What internet speed do I need?

Theironhand

Hey guys, my parents decided to switch to Wow last week, and I've been experiencing some problems with the internet.

First of all it is really slow at loading videos, I use to be able to play them in 1024P and it'll load up the entire video in 10-20 seconds, now it takes forever to load them.

Second I keep lagging and getting logged out on MMO's and when ever I play minecraft on my Xbox and my PC (When I'm on a server) it'll take forever to load blocks, and commends.

I called wow earlier and asked them what was our speed, she said basic, which is 2 MBPS.
Is that good enough for online gaming? Or do we need to upgrade? They 15 MBPS and 35 MBPS and even 50 MBPS.

primesuspect

2mbps is very slow. You're definitely not going to be able to watch 1080p videos or do any significant online gaming.

You need, at a bare minimum, their 15mbps package for those activities. Obviously the faster the better. I have the WOW 50mbps package, and it makes me go "WOW" all the time. It's fast

MAGIC

It should be in theory. Sometimes speeds are slow for the first few days of serivce. Are you in a highly populated area? Your speed can depend on the number of users also.

d3k0y

I usually run my games on 7MBPS and it tends to run pretty well most of the time. I will get some issues during peak times, but nothing super horrible. But yea 2MBPS is pretty dang slow.

ardichoke

I have a 1.5Mbps connection and have absolutely no problem playing online games, contrary to what Prime says. I regularly play EVE while connected to our Alliance Mumble server without any issue. If you have a bunch of other stuff eating up bandwidth in the background, however, that will cause problems.

Streaming 1080 video is definitely a no-go on those speeds though.

Thrax

Online games don't require much more than 1.5-2Mbit to play well. All that matters is latency.

HD video requires 2-10x that bandwidth to stream well.

ardichoke

As Thrax said, latency is probably the issue with games. Best thing to do is to tweak the QoS settings on your router. If your router doesn't have QoS settings, get a better router (or install DD-WRT, OpenWRT, Tomato or another open firmware if possible). In the QoS settings, you typically need to tell it what the amount of bandwidth you have is, if you set that to ~75% of your actual bandwidth amount (so, for 2Mbit line, set it to 1.5Mbit) it can greatly improve your latency by reducing upstream buffer bloat. You will get slightly reduced peak throughput, however, for most applications these days it's latency, not throughput, that matters most.

EDIT: For more information on the bufferbloat problem, see Jim Gettys blog. Guy is doing a lot of work on the bufferbloat problem https://gettys.wordpress.com/2010/12/03/introducing-the-criminal-mastermind-bufferbloat/

Theironhand

I'm thinking of upgrading to 15MBPS, however I never tried playing WOW or SWTOR yet.

As Thrax said, latency is probably the issue with games. Best thing to do is to tweak the QoS settings on your router. If your router doesn't have QoS settings, get a better router (or install DD-WRT, OpenWRT, Tomato or another open firmware if possible). In the QoS settings, you typically need to tell it what the amount of bandwidth you have is, if you set that to ~75% of your actual bandwidth amount (so, for 2Mbit line, set it to 1.5Mbit) it can greatly improve your latency by reducing upstream buffer bloat. You will get slightly reduced peak throughput, however, for most applications these days it's latency, not throughput, that matters most.

EDIT: For more information on the bufferbloat problem, see Jim Gettys blog. Guy is doing a lot of work on the bufferbloat problem https://gettys.wordpress.com/2010/12/03/introducing-the-criminal-mastermind-bufferbloat/

Thanks, I'll try this out.

ALSO! My brother does play on his Xbox 360 alot too, and my mom does surf the web on her Iphone alot too.

Theironhand

It should be in theory. Sometimes speeds are slow for the first few days of serivce. Are you in a highly populated area? Your speed can depend on the number of users also.

I live 3 miles away from Detroit (Specifically Center line). I would guess alot of people in my local area do have wow, but I don't think that will affect my connection as much.

primesuspect

Hah. I grew up in Center Line. My parents still live there I think you actually go to school with my kids.

AlexDeGruven

Depends more on the neighborhood/local loop. If you only have the basic service, though, you're never going to get more than 2Mbps. If you have a lot of people in your direct neighborhood on WoW, then you might run into congestion issues during peak times, which will drop you even lower.

15 is a great overall speed, and many people never need more than that.

Also, WoW's basic sucks. I'm on Charter up here in the Flint area, and for all their flaws, their basic ($35/month) is 15Mbit. And it's only $10/month to upgrade to 30Mbit (which is where I'm at now).

Theironhand

Hah. I grew up in Center Line. My parents still live there I think you actually go to school with my kids.

Oh yeah, I do go to school with Kyle and Perry!

Depends more on the neighborhood/local loop. If you only have the basic service, though, you're never going to get more than 2Mbps. If you have a lot of people in your direct neighborhood on WoW, then you might run into congestion issues during peak times, which will drop you even lower.

15 is a great overall speed, and many people never need more than that.

Also, WoW's basic sucks. I'm on Charter up here in the Flint area, and for all their flaws, their basic ($35/month) is 15Mbit. And it's only $10/month to upgrade to 30Mbit (which is where I'm at now).

If it's only $10 to upgrade I'm definitely going to do that.