Apologies for the newb question.

Fixed wireless is like wifi on a larger scale. Wifi antennas that you will find in your home router and your mobile phones are omni-directional, meaning they don't have to be pointing in a particular direction for them to connect, which is great for convenience, but not very good for distance.
With fixed wireless, the antennas used are directional, so they have to be pointing in the general direction of one and other, but because of this, they can go longer distances(~20km as the crow flies, much better than dsl(~5km along the poles)).

Fixed wireless need line of sight though, so if you live in the middle of a forest, it is not going to work.


Think of it like this: The bandwidth, latency, and reliability are much like the wifi in your home, so not as good as a wired connection(ethernet, they actually tend to be better than adsl), but better than a 3g connection.

Providers usually offer between 2-20mbps and because they are not asynchronous like dsl, it means they can offer better upload speeds than dsl as well.

I am not an expert in the area by any means, but I do use this type of equipment to connect my grandmother's house to the internet, and it works really well.

Applications:

Mindfulness

MichealKenny wrote: »

Fixed wireless need line of sight though, so if you live in the middle of a forest, it is not going to work.

Ah, okay. Probably won't work for me given the ridiculous geography where I'll be moving to

MichealKenny

Mindfulness wrote: »

Ah, okay. Probably won't work for me given the ridiculous geography where I'll be moving to

Line of sight from the top of your house to the top of a really tall mast though, so you never know, check out Ireland Offline to see which providers are available, then you can get mast locations from those providers and look at elevation maps on google earth to see if you can get line of sight.

Also, even if you don't have direct line of sight, 1 line of trees isn't going to do that much damage, just as long as it's not a forest, haha.

This is all if you want to do research on your own, if not, just find out which providers are available and they will do the rest.

BeerWolf

Mindfulness wrote: »

Are you likely to get those speeds no matter where you are in the country or do you have to be beside a mast?

Connection's pretty consistent between 6MB to the 9MB shown above, ping's always around the 30-60ms mark.

I'm short of 4km from the mast.