xbox lie internet requirements

jgallcash

Looking to buy an Xbox and currently have free Sky Braodband up to 2Meg speeds and 2MB monthly download limit. Will this limit me if I would like to play against friends online?

Is there any need to upgrade to Broadband at all?

Basil1234

yes 2mb is very low very low. you do need to upgrade by quite a bit

[Deleted User]

A 2GB monthly download limit is indeed very restrictive and you should upgrade it, but the 2Mbit/sec download speed is fine for gaming. Well, it is fine for playing the game, but obviously a bit slow for downloading any updates or extra content. The key thing to check is latency (i.e. the time it takes for data from your computer to get to another computer and back again). You can check this on a Windows computer by going to start/programs/accessories/command prompt and typing e.g.:
ping www.bbc.co.uk

If the value is high, you could try some other British websites just in case the BBC are particularly busy at the time. A value of less than 50ms should be fine, although games will still be playable (but not ideal) with somewhat higher than that. If your value is high, you could probably only get much better with a different ISP.

Phantom_Flan_Flinger

I think we understand that the OP meant 2GB download limit, which in itself won't be anywhere near enough if you plan to spend time playing Xbox Live.

Some of the demos available are over 1GB in size, nevermind updates, map packs, etc.

jgallcash

I'm with Sky so could get 10MB speed and limit for £5 a month extra or they are doing their 20MB download speed and unlimited usage free for 6 months (£10 a month thereafter)

Would these be closer to the mark?

Pinging showed the following:

BBC - 77ms
Money Saving Expert - 80ms
Direct.gov.uk - 118ms

marleyboy

with VM you have unlimited download, can get upto 50Meg BB with unlimited downloads

[Deleted User]

There is still a 10GB cap, which is still restrictive for game updates. However, it could be just about ok if you were very careful about not downloading too much.

If you can afford it, an extra £5 on top of that for the unlimited option would be a better choice.

Those pings are a bit slow. I am presently in the USA and I have a better ping to direct.gov.uk than you do! Games would be playable, although you might notice some lag. The more expensive Sky options come with higher upload speed (and perhaps slightly better latency in that direction), although I doubt the difference would be large. A different ISP would be a good idea for online gaming, but then Sky are very good value if you already have TV with them (I don't know if you do or not).

One other thing to consider - depending on how far you live from the telephone exchange, you might not be able to get anything like 10Mbit/sec or 20Mbit/sec download if you upgrade your package. However, it is still worth doing for the extra download allowance every month.

jgallcash

Thanks again for swift replies. I do have Sky and thus it does seem like great value. Perhaps I should check out what offers are available from other ISP's.

I know it's a difficult question to answer but would the potential lag ruin gameplay of games such as Fifa 10 and COD 2? I want to play against mates via multiplayer

[Deleted User]

I wouldn't say that it would ruin gameplay, but it might put you at a slight disadvantage, particularly in a fast moving shooter game like COD 2 - i.e. if your friends are very fast, they could potentially shoot you before you see them or at least have a slight head start over you.

To put things in perspective, games must run at a minimum rate of 25-30 frames per second in order to offer reasonably smooth gameplay (and the screen has to refresh much more often than that to be flicker free). This means that we are easily capable of noticing a time lag of around 30-40ms, so a lag of 100ms is definitely noticeable! This will also make it difficult to accurately shoot somebody with a sniper rifle unless they are fairly still.

High latency can also cause occasional jerkiness, but that is probably only a serious problem when the ping values get a lot higher than 100ms.

Of course this all depends a bit on how fast your friends' connections are. If they do not have particularly low latency, then you wouldn't really be at any disadvantage.

[Deleted User]

One other thing - Sky may have enabled something called interleaving on your line. This has the effect of potentially improving your connection stability while significantly increasing latency. I won't explain the technical details here, as you can easily Google it if you are interested. Anyway, you can check if it is enabled or not by looking at your line properties on your router's configuration page (if the line is not interleaved, it will say fast path instead).
If you live very far from your exchange, it could be essential to achieving even a 2Meg/sec connection. However, that may well not be the case and interleaving is often enabled by the ISP when it is not needed. You could try asking for it to be turned off. That would definitely give you better latency, although it reduces the chance that you will be able to attain the full 10Meg/sec or 20Meg/sec on an upgraded package (but this really doesn't matter for gaming compared to latency).

DCFC79

Ive only experienced lag when playing against/with gamers from the USA, against UK based gamers iev no issues