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Halo 2 Effect Threatens Broadband
darkstar949 writes "There is an article on CNET News.com that reports the so called 'Halo 2' effect is threatening broadband users. Because of this some ISPs are being pressured for more reliability and low latency. Perhaps this marks a new trend for the internet as online gaming becomes more popular." From the article: "Sandvine's latest statistics showed that Xbox Live traffic quadrupled when "Halo 2" was launched on Nov. 9, and it has stayed at that level since. Sandvine claims that this will put added pressure on ISPs to improve the quality of their broadband offerings, as users will demand reliability and low latency."
...that lag can be caused by your internet connection. BRILLIANT!
*is run over by rotten tomatoes*
Yes, I think this is a very dangerous issue, but might also encourage the isps to improve the speed and quality of their serviec. Who knows, this could be a geed thing!
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Anything that can go wr
fortune: Segmentation violation -- Core Dumped
What in this article is a threat to broadband? What editor at CNet wrote this headline?
:)
quote: ISPs see online games as an application that could tempt many people-- both PC and console users--to broadband.
yeah, they sound really scared.
maybe they meant "opportunity" but threat got posted instead. Damn spellchecker
i saw the baby, and the baby looked at me
looks like it's time for Gabe and company at Valve to bring Power Play back from the vaporware/pipedream cabinet. is the X-box Live / Halo 2 usage that much greater than online Half-life was? is it really a new issue, or just the same old issue in new shiny Halo 2 wrapping?
If the providers start to shut down more spaamers and outher wasters of bandwidth, this is a good thing.
Many a long talk since then I have had with the man in the moon; he had my confidence on the voyage. Joshua Slocum
"People Using Net Threatens Broadband!"
I think we're really starting to see the cost of online connectivity drop. I just upgraded my cable account to 4mb/384k and i pay about $60/mo, not too shabby. I've just started seeing ads pop up for broadband specifically targetted towards gamers. I think we might start seeing a lot more competition aimed directly at us. It's funny, how a group so ignored and misunderstood can punch so much money into the industry. I'm interested in seeing how other industries are going to start taking the gamer perspective into account when creating/marketing their products. -- www.mktourney.com online console game tournaments. Football/Fighting/FPS
ISPs have had the ability to deal with this for a long time. Many home users even take advantage of an easy bandage (probably not a fix) - simply prioritize packets. As an example, ACK's get priority whereas the next packet in your 3GB Linux ISO gets bumped by a millisecond or two. Net result: Your connection is still usable and responsive, even though it is being pushed near capacity. Heck, I was behind a transparent proxy for awhile (didn't bother me, but that is another story) that would simplify routing as well. Most home users would never even know (or care about) the difference. Most are proxied at work some way or another as it is.
ISPs can simply log their data, see where it is going and what it looks like and write some prioritization rules to give the end users some help. Yes it is more work for the ISP, but it is right in line with something they should be doing anyway.
Now if there was a way to do proper QoS on the internet at large, that would be an interesting proposition as well...
... is the most important part in my opinion. My ISP has always been extremely reliable, with at the most a day of downtime every six months. But for a while about half a year ago, their latency increased to the point where any online game became unplayeable. The connection was just fine for downloading data or browsing, but any server I could connect to would ping higher than 1s. Unfortunately, I could not switch ISPs, so I ended up giving up on gaming online.
I used to be an Americas Army fanatic, spending even 4-5 hours a day playing. I won't try to pretend that I've stopped playing games, but now I only do it at lan parties, or I play games that don't require an internet connection. The reason I was spending so much time online was not necessarily playing the game itself, but playing it with other people. Since that element was removed, I spend less than an hour a day playing, mostly Warcraft3.
As an interesting side note, my GPA improved quite a bit, and I have time to spend on other things... Imagine that!
When cable first was in development (@home was betatesting in Baltimore at least 7-8 years ago), just about anything other than straight up web browsing was a violation of the terms of service. Gaming (qworld, etc) was something you'd get suspension notices for because of how much of an impact it had then to the local 'community' network (all the pinging to servers, etc).
Fast forward a bit and highspeed gaming is now a major selling point for ISPs.
It's just funny to see how companies used to make huge problems out of things that later turn into total 180degree policy shifts.
A demand for RELIABILITY?! How will these corporations ever stay competitive?!
Seriously, these complaints are as stupid as the ones made by the insurance companies that insured the buildings after 9/11. Complaining about how they wouldn't be able to stay in business if they had to pay for these buildings.
Your ENTIRE BUSINESS MODEL is based off of people paying you money in case something like this happens. That is the ONLY service you provide. And then they're saying that they can't provide it. Freaking brilliant. I hate corporations.
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This is no different from when p2p applications began to become mainstream.. Even with the huge numbers of halo 2 players online, I still think that filesharing uses more bandwidth.
They might do it, but they'll offer it as a new 'premium service'. Cebridge is doing it in my suburb of Houston, and RoadRunner is advertising it on the radio in Houston proper.
I guess it's only fair, since they have to upgrade the lines for gamers and downloaders, but it feels like extortion. 'What? You're lagging out in Warcraft? Well, if you paid 15 bucks [I'm guestimating the price] more a month you wouldn't get killed so often. You want to enjoy your game don't you?'
This is being discussed on NANOG. Consensus is that (surprise, surprise) this is a PR move by Sandvine, who just happens to have a bandwidth management product. Several network managers in charge of large, multithousand-user networks, and including one large university campus, and a couple of ISPs, have chimed in saying that they've seen no real increase in bandwidth usage since Halo 2 was launched, and in fact, in a couple cases, have seen usage drop, attributable to the migration of PC/Mac Halo 1 players to the Xbox-only Halo 2.
The sky is not falling.
-jeremy
As has been stated, there are many other games, not to mention NON-GAME APPLICATIONS, that have much higher bandwidth requirements.
Someone at CNET got a fat check for this article.
...Is a very good thing. Here, Cox is the premier ISP - crappiest service ever. More often than not, the service is out during peak hours, and the customer service line is always busy. On top of that, the reps will flat-out LIE to you and say that you're the cause of the outage. (I was once told that my "illegal router" brought down the Norman service area.)
Increased loads will cause Cox to at least build a better network, but I'm sure the service will stay pretty bad.
Why can't all fpga/microcontroller manufacturers just release free optimizing compilers???
Sandvine claims that this will put added pressure on cable company (my edit) ISPs to improve the quality of their broadband offerings, as users will demand reliability and low latency.
I find it hard to beleive this is an issue for DSL providers, but I can see this totally clogging up some sections of cable broadband ISP.
ISP sales reps usually don't even know what latency is, I've heard comment's like.
Higher throughput means lower latency" and other ridiculous panderings. I haven't heard of anyone who is extraordinarily happy with their isp, it's a routine service it should JUST WORK without concerns like 98% uptime.
OK, enough with Halo 2. Plenty more games have larger userbases so stop advertising Halo 2 on Slashdot, for the love of god.
Acting stupid isn't much fun when there's someone around who knows better
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I live in Richmond Hill, a suburb of Toronto.
Rogers is just shit. Period. Terrible, terrible ISP.
All our computers are malware free, and i always make sure to shut off MSN, Gmail, etc. etc. every time i play. I run no FTP/HTTP services.
I constantly get unnaceptable (not unplayable, but low) pings. It's so bad we're actually looking to switch to Sympatico right now.
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...but isn't Steam synonymous with Power Play?