DSL Speed and Online Gaming

zepherus · Oct 12, 2005

I'm hoping someone here can give me a little help, as I have a question about something I know little about...and I'll bet I get some good suggestions from the fine folks on these forums!

I'm planning on upgrading my connection from dial-up to DSL ( I know...welcome to the 21st century ), and I was wondering if 256K DSL would be fast enough for online gaming ( WoW, EQ, etc ). It looks like 256K is all that's available from my provider, and I just don't know if that's fast enough. I myself don't do the online gaming thing ( but the girlfriend does ), so this is something I have no experience with.

Any thoughts or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!

Zepherus

ssampier · Oct 12, 2005

I don't game, but consider this: You may not have the fastest connection currently available in North America, but DSL is substantially better Internet experience than dialup. 256 kbps is somewhat slow for DSL, but still is roughly 4x times the speed of your dial up connection. You never tie up your phone line, never have to connect (this is technically not true with PPoe), and can easily add multiple computers and/or wireless networking.

Since you mentioned this is the only speed they offer, the only other alternative is satellite. Satellite has considerably more expensive equipment and the speed is slower when factor the propagation delay (the time it takes the satellite signal to by-pass the atmosphere and reach your satellite dish). I'd go for it as long as the price is right and the contracts aren't too draconian.

Rackhir · Oct 12, 2005

Speed is not necessarily the most important factor in gaming. Your connection's latency is often going to be more important. The latency is basically the amount of time it takes for data to travel from your machine to the server and/or back to your machine. With most games they have tried to minimize the amount of information that's transmitted, so speed hopefully shouldn't be critical.

Latency is not necessarily related to the speed of your connection either. Its more influenced by things like the distance to your POP, network connections and network traffic. Pretty much any broadband connection will have much lower latencies than a dial up connection, if for no other reason than the analogue to digital conversion that a modem has to do is skipped.

Check the website http://www.dslreports.com/ you might be able to get some good information on options for service there.

Truth Seeker · Oct 12, 2005

Here, use this site to test your speed, and see if you are gaming qualified. As DL stream is important to play the game, UL is also...especially when you have give a feedback response.

zepherus said:
I'm hoping someone here can give me a little help, as I have a question about something I know little about...and I'll bet I get some good suggestions from the fine folks on these forums!

I'm planning on upgrading my connection from dial-up to DSL ( I know...welcome to the 21st century ), and I was wondering if 256K DSL would be fast enough for online gaming ( WoW, EQ, etc ). It looks like 256K is all that's available from my provider, and I just don't know if that's fast enough. I myself don't do the online gaming thing ( but the girlfriend does ), so this is something I have no experience with.

Any thoughts or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!

Zepherus

DSL Speed and Online Gaming

zepherus

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ssampier

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Rackhir

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