General Chat / Internet Speed

So I apparently have good Ping. Shame about my upload speed.

On a side note, I find this competitiveness about who can showcase the fastest connection primitive. When will you ever need high transfer rates as a private person legitimately? To illegaly download badly compressed and thus oversized copyrighted media files? I've recently met someone who does this excessively, and has made it his aim to build up an archive of pirate copies of entertainment media. He tries to pride himself with it, but really, what I saw was just a sad, desperate, socially unfulfilled human being, longing for distraction of his mental problems and using all his films and videos for it.

Two points:

- Transfer rates are crucial for online gaming. Upstream bandwidth actually matters a lot more than ping, especially with the host system that Xbox Live uses. (Namely, if your upstream is shit, you won't get host *ever*, and so you're inherently disadvantaged.)

- There is a whole lot of legal media available on the internet, that benefits just as much from high download rates. As for myself, I'm learning Japanese, meaning I need a lot of media in Japanese, meaning I'm streaming audio or video pretty much 24/7. Sure, crappy bandwidth will *do* (I have a pretty poor connection here) but better bandwidth would make things more efficient. (I'd also object to your characterization of file-sharers, but that's too much of a mess to bother with.)

EDIT: Okay, that was a shitty example. Better one:

I know people who no longer have cable television because the internet services like Hulu and Netflix have replaced it. Both require massive bandwidth and transfer speed to work properly.

And yeah, this thread's a bit of a pissing contest, but it is interesting to see correlations between location and speed. (Fucking Europe and your better infrastructure.)

-ACE

Thanks for your serious reply.

The examples you mention do seem to make sense, especially the online TV one.

Can you explain, technically, why a high upload rate will help online gaming? I understand that data has to be exchanged between players to play together, but I would assume these are usually just low size data like coordinates or action properties. Wouldn't it be more important to send these as instantly as possible, refering back to ping, instead of as quickly as possible (upload speed) ? Although, I guess both play a role. I would still believe ping has more impact.

Again, I can't help but to perceive online gaming as an entertainment media intended to allow people to dive into virtual worlds that feel better than their real one. I find this disturbing. And I realise this site does it too, to certain extent, and I'm not always cool with it. I guess you have to find a healthy balance.

Thanks for your serious reply.

The examples you mention do seem to make sense, especially the online TV one.

Can you explain, technically, why a high upload rate will help online gaming? I understand that data has to be exchanged between players to play together, but I would assume these are usually just low size data like coordinates or action properties. Wouldn't it be more important to send these as instantly as possible, refering back to ping, instead of as quickly as possible (upload speed) ? Although, I guess both play a role. I would still believe ping has more impact.

Xbox Live uses a particular host/client method to run games. In any given lobby, one console is decided to be host -- it becomes the server for that game. This console must therefore download all incoming data from clients and then upload to pass it along to every client in the game. (A FPS actually has a lot of data traffic; individual bullet trajectories, locations of dropped weapons, location, condition, and activity of teammates/enemies (necessary for a useful spawn system -- it's not good to spawn into a firefight.))

EDIT: It's worth noting that the host has inherent advantages in any reaction-based game. Going toe-to-toe with shotguns at close range? Host wins that engagement every time, because the host machine decides when those shots were fired.

Ping, while important, is minimized in this system because Matchmaking attempts to find people geographically close to one another. (Due to the oddities of IP, this effectively means people who's ISPs are close to one another.) However, even with very low ping times, if the host cannot cope with the data transfer, the gameplay will lag severely. (Also, for what it's worth, bandwidth is more important than speed here.)

Again, I can't help but to perceive online gaming as an entertainment media intended to allow people to dive into virtual worlds that feel better than their real one. I find this disturbing. And I realise this site does it too, to certain extent, and I'm not always cool with it. I guess you have to find a healthy balance.

It is a media for virtual worlds. As is television. And comics. And novels. It's relatively new, so the stories of abuse are played up far more. (Yes, yes, all the South Koreans dying playing WoW -- do you have any idea how many people world-wide play MMOs? Somewhere around 1% of the world population. Crunch those numbers and tell me how serious the problem *really* is.)

Media in general is escapism; and that is a *good* thing. Obviously the potential for abuse exists, but when it happens it is rarely the media's fault. (My own experience with video game addiction came at a time when I was dealing with severe depression. Wasn't the game's fault--was mostly mine, for escaping rather than dealing with the problem at hand.)

Just my $.02 on the issue.

-ACE

I think you raise a few valid points. The problem I see though is that when life problems exist, the availability of escapist "tools" is dangerous.

Eh, well...

200 ping makes you laggy as fuck while 3 ping is smoooooth sailing

What about...
610 milliseconds
Needless to say, I can't play online multiplayer...

Download 2.4 kB/s
Actually it's usually around 3.5 kB/s, but...maybe I'm wrong?

Upload 8.9 kB/s
Okay, I definitely didn't know my upload speed was so fast. (Yes, I called 9kB/s FAST.)

I want speedy internets!

I think you raise a few valid points. The problem I see though is that when life problems exist, the availability of escapist "tools" is dangerous.

Only if they're abused. If you use escapism as a chance to completely ignore your problems and pretend they don't exist, it'll cause serious problems. (Frankly, if someone's in the situation where they are so detached from reality and social groups that this is possible for a long time, there's not much anyone can do about it.) However, small doses of it can be useful for getting though stressful situations. When I became addicted to video games to escape my depression, that was abuse. (And my family and social network forced me out and made me face the issue.) More recently, when dealing with a very stressful family situation, having the means to let go and vent my anger more appropriately was pretty important. Especially in the case where there's nothing you can actually do about a situation.

Of course there's a situation where it's dangerous. Same with everything. But you don't blame suicides on the availability of rope.

-ACE