Re: [ProgSoc] Optus@nospam.Home

[Richard John Vagg <rj@nospam.progsoc.uts.edu.au>]

On Wed, 23 Feb 2000, Telford Tendys wrote:

> > > >Not much. The back channel of data provided by a quake/halflife/other
> > > >net game is not likely to get to you to 300Mb / month. If you are just
> > > 
> > > 
> > > And what are you basing that on?
> > 
> > Observered data upload versus data download from my home machine.

And you have observed many network games?

> > 
> > > On a 28.8 kilobit/s modem I send around 1 megabyte of data every ten minutes
> > > doing bugger all.
> > 
> > Really? Your just clicking on web pages? How did you get this figure?

Sorry. I was replying specificly to the comment on network games. The 1
megabyte in 10 minutes refers to running a client of quake3 connected to
an internet server with only the one client, myself, connected.

It was based on me observing how long it took to send one megabyte of
data. Just under 10 minutes.

> 
> From what I've seen, playing quake really pushes a network, you can tell
> straight away the difference between modem links and lan links.
> The upload vs download ratio for a game like quake is a bit difficult to tell
> but since it has to keep track of every movement of every item in the
> game I can imagine that there is a lot being uploaded. Remember that one of
> the players has to run the quake server which maintains connections to the
> other machines, without that they are all playing on their own -- this player's
> bandwidth will go up a whole lot extra.

With internet games over modems the server is located on a machine with a
fast network connection. I play on a server that is run by my ISP. 

With a cable connection I would have hoped two or more players who wanted
to break off and play a game of there own could just start there own game.

> 
> Other than those real time arcade games, things like MUD, IRC, etc
> use next to nothing. With ftp or www it is about 95% download vs 5% upload,
> email is about equal upload and download but rarely adds up to much unless
> you move binary files around using email attachments (those MS-word files
> start to add up pretty quick, I often see word files in the 300k to 1M range).
> 
> I would guess that MUD servers could operate quite reasonably under the
> 300M limit on uploads, other servers probably wouldn't work. Quake
> players might go over if they were hard core addicts but how long can you
> play Quake for before you run out of new ideas?

How long can you play cricket for before it becomes boring?

> 
> 	- Tel
> 

Richard.


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