Real-life MMD: Should gamers pay for faster broadband?

JeremyCH

Always difficult with this sort of situation - my son had a similar problem in his first year of Uni. The fisrt point to check is are they getting the right speeds/download and upload that they think they're getting. Secondly are they with the right provider as an example when my son and his house share looked into it they found that for very little more they could switch from 'standard' broadband to fibre for very little extra a month which solved everyone's problems and avoided any acrimony.

The other question to watch out for is are you sure that it is the gamers using all the bandwidth? There are free to use monitors you can put on to see who, when, where and how bandwidth is bring used - you may be very surprised especially if you're not getting the network speed you think you are.

Finally, if all the above has been done then this becomes a matter for negotiation between the house mates but this can open a can of worms - who usses the most hot water, who has the longest showers/baths and so on? My suggestion would be to smile sweetly and split the cost equally, even if you do not game but, say, download lots of files, music, watch YouTube etc. then you will benefit as well

duchy

For the sake of what will literally be a couple of pounds a month to you personally - and the likelihood of lots of bad feeling for the rest of the year if you refuse -it probably comes under "part of living in a shared house"

newcook

Why dont you just get your own broadband installed and let them fight it out between them?!

Mouseboy007

minicooper272 wrote: »

According to a friend that works for a broadband company, bandwidth is not used up by what you do on the internet - it is split equally among all the devices that are connected, and what you do on your device will determine how fast it is.

G6JPG wrote: »

(which one, so I can avoid it:)?)

I totally agree with G6JPG - minicooper272's friend is unfortunately ill informed or something has been lost in translation. For starters, your ISP provides broadband to your router, not individual devices. The router itself, via its wired/wireless networking will share the available bandwidth accordingly. The speed of sharing isn't necessarily going to be an equal split either.

In some instances the device connected to the internal wireless network is connecting at a slower speed than the Internet signal coming into the premises, i.e. Virgin Media might provide 60mbps, but if the device that's connected to the wireless network is connected at 20mbps due to a weak signal and distance from the device then the maximum that the device will receive is 20mbps (and even that's not strictly true due to overheads in data transmission etc).

Try browsing YouTube right next to your wireless router and then again all the way down the garden/road as far as you can get where you *just* pick up your wireless network. You'll soon see that your performance changes, and yet your broadband connection hasn't.

I would suggest that before discussions are had regards upgrading that some tests are performed to identify the problem. If the wireless network is switched off (or all wireless connected devices) and only one hard-wired device is connected and you STILL have problems, then it *most likely* points to the ISP (it could still be your internal wiring as someone mentioned above regards the bell (orange) wire).

If you buy a TV and turn it on and BBC1 doesn't work, do you assume it's a problem with the BBC, the TV, or your configuration? And do you then upgrade to a bigger TV / change the aerial, or do you perform some kind of tests (such as changing channels, seeing if other televisions in the house can pick up the BBC) etc first?? ......

moneyistooshorttomention

They want it = they pay for it.

Be on the watch to see if they are planning to try it on to get you to subsidise THEIR lifestyles in other ways as well.

Ebenezer_Screwj

No, the gamers should pay the difference, why should you subsidise other people's activities, especially useless pastimes like gaming?