proggR Posted July 9, 2009 Share Posted July 9, 2009 Right now I'm living back at my parents for the summer and they only have dialup here. I have an iPhone and can tether my computer to it so I can get decent enough speeds to do what I need. I've been talking to a guy at work a lot about Startcraft and I've been wanting to play him on Battle Net. I have a 6GB limit a month and I'm probably up to 1.5GB already (says the network usage section on my phone so I don't know how accurate it is). Does anyone know offhand where I can find out how much bandwidth games generally take up? I imagine I could get away with playing online poker no problem but what about Startcraft? Or WoW? I've never played either online so I'm not sure what to expect as far as traffic is concerned. Thanks in advance. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PugJr Posted July 9, 2009 Share Posted July 9, 2009 Thats about 145 KB a second which is plenty to run starcraft. I can run WC3 (Which I would imagine would take more internet speed than SC.) and my upload is about 128KB/sec and thats hosting a game of 12 people with a few hundred units on the map. No one ever complains about lag. Although you never specified if you are hosting or joining a game so that makes all the difference. If you are in a game with 145 KB/sec you should be fine with anything from what I know, as far as hosting a server goes or a game, that might be a bit of a problem on some games. EDIT: Oh also, whats your connection? Now I think about it, 6 GB bandwidth means nothing. Several shared servers offer infinite bandwidth but the connection is only so fast. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
.josh Posted July 9, 2009 Share Posted July 9, 2009 The question isn't about throughput, it's about consumption limit. Bandwidth is how much data you consume uploading and downloading. Like for instance, if you download a 1mb file, you have used 1mb in bandwidth (well technically a little bit more, but you get the point). So a bandwidth limit is saying for instance "In a month, you can only upload/download x amount of data." Or another way of putting it: it's not how big a pipe the water is going through, but how much water is allowed to go through it, before the door is shut. So for instance, if you had a 50mb/mo bandwidth limit, you could only be able to download that 1mb file 50 times (actually less, if you factor in the bandwidth used for headers, etc..). After that, you would exceed your limit. There would be a block in place saying you have exceeded the limit, and it will not allow you to request anything else until the next month. Or it could kick you to a special rate, kind of like going over on minutes on a cell phone plan...just depends on what's in your ISP's contract/plan. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
corbin Posted July 9, 2009 Share Posted July 9, 2009 If we want to get technical, the term "bandwidth" has now been bastardized by the web industries to mean how much data in a certain amount of time ;p. As far as Starcraft goes, I don't play it, nor have I ever even heard of it, but I can't imagine it would use much bandwidth. I used to help with a server that had 800-1500 people on at any given time, and the monthly bandwidth consumption was usually really freaking high, but not that high individually for people. I wish I could remember now what the monthly bandwidth usage was.... Anyway, if I had to throw a guess out there, I doubt you'll use more than 1GB of BW a month on Starcraft as an absolute max. That would be 414B/s. I guess the max you could use would be: s*30*36*60*60, s = speed of connection. So, at 100KB/s, the max you could use would be: Wow... Actually 247GB. OK, so that's a bad way to figure it out haha... Errrmmmm, I would estimate 30-100MB per month depending on how often you play. Dunno though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PugJr Posted July 10, 2009 Share Posted July 10, 2009 The question isn't about throughput, it's about consumption limit. Bandwidth is how much data you consume uploading and downloading. Like for instance, if you download a 1mb file, you have used 1mb in bandwidth (well technically a little bit more, but you get the point). So a bandwidth limit is saying for instance "In a month, you can only upload/download x amount of data." Or another way of putting it: it's not how big a pipe the water is going through, but how much water is allowed to go through it, before the door is shut. So for instance, if you had a 50mb/mo bandwidth limit, you could only be able to download that 1mb file 50 times (actually less, if you factor in the bandwidth used for headers, etc..). After that, you would exceed your limit. There would be a block in place saying you have exceeded the limit, and it will not allow you to request anything else until the next month. Or it could kick you to a special rate, kind of like going over on minutes on a cell phone plan...just depends on what's in your ISP's contract/plan. You are missing my point. 145 KB/S is plenty to run starcraft, so that means starcraft is taking /less/ than 145 KB/s, which would be under 6GB of bandwidth. Well, thats under the assumption starcraft is less than 145 KB/s but I'd be shocked if it wasn't considering WC3 can be hosted with no lag at 12 players at 128 KB/s upload. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
corbin Posted July 10, 2009 Share Posted July 10, 2009 The question isn't about throughput, it's about consumption limit. Bandwidth is how much data you consume uploading and downloading. Like for instance, if you download a 1mb file, you have used 1mb in bandwidth (well technically a little bit more, but you get the point). So a bandwidth limit is saying for instance "In a month, you can only upload/download x amount of data." Or another way of putting it: it's not how big a pipe the water is going through, but how much water is allowed to go through it, before the door is shut. So for instance, if you had a 50mb/mo bandwidth limit, you could only be able to download that 1mb file 50 times (actually less, if you factor in the bandwidth used for headers, etc..). After that, you would exceed your limit. There would be a block in place saying you have exceeded the limit, and it will not allow you to request anything else until the next month. Or it could kick you to a special rate, kind of like going over on minutes on a cell phone plan...just depends on what's in your ISP's contract/plan. You are missing my point. 145 KB/S is plenty to run starcraft, so that means starcraft is taking /less/ than 145 KB/s, which would be under 6GB of bandwidth. Well, thats under the assumption starcraft is less than 145 KB/s but I'd be shocked if it wasn't considering WC3 can be hosted with no lag at 12 players at 128 KB/s upload. Under 145KB/s could still be over 6GB.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
.josh Posted July 10, 2009 Share Posted July 10, 2009 You are missing my point. 145 KB/S is plenty to run starcraft, so that means starcraft is taking /less/ than 145 KB/s, which would be under 6GB of bandwidth. Well, thats under the assumption starcraft is less than 145 KB/s but I'd be shocked if it wasn't considering WC3 can be hosted with no lag at 12 players at 128 KB/s upload. No, you are missing the point. Your connection speed is not the same metric as bandwidth. They are two different metrics. Go back to my pipe analogy. Or better yet, here's another analogy: using a hose to fill a pool up with water. The smaller in diameter the hose is, the longer it is going to take to fill the pool up. Your connection speed is like that hose. Now, whether it takes an hour to fill that pool up or 10 hours to fill that pool up, the pool is only so big, and once you fill it up, it's filled. The water being put in the pool is like the data. Bandwidth is how much water is in that pool. So if the pool is a 100 gallon pool, it doesn't matter whether your hose is 145kbps or 20mbps. All that means is how fast the water will flow. But if you have a 6gb cap on your bandwidth, no matter how fast you fill that pool up, once it's filled, it's filled. Point is, bandwidth and connection speed are 2 different metrics, measured 2 different ways. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
.josh Posted July 10, 2009 Share Posted July 10, 2009 Under 145KB/s could still be over 6GB.... Well, that depends. If you were actually using a full 145kb/s it would take you approximately 12 hours to burn through 6gb bandwidth. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PugJr Posted July 10, 2009 Share Posted July 10, 2009 Under 145KB/s could still be over 6GB.... No. 60 (seconds) * 60 (minutes) * 24 (hours) * 30 (days) = 2592000 seconds in a month. 6 GB = 6 * 1024 (Megabytes) * 1024 (kilobytes) = 6291456 KBs. 6291456 / 259200 = 24 KB a second? Oops, I did some miscalculations...so at 24 KB/S. Hm...Not sure if that would be enough for SC. Still 24 KB/S would probably be enough for starcraft as long as you aren't hosting. Well, he still needs 8 hours a sleep a day and if he is a star-craft 'oholoic that would make it 16 hours of constant playing. 24 * 24 / 16 = 36 KB a second? And I think that would make it for starcraft. Starcraft is a '98 game so it can't require too much speed. Well, that depends. If you were actually using a full 145kb/s it would take you approximately 12 hours to burn through 6gb bandwidth. Yeah, I messed up my calculations. I recalculated it to 36 KB a second. Unless I did that one wrong too. Oh rofl, ignore this entire post. I left out a 0. > So you are getting 3.6 KB a second which he has no chance. OP, how often do you plan on playing starcraft? 16 hours a day isn't possible. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
proggR Posted July 10, 2009 Author Share Posted July 10, 2009 Haha this has been an interesting thread to come back to. No not 16 hours a day. Not likely more than 3-4 and probably not everyday. I suppose the easiest way would be to play for an hour or so and see how much the number jumps where the phone tells me what I've used. It's not really accurate but it'd give me a decent estimate. I may try that in the next few days and I'll post what I get whenever I do. I read that Starcraft tends to use smaller packet sizes than most online apps so hopefully that bodes well. 47 days and I'll be back to real Internet Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PugJr Posted July 10, 2009 Share Posted July 10, 2009 Well 3-4 is about 4 times more speed you get. Now you are up to 3.6 * 4 = 14.4 KBs if you play 4 hours everyday. You'd probably be pretty safe assuming you played 4 hours every other day but to make sure nothing goes wrong and I'm completely off (Which is more likely to happen than not) you should download ethereal and monitor your bandwidth usage from that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
burnside Posted July 10, 2009 Share Posted July 10, 2009 Or not play it at all ... ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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