UT Playability Effect - Upload or Download Speed?

[Brian R.]

Since I have ADSL, the question comes up as to what has the bigger effect on playability, download speed or upload speed or equal? Trying to determine if increasing my download speed will be worth the extra money. Going to the next ADSL level triples my download speed, but has the same upload speed.

Also, what is the significance of the red square icon that pops up in the middle right side of the UT screen occasionally? Some form of ping warning?

[Humus]

Neither upload or download has especially huge importance. It's the ping that matters. Usually transfers isn't larger than 2kbytes/s.
However, there should be more download than uploads i think, since you only need to upload your own actions, but has to download all the other players actions.

[Brian R.]

You don't think download speed or upload speed has an effect on ping time?

Anyway, I'm looking for a critical independent (user changeable) variable. Ping is a dependent (measured) variable. I can't change ping. I can only directly change download speed or upload speed, etc.

[This message has been edited by Brian R. (edited 05 September 2000).]

[Humus]

Brian R:
You can't change your ping. The ping is the time it takes from a request to a server was sent until you get a reply. It doesn't depend at you connection speed, it depends on which route it takes on the net and the speed of the routers along the way to the server.

[Brian R.]

Maybe ping is not important as long as it's adequate. My concern is changing variables I can to decrease my lag and stutter online.

[Brian R.]

I don't know if ping is the variable I'm interested in. It may be the only one you can measure, but all I care about is smooth playability.

Maybe ping is too artificial a measurement to be applicable. Upload speed and download speed may affect playability if you are transferring big chunks of data instead of a single pulse. Is ping really the bottom line? I wonder.

Has anyone tested changing download speed vs. playability? If playability is independent of download speed, then why are people rushing to get higher bandwith?


[This message has been edited by Brian R. (edited 05 September 2000).]

[Raptor^]

Ping, Packet Loss and Rate are the 3 main things that affect your online gameplay.

Ping is how long it takes for packets sent from between you and the server to reach their destination. This is how far behind the game what you see is, and how far behind your actions will be. You can't alter it directly.

Packet loss is measured as a percentage. It is the number of packets that don't reach their destination, a high PL causes jerkiness (you aren't getting the information all the time). Analog lines are more prone to packet loss than digital, but it also depends on your ISP. Packet loss is bad as it means your conncetion has to do more work (resending the data, if necessary), but time has already been lost (increasing ping).

Rate is how fast data is being sent to the server by the game. If you set this too high, then your connection becomes saturated, causing packet loss and high ping. You set it too low and you get high ping as you aren't sending data to the server often enough. Obviously your connection can handle a higher rate than a 56k modem, so increasing that should give faster and smoother gameplay (sorry I don't know the exact variables for any specific games off hand). Some more modern games allow you to specify uprate and downrate individually.

As all games today will run on a 56K modem, the volumes of data cannot be that large, so it is unlikely you will need to upgrade your ADSL, remember that V.90 is restricted to 33.6kbps upstream. (what are your upload/download speeds btw?).

I expect your connection is fast enough already. The only problem could be high packet loss (normally more so on cable modems with overloaded nodes), but upgrading your download speed wouldn't help this.

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P3-700E, Abit BF6, G400 MAX, 8.6 gig Seagate, 8.6 gig WD, SBLive 1024, 256Mb PC100... Mouse, Keyb, Stuff

[This message has been edited by Raptor^ (edited 06 September 2000).]

[Liquid Snake]

One way to help ping is to find a good ISP (although its rather troublesome to switch DSL ISPs). Or you can try to find a better, well-connected server. Yes, with a higher down/up speed, you may be able to set a higher rate, which translates into smoother play. But I think 640/90 is fine. I assume the next level is 1600/90? Extremely imbalanced down/up speeds can be bad. Downloading requires a bit of uploading as well (sends acknowledgement packets so that the sender knows that you've received the packets). Faster download rate requires faster upload rate. 90 may not be enough for 1600.

Note that this only applies to TCP, not UDP (which is used in most games, so this does not really apply to games, just downloads).

[Brian R.]

My ADSL is 640/90. I just signed up for 1.6/90 to see the effect on playability. I'll keep it if I see any difference.

Is packet loss decreased by a faster maximum connection speed?