A question about adsl caps and gameing

bizmark

lads i just want some advice from what i see as the very informed people on this board.

firstly how much would a game such as star trek bridge commander (i know im sad) use in cap bandwith i mean will i be left with 2 gig of bandwith after only one game that would p*** me off no end

2.esat or eircon.......i have esats 125 hour netsmart and am very happy with it cut my bill,s in more than half .but for games i would be more interested in ping,s (and oddly eircon will be cheaper in a few weeks with their adsl service) so what would u suggest eircon adsl or esat ?

thanks for anyhelp

Dustaz

Originally posted by bizmark
lads i just want some advice from what i see as the very informed people on this board.

Not the right board for it , but Broadband is
Moved.

firstly how much would a game such as star trek bridge commander (i know im sad) use in cap bandwith i mean will i be left with 2 gig of bandwith after only one game that would p*** me off no end

No matter how much you game your ass off, it wont affect your cap. Trust me on this one Its things like P2P apps that will eat up your cap

2.esat or eircon.......i have esats 125 hour netsmart and am very happy with it cut my bill,s in more than half .but for games i would be more interested in ping,s (and oddly eircon will be cheaper in a few weeks with their adsl service) so what would u suggest eircon adsl or esat ?

If its ping your after, Esats dsl gives a far superior ping. IBB and Leap also give pings in the 20-30 range. The best you can hope for with Eircom is 50, but more likely 70.
thanks for anyhelp

bizmark

seems like its time to call esat to my house so ........i wasnt going to get adsl because i use the net mostly for games and a cap seemed a death blow for me thankfuly i am wrong

thank u for your help
and sorry for posting in the wrong forum

bizmark

btw isnt esats adsl only 256k ? so how would it have a better ping

longword

Originally posted by bizmark
btw isnt esats adsl only 256k ? so how would it have a better ping

It's the nature of the service. Eircom turn on the "Interleave" option on their DSLAMs and refuse to turn it off - depending on their DSLAM equipment they may not be able to turn it off on a per-port basis, and even if it is possible, they may choose to deny it in order to avoid the additional engineering effort. Interleave spreads out the transmission of bits over time and adds a bit more error correction. The cost is additional latency. The gain is a more reliable link (lower packet loss) for a given distance from the DSLAM, and also increased useful reach.

ESAT seem to default to interleave off on their service. I don't know if it can be turned on per-user. Even though a 256k service can transfer fewer bits per second, if you look at each individual bit, it takes less time to get through the system. It's just like a 56k modem vs. a 64k ISDN link. Assuming say a decent 48k connection, you'd probably see about 120ms ping times on a really good day. Now if you were just looking at the bitrate and you were to scale that down to 64k, you'd expect the latency to be a third less - 80ms. In reality, because of the more direct transmission used by ISDN you get 30ms or better - faster than Eircom's 1Mbit ADSL service.

It's the Latency, Stupid

As for how much bandwidth you need to play games - I tested that recently with Return to Castle Wolfenstein on a large and full 50-player map. Playing three hours a day every day you'd use less than 2GB/month.

KdjaCL

For online gaming upload is more important than download so a 256/128 could possibly be better than a 512/128 if the interleave is off and the 128 is decent enough.

If 56k was 6kb/6kb up/down it would be fine for online play.

kdjac

longword

Bandwidth isn't particularly important, and games tend to make much less use of upstream than downstream (I'll measure that later if I remember). Logically all it has to upload is what you've done - what it has to download is that same information multiplied by however many players there are.

I'm not aware of any current game that exceeds 128kbit/sec and if you've got enough bandwidth to cover that you're fine. What's more important is the latency on the individual packets. Have a good read of that "It's the Latency, Stupid" link.

saik

5kB/sec most games ask for this or upwards when u use bb settings

300kB/min
17.6MB/hour
52.7MB/night - 3 hours a night uau.
1582MB/month - 3 hours every night for a 30 day month
1.55GB/month

3GB-1.55GB = 1.45GB left.

so if you played 6 hours a day in some games, you'd eat your cap.
the 4 gig cap adsl isn't out yet as far as i know

esat pings the best, but not in dublin, or something

do they only count ftp/filesharing apps?

longword

Originally posted by saik
do they only count ftp/filesharing apps?

Every packet that crosses your downstream channel counts.

Tazz T

Very useful information, Saik. I'd been wondering about that and couldn't think iof a way of measuring it.

I think a lot of ppl thinking about getting one of the new adsl services for gaming will find that useful.

Cheers.

Dustaz

Originally posted by bizmark
btw isnt esats adsl only 256k ? so how would it have a better ping

FYI Esat provide a 512 service as well as 256 service. As has been pointed out the downstream is a seperate issue from the latency

bizmark

so if you played 6 hours a day in some games, you'd eat your cap.

6 hours a day on a massive 50 player game isnt going to happen for me i perfere 1 v 1 or 4 v 4 type games (well maybe when star wars galaxies come out ill get that)

on the adverage day i use the net 4 hours a night and the 56k d/l 4-6 meg of info in that time so more than likely a aveage months surfing the web sites accounting for the extra time spent with always on connection would only be 8-10 megs a night so thats only 300 meg cap a month goody and as i dont use imesh or kazza (damn virus)
that leaves much space for games thats assuming i got this adsl cap figered out

ill read over that link in your post and use my tiny brain power to try and understand it:D

bricks

Originally posted by saik
5kB/sec most games ask for this or upwards when u use bb settings

300kB/min
17.6MB/hour
52.7MB/night - 3 hours a night uau.
1582MB/month - 3 hours every night for a 30 day month
1.55GB/month

3GB-1.55GB = 1.45GB left.

so if you played 6 hours a day in some games, you'd eat your cap.
the 4 gig cap adsl isn't out yet as far as i know

esat pings the best, but not in dublin, or something

do they only count ftp/filesharing apps?

hmmmm. I'd be sceptical of this. You gotta remmeber that you won't be playing continously sometimes you'll be in the lobby waiting for people to join etc. And it would most likely not be a 7 day a week thing. Also which games have bb settings?

STaN

Originally posted by bricks
hmmmm. I'd be sceptical of this. You gotta remmeber that you won't be playing continously sometimes you'll be in the lobby waiting for people to join etc. And it would most likely not be a 7 day a week thing. Also which games have bb settings?

Once your connected to a server you are transfering data, no matter if your standing looking at a virtual wall or jumping around the map firing grenades and killing everything in sight.

Most games can be tweaked if you have a bigger connection. Q3, TFC, CS, all the HL mods, UT etc etc

KdjaCL

All games after half life were made for BB ,you wont touch your cap on gaming alone.

By lobby i assume you use Gamespy ...ewww @ you

Get All seeing Eye a lot better.

kdjac

bk

Originally posted by longword
Bandwidth isn't particularly important, and games tend to make much less use of upstream than downstream (I'll measure that later if I remember).

I wouldn't mind a job where you have to play games for a few hours in order to "test" the network.

I know a person who was "forced" to play java applet games for a month, for testing purposes.

saik

people play an awful lot more on the weekends, and i didn't factor that in. so it balances out

longword

Originally posted by me
Bandwidth isn't particularly important, and games tend to make much less use of upstream than downstream (I'll measure that later if I remember).

I eventually remembered. Another solid hour on GamesDomain's RTCW Market Garden 50 player server with a /rate 20000 setting (the default rate setting for DSL/Cable is 10000, and 25000 for a LAN game). Came to 7MBytes upstream, 15MBytes downstream usage - the equivalent of roughly 15kbit/sec up and 35kbit/sec down. You'd want probably two or three times those average numbers in bursts to ensure a smooth game. A quality 256/128 connection would easily suffice. BTW, that downstream is more than the 12-13MB I measured last time I played because I nearly all the game near the front lines this time.

DeVore

Ok, this my understanding which I'm reasonably confident in (though of course I *could* be wrong )

1. Rate MASSIVELY effects how much you down load. Playing with rate set to 25000 will attempt to down load information CONSIDERABLY MORE OFTEN PER SECOND from the server. Hence a smoother game.

2. The activity of the people around you and of yourself DOES make some difference. This depends on the game but most serious game engines know when you need to be sent a "play this sound" instruction. If you are the other side of the map you wont be sent it. This can be seen in the effect that sometimes you can take a step forward (accross a map boundary) and you will hear sounds that if you take a step back you wont.

Theres actually a "cheat" for Q3 where you can tell it to demand everything and so hear sounds miles away... (I played with it on once, I think its been OSPed now... it was HELLA confusing actually and not much of a cheat hahah

3. You'll easily burn through 20-30Mb an hour with Q3-engine based games I'd have thought though I just did rough math in my head to determine that.

Can someone play a duel at rate 20000 or something and determine the difference between that and 10,000 ?
I would but I'm always on a lan with stuff happening...

DeV.

Coyote

The rate will make a diff in the amount that is downloaded but most servers have a max rate (7500-10,000) to stop one or two players eating all the bandwidth.(quake duel servers mabe diff)
just about all CS servers have limits.

for pings to games Esat is better if they are in your area.(as Interleave is turned off)
Interleave splits the info across more packets and so slow it down.

as for bandwidth no ips so far seems to be charging yet!
but Eircom's prices after you go over it is a insane €37 per GB.
(eircom reserves the right to charge 3c ex VAT per MB for material downloaded over and above the stated monthly allowance.)
.03 x 1024 = €30.72 + vat 6.45 = €37.17 per GB over
IRC seems to eat about 10mb a hour for me as well

captainpat

Thanks for doing the sums, they are much as I reckoned too. While I am also still living in fear of the "axe falling", it hasn't happened yet. This might be due to Kaza* being very slow, and my connection dropping 5-6 times/day (not blaming anyone). So I may not be going over the limit by much in practice.

Incidentally, Is there an official MegaByte definition for the i-Stream contract? (1024*1024 or 1000*1000). It might make a difference if you were marginally over.