How much bandwidth would be used by online gaming?

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Saber

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I have never gamed online before, ADSL now makes this possible for me. However, there is still the thing about the 3Gb cap.

How much bandwidth would be used by playing e.g. Freelancer, Project Entropia or America's Army online for an hour? Is there a difference in usage between a FPS and an MMORPG?

I am just trying to gage how "expensive" it is in bandwidth terms.

Thanks :)
Saber
 
things like Ultima Online dont take up much bandwidth. we played up to three people on the same dial-up connection

WoW is similar, although we only ever tried 2 people on one dial-up connection.

MMORPG should be fine, they use up relatively little bandwidth
 
Well i play counterstrike and the average bandwidth used is never more than 5KB/s, which will be around 20MB/hour, not much at all

What you could also do is download Netstat from AnalogX, start it up before you open the game and reset the counters.. when ure done playing you can just check the peak and average bandwidth usage..
 
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MMORPGs don't use alot of bandwidth [or i see it as relatively low], i've played WoW, DOAC and Anarchy Online and they all seem to be using an average of 2 MB per hour [give or take a MB]. Depending also on your activity in the game [being in crowded areas etc].

Although you have to count in patches and updates for these games too. I know AO will come out with a 20MB patch every month with smaller ones [500k-1MB] inbetween.
The newer MMORPGs, like Guild Wars [if i can call it a MMORPG] uses a type of streaming method with the updates [so it downloads while you play etc etc] which might influence your bandwidth usage.

As for FPS types of games i believe they can easily do 1MB in 2 minutes depending on what you do [take for example audio communication in Counterstrike].
 
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usage is dependant on settings mostly. take gtr for instance. at adsl settings it uses ~80Mb and hour odd, drop to ISDN settings (no speed loss :s) and it uses ~20Mb per hour.
Most games fit in around 20Mb per hour mark.
 
Stoke - I'm interested in BF1942 readings..when I first played online [and didn't know it was a bandwidth chewer :D ] my readings came in at about 250MB for 3 hours of BF1942 online action...it just seems weird it is so high.
 
Dominic: Depends on how many peeps are online..
If you're playing with 5 or so other peeps, it wont download more that 7k/s!
But if the server is jammed packed to like 40.. then expect something like 20 :)

You could always set your connection setting to 56k it limits downloading up to no more than 7k (or so).
 
the download bandwidth is not really dependent on the number of people on the server...

for example on Americas Army (UT03 engine) download speeds are around 5-6k/s irrespective of the number of players on the server...

in UT03 game...(maybe latest editions as well?) you might be able to bring your game console up and type "stat net"

that will give you your ping, your upload and download speed...
 
We play age of Empires - and bandwidth usage is very low. It only picks up rapidly when you need to confer with allies constantly via skype ... :D
 
Played GuildWars for 2 hours 10 minutes :

Total up and download while playing : 4.4 MB [2 hours]
Total up and download content streamed : 10.5 MB [8 minutes]

The streamed content depends on how you got the game. I just bought an online
account , so you end up getting the entire game streamed to you as you play [a bit annoying but also very promising in terms of adding new content]. Basically it downloads pieces of the game on demand as i go along. If you bought the box, then you will have everything on install so you won't have such large content being streamed as me above .
 
4.4MB in 2 hours - that is amazing even for a MMORPG as WoW uses about 10-20MB/hour I think...
 
what would warcraft / dota use?? I was wondering this. If some1 say wants to use 3g from vodacom or edge to game every now and again how long would a meg last....
 
What are your ping times and in-game latency. Currently I have been hitting ingame of 3500ms up to a whopping 11813ms especially near IF. I am on HomeDSL384 (standard 3G shaped). Ping time to logon server is 352ms.

And no way am I making those pigs at our favorite company fatter by paying R830 per month of unshaped.

Ideas ... help ... advice
 
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