[KarlMariaSeeberg]

hello...

i'm going to change my internet provider, therefore i'd like to know what connection speed is needed for stable gameplay. i'm living in vienna, spending most of my time on german servers, usually with a ping around 50ms. i can't spend that much money on my new connection, would 2048 KBit/s be enough to keep that ping? for various reasons i can't tell what connection speed i'm using right now :) sorry for that...

yours truly

karlchen

[|PWNY|Nitro]

the speed of the connection shouldn't affect your ping... general changing the medium does though for example. changing from cable to fiber might reduce the ping

2mbit or 200mbit would not make a difference since this is only how much bandwidth the medium can handle.

[KarlMariaSeeberg]

now thats an answer ... many thanks

This post has been edited by KarlMariaSeeberg: 22 July 2011 - 10:18 AM

[[PCC]cyrus]

In checking on network utilization for Urban Terror, with rate set to 25000, I have found that the connection uses 25Kbps (the math is straight-forward). So even a 1.5Mbps x 768Kbps DSL connection can easily handle the load.
Keep in mind that other activities that consume portions of bandwidth, will also affect your ping. If your room mate is downloading porn while you are playing, you may see that your ping increases or becomes unstable. Having a bigger pipe will help mitigate this.

[aI|klabauterman]

Only thing that might p*** you off while playing with a "slow" DSL (max. DL-rate of 180 kB) is that it might take quite a while to download new maps…

Nothing is more important for a decent gameplay is good FPS.

If "fastpath" really gives advantages nowadays I'm not so sure anymore. A few years ago I definitely was the case.

[lucidlynx]

I play with 300 kbs and its great, but map downs are a little slow

[KarlMariaSeeberg]

hmmm ... porn or other background downloads won't happen, nor will slow map download be a matter of concern (it's uptown only night and day:) but the possible fps issue got me thinking ... what bandwidth to keep my 125 fps?

i still can't distinguish between bits and bytes .... on the internet provider's page it reads like this
"2048/512" but no hint what unit they refer to...

i'm noob obviously ...

[<PWC>YAY5637]

your ping or internet connection wont affect your fps.
Thats a matter of your pcs specs and your settings

[KarlMariaSeeberg]

hm .. i beg to differ ... i don't know what type of connection i'm using right now but i know from experience that connecton issues can affect your fps... i'm running urt on an imac i7 so no lack of hardware performance ...

[[PCC]cyrus]

Those measurements indicate that the line is 2Mbps down and 512Kbps up (you will download 4x faster than you upload).
I would not be concerned about FPS in regards to bandwidth. As long as you can stream 25Kbps to the server reliably, your FPS should do fine.
Of some concern is the fact that there is no way to determine ahead of time how the new internet connection will affect your ping to the servers you play on. It may improve, it may stay the same or it may be degraded. There is no way to know until the change is made.
But keep in mind that this has nothing to do with bandwidth. It is latency. The longer your packets take to get to the server and back, the greater the risk of poor performance (jumpy movement, warping, etc.). Even with a kick-ass line, there will be servers to which your connection performs poorly (high latency or ping).
Assuming a low latency connection to a server, 2Mbps x 512Kbps is more than enough bandwidth, given that you are only going to be using 25Kbps in either direction.

This post has been edited by cyrus: 24 July 2011 - 09:45 PM