FO online play bandwidth usage.

posted on May 25th, 2010, 10:25 am

ok well maybe some of you know here in south africa bandwidth is very expensive ~$0.30 per MB.

Im dying to play online but i wana know first how much bandwidth your average 4 player, 1 hour game is gona use up? 10MB? 20MB? etc

and what would you consider to be the minimum (but playable) connection speed that is needed? 56Kb/s? 128 Kb/s? etc

I really wana play online and kick some ass

posted on May 25th, 2010, 10:56 am

an online game usually takes up a good deal of the total bandwidth, the higher your bandwidth, example 5mb, the faster you connection is which makes your internet gaming experience better, but 56kb is playable but a very good connection is needed for that and even so, the ms could be anywhere from 300 to 600, a 128kb may do nicely, so if your going 128 kb per second that is

128kb x 60 seconds = 7,680 kb (10 seconds = 1,280kb)
7,680kb x 1 hour = 460,800 kb x 10 hours = 4,608,000 kb etc....


$0.3 x 460mb = $138.  i could be wrong, there could be other things that may get involved like line rental, taxes and such.

posted on May 25th, 2010, 11:28 am

ur forgetting canny that just because one might have a 386kb/s line doesnt mean that FO will use the full bandwidth, and if it did use the full bandwidth it might be for only short bursts at a time meaning for example if FO bandwidth was a maximum for say 2ms sec and then nothing for say 1ms then ur bandwidth usage is only 2/3*totalbandwidth... it all depends on how much bandwidth the game needs to have a smooth game.... One cant just say "yea i have a 100MB/s line and i play for 2 hours so therefore i use 2*60*60*100 = 720000MB to play a 2 hour game of FO" thats not logical and unrealistic.

posted on May 25th, 2010, 11:39 am

also canny latency is NOT dependent on bandwidth! im not talking about latency here im concerned about the costs

[Zebh]

posted on May 25th, 2010, 12:18 pm

Last edited by Zebh on May 25th, 2010, 12:20 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I did take some measurements of the network usage in a 1vs1 game and I remember that they were quite small (under 20 kb/s, I think).

I have noticed when the latencies between players are high  (over 200ms) then the game most likely lags.

posted on May 25th, 2010, 12:45 pm

ur forgetting canny that just because one might have a 386kb/s line doesnt mean that FO will use the full bandwidth, and if it did use the full bandwidth it might be for only short bursts at a time meaning for example if FO bandwidth was a maximum for say 2ms sec and then nothing for say 1ms then ur bandwidth usage is only 2/3*totalbandwidth... it all depends on how much bandwidth the game needs to have a smooth game.... One cant just say "yea i have a 100MB/s line and i play for 2 hours so therefore i use 2*60*60*100 = 720000MB to play a 2 hour game of FO" thats not logical and unrealistic.

didn't i say it usually take up a high amount of bandwidth? you ask for information and i gave it to you, if you were not interested in information of what it would cost you to play a game, then get a calculator out and do it yourself .

[deathincarn]

posted on May 25th, 2010, 12:53 pm

Last edited by deathincarn on May 25th, 2010, 1:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.

canny i think you confusing 'Bandwidth' with 'Throughput' 

playing a 2 hour game of fleet ops is never gona take 720GB of 'Thoughput'. at least not within the Phyisical Laws of the universe in which we live in.  only the Q could make such a thing happen