7 Mbps for online gaming ?

W

Webb

Limp Gawd
Joined
Aug 6, 2004
Messages
238
Okay I'm switching from Comcast to Verizon,in my area Verizon only offers max online speeds Download up to 7.1 Mbps
Upload up to 768 Kbps.

Is this speed enough for online gaming :confused:

I only play PC gaming Call of Duty series.

Thank you
 
should be fine. my speedtests usually shows me at 4.5 - 4.8mbps range and i get good solid connections all the time. latency is usually more of a factor than overal bandwidth.
 
find out what your latency is, that is probably more important than ul/dl speed.
regardless fios should be fine, but say going from 7ms to 100ms (ie:dsl) would be worse.
 
How do I find out about latency ? just call them up ? Didn't see any info on Verizon site.:mad:
 
Online multi player uses minimul bandwidth, 20-30k up/down combined max. Ping/latency is going to be the biggest issue. Only time bandwidth would be an issue is if you're downloading a map for multiplayer.
 
That bandwidth is way more than enough for online gaming. Way more. The key is latency.
 
Max download/upload throughput are largely irrelevant these days for gaming. If you're on broadband chances are it's enough for most games. What you should be concerned about is the latency. Which varies between servers.

There are technical ways of finding the individual latency of almost anything via the command prompt ping command but I think that's largely pointless for most people except the overly curious. Most in-game menus show the latency/ping. If you're still curious, open command prompt and type:

ping www.hardforum.com

Code: 
C:\>ping www.hardforum.com

Pinging www.hardforum.com [75.126.99.220] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 75.126.99.220: bytes=32 [U]time=34ms[/U] TTL=55
Reply from 75.126.99.220: bytes=32 [U]time=44ms[/U] TTL=55
Reply from 75.126.99.220: bytes=32 [U]time=35ms[/U] TTL=55
Reply from 75.126.99.220: bytes=32 [U]time=32ms[/U] TTL=55

Ping statistics for 75.126.99.220:
    Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 32ms, Maximum = 44ms, [U]Average = 36ms[/U]

C:\>

The underlined part is the latency of each ping to these forums, and the average is 36ms. Not bad.
 
My ping with Comcast while playing online was always below 50...
 
http://speedtest.net/ will give your speed including ping. only way to find out what verizon will do is to have someone run the test and share their results. You might be able to find some online....
in general lower is better, <100 for best play, <200 is manageable, 300 is laggy, 500 (1/2 second) will let you play some games (left4dead) others will have characters teleporting.
Note here the main latency is your first hop (or 2). Every jump to the actual server you play on will add to that. It is the first hop that cannot be reduced by joining a different server.
in dos use tracert www.google.com to see your hops.
 
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Webb said:
Okay I'm switching from Comcast to Verizon,in my area Verizon only offers max online speeds Download up to 7.1 Mbps
Upload up to 768 Kbps.

Is this speed enough for online gaming :confused:

I only play PC gaming Call of Duty series.

Thank you
Click to expand...
You don't even need that much. As long as the ping is good, you could get by with 768-256Kb.

Ping under 50MS is fine. Jitter should be 1-5MS but that really varries by a lot of factors out of your control (unless you have some serious interference on your side of the network).
 
Webb said:
So what my Latency should be ? Any specific number ?
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There's many factors than just "what number should it be.", each individual game has what could be widely considered acceptable latencies. An FPS is much more sensitive to latency than an MMORPG for example.

Some people might disagree, but since you seem to want actual numbers, here's a good starting point:

FPS - 150ms acceptable, <= 60ms ideal
MMORPG - 300ms acceptable, <= 100ms ideal

Basically, unless you're playing a game competitively, try to shoot for 150ms or less. So if you were playing Counterstrike: Source, that would mean not joining any servers where your latency was over 150ms in the server list menu. Me personally, I don't join any server where my latency is over 100.
 
Aaron11 said:
but I guess with Comcast you're limited to 250GB a month (but who really uses that much anyways).
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Me. Easily. That's why I cancelled. And with all these streaming services it's not hard to use more than that.
 
Aaron11 said:
Comcast can go up to 50mbps in my area because of DOCSIS 3.0 (not sure how you spell it). It's $100 a month, but I guess with Comcast you're limited to 250GB a month (but who really uses that much anyways).
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If you're getting an internet plan with 50 megs down i imagine it would be quite easy to go over 250gb a month.
 
I play on 3mbps, and have no troubles. usually have 80-150ping if the server is EST.
 
jadams said:
If you're getting an internet plan with 50 megs down i imagine it would be quite easy to go over 250gb a month.
Click to expand...

Its beyond "easy" I had this service for about 4 months and had to cancel it because I went over the 250 gig cap twice and got calls from comcast after they disabled my modem for a few hours until I spoke with them. Just retarded , there network can now handle 100mbps in my area per unit just on the internet side , bandwith caps are very annoying.

I ended up sticking with my Uverse service which has zero bandwith cap.
 
I remember in the old days, playing Quake on Gamespy, and people regularly had 200 - 300 ping.
 
I remember when I subscribed to GTE internet for a couple months before they went defunct, 90-150ms pings on a 56k modem while playing Quake! My mind was blown.
Bandwidth is probably the most important thing nowadays since you can finish your pr0n downloads faster during your gaming session.
 
Majinhoju said:
latency is usually more of a factor than overal bandwidth.
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tamshiwen said:
Ping/latency is going to be the biggest issue.
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This, this, this. Most people don't understand how networks work and confuse bandwidth with latency. Believe it or not a 256k line has enough bandwidth for nearly all multiplayer games. What's going to matter is your latency to the server, and the stability of your latency (ie how much does it fluctuate).

Pingtest is a quick way of seeing your latency to different locations. It's results won't be 100% accurate but its an ok-ish estimate.
 
PornoSatan said:
There's many factors than just "what number should it be.", each individual game has what could be widely considered acceptable latencies. An FPS is much more sensitive to latency than an MMORPG for example.

Some people might disagree, but since you seem to want actual numbers, here's a good starting point:

FPS - 150ms acceptable, <= 60ms ideal
MMORPG - 300ms acceptable, <= 100ms ideal

Basically, unless you're playing a game competitively, try to shoot for 150ms or less. So if you were playing Counterstrike: Source, that would mean not joining any servers where your latency was over 150ms in the server list menu. Me personally, I don't join any server where my latency is over 100.
Click to expand...

seriously? fps ping should be as LOW AS POSSIBLE. I had cable here in New Zealand and I used to ping 20ms or less to local UT2k4 servers, then when i moved and had to get ADSL i would ping 60ms and the difference was huge because I was used to 20ms.
 
I had between 35-60 pings with my cable connection.When I called Verizon the lady said that ADSL connections even at 7.1 Mbps would be greater than cable because it won't share with other users.

I don't know sounds like a bunch of crap...:mad:
 
haha, I play COD4 with 768kbps down

pings in the 60-80's

zero lag :)
 
SoAndSo said:
seriously? fps ping should be as LOW AS POSSIBLE. I had cable here in New Zealand and I used to ping 20ms or less to local UT2k4 servers, then when i moved and had to get ADSL i would ping 60ms and the difference was huge because I was used to 20ms.
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Read it again. I said <= is ideal. Ofcourse the lower it is the better.
 
masamune said:
I remember in the old days, playing Quake on Gamespy, and people regularly had 200 - 300 ping.
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The day I became an LPB was like...losing your virginity. The pearly gates to Heaven itself opened up before me. *insert angelic music here*.

I remember how much the HPBs hated the LPBs. The LPBs were mostly gamers in college with fat internet connections.
 
Webb said:
I had between 35-60 pings with my cable connection.When I called Verizon the lady said that ADSL connections even at 7.1 Mbps would be greater than cable because it won't share with other users.

I don't know sounds like a bunch of crap...:mad:
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it's not a bunch of crap, at least not for Cox cable here in Norfolk, IIRC your whole area "grid" so to speak has a limited amount of bandwidth, of course they don't tell you that when you sign up, but if there are a lot of people DLing, surfing the web, streaming video and gaming at one time the connection gets slower for each individual user...

that's how it was explained to me, and there have been times during the day that I have noticed internet slow downs, but in the middle of the night my connection flies...
 
it is a bunch of crap. The reason being that for cable your neighborhood shares essentially the same signal, spread over a few different channels. Now your telco will tell you that you have a dedicated line. Which is true... up until the central office or the dslam that you are connected to. At that point, you guessed it, your traffic is aggregated with everyone else's and you essentially share the same connection. In fact 'shared' lines are pretty much the way everything works for internet. "Dedicated" is at best only dedicated until the central office, then it is shared, although via a much larger pipe. franky dsl is obsolete and can no longer compete with cable. Same thing with FIOS. Once you hit 20Mbs with basic cable and a 15ms ping, it is damn hard to consider DSL viable any more.
 
Aaron11 said:
Comcast can go up to 50mbps in my area because of DOCSIS 3.0 (not sure how you spell it). It's $100 a month, but I guess with Comcast you're limited to 250GB a month (but who really uses that much anyways).
Click to expand...


i do.. :p but you can just get their business plan which is unlimited but you pay about 25 bucks more then consumer.. but they have far better customer service for those that have the business package..


for internet gaming you can get away with 125kB/s down 40kB/s up.. but it also depends on the games you play and how they transmit data.. but latency(ping) is far more important in the majority of games then connection speed is..
 
jiminator said:
it is a bunch of crap. The reason being that for cable your neighborhood shares essentially the same signal, spread over a few different channels. Now your telco will tell you that you have a dedicated line. Which is true... up until the central office or the dslam that you are connected to. At that point, you guessed it, your traffic is aggregated with everyone else's and you essentially share the same connection. In fact 'shared' lines are pretty much the way everything works for internet. "Dedicated" is at best only dedicated until the central office, then it is shared, although via a much larger pipe. franky dsl is obsolete and can no longer compete with cable. Same thing with FIOS. Once you hit 20Mbs with basic cable and a 15ms ping, it is damn hard to consider DSL viable any more.
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have you ever had FIOS...? everyone I know who used to have cable and went to FIOS was very, very happy and noticed a difference, others who moved and then had to go back to cable hate it and really miss the FIOS...
 
You game communicates with the server via text... like a really fast confusing IRC chat, it isn't sending video or any audio/graphics information(until you start using bluetooth).


Without chatting, a lot of games could probably still be played on 56k, text doesn't take much bandwidth. Latency is the key.
 
Verge said:
You game communicates with the server via text... like a really fast confusing IRC chat, it isn't sending video or any audio/graphics information(until you start using bluetooth).


Without chatting, a lot of games could probably still be played on 56k, text doesn't take much bandwidth. Latency is the key.
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Pretty much. Generally speaking I observe games to use between 1-15(kilobytes) of data per second for download and/or upload. It comes down to how much action is going on, how many people simultaneously are playing and last but not least the servers settings (IE in a Half Life/Source engine based game what the settings are for rate and tick rates which effects big time how much data you send to and receive from the server.)
 
Verge said:
You game communicates with the server via text... like a really fast confusing IRC chat, it isn't sending video or any audio/graphics information(until you start using bluetooth).


Without chatting, a lot of games could probably still be played on 56k, text doesn't take much bandwidth. Latency is the key.
Click to expand...

not too sure about that 56k bit, my pings on 56K were like 400. I thought 56K has an inherent slow latency.
 
Archer75 said:
Me. Easily. That's why I cancelled. And with all these streaming services it's not hard to use more than that.
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haha, yea, streaming services using 250GB a month. Good one.

Since when is streaming services code for torrenting a bunch of crap? That's almost 10GB of data a day. Please, tell me what streaming services you use.
 
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