Riggster Posted March 29, 2005 Report Posted March 29, 2005 Hi I'm thinking of upgrading my ADSL connection from 750k to 1500k. My ISP quotes the following connection speeds: 750: 896kbit/sec (downstream) / 288kbit/sec (upstream) 1500: 1792kbit/sec (downstream) / 288kbit/sec (upstream) What makes the difference for the experience of online gaming? Is it the upstream or the downstream? Obviously, looking above, if it is the upstream which is most important, it would be pointless upgrading my connection. They also do a 3000k connection which has an upstream of 448kbit/sec, but I'm going to have to wait for the price to drop on that one...
JohnMid Posted March 30, 2005 Report Posted March 30, 2005 (edited) Gaming is two way traffic. Both upstream and downstream are important, because you need to send and receive game data to and from the server. It's the same when you're hosting a server, except the ammount of connexions you have to send/receive to/from is greater (ie the number of players who connect to your pc). In the two examples you give above, both will give the same performance if you're a "client". The faster download option might give a slight improvement in hosting (because you can receive more data from the clients in a second) but will still be limited by the upload speed, to the point where I think the download speed will still be largely irrelevant. In short, both will (in theory) be the same for gaming purposes. This is depending on the specific traffic generated by any given game, though- I think the 750 is plenty of downstream to receive data on a full grid of 20+ cars in Heat, for example. You might want more if you play those shooter games with 100 people at a time connected. Edited March 30, 2005 by JohnMid
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