Hourly bandwidth usage too high - this year

Rynier · June 2015

Well as a south African i have to say that its quite amuzing seeing what the rest of the world thinks expensive bandwidth is. I feel for the OP and hope they give you clarification as I travel and would like to feed my horse whilst on travels

and using my phone is super expensive.

So to give you guys a rough idea. I have a 10mb line ( 10 down 1mb up ) and 20Gb cap this is about $90

In our neighboring Zimbwabwe a 2mb Vsat conn with 10Gb cap would set you back $140

I have to add that with the new Fibre coming in we might have 20mb uncapped lines for $100 soon

UrQuan · June 2015

Etaniel wrote: »

I'm baffled to see that some people in the US (is this right?) still don't have access to unlimited internet... I feel lucky to live in France

According to the most recent study that I know of, about 9 million people in the USA still use dial-up internet... So it's not that surprising that many people in the US don't have unlimited.

I'm lucky I live in a city in Canada where I have multiple good internet service options (off the top of my head I know of 3 different high-speed internet providers I could go with, and if I actually looked into it I suspect there are others I could choose from as well). I don't think I technically have unlimited internet - I think I actually do have a cap, but even with streaming and doing tons of downloading I've never come close to it.

traigusb14_ESO2 · June 2015

UrQuan wrote: »

Etaniel wrote: »

I'm baffled to see that some people in the US (is this right?) still don't have access to unlimited internet... I feel lucky to live in France

According to the most recent study that I know of, about 9 million people in the USA still use dial-up internet... So it's not that surprising that many people in the US don't have unlimited.

I'm lucky I live in a city in Canada where I have multiple good internet service options (off the top of my head I know of 3 different high-speed internet providers I could go with, and if I actually looked into it I suspect there are others I could choose from as well). I don't think I technically have unlimited internet - I think I actually do have a cap, but even with streaming and doing tons of downloading I've never come close to it.

A lot of people in the US think they have unlimited but don't. Most cable companies have a throttle cap (as opposed to a pay cap or a shut-off cap). Not easy to get to if you are single in an apartment, but you can get there with a family of 4 pretty fast.

A lot of places won't even enforce that unless you go over several months in a row.

Caps are out there though, usually in the small print of your cable contract.

Pallmor · June 2015

Unfortunately, a lot of these bandwidth problems could have been solved by municipal broadband in the U.S., but we let our lovely politicians get away with outlawing it in most states (after generous campaign contributions from the cablecos, of course). Chattanooga, TN is a great example. The city put in cheap fiber broadband back before the helpful politicians in TN outlawed this for the rest of the state. And the funny thing was that the local cable company, that swore up and down that it was technologically impossible to put in fiber before the city did, suddenly found a way to put in their own fiber and drop their prices.

idk · June 2015

HalloweenWeed wrote: »

In the past 3 months we have had problems keeping our Internet usage within our provider's bandwidth limits. We have a download limit of 17GB/mo. and have been consistently about 14.5-15GB/mo. I did some research, using bandwidth checking tools, and found that ESO was the culprit. I have checked for unwanted software taking up bandwidth, and reduced some of the extraneous desired software to reduce our download bandwidth. I have ruled out rootkits, worms, trojans, and other malicious software. We have two computers and two accounts, both me and my wife play ESO heavily, on the same Internet connection. They have no consumer upgrade for out Internet package, and we have no alternative in our location - we own a house. So we have only one alternative - reduce ESO play time or quit altogether to keep our Internet usage lower.

However, this was not a problem last September, and we were playing ESO just as much. I have seen ESO bandwidth usage at least double, perhaps much more than double, since then. I am not complaining about the patches downloads - that's understandable. I am talking about the hourly usage when online in ESO. Please consider this a complaint about the high-download volume that the game is currently doing. Please have the developers look at this and fix it, I think the current download usage of ESO is unnecessary, and caused by a bad update.

-HalloweenWeed

Based on the information provided no conclusion can be made as to the data transfer requirements of ESO while just playing the game.

I seriously doubt gameplay is using much of your monthly bandwidth and it's a culmination of patches and streaming some movies that are taking up your monthly allotments.

If your normal monthly usage is that high and upgrading the account isn't an option maybe get a second account, essentially doubling your bandwidth.

Gorthax · June 2015

HalloweenWeed wrote: »

out --> our
"They have no consumer upgrade for our Internet package, and we have no alternative in our location - we own a house."
(Edits are not allowed)

@HalloweenWeed the edit feature is located above your post

and to the left; that is only for the original post though every other post on your thread you make is the same location. Look by the thread title

Athas24 · June 2015

omg.. I thought I had a right to gripe about my connection going from the 25mbps to 15mbps occasionally. Apparently there are people who have a limit on how much they can download? YUCK!

That sounds terrible.

gard · June 2015

DaveMoeDee wrote: »

wrlifeboil wrote: »

Robbmrp wrote: »

HalloweenWeed wrote: »

Pallmor wrote: »

Just curious, where are you guys at where there are such low bandwidth caps? Do you have satellite internet or live out in the country or something? My cellphone cap is almost as much as your home cap. Most people (in the U.S. at least) have a home cap in the hundreds of GB.

Yes, I have Satellite Internet service. The phone Co. don't offer high-speed Internet right here, and the cable Co. won't bring it this far down the road. Terrible lag, 1-2sec. in-game. Ping times >900ms. Tried turning on the in-game ping meter once, it stayed at a constant 999 and never changed. Apparently it doesn't indicate higher ping times. I am extremely glad that ESO is playable with our lag, we have enjoyed it immensely. We get 400KBps download speed peak ("3Mbps" advertised speed, Bytes vs. bits). Upload speed is dismal at less than 10KBps. FYI.

Milktray wrote: »

HalloweenWeed wrote: »

DaveMoeDee wrote: »

Every Monday, bring computer to a Starbucks.

Our computers are big, and weigh about 20 lbs. each (mine is water-cooled). Plus our only monitors are 24". Not feasible. But we do have an alternate method of downloading, which I should've reverted to today. But since in the past the posted patch sizes have been a little more than the actual that I seen, I thought maybe we could do it. I was wrong.

We can download elsewhere, and copy the files to our computers. It is quite an inconvenience, and one of us might get into trouble for it someday - perhaps even making our employment in jeopardy. We've done this several times before.

Ojustaboo wrote: »

You could patch one PC and copy files to the other to save you a bit

Yeah we've been doing that since Beta over a year ago. We're used to the methods to reduce download bandwidth, and I am what you would call a "power user," or perhaps even a "computer geek." Please keep giving your suggestions like this though, you could help other people with suggestions like this.

Power User? Computer Geek? High End PC's .. yet you cant afford a decent bandwidth limit?

Umm, you must have missed this quote.... He never said he couldn't afford it, no ISP will get it to them other than Satellite.....

HalloweenWeed wrote: »

Pallmor wrote: »

Just curious, where are you guys at where there are such low bandwidth caps? Do you have satellite internet or live out in the country or something? My cellphone cap is almost as much as your home cap. Most people (in the U.S. at least) have a home cap in the hundreds of GB.

Yes, I have Satellite Internet service. The phone Co. don't offer high-speed Internet right here, and the cable Co. won't bring it this far down the road. Terrible lag, 1-2sec. in-game. Ping times >900ms. Tried turning on the in-game ping meter once, it stayed at a constant 999 and never changed. Apparently it doesn't indicate higher ping times. I am extremely glad that ESO is playable with our lag, we have enjoyed it immensely. We get 400KBps download speed peak ("3Mbps" advertised speed, Bytes vs. bits). Upload speed is dismal at less than 10KBps. FYI.

To be honest, I don't feel that badly for satellite users. Satellite Internet usually means rural or exurb. There is a quality of life tradeoff there that many would gladly make if they had the means or opportunity.

It would be nice to not have to pay the premium to live in the city but there is too much that I am not willing to give up.

Etaniel wrote: »

I'm baffled to see that some people in the US (is this right?) still don't have access to unlimited internet... I feel lucky to live in France

@ Etaniel It's mainly people like me who live in sparsely populated, relatively remote areas (30+ miles from a town).
I'm lucky - I have 4G wireless reception at my house which I use for my main internet, and I have a satellite internet connection as backup. I'm paying about 320 a month for 60GB of 4G bandwidth. If I go over, they charge me $10/GB.

However, I live on 10 acres and have few neighbors. I can sit on the front porch and watch the deer in the morning. I can grow/raise my own food, drink water from my own well, and provide my own power. To me, this is freedom. Or as close to it as I can get. If I could get DSL life would be perfect. Really the lack of bandwidth is the only downside.

wrlifeboil · June 2015

cazlonb16_ESO wrote: »

Moonshadow66 wrote: »

I never know how much it needs on my end, we don't have a limit here in Germany (I had 2 ISPs, with both it's been like this). But the power company wanted a lot more money per month after a year playing ESO..

Most ISPs in Germany do have a limit these days actually, although not all of them enforce it (yet).

Recent Intel CPUs and graphics cards ( no matter the brand, AMD and Nvidia both cut on the consumption ) really help with the power bill.

wrlifeboil wrote: »

Sunver wrote: »

Putting limits on the internet usage should be banned in EU/USA.

Internet access isn't a necessity, say the corporate interests. They hire lobbyists to convince the government that it doesn't have the right to regulate the pricing of Internet service. So the government hasn't done much to regular price or access of Internet service like it did with telephone service 75 years ago in the U.S.

The Asian countries take a different approach. In many countries, their governments believe Internet access is so essential for growth that they subsidize broadband service.

It will be interesting to see which strategy worked out better for countries and their people - corporate run or government run infrastructure - in a few decades.

To be fair there are other factors to consider. The geography of the United States is very different from, say, South Korea. Wiring tiny South Korea with high speed internet is an entirely different thing than doing the same in the huge US. Outside of the high population density areas satellite based approaches are probably the only viable option.

You are buying into the cable company propaganda. I live in a relatively compact city with close to a million residents. There is one cable provider. The only wired alternative is the telephone company. Even in larger cities with more than one cable provider, you often find that they have separated the area into territories where they will not offer service. Coincidentally, they usually don't offer service where their competitor offers service.

That is oligopoly. That's why Comcast, the #1 cable company in the nation, spent $2 billion thinking that the government would actually allow it to merge with the #2 cable company, Time Warner. They felt the merger wouldn't affect competition because they don't compete against each other in most of their territories!!!

The fact is, the major cable companies rarely compete against each other. The usual cases where prices go down is when an upstart competitor like Google Fiber enters the market or a local government proposes to create its own system for its residents. Go and read about Internet pricing in locations wherever Google Fiber competes against the big cable companies.

Attorneyatlawl · June 2015

HalloweenWeed wrote: »

Pallmor wrote: »

Just curious, where are you guys at where there are such low bandwidth caps? Do you have satellite internet or live out in the country or something? My cellphone cap is almost as much as your home cap. Most people (in the U.S. at least) have a home cap in the hundreds of GB.

Yes, I have Satellite Internet service. The phone Co. don't offer high-speed Internet right here, and the cable Co. won't bring it this far down the road. Terrible lag, 1-2sec. in-game. Ping times >900ms. Tried turning on the in-game ping meter once, it stayed at a constant 999 and never changed. Apparently it doesn't indicate higher ping times. I am extremely glad that ESO is playable with our lag, we have enjoyed it immensely. We get 400KBps download speed peak ("3Mbps" advertised speed, Bytes vs. bits). Upload speed is dismal at less than 10KBps. FYI.

Actually, it does. Your connection is causing a fault there, as I have seen it go over 14000 during large lag-outs in Cyrodiil on occasion.

I'm sorry to hear of your bandwidth situation, and definitely do sympathize. I have tethered my computer through my 4G LTE cell phone service and it doesn't seem to take much bandwidth, but your caps may vary

.

gard · June 2015

To get back on topic, last night I monitored my elder scrolls bandwidth. If I was in a densely populated area (like the bank, for example), bandwidth usage would approach 80k/sec. Out questing solo, it drops to ~20k.

This is just the elder scrolls process. I don't have the mm addon enabled.

wrlifeboil · June 2015

gard wrote: »

To get back on topic, last night I monitored my elder scrolls bandwidth. If I was in a densely populated area (like the bank, for example), bandwidth usage would approach 80k/sec. Out questing solo, it drops to ~20k.

This is just the elder scrolls process. I don't have the mm addon enabled.

If that's typical for your ESO sessions, that's low compared to the bandwidth that most have access to but high compared to some other online games like WoW.

Anyway, for mmos the latency is more critical than the bandwidth, except while downloading patches.

RedTalon · June 2015

A major source of data use I have found in past mmos and current ones, is voice chat if you use it while playing games can add up fast with TS.

Cant recall the name of the lighter voice chat client off hand, but not has many people can be in a given chat either.

But the patches even though routine have gotten largely from time to time

Trensharo · June 2015

Voice Chat isn't a huge issue if you use a client that uses a decent compressed CODEC. That's why most people use Ventrillo and TeamSpeak. They really don't use that much bandwidth, to be frank.

The issue with MMORPGs is the size of the update patches.

This game has probably the biggest bordering non-factor patches I've ever seen from a video game, and that causes issues. Blizzard puts out 2.6GB patches for their game when they do large content patches, not fix a few bugs. I've never had a game download such big files for things that (at least from the perspective of the patch notes) seem like trivial fixes.

The big issue is the patch sizes, not the data transferred through gameplay or a Voice Chat Client.

I can stream hours of HD video over the internet for the same amount of bandwidth it takes to download some of these video ESO patches.

That's another reason why these next-gem consoles (XBOne & PS4) are such a huge PITA, with their 35-50GB Game Downloads and 10GB+ Day 1 Patches.

HalloweenWeed · June 2015

Trensharo wrote: »

Voice Chat isn't a huge issue if you use a client that uses a decent compressed CODEC. That's why most people use Ventrillo and TeamSpeak. They really don't use that much bandwidth, to be frank.

BTW, I have tried and can't use TS or Ventrillo either, on Satellite Internet. I had a few periods of success, but most of the time (60%) the voice is "garbled," really it goes like 1sec. on, 1sec. off, repeat, repeat. Yes I tried "push to talk." Looking at what was said in a Google search, it is apparent that my provider does "not support VOIP," and this is the root cause of that problem. Apparently this is a common practice for all Satellite Internet providers as well (I used to have a different Satellite Internet provider, with a different parent Co.). I have also tried Skype, and it was consistently terribly garbled. Yes, Satellite Internet service is bad.

HalloweenWeed · June 2015

traigusb14_ESO2 wrote: »

A lot of people in the US think they have unlimited but don't. Most cable companies have a throttle cap (as opposed to a pay cap or a shut-off cap). Not easy to get to if you are single in an apartment, but you can get there with a family of 4 pretty fast.

A lot of places won't even enforce that unless you go over several months in a row.

Caps are out there though, usually in the small print of your cable contract.

^ This. True. Even some provider's "unlimited" Internet: They put the word "unlimited" in quotations for some legal reason, when you read the fine print (somewhere) you find out there is a data cap despite their "unlimited" label. I have heard multiple times ppl complaining about this, after they are throttled or charged extra they find out about it. Still when this happens I usually find it amusing, because it is usually the ones who are watching multiple movies form the Internet per week and also sometimes constantly running bittorent for pirating uses.

HalloweenWeed · June 2015

Regarding my OP:
I was able to download the patch elsewhere, and have been in-game. And I have discovered that the previously mentioned usage statistics were not typical for me. Lately they have been around 4-12MB/hr, and the Master Merchant mod doesn't seem to have a significant impact on it. Changing toons seems to take more, and since I have 8 toons, use them as mules, and get hireling mails from them daily, that's when the download amount also soars! It was around 5MB/hr. when I only used one toon, in PvE, not logging in/out. Previously, when I did the investigation, I was PvPing in Cyrodiil, taking keeps with big mobs, and defending keeps with big mobs. I think this made a big difference. But I don't plan on trying it (in Cyrodiil) again any time soon to verify the bandwidth issue. It was only a temporary game strategy, I'm back in PvE in single alliance map lands now. We have decided to download all patches >1GB offsite in the future to alleviate our bandwidth problems. FYI.

HalloweenWeed · June 2015

Gorthax wrote: »

@HalloweenWeed the edit feature is located above your post and to the left; that is only for the original post though every other post on your thread you make is the same location. Look by the thread title

TY - did it

deleted221205-002626 · June 2015

infraction2008b16_ESO wrote: »

It's patches, without patches you're looking at around 100-200 mb a day which is normal for an MMO.

Actually your wrong.. if your standing someplace in the middle of nowhere maybe 100-200mb per day.. in town or pvp you can be downloading 2-3MB per second!!! check your connection next time your defending arrius keep(or whichever is your equivalent) for example and its 999+ ping time... I can promise you you got 1.7MB+ per second coming in.. and that's every single one of us!

This is assuming your connection supports event that fast which im sure a lot doesn't.. 1.7MB/sec would requite a 17Mb internet connection to achieve for those that don't know!

I mostly pvp and without doing much else online my avg daily usage is 3-5GB per day. jus sayin

ItsRejectz · June 2015

This isnt an attempt at being sarcastic, it's am honest question.. But where are people based with these download limits?
The reason I ask is, I am in the UK. I always presumed we were lagging behind in speeds compared to other places like America, as our fastest provider currently offers 150MB fiber optic connections.. But I often see people complaining about download caps and that's something most of us don't have over here ( providers over unlimited download/upload usage ).

Are download caps common in other places? And also do people use these services because there are no options for them that provide unlimited download usage?
This honestly isnt a "I've got this and you haven't" I'm just curious as it's something I don't know.

deleted221205-002626 · June 2015

Toronto - Im on 100mb fiber with a 320GB monthly limit.. and I still lag!

UrQuan · June 2015

ItsRejectz wrote: »

This isnt an attempt at being sarcastic, it's am honest question.. But where are people based with these download limits?
The reason I ask is, I am in the UK. I always presumed we were lagging behind in speeds compared to other places like America, as our fastest provider currently offers 150MB fiber optic connections.. But I often see people complaining about download caps and that's something most of us don't have over here ( providers over unlimited download/upload usage ).

Are download caps common in other places? And also do people use these services because there are no options for them that provide unlimited download usage?
This honestly isnt a "I've got this and you haven't" I'm just curious as it's something I don't know.

What a lot of people from the UK and Europe don't fully grasp is how huge North America is in terms of shear land mass (Russians will understand, but then their country covers significant portions of 2 continents). Those of us who live in major cities generally have pretty good options for internet providers. That leaves a lot of rural areas where you only have bad options though, because it's just not worth it for the ISPs to run better options like fiber optic out there.

In North America you've got a total population of about 565 million across almost 25 million km2. Population density is 22.9/km2. Now compare that to Europe. You've got a total population of about 742 million across just over 10 million km2. Population density is 72.9/km2.

So bottom line: if you're in NA and you live in a major city, you've probably got good internet with either no download cap, or a high enough one that it barely matters. If you're in NA and you're not in a major city there's an excellent chance your internet is terrible. It's a lot easier to have consistently high quality internet across Europe than it is across North America.

ItsRejectz · June 2015

UrQuan wrote: »

ItsRejectz wrote: »

This isnt an attempt at being sarcastic, it's am honest question.. But where are people based with these download limits?
The reason I ask is, I am in the UK. I always presumed we were lagging behind in speeds compared to other places like America, as our fastest provider currently offers 150MB fiber optic connections.. But I often see people complaining about download caps and that's something most of us don't have over here ( providers over unlimited download/upload usage ).

Are download caps common in other places? And also do people use these services because there are no options for them that provide unlimited download usage?
This honestly isnt a "I've got this and you haven't" I'm just curious as it's something I don't know.

What a lot of people from the UK and Europe don't fully grasp is how huge North America is in terms of shear land mass (Russians will understand, but then their country covers significant portions of 2 continents). Those of us who live in major cities generally have pretty good options for internet providers. That leaves a lot of rural areas where you only have bad options though, because it's just not worth it for the ISPs to run better options like fiber optic out there.

In North America you've got a total population of about 565 million across almost 25 million km2. Population density is 22.9/km2. Now compare that to Europe. You've got a total population of about 742 million across just over 10 million km2. Population density is 72.9/km2.

So bottom line: if you're in NA and you live in a major city, you've probably got good internet with either no download cap, or a high enough one that it barely matters. If you're in NA and you're not in a major city there's an excellent chance your internet is terrible. It's a lot easier to have consistently high quality internet across Europe than it is across North America.

Ahh right, that makes sense. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't trying to say "I have this and you don't" or anything remotely like that, was just curious as download limits hardly exsist here anymore, so just wanted to know why places like America still did. But from reading your post, I can understand why that's the case now.

Still, it's prety crap that's the case. Not going to lie, if I didn't have the internet for a while because I used all my data limit, I don't even know what I'd do.. Would have to do something drastic like talk to the wife or something lol

Endurance · June 2015

The patches are 2gb in size because its not really patching anything at all, their sending you the full sized updated files all over again

deleted221205-002626 · June 2015

Endurance wrote: »

The patches are 2gb in size because its not really patching anything at all, their sending you the full sized updated files all over again

I think there may be advantages to this style of patching tho years down the road... as it is now in 7 years you could install eso and your update would be about 30gb! in 6mo its prolly also be about 30gb! With other patching styles each patch has to be applied usually in order and you could end up patching for days and 5x or more that amount of data in 7rs for example. I think I know why they've chosen this method but Im not sure which is better yet.

actually after thinking about it for a few moments it dawned on me... The current patching system gets you playing faster after an install particularly down the road but for us already playing we're gonna be downloading a lot more in comparison when you factor in having to download every single patch as theyre pushed out.. id be afraid to know exactly how much ive already downloaded since last april!

UrQuan · June 2015

ItsRejectz wrote: »

UrQuan wrote: »

ItsRejectz wrote: »

This isnt an attempt at being sarcastic, it's am honest question.. But where are people based with these download limits?
The reason I ask is, I am in the UK. I always presumed we were lagging behind in speeds compared to other places like America, as our fastest provider currently offers 150MB fiber optic connections.. But I often see people complaining about download caps and that's something most of us don't have over here ( providers over unlimited download/upload usage ).

Are download caps common in other places? And also do people use these services because there are no options for them that provide unlimited download usage?
This honestly isnt a "I've got this and you haven't" I'm just curious as it's something I don't know.

What a lot of people from the UK and Europe don't fully grasp is how huge North America is in terms of shear land mass (Russians will understand, but then their country covers significant portions of 2 continents). Those of us who live in major cities generally have pretty good options for internet providers. That leaves a lot of rural areas where you only have bad options though, because it's just not worth it for the ISPs to run better options like fiber optic out there.

In North America you've got a total population of about 565 million across almost 25 million km2. Population density is 22.9/km2. Now compare that to Europe. You've got a total population of about 742 million across just over 10 million km2. Population density is 72.9/km2.

So bottom line: if you're in NA and you live in a major city, you've probably got good internet with either no download cap, or a high enough one that it barely matters. If you're in NA and you're not in a major city there's an excellent chance your internet is terrible. It's a lot easier to have consistently high quality internet across Europe than it is across North America.

Ahh right, that makes sense. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't trying to say "I have this and you don't" or anything remotely like that, was just curious as download limits hardly exsist here anymore, so just wanted to know why places like America still did. But from reading your post, I can understand why that's the case now.

Still, it's prety crap that's the case. Not going to lie, if I didn't have the internet for a while because I used all my data limit, I don't even know what I'd do.. Would have to do something drastic like talk to the wife or something lol

Oh I know you weren't. It's just been my experience every time I've been to the UK or Europe (and most of my extended family lives in England, so I actually go there at least once every few years), and every time friends and family from there have come over to visit, that the vast majority of people on that side of the pond simply don't realize the scale of things over here. It's understandable, actually, because the way everything is spread out over here is just so completely different from the way things are over there.

No joke, a couple of friends of my parents came out to visit Vancouver a year or two ago. They had been hoping to make a day trip to Niagara Falls... Now most people aren't quite as bad as that, but even my Aunt from Liverpool, who was quite a seasoned world traveler, and had visited Canada and Mexico quite extensively, was surprised to find out that driving from Victoria at the South end of Vancouver Island to Port Hardy at the North end was the equivalent of driving from London to Newcastle. And Vancouver Island is just a tiny part of one province of Canada! It's only about 3% of the area of the province!

Craven_Killmore · June 2015

I don't think they use compression tech for their patches or anything, which is why you get 3gig patches for some text changes or skill damage changes, I couldn't imagine what an expansion patch would be like (never seen a content patch in over a year).

A tip to the guy living in the sticks with the bad internet package, play another game that doesn't do 3gig patches every monday.