Curse

Gibush · Sep 22, 2008, 03:59 AM // 03:59

Yeah... I only really plan to play PvE anyway (until high speed/wireless/broadband/whatever it is.

Also, jokes aside, I'm not in Alaska. A rural part of Canada, actually. Like I said, we're *supposed* to have 56k, we have a 56k modem, but we only connect at 28/31k.

Also, NLM, I've heard that satellite internet is pretty crappy for gaming, isn't that true? I've heard hosting games is even worse than dial-up in some cases...but I could be very wrong.

Thanks for the information.
Might be getting high-speed by christmas. (I sure hope so.)

Like I said, thanks for the help.

Lord Sojar · Sep 22, 2008, 05:32 AM // 05:32

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gibush

Yeah... I only really plan to play PvE anyway (until high speed/wireless/broadband/whatever it is.

Also, jokes aside, I'm not in Alaska. A rural part of Canada, actually. Like I said, we're *supposed* to have 56k, we have a 56k modem, but we only connect at 28/31k.

Also, NLM, I've heard that satellite internet is pretty crappy for gaming, isn't that true? I've heard hosting games is even worse than dial-up in some cases...but I could be very wrong.

Thanks for the information.
Might be getting high-speed by christmas. (I sure hope so.)

Like I said, thanks for the help.

It wasn't a joke, I assumed you lived in the far north in the middle of no where, as that is the only place with little to no development of IT infrastructure.

Satellite internet doesn't function well for online gaming. If you calculate the transmission of the signal (assuming lightspeed) from your PC (assuming the signal goes directly to the satellite and back to your PC) to the satellite, and back again... this would yield

2SQRT[(6K)^2 + (6K+36K)^2]/c = 283 ms.

Assuming dual path, multiply that by 2. So 566ms minimum latency, assuming perfect conditions (give or take 10ms because of rough calculations) Not exactly ideal for gaming.

Quaker · Sep 22, 2008, 11:22 AM // 11:22

Some (if not most/all) satellite internet only downloads from satellite, the uploads are dial-up - so the overall ping would be worse than Rahja's calculations.

Gibush · Sep 22, 2008, 03:28 PM // 15:28

Yeah. Well... I believe I have a couple friends who might be nice enough to mail me the data. I'll try that, and if that doesen't work, I'll be waiting for high speed.

Thanks all.

Tarun · Sep 22, 2008, 03:48 PM // 15:48

To get 56k you need to call your phone company and ask them to clean the lines.

jesh · Sep 22, 2008, 08:43 PM // 20:43

Giving your phone co. a call is worth a shot, although I have to warn you, where I live, they only guarantee voice quality and not data transmission, which in essence means you're stuck with what you've got.

However..
Once you get all the material downloaded, it really isn't that bad. Although I do connect at 48-50.6k, my ping times range between 80 and 160ms most of the time, which humorously enough is better than some of my friends with high speed. When there is a lot of network traffic it can slow down some, maybe 200-350ms.
This is still ok for PvE.

I really miss my high speed access..
But I still get to feed my gw addiction with pve/ab/ra. You'll be fine I think.

fusa · Sep 22, 2008, 11:39 PM // 23:39

Quote:

Originally Posted by Quaker

Some (if not most/all) satellite internet only downloads from satellite, the uploads are dial-up - so the overall ping would be worse than Rahja's calculations.

Hughesnet, and WildBlue (both are the largest in the area) are both much faster than dialup, usually four times faster uploads. And yes Rahja's calculations are way off. He calculates as if the signal goes from satellite to your house, it doesn't. It goes first from you to satellite then local noc then back to satellite then to you. So your ping at minimum is twice that, usually around 1000. Dialup ping is usually 300-350. But it usually is 1500-3000, spiking much higher. I've seen well over 100,000 ping during events. Clouds, rain, snow or wind in your area of anywhere between you and the local noc will greatly reduce or disconnect your signal. Also you'll have to spend minimum $500 for setup fees, and sign a two year contract. If you drop you are billed for full price of remaining months of the contract. On top of that Hughesnet put a strict 200mb limit of transfers daily, if you exceed this, your download is 1-2kbps for 24 hours. I think WildBlue disconnects service for an unknown time if you exceed 7gb/month.
Guild Wars is still completely playable, and only very noticeable in groups of real people. You can't play monk or interrupt mesmer or ranger, but otherwise not too bad. PVP is out of the question.

Numa Pompilius · Sep 23, 2008, 06:30 AM // 06:30

28.8 has an effective transfer rate of 3.5 kilobyte per second, which is sufficient for GW, and should not even be laggy provided nothing else uses bandwidth (absolutely no downloading of virus-killer updates in the background, for instance).

The problem is that there is a big patch to download for anyone starting playing today. I don't know exactly how big that patch is, but certainly several hundred megabytes. Then there'll be huge load-times upon entering a new area.

A good solution could be to find a computer with a fast internet connection, run the GW client with the -image switch to download all files, and then transfer the whole GW directory to the home computer (with the slow connection). As stated the full GW directory will be 3.6 gigabyte in size, and will fit on a decent-sized USB stick.