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Bandwidth Use In MMOs
Massively is running a story about bandwidth costs for MMOs and other virtual worlds. It's based on a post at the BBC on the same subject which references a traffic analysis (PDF) done for World of Warcraft. Quoting:
"If you're an average user on capped access, the odds are you have roughly 20Gbytes per month to allocate among all of your Internet usage (it varies depending on just where you are). For you, sucking back (for example) a 2GB World of Warcraft patch isn't something you can just do. It's something you have to plan for — and quite often you have to plan for in the following month. Even a 500MB download has to be handled with caution. MMOGs as a rule don't use a whole lot of bandwidth in actual operation. However, the quantity definitely rises in busy areas with lots of players, where there are large numbers of mobs, or on raids, and takes quite a much larger jump if you're using voice as well."
Can't you get offline installers that you can download from school/work/friend's basement and bring over by sneakernet?
How good MMOs could be if bandwidth wasn't an issue?
If an ISP has you capped at 20 gigs a month, switch.
Unfortunately, that may not be an option, depending on where you live...
It's my hope that things like MMOs, voice communication (and videoconferencing), YouTube, etc, will all drive ordinary users to use more bandwidth. Hopefully a lot more.
And that these applications will appear too fast and too varied for the ISPs to attempt to make deals with them.
This would force ISPs to stop focusing on bandwidth leeches (and specifically targeting BitTorrent), and actually start increasing their bandwidth to match the very real demand.
I could be entirely wrong, though. All of the above rests on the assumption that MMO companies ultimately have more power than ISPs.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
This doesn't seem to be an issue of bandwidth, but of transfer caps. Unless bandwidth refers to both caps and connection speeds.
You mad
TFA gives the size of a patch or a game download. But that information is easily found. What would actually be useful is the information on how much bandwidth gameplay actually consumes, perhaps in Kbps, for a few of the more common MMOs like WoW.
Such information is also easily found: http://www.google.com/search?q=wow+bandwidth
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Both major services in British Columbia Canada are capped. Telus is 40gb/month, Shaw was 30 a few years ago but may have increased. Telus also seems to cap total transfer speed around 250kb/sec, torrents, PS3 updates, itunes, and regular downloads noticeably slow down web page loads.
[20:36] wwwdot/.dotorg
you're so bored in between pulls you study the traffic WoW is generating.
Shaw raised their cap to 60GB around '06 I think. Anyway thats for the average highspeed internet, the next step up can be had for an extra 10 bucks and doubles the speed and raises the cap to 100GB.
No clue how you put Canada on that list. I live in Calgary Alberta. And not a single ISP offers Uncapped Downloads unless you pay for a small Biz Line. Caps start at 20 Gigs for the slow internet 200kbits/s up to 100 Gigs for 10Mbit/s
I've been a WoW raider for years and always used 2-3 gig a month for 15-20 hours of raid with vent, plus a few more hours of solo play. That's patch and surfing included.
I know, because I'm using a cheap metered connection and I have to pay extra when I bust the 2 gig/month cap. I don't see why I should pay 50-80$ a month for bandwidth I won't use.
ID: the nose did not occur naturally, how would we wear glasses otherwise? (apologies to Voltaire)
if you have a business connection then you might have access to uncapped internet access in the U.S., but otherwise most residential broadband services are capped--even if the ISP doesn't tell you.
when it's standard practice to oversell to the point that your total network capacity is only enough for 1% of your customers, then of course bandwidth caps are going to be put in place. there's no way that Verizon, Comcast, or any other major U.S. ISP can handle even a quarter of their subscribers using their service plan's full advertised transfer rate 24/7.
with bandwidth throttling & packet shaping, i'm only getting about 50~60 GB total downstream throughput per month (if there are no major outages). and we're charged about 1000% the bandwidth costs (per Mbps) of countries like Sweden, Japan, Korea, etc.
Imagine the irony if this had been a main story and the article got slashdotted.
If you don't have a cap then you're likely in a very developed area. I live in a less developed area and am stuck with wireless broadband to a T3 trunk. Sure my latency is great, but my cap is 600M per day. That's not a rolling average either, that's a "soft" cap. If I go over I get a hand delivered letter letting me know that I used 601M yesterday!
Imagine instead of carbon credits you have download credits. Hey I only downloaded 5 gigs this month I want to be able to sell the other 15 gigs to anyone who is over their limit.
:-)
Not really a bad idea
That's in England, not the US.
And it's Australia that seems to have the most problem with bandwidth caps - so far as I can tell it's universal there: you can't get an uncapped connection down under.
The way ISPs cap usage seems to be more abusive in the US, though (when there is a cap, that is). From what I understand you simply get throttled in Australia once you hit the cap. In the US you start paying overcharge rates instead.