Originally posted by airbumba
Kinda on the same topic. When I get my new machine I'd like to run this one thru a router and run a second machine, so me and a pal can fly at the same time.
Is that going to slow the connection?( I have high speed cable, if that matters).
Thanks in advance for any help, .
Simple answer is no. Keep in mind its common for folks to confuse speed and bandwidth.
Think of it like this.
Your 'net connect is measured in terms of speed based on how long in elapsed time one miniscule amount of data (a packet, which is like 576 bytes if I remember correctly) takes to travel round trip from you to the server you're communicating and then back to you. That's measured in thousandth's of a second. But you're only talking about a teeny tiny bit of stuff, not a big download.
Your 'net connect is measured in terms of bandwidth based on how much volume of data you can receive in a given time interval. Normally people refer to how many kilobytes (1,000 bytes = 1 kilobytes) per second when referring to bandwidth, but you could also say how many megabytes per minute or whatever. The point is that you're measuring how MUCH you receive in a given time frame, not how fast each pice of data moves over the net.
Its common to confuse the two things because bandwidth controls how long it takes to download a file of a given size, hence people think "fast" or "slow" for a connect based on how long they take to get the complete file of a given size.
The fallacy in that is that Joe Smith might have a very fast connect to, say, HiTech Creations, meaning he can ping a packet there and back in 35 milliseconds, but because his 'net provider is only selling him a 512 kb/second bandwidth he takes 4 times as long to download a patch as Jane Doe because she has a 2000+kb/second cable connect that, due to network issues, takes 140 milliseconds to ping one packet back and forth to HTC.
So, in the above example, Jane downloads the patch in a quarter of the time Joe did, because she's taking in 4 times as many packets per second as Joe, so they think "wow she's fast and he's slow" but in fact Joe's connect is actually faster in terms of how quickly any one little piece of info reaches him in elapsed time.
Its really like the difference in the size of a water pipe (diameter of pipe not length). Jane's pipe delivers more because its a lot bigger around than Joe's, not because the water is coming out any faster than from Joe's.
For gaming, its the speed that's critical, not the bandwidth. Most of the work to render the game is done right inside your computer by the "front end" software you downloaded from HTC. All you send to HTC and receive from HTC is packets that contain the info as to your inputs (throttle, joystick, rudder, text, etc) so HTC's "server-side" software knows where and how to position you and your actions in its universe, and packets HTC sends back telling you what the other players in the universe are doing and where they are. This doesn't involve very large data files. All the video and sound is generated by the "front end" software resident in your computer, using the information received from HTC's "server-side" software to populate the universe being displayed appropriately with player actions.
I don't know exactly what bandwidth AH uses, but I doubt its much more than what Air Warrior used, and that was relatively nothing to what any "broadband" connect has (we used to advise AW customers they could limit their 28k, 33k, and 56k phone line modems to 14k max transmission for stability back in the day when that served to help control warping due to packet loss caused by modems trying to over-perform).
Another way to think about it is how much you can carry in your car versus how much a truck can carry (for example, a truck carries 4 times what the car carries). If you both drive the same speed, you and the truck arrive at destination at the same time (you both have the same 'net connection "speed") but since the truck holds more you have to make 4 trips to deliver the same amount of goods.
The reason the speed is more important to gaming than bandwidth is that the faster you get little small bits the server sends, the sooner you SEE what the other folks are doing.
Think about Joe Smith and Jane Doe again now. Each one is getting info from HTC's server as to where the other is and what they are doing. But, it takes Jane longer than Joe to receive a data packet since her ping time is longer, so he sees her actions sooner than she sees his.
Example, Jane is on Joe's six, gunsights lined up, and squeezes off a shot. But Joe's not really there anymore, he just started a barrel roll. His faster packet got there, updated the server, which moved him in the universe and sent a packet out to Jane - but her front end doesn't paint that move until she receives her slower data packet.
Think about that. It might explain some "rubber bullet" issues, eh?
Bottom line, in answer to your question, if you share a connection on your cable modem using a router to supply 2 computers, the only things that's affected is if you both choose to download large files at the same time. In that case, you're sharing the full amount of the pipe therefore each will take longer to download their pr0n than if only one was downloading.
BUT if you're both playing AH, you're each only using a little bit of what the pipe can carry, so the pipe is running at less than capacity and nobody is delayed. You're simply taking the stream that's coming out of the pipe and diverting it into two streams which both spray just as far.
And, in order to determine what's the best connection for gaming, you have to hook it up then measure the ping time via that connect to the game server you want to play on. Many things can affect ping time. Geographic distance "as the crow flies" is one, but the actual route your provider uses to get to where you hook up to the game's 'net provider backbone and then the route that provider uses to carry you to the game server is also a factor....as is how under-or-over-loaded any of the network that involves is at a given time (your home router won't delay your home network any because it can handle that much traffic, but a router on the internet that's handling a provider's entire load may cause delay if its overloaded due to too much traffic reaching it).
Bottom line, home network = no problem for gaming, but just because a connection is "broadband" doesn't mean its going to be good for gaming. Sometimes smaller can be better if its has a more direct and clean path. YMMV.
I hope this makes sense (I'm starting to confuse myself
)
culero
