Min. reasonable down/up speeds to play AH

[RTGorkle]

I'm likely going to resubscribe to AH soon but I need to first organise a plan with an ISP. Am not much into downloading audio/video and will only need it for VPN/RDC to work and of course for Aces High.

I'm hoping somebody in the know can tell me what sort of down/up speeds should be sufficient for solid Aces High MA play? I used to get 300 ping (from Australia) on my previous 1500/256 plan. Rarely got dumped and I don't think I was ever accused of warping.

DSL is rather expensive downunder and I can really only justify paying for 256/64 or maybe 512/128.

Thanks.

[Lusche]

Warping is result of unstable/low quality connection, not "download speed". I don't know exact figures, but the amount of data transferred is rather small. Many people are still playing with 56.6 modems...

Just by having a bigger download speed (=more bytes streaming through per second), your signals are not travelling any faster.

[hubsonfire]

Skuzzy would probably be the man to ask, but even a 28K dialup modem with a stable connection (ie, no, or at least minimal, packet loss) is perfectly playable, as long as your ping is under 300ms.

[38ruk]

I think i remember skuzzy saying that AH will run on a 19.6 kbps , very slow dial up . Speed has little to do with warping or disco's , packet loss is what is important . I'd rather have a packet loss free 28.8 kbps connection than any broadband connect with packet loss for this game .

[Bruv119]

Gorkle we dont want you back  if your going to be playing on a tin pot connection!  


That took like 3 / 4 weeks   and your gagging for it already.


Bruv
~S~

[Bruv119]

Oh and 512 (should)  be ok.

I detest guys with crappy connections who lag all over the screen but I will make an exception for you gork because you are so dam sexy!

[Skuzzy]

The game has been designed to work over a 28.8K dialup connection.  If the connection has little latency, and no packet loss, it will play the game fine.

[Thruster]

As far as I can tell, the slower the connect the better.

It seems as though the arena servers are not capable of maintaining substantial throughput and the faster you deliver data, the harder it is for AH to deliver back reliable computations.  Hence the noticable increase of warps, rubber bullets, and other irregularities when the arena 's population exceeds 100 or so players.

I'm no engineer but I can tell that despite all the mumbo jumbo about PL, background apps, driver versions, vid chipset types etc. it all boils down to the amount of traffic through the server. If you can play reliably one minute, and the game becomes unplayable the next, it's mainly due to server load.

Since your in a timezone that encourages you to log at "off peak" times, you could probably get away with a coupla cans and a string.
If your setup plays ok, don't sweat the slower connection.

[Fulmar]

The problem with dial up modems is response time.  If your 50 miles from the server, you can reach 150ms responses.  But the truth is most people are not and you're going to see a ping around 200-250.  I played first person shooters for a couple years on dial up and switched to high speed in college.  The difference between a 50 ping and a 250 ping is like an 34A to a 36DD.

As for your DSL, the 256kb dl one will work just as good as the 512kb dl one (ping wise) - download times would be about half however.

Just avoid dial up, for all of us.

[Skuzzy]

Originally posted by Thruster
As far as I can tell, the slower the connect the better.

It seems as though the arena servers are not capable of maintaining substantial throughput and the faster you deliver data, the harder it is for AH to deliver back reliable computations.  Hence the noticable increase of warps, rubber bullets, and other irregularities when the arena 's population exceeds 100 or so players.

I'm no engineer but I can tell that despite all the mumbo jumbo about PL, background apps, driver versions, vid chipset types etc. it all boils down to the amount of traffic through the server. If you can play reliably one minute, and the game becomes unplayable the next, it's mainly due to server load.

Since your in a timezone that encourages you to log at "off peak" times, you could probably get away with a coupla cans and a string.
If your setup plays ok, don't sweat the slower connection.

I would advide anyone to take this information with a grain of salt.

Server load is nothing compared to the problems the Internet will impose on a connection.  The server has little to do with packet loss.  Anyone with PingPlot can see that.

The person making this statement is not an employee of HTC and has no idea how things really work in the game.  We have always been open about connection related issues.  All one has to do is ask.

But in all honestly, anyone can trouble shoot a connection.  The tools for getting to the gross problems of a connection are available to anyone.  So we would be foolish to try and hide any problems we know about.

When in doubt, grab PingPlotter and run it to the server IP address.  Now, if the packet loss is at the very last hop, then I need to run a PingPlot back to the origin.  This is simply due to asynchronous routes and a limitation with the way traceroutes/PingPlots work.

There really is no reason to speculate about connection issues.  Most of the time they are Internet related, but sometimes they can be client computer related.  The best place to start is with a good traceroute and/or PingPlot.

[Skuzzy]

Fulmar, first person shooters work in an entirely different manner that Aces High II does as it pertains to the network connection.  The speed of the connection in Aces High II is really not a big deal.

Variance and latencies are more important for us.  Latencies in terms of how long has it actually been since your computer got the first packet from the server.  Satellite connections have great throughput but terrible latencies.

Variance is how much time between packet updates.  These, ideally, need to be the same all the time.  This makes for very smooth game play.  The more variance in the time between packets, the more jitter you might see in the game.

Variance is a tricky one.  Not only does the Internet affect it, but the local CPU can also impact it.

[hubsonfire]

Originally posted by Skuzzy
Now, if the packet loss is at the very last hop, then I need to run a PingPlot back to the origin.  This is simply due to asynchronous routes and a limitation with the way traceroutes/PingPlots work.

There's no way for us enduser types to get pingplotter to do this, is there? Often, when my connection has completely gone to ****, it's either at the Savvis/ATT hop, or showing as the last hop. Since this doesn't happen consecutively, or at hours that normal people are at work, how can we diagnose problems on the return route while we're actually having problems?

[Skuzzy]

Unfortunately, there is no real way to do this.  There is simply no mechnism which allows data points to be tested fully in an asynchronous route.

The network design at the AT&T colocate guarantees an asychronous route.

[Stegahorse]

My Internal LAN went sour. They way I found it was I'd play for an hour or so then KABLOOEY! Black screened. The event logs in Adminstrator showed an unanswerable IRQ request and IRQ_not_less_ or_equal error.
I checked my Devices by connection in the Hardware Manager and found that  the LAN and ATA controler and a USB controller were on the same IRQ.
It had been that way since the computer was built as XP "balances" IRQ.
I disabled the onboard LAN(NIC) and installed a PCI NIC. The NIC is now on its on separate IRQ now.
Everything Better!

Might consider this as a way to fix a slow connection with and onboard NIC.
The NIC card cost $15.

[RTGorkle]

Originally posted by Bruv119
I detest guys with crappy connections who lag all over the screen but I will make an exception for you gork because you are so dam sexy!

I am now waiting for my DSL to get hooked up and have just tried my ISP's standby dial-up servive. The wiring in my house is so noisy that the best I can connect at is 19.2 Kbps. Because I've not been online for a while, AH wants to update itself. I click 'yes' to do this and it drops back to the main menu. It would probably be like a 10 hour download anyway so I'm not pursuing it. I ain't going to inflict such a lousy dialup connection on you guys, so I'll wait for DSL. I suspect I'll have to get my noisy line fixed for DSL.

BTW Bruv. I love you too I'm not really gagging to get back online, but flying offline in circles shooting down drones sure is boring..