Online games and modem lag

[rhy7s]

Just a thought that's flitted by while I'm sitting here. For two player gaming in an area where there is only modem connectivity, would dialling the other player direct give better network performance than via their respective ISPs? Obviously dial-in speed would be restricted to the analog 33.6k transfer rates with your average modem but I would assume you would traverse less network segments and thus latency would reduce? I'm not familiar with how the telcos route their phone and data traffic so I don't know if you would realise a benefit.

 

[XOR != OR]

I'm not entirely sure how that would work, but I imagine you'd just setup your own private subnet for the end points.

Anyway, that wasn't your question.

Yes, latency would be reduced. Not by a great deal, mind you. You are only cutting out one step ( analog -> digital ) for each side of the conversation, so where you would normally get 250ms latency, you'd end up with 230ms ( I think. Long time since I had a few modems to play with ).

 

[IceWindus]

It used to be back in the old days when me and my friend wanted to play Jedi Knight II, I'd call his phone number set in the options of the game and it would create a play session and thus, we could play head to head pretty decently.

Ah, those were the good old days.......