Upload speed and online gaming

I've just moved from O2W to TTB LLU due to O2 pulling the plug, but my upload speed isn't great. This package has a stated 1 meg upload but my modem only syncs at 0.7 meg, after noise reduction the connection achieves 0.6 meg up. Xilo were pretty good at trying a couple of tweaks and according to TalkTalk that's as good as it gets, from them at least (I was getting 1.4meg without issue from O2).

So, how fast up does a decent gaming connection need do you think? I guess the proof is in the playing but the trouble is I've got nothing to compare it with as I've only just got into this multi-player lark. I do seem to be constantly surprised by psychos with shotguns in Gears of War 3, though this could equally be due to me being old and rubbish at gaming. The connection itself otherwise is pretty decent with a solid latency.

Edited by deleted (Sun 22-Dec-13 20:16:08)

This is the kind of question that you want someone else to answer, for all sorts of reasons. Though, in the absence of better informed and more technically knowledgeable folk, I will give you my two pence worth.

It's been a while since I was on ADSL (or seems so at least) but I'd say 600k up is all right for gaming. I'd normally say it's more about your latency and jitter (variability of latency as I understand it) than sheer throughput (bandwidth) though of course having adequate bandwidth does matter but I think 600kbps is adequate enough. Your latency might be a better benchmark to go by, but...

You're playing on the Xbox 360, a console. And there can be huge issues involved with what is termed 'match making', that is grouping of players in a game (supposedly) dependent on their average latencies. If a game is hosted by another player rather than at a common and separate server on another line somewhere, then you can sometimes be at a disadvantage if you've got better latency than others and are the host. But this depends on the game.

So far, it's been Call of Duty and Battlefield games that have been particularly criticised for unfairly penalising users who are hosting games due to seemingly overly aggressive 'latency compensation'. If you're hosting a game on your device then you're effectively 0 milliseconds away in time and would expect a bit of an advantage over other players depending on how far away they were from you (and their latency). I don't know if this applies to Gears of War 3 though. Timey used to play that a lot so he might know.

Things to check are your 'ping'. On a PC you can run a command prompt from the run box by typing cmd and pressing enter. You get a black dos-like box and you just type: ping bbc.co.uk or wherever to see what your latency is like (how many milliseconds it takes for a packet of data to get there and back). You can also ping a game server if you have the IP address. What you want to see is a nice steady ping without any spikes or packet losses (time outs) and preferably as low as possible, something under 30ms would be very good but you can play games okay up to about 130ms in my experience without being so severely affected by 'lag', the game becomes unplayable as you're too out of sync with what's going on.

Best to post router (line) stats and do some ping tests. There are various online sites and tools which help. And lastly, most of suck at gaming online here at least some of the time. And some all of the time (or so it seems). It's taken me over 100 hours on Battlefield 4 to get more competent at it to start scoring in the top half of the rankings. I'm not a hardcore gamer but I'm experienced in some of the older Battlefield games so have some advantage over totally newcomers. You've got to give it time no matter how good you are to understand the mechanics of a game and in a game like Call of Duty or Battlefield you need to understand the map as well and how it's being played like watching for players re-spawning on squad members and understanding where the hot spots are going to be.

I guess you're playing Horde mode so that might be a bit more simple, I don't know? Even a simple game will have people who are amazingly good at it as they've been playing it loads and it really requires online experience to get good against other human players. Bots don't compare at all to real intelligence. Even Nelly and Swanny can outwit the average bot sometimes. Just checking if they're reading this. I doubt it. And Timey won't be either. But you can't be as bad as him.

Edited by deleted (Sun 22-Dec-13 21:31:37)

Cor what a full answer, thank you.
My ping to the Beeb is 18 millisecs so no worries there. TBBs speed test clocks my ping at 40 ms so all is well on that front.
Yes I did start off with Horde mode which was great and I didn't get wasted too quickly, but Team Death Match is another matter. It's only a matter of time before some tooled up crazy rushes me and I'm toast!

I guess I am just old and rubbish

I think Gears uses dedicated servers, so whatever you get it should at least be consistent. That said I think it still uses client side hit detection (I could be wrong) so your apparently reasonable latency means you will, as SPOOK surmised, rely on decent matchmaking for a good game experience.

In any case, to be successful in team deathmatch you need your hackles up and if you don't know the map well enough you will always be at a disadvantage. If you can, play map domination style games when you are a beginner. They help you to learn the maps and you will have a better idea of where the enemy is going to converge, rather than being stalked personally in TDM.

Timey has great reaction speed and he's in bus pass territory, so there's hope for everybody. He dropped fifty pence earlier and it hit him on the back of the head.

Horde mode is the way the best part of gears 3 and the only reason i kept my Xbox 360 until the death and there stupid originally Xbox One Reveal��Thats was the time i kicked Microsoft into touch.

Horde is a good way of getting some serious practice for taking your skills for when you actually play team death or death match .

Personally just play Horde all the time with 3 other players because its brilliant fun and the stupid idiots that are people can fly ruined the latest version of Gears called Gears Judgment by taking away the best mode in it Horde ?

So don't ever consider getting that game.

Oh and nice to see and new face in the gaming forum,can not remember you ever posting in here before.

As for your connection all i know is you need very little bandwidth apparently to have good online games its based on other criteria such as Spook mentioned.

I remember the day with my Sega Dreamcast and my dial up and 28k modem playing Quake 3 arena it ran as sweet as a nut,granted its was only 4 players and its not exactly a Graphical delight but played lovely all the same.

Watch your cheek Nelly else I'm going to hit this Panic Button and call the warden over to deal with you�..Cheeky feeker .

The only 50 I'm likely to drop won't be the coin variety either it will be paper Money

Chamone Mutha Feeker �.Eh heeeeee

Edited by time2die (Mon 23-Dec-13 00:48:19)

Picking up COD Ghosts tomorrow.....bolt your back doors.

What Christmas Eve ? Why Tomorrow and not today�You doing some Christmas Busking again

Welcome to the forum Bernado
Don't worry about being old, you'll never be as old as Old Man Timey. He's so old that home help have to play his games for him

Haha, at 50, it's nice to know I'm not completely past it then. This online gaming stuff has bitten me hard, though it did freak me out a bit when I started as up to now I had all the messaging stuff turned off and had no idea. I was playing GRAW 2 (I did say I was old) for my first look at multiplayer and I was so outclassed I stopped playing only to get some message from an American chap asking me back - I turned off the Xbox and shut the curtains

Hi Bernado. I still remember the first time I played Counter Strike Source. From having played Battlefield 2 a lot and various games like Unreal Tournament 2 online, I lulled myself into a false sense of security that I was experienced online and would do ok. How wrong can you get! I was slaughtered over and over even though we were playing one team against the other. I just kept running around trying to find where people had gone to only to run round a corner and kerbam! I was dropped stone dead, just like that.

I did learn eventually that this game was very unlike others in that it only took a couple of bullets to drop you and you had to treat it a lot more like real life: get shot and you're dead. Not like BF2 or UT2 where you could survive being hit with an RPG rocket and knowing you could soak up a fair few rounds you'd be more reckless. Soon I was holding my own and scoring much higher (a big difference from not scoring at all). Strangely I had a really low ping - 5ms - the lowest I've ever had connecting to a game and it was sweet as a nut. But like Nelly says, this good experience might be a lot more down to the game than simply my latency as such. Latency (ping) should be seen as a diagnostic tool really, to check there's nothing wrong like packet loss, which could suggest problems somewhere in the actual ISP's routing, their 'backhaul' or a line fault etc. Also, there's error correcting or interleaving applied to many broadband connections by default so this adds latency, usually around 10ms or so but it can improve the reliability of ADSL connections that are considered marginal, in that they're at the margin of what can be considered a good line. If you're close to the exchange you might consider having interleaving (error correction) switched off or lowered to a 'fast path' profile. This aids latency usually at a small cost to downstream bandwidth synchronisation as I understand it (or try to).

Most of us are getting on a bit here. We're all 'mature' gamers. <Cough> Ahem. Some more mature than others... Old Nelly must be taking loads of cod liver oil capsules to be able to come up with such smart one liners so early in the morning. Nothing wrong with his mental faculties at all (well, not that way at least). We just need practise is all. Maybe more than the youngun's as they play games all the time but we're smarter <cough cough> so we have an advantage there don't we at least? Yeah, the more we play the more they pay.

Your ping seems all right then, eh? As MrNelster has said, there's other stuff going on like client or server side hit detection that work out when you're dead and who hit who - it all gets a bit messy though and there's a lot of complaint about the whole subject online as it's apparently not easy coding something that's meant to be real time action when everybody is connecting at a slightly different rate and so behind time by varying amounts. Hope you enjoy it and have a good xmas!

In reply to a post by mrnelster:

Timey has great reaction speed and he's in bus pass territory, so there's hope for everybody. He dropped fifty pence earlier and it hit him on the back of the head.

Cracks me up!

Edited by deleted (Mon 23-Dec-13 13:38:14)

In reply to a post by time2die:

What Christmas Eve ? Why Tomorrow and not today�You doing some Christmas Busking again

Now there's an idea?

Working away today and knew I wouldn't be back in time for shopping. Just got in, drenched and freezing. Brrrrr humbug you might say.

You playing tonight?

Swanny just got a early Christmas present ....A Sense Of Humour.....


I will show you old I am when I eventually catch you online one day and teach you the art of how to play a FPS like Battlefield

Graw 2 hey ....that's a old game....Stick with Gears 3 and Horde mode or get yourself a Playstation 4 and join Dads Army ,Nelly is our leader ,That's Mrnelster on these forums.

He's aloud out of the Home weekends and likes a little bit of online Gaming once his hearing aids have fully charged .

Swanny wanted to join but it's only for people with next generation consoles and a Sega mega drive just don't qualify...

He keeps sending us begging letters but we ain't having any of it...

Infact mate I would say your one of the younger gamers on these forums ,even if the games you play are about 5 years out of date

Not Blacklight Retrubution I ain't ...have to teach you to use that Playstaion network App as I don't think you got the hang of it...I send you 6 messages and you answer with a one liner 3 days later .

What game have you in mind,battlefield or Killzone and when you going to sort out that VPN online connection thingy ....

Best contact me on the network app on your phone Grandad ,ask one of the girls how to use it and to read out the messages I send you

And when do you actually break up then,and what days ,evenings are you allowed to play over Christmas wife and daughters permitting

Oh by the way Swanny wants to be in our clan but I said we only take mature minded adults and you need a Upgrade....So on both counts he Failed

Edited by time2die (Mon 23-Dec-13 18:57:32)

In reply to a post by SPOOKish:

Hi Bernado. I still remember the first time I played Counter Strike Source. From having played Battlefield 2 a lot and various games like Unreal Tournament 2 online, I lulled myself into a false sense of security that I was experienced online and would do ok. How wrong can you get! I was slaughtered over and over even though we were playing one team against the other. I just kept running around trying to find where people had gone to only to run round a corner and kerbam! I was dropped stone dead, just like that.

I did learn eventually that this game was very unlike others in that it only took a couple of bullets to drop you and you had to treat it a lot more like real life: get shot and you're dead. Not like BF2 or UT2 where you could survive being hit with an RPG rocket and knowing you could soak up a fair few rounds you'd be more reckless. Soon I was holding my own and scoring much higher (a big difference from not scoring at all). Strangely I had a really low ping - 5ms - the lowest I've ever had connecting to a game and it was sweet as a nut. But like Nelly says, this good experience might be a lot more down to the game than simply my latency as such. Latency (ping) should be seen as a diagnostic tool really, to check there's nothing wrong like packet loss, which could suggest problems somewhere in the actual ISP's routing, their 'backhaul' or a line fault etc. Also, there's error correcting or interleaving applied to many broadband connections by default so this adds latency, usually around 10ms or so but it can improve the reliability of ADSL connections that are considered marginal, in that they're at the margin of what can be considered a good line. If you're close to the exchange you might consider having interleaving (error correction) switched off or lowered to a 'fast path' profile. This aids latency usually at a small cost to downstream bandwidth synchronisation as I understand it (or try to).

Most of us are getting on a bit here. We're all 'mature' gamers. <Cough> Ahem. Some more mature than others... Old Nelly must be taking loads of cod liver oil capsules to be able to come up with such smart one liners so early in the morning. Nothing wrong with his mental faculties at all (well, not that way at least). We just need practise is all. Maybe more than the youngun's as they play games all the time but we're smarter <cough cough> so we have an advantage there don't we at least? Yeah, the more we play the more they pay.

Your ping seems all right then, eh? As MrNelster has said, there's other stuff going on like client or server side hit detection that work out when you're dead and who hit who - it all gets a bit messy though and there's a lot of complaint about the whole subject online as it's apparently not easy coding something that's meant to be real time action when everybody is connecting at a slightly different rate and so behind time by varying amounts. Hope you enjoy it and have a good xmas!

In reply to a post by mrnelster:

Timey has great reaction speed and he's in bus pass territory, so there's hope for everybody. He dropped fifty pence earlier and it hit him on the back of the head.

Cracks me up!

And to think its Christmas,some people have no compassion

Your not related to Dr are you.....

Yeah! Nothing wrong with being old oh wise master. Looking good for your age!*

*Skin might've turned a bit green tho is only thing

Edited by deleted (Mon 23-Dec-13 19:55:41)

Yeah Hulk style...so don't make me angry have a good few days Spook I will be trying to find Nelly a Battlefield server he can play on later this evening...

See Spook....if only you had took the plunge and bought the Playstation 4 when you were considering it 3 months back....could have joined us

Don't worry you need a head start

I don't think I'd have gotten BF4 on the PS4 mate, not initially anyway. It would take a lot of convincing for me to get into a more 'serious' FPS using a control pad. I'd have had to practise a lot before playing online for sure.

But yeah, it'd be great playing online in a crew with my fellow nursing home rezzies. Glasses, teeth, walking sticks and hearing aids - at the ready! We'd show 'em eh?

Yeah....Don't tell him Pike

Trying to think of a good clan name ,,how about Zimmers R Us

Yes Captain Mainwaring... mean no.

In reply to a post by time2die:

Trying to think of a good clan name ,,how about Zimmers R Us

Well, it's better than Rimmers Z Us...

In reply to a post by time2die:

Trying to think of a good clan name ,,how about Zimmers R Us

The Expendables?

Bagsy Stone Cold Steve Austin.

Not Battlefirld I ain't!

It's utter pants. Standing drilling guys from 6 feet away with an LMG and they just run away regardless? It's a massively selling online game with a cheapass server set up. MrSaffron talks about moving up through the weapons....after 5 or 6 hours I've reached level 2 with my best score of 2 - 19. SPOOK talks about tactical team play, but I'm afraid connection decides who is the marauder and who hides under a jetty lobbing hand grenades. If you fall in the middle ground you likely settle for mid table results and blame your own playstyle. If you are at the top you will never admit it isn't your own ability, because you likely don't realise it.

You knock Blacklight unfairly without playing it. Fifty percent of the time it starts to lag and you can't get into a different server, probably because it's a beta and only a few available servers are being overloaded. But when you get into a well matched ping server (which it shows you unlike virtually every other console FPS you play) it works great.

BF4 Europe, every server has a full five bars for me. That means everybody in Europe has a very similar latency right? Yeah right. You don't have to have GCE maffs to work the problem out there Rodders.

I tried the 32 player rush you recommended and it was slightly better at times, but only through not so many other people to shoot you with one bullet, whilst you have to put two clips into your own target. It was a waste of fifty quid, so I'll pick ghosts up today and stick to survival mode. I'm not telling you how it plays though. You want to take the wrapper off, it's your call, don't be blaming me!

In reply to a post by time2die:

Graw 2 hey ....that's a old game....Stick with Gears 3 and Horde mode

Yeah it's old I know! It does still seem to have a semi-active online community but pretty much US based, who aren't very welcoming of strangers - at least not judging by the number of times I got kicked off the servers. I took the hint and won't be returning, I'll drag my ancient gaming [censored] somewhere it's appreciated, which could of course be quite a challenge with my current skills set

You need to tell me what its like before i take the wrapper of,especially the survival mode thing which is not called survival.

Maybe you're just not cut out for online FPS gaming

Well theres a thought .

Actually based on his Resogun style of play i would have thought he would have easily held his own in most fps.

Get yourself a cheap PS3 in the sales and join us

In reply to a post by Lt_Swan:

Get yourself a cheap PS3 in the sales and join us

Well that is tempting but seriously broke right now, especially as the Billy Nobrand tablet that was destined to be my lad's Christmas present tomorrow turned out to be a lemon when I was setting it up. I had to chase around town yesterday to get what must be the last tablet on the planet - at an
exorbitant price.
Bah Humbug

Can not beat a Galaxy or a IPad or Nexus 7 ,10 ,anything else is playing catch up

In reply to a post by Lt_Swan:

Maybe you're just not cut out for online FPS gaming

Ah, now why didn't I think of that? You dont understand the issues, so they can't be real. Still, you're alright so that's all that matters eh? /one of your winks

In reply to a post by time2die:

You need to tell me what its like before i take the wrapper of,especially the survival mode thing which is not called survival.

Yeah, I forget what it's called now but will tell you later, if I can get the wrapper off before the missus starts on the fake snow and santa boot print malarkey.

The Battlefield collision detection system is poor - I've mentioned these sort of problems before. Unfortunately DICE dont want to improve things

In reply to a post by MrTAToad2:

The Battlefield collision detection system is poor - I've mentioned these sort of problems before. Unfortunately DICE dont want to improve things

If it can be bad on PC, I'm sure someone as tech savvy as you Toady, can imagine just how bad it is on an "immitation" server browser with no latency statistics. It affects the minority and the majority aren't bright enough to grasp why, and (more importantly) care. Client side hit detection also means of course you can have fewer and larger, regional servers. Cost cutting at the expense of people who have paid fairly and squarely for a game.

There's not really any point in talking to Plusnet about routing, so I'm trialling a VPN connection after Christmas that may be able to help, fingers crossed.