DSL Speeds and online Gaming

[BomberBill]

I'm in Australia and our country has a monopoly situation in telecommunications that sees the major player extremely slow to roll out quick broadband products to its competitors customers (me). I'm on a 512k/128k broadband product and its simply not quick enough for online gaming; particularly UT2004 etc..

The best I can do is 1500k/256k for speed and I've made that change just now for next month so I can play the games I love online, smoothly and efficiently.

This is not without some cost to me though and I'm on a very tight budget as it is so it was not until after I made the changes with my Telco that I realised: hang on, this may be a waste to money. Will it be quick enough?

And that folks, is the question? Is a 1500k down/256k up going to be quick enough to play good games online with little to no lag?

P.S Truly, for a country as developed as mine its ridiculous that we dont have quicker/better broadband products on the market at affordable rates.

 

[illuminatirex]

i think ull be fine with that, what games are u planing to play? bf2 ans such with many players? if yes there might be a bit of lag with those 64 players , but i would say that might be caused by the ping issue not by ur connection.

 

[Guest]

A bigger bandwith will change absolutely nothing. Yours is by far wide enough to support every shooter along with a voice connection and somebody surfing on the same line. The problem is the response time; just test your pings to the servers your are playing on (everything above 150 ms is nasty, at least for me). Let me guess; you try to play on US servers?

 

[systemlord]

Its all about latency! If you have 100megs up & down and have high latencys then have those speeds is useless. Go to DSL Reports.com down load Dr. ping run it then use the tweek test and you can change your RWIN/ receive window in the process improve your ping big time!! When you run tweek test it tells you what you can do to improve your connection speed and gives you recomendations. When I first ran tweek tester it recomended change RWIN to between 84000 to 126000, I always try the lowest setting first 84000 and boy it made a huge differance!!! It also gives you helpful advice on how to improve just about everything! TRY IT even if you have high speed cable which I have. In the tweek test it asks you what operating system you have, DLS/cable/ISDN/satilite/etc... Make sure you input you advertist up & down speeds to get proper recomendations! GOOD LUCK!

 

[chuckshissle]

Your current line is good and no matter how fast a connection, there's always a lag. Now what kind of router do you use?

 

[BomberBill]

A bigger bandwith will change absolutely nothing. Yours is by far wide enough to support every shooter along with a voice connection and somebody surfing on the same line. The problem is the response time; just test your pings to the servers your are playing on (everything above 150 ms is nasty, at least for me). Let me guess; you try to play on US servers?

Yes, that makes perfect sense. Its all about the "ping". Currently I play UT2004 on US and UK servers and naturally things are no good.

Its the upload that I've noticed an improvement on, particularly for UT2004 courtesy of the 256k upload now applicable.

I want to play battlefield 2 but not with 64 players. :lol:

 

[BomberBill]

Its all about latency! If you have 100megs up & down and have high latencys then have those speeds is useless. Go to DSL Reports.com down load Dr. ping run it then use the tweek test and you can change your RWIN/ receive window in the process improve your ping big time!! When you run tweek test it tells you what you can do to improve your connection speed and gives you recomendations. When I first ran tweek tester it recomended change RWIN to between 84000 to 126000, I always try the lowest setting first 84000 and boy it made a huge differance!!! It also gives you helpful advice on how to improve just about everything! TRY IT even if you have high speed cable which I have. In the tweek test it asks you what operating system you have, DLS/cable/ISDN/satilite/etc... Make sure you input you advertist up & down speeds to get proper recomendations! GOOD LUCK!

Man, this is an excellent little piece. Thank you.

I'm at work this morning but will certainly have a crack at your suggestion tonight.

 

[BomberBill]

Your current line is good and no matter how fast a connection, there's always a lag. Now what kind of router do you use?

DSL 2 Capable one. Cant remember the specific name; will look tonight after work.

 

[chuckshissle]

How fast is that router? Anyways with my DSL connection, I switch from LinkSys to a D-Link DGL-4100 gaming router and got some major improvements on online gaming speed. It's so much smoother and got some low pings/latencies and most of all minimizing lag during gaming. Router can choke performance during online gaming so it would help really well if get a high-speed router specially for gaming like the DGL-4100. Along with DSL and this router gaming are optimized. So I have no more big lag worries and more fun.

http://games.dlink.com/products/?pid=371&#DGL-4100

 

[BomberBill]

Mate, I have:

D-Link DSL-302G

Thanks for the tips and advice.

 

[chuckshissle]

Well your hardware is good for gaming alright. I guess it's just your connection that's slowing you down during online gaming. Could you at least research of which type of internet service is great for gaming. I know I have to upgrade mine to get faster connection, but it's costly.

www.2wires.com

Visit the site above and then click on the "Test Meter" and then tell me what's the rate. It's not an accurate test but just a average or an idea of the bandwith of the connection.

As for me I have a DSL connection, the D-Link gaming router and D-Link modem on ethernet ports and I did that just for gaming. Kind of expensive especially the net fee which is about $50 U.S. a month

 

[BomberBill]

Ok, will do.

I can tell you that it is a 1500k download/256k upload connection.

I've had it for a week and pay $59 Aus per month to have it; a small price to pay for the enjoyment it is bringing.

Mate, I have to tell you, the improvement for games like UT2004 have been terrific; it plays almost as quick as single player and thats on US and UK servers too which is simply incredible.

So its all good for the moment. I havent had any time to test any of the above yet because I work long hours and crash of a night time; :lol: