1Mb/s Uncapped ADSL (Shaped or Unshaped)

Shaped just means it offers QoS (Quality of Service) controls, which means the ISP is providing higher priority to some protocols over others. That can help responses times, which are particularly important for VOIP applications and gaming.

However, there's a catch. The ISP can only control his *own* environment. So if slow responses times (what a gamer would measure as ping time) are beyond his network, it won't matter. Also, it assumes the ISP can isolate one protocol from another. For example, most VOIP apps use well known, VOIP-specific protocols. So it’s easy for the ISP to detect and give higher priority. OTOH, your game may simply be using http or some other protocol common to 1000's of other applications. So how is the ISP to separate your game from all those other applications? He may, perhaps based on port usage, not sure, but you’d need to verify that w/ the ISP. IOW, find out SPECIFICALLY how he uses shaping and what it really offers.

As far as 1Mbps, that pretty low on the scale of what’s available for most ppl these days over cable, or even DSL. But it may be enough, esp. since gaming has less to do w/ downloading (at least once you’d downloaded the game itself) and more to do w/ response times. But unless your ISP has some sort of limitation that prevents it, it should be possible to increase that w/ a better plan ($$) should it prove necessary.

Thanks for the quick response.  

Well, I stay in South Africa and everything technological is more expensive hear by us. Our 1mb/s line rental is about $40 per month. So I was hoping I could get something fast enough to download and be able to game (separately of course).

But thanks for the explanation. I'll do some more research on what you've mentioned.