Bandwidth Usage

gunsofdeschain · April 2014

Hey guys,

I was wondering if any of you could tell me approximately how much data would be used per hour of gaming? I stay in a shared apartment and these *** in the other rooms download crap all day and my ping is just horrible. I was considering a mobile broadband plan just for gaming.

Is this a viable option? Are mobile broadband services reliable and fast enough for gaming? Just FYI, I live in Melbourne, Aus.

Cheers guys.

Moobs · April 2014

Don't know about bandwidth use but when I'm travelling I use my phone as a personal hotspot. Telstra 4G is super-fast and fine for games. In fact it's about 5 times faster than my home ADSL connection. Reliable too.

jesterstear · April 2014

The bandwidth requirement should be tiny, but mobile broadband dongles can be inconsistent in their ping times and speeds. Great one minute then lag spikes the next etc.

I'd have a look to see if your apartment could upgrade to a (gaming?) router that supports "quality of service" packet scheduling - basically giving priority to the small amount of game data coming through your network.

dagnome · April 2014

gunsofdeschain wrote: »

Hey guys,

I was wondering if any of you could tell me approximately how much data would be used per hour of gaming? I stay in a shared apartment and these *** in the other rooms download crap all day and my ping is just horrible. I was considering a mobile broadband plan just for gaming.

Is this a viable option? Are mobile broadband services reliable and fast enough for gaming? Just FYI, I live in Melbourne, Aus.

Cheers guys.

I work as a sales consultant for a variety of things and I can tell you that unless you plan on dishing out about $200-$400 a month on a data plan you still wouldn't have the capability to play ESO even on a average playtime. Most people can get away with Mobile Broadband (IE a hotspot or mobile MIFI device) if they browse the web and download the occasional document, gamers would not stand a chance unless you like playing offline solitaire. Let me throw down some prices for you.

I would say the average person uses at least 10-20GB's a month (Very rough estimate I know my data usage is extreme but I also do other things on my computer, how else am I going to get the second season of "The Newsroom" on my PC?for gaming (Depending on how often you play) and that's not including any other activities you do on the internet (IE Downloading music, movies) you would be paying at least

16GB $90 18GB $100 20GB $110
30GB $185 40GB $260 50GB $335

A month just for the data plan not including the additional $20-$50 a month for just having the line open. (These prices are from Verizon but other mobile broadband carriers reflect similar pricing)

Can you see where the price gets to outrageous to pay for? I mean you can go ahead and try it but you'd be better off just buying each of your friends a copy of ESO and playing it together, while your at it buy about 20 copies and give them away because that's probably what you could do with the amount of wasted money trying to game on a mobile broadband plan.

I didn't even cover the actual speed of the device because its irrelevant, you cant play ESO on a mobile broadband device effectively.

dagnome · April 2014

Moobs wrote: »

Don't know about bandwidth use but when I'm travelling I use my phone as a personal hotspot. Telstra 4G is super-fast and fine for games. In fact it's about 5 times faster than my home ADSL connection. Reliable too.

That's the downside of DSL. In my area (Even with comcast) we get about 50 down and 5-10 up.

Burbs · April 2014

I was wondering this myself, so i did some testing last night using my ipad as a hotspot. I'm on verizons 4g network and played just fine with a friend doing some questing and a public dungeon. after about 2hrs of playing i used around 40mb of data.

gunsofdeschain · April 2014

Hey guys, please continue to add / clarify any points. Still unable to make a commitment with the info I have so far.

Just FYI, I only plan to use the 4G for gaming. For downloading other stuff and browsing, streaming, general net use, I can use the home ADSL.

Burbs · April 2014

Well one thing about gaming on a mobile hotspot is the only data your sending and receiving is your actions and the actions of others around for the most part. Most of the worlds data is already installed on your computer. so the data usage is very little as i pointed out from my previous post.

commandline · April 2014

gunsofdeschain wrote: »

Hey guys,

I was wondering if any of you could tell me approximately how much data would be used per hour of gaming?

To find your approximate ESO hourly bandwidth usage, one method would be to check your network adapters sent/received data.

commandline · April 2014

You always have the option of changing the QoS (quality of service) on your router/switch to cater to your ESO needs

Hexcaliber · April 2014

dagnome wrote: »

I work as a sales consultant for a variety of things and I can tell you that unless you plan on dishing out about $200-$400 a month on a data plan you still wouldn't have the capability to play ESO even on a average playtime. Most people can get away with Mobile Broadband (IE a hotspot or mobile MIFI device) if they browse the web and download the occasional document, gamers would not stand a chance unless you like playing offline solitaire. Let me throw down some prices for you.

I would say the average person uses at least 10-20GB's a month (Very rough estimate I know my data usage is extreme but I also do other things on my computer, how else am I going to get the second season of "The Newsroom" on my PC?for gaming (Depending on how often you play) and that's not including any other activities you do on the internet (IE Downloading music, movies) you would be paying at least

16GB $90 18GB $100 20GB $110
30GB $185 40GB $260 50GB $335

A month just for the data plan not including the additional $20-$50 a month for ju.

The Internet is global, while your figures may or may not be accurate for the US they are not elsewhere in the world. I travel extensively and regularly play games on the move including mmo and fps using my phone/laptop; many international phone providers still offer unlimited data tariffs.

WhiteQueen · April 2014

It depends on where you are, of course, but I use a USB dongle for my online gaming and, while the latency isn't terrible, it also isn't that great. Since we don't have a latency monitor for this game (which is a horrible design flaw) I'm quoting from my previous game, which was around 100-300ms.

Burbs · April 2014

dagnome wrote: »

I would say the average person uses at least 10-20GB's a month (Very rough estimate I know my data usage is extreme but I also do other things on my computer, how else am I going to get the second season of "The Newsroom" on my PC?for gaming (Depending on how often you play) and that's not including any other activities you do on the internet (IE Downloading music, movies) you would be paying at least

16GB $90 18GB $100 20GB $110
30GB $185 40GB $260 50GB $335

A month just for the data plan not including the additional $20-$50 a month for just having the line open. (These prices are from Verizon but other mobile broadband carriers reflect similar pricing)

Can you see where the price gets to outrageous to pay for? I mean you can go ahead and try it but you'd be better off just buying each of your friends a copy of ESO and playing it together, while your at it buy about 20 copies and give them away because that's probably what you could do with the amount of wasted money trying to game on a mobile broadband plan.

I didn't even cover the actual speed of the device because its irrelevant, you cant play ESO on a mobile broadband device effectively.

gaming vs movie streaming is not a good comparison. When your streaming an entire show or movie your basically downloading that entire movie/show data and one average movie is around 2gb of data. Where as with gaming the game is already installed on your computer.

I would save data usage by not downloading patches from your mobile device. I'd download the patches from your home service instead. Some patches can be big and use a bunch of data.

superfluke · April 2014

gunsofdeschain wrote: »

Hey guys,

I was wondering if any of you could tell me approximately how much data would be used per hour of gaming? I stay in a shared apartment and these *** in the other rooms download crap all day and my ping is just horrible. I was considering a mobile broadband plan just for gaming.

Is this a viable option? Are mobile broadband services reliable and fast enough for gaming? Just FYI, I live in Melbourne, Aus.

Cheers guys.

I monitor mine quite a bit as I am on mobile broadband with a monthly cap. On a quiet day solo questing I can get by with as little as 12-15 Mb/hour as an average.
In Cyrodiil amongst the worst zergs and furious fighting it can be ten times that.
I would say the average person unless you are doing 12 hour days every day should be fine with less than 200Mb a day easy, as far as just an ESO budget goes. For reference I played Lotro for years on it and stayed under 150 Mb a day with zero monthly overage issues. This game uses more data transfer and they have alot of updates though.

dagnome · April 2014

Burbs wrote: »

gaming vs movie streaming is not a good comparison. When your streaming an entire show or movie your basically downloading that entire movie/show data and one average movie is around 2gb of data. Where as with gaming the game is already installed on your computer.

I would save data usage by not downloading patches from your mobile device. I'd download the patches from your home service instead. Some patches can be big and use a bunch of data.

Very true, but I was simply making a point from the possible financial aspect of attempting to use a Mifi device as your sole internet connection for gaming. I also stated that a lot of it has to with what else he may or may not be doing while connected to this hotspot. It CAN work but the average user/gamer utilizes to much internet for it to be truly beneficial.

gunsofdeschain · April 2014

Alright, thanks guys. I think I'll start looking into who to get the service from now. Perhaps a provider willing to give me a cooling off period. I desperately need a low ping service. ATM, my tracert results are horrible.

I'm level 23 and so far I don't think I have ever seen a mob drop from full health to dead in one fluid chain of combat. It's usually a stealth full draw attack, some random button mashing and charge, ultimate and then after a couple seconds I'll either see all the mobs dead or 'Press to res at the nearest wayshrine'.

KozmozDK · September 2014

Hi guys this is my experience with playing ESO with ipad hotspot. I'm sitting in Thailand right now far out on the country I'm playing on the US server, my Ipad show 3 dots as connecting and I can play fine, well sometimes I spike out. I will say 2-3 hours in PVP fights and I used around 40-80 mb but thank god the internet only cost 3$ for 1 gb

Nestor · September 2014

gunsofdeschain wrote: »

Hey guys,

I was wondering if any of you could tell me approximately how much data would be used per hour of gaming? I stay in a shared apartment and these *** in the other rooms download crap all day and my ping is just horrible. I was considering a mobile broadband plan just for gaming.

Is this a viable option? Are mobile broadband services reliable and fast enough for gaming? Just FYI, I live in Melbourne, Aus.

Cheers guys.

Online gaming uses small amounts of bandwidth, on the order of 10KB to 20KB per minute. It's just coordinates and inventory/accounting information.

You can get another ISP device, or you could get a router that lets you apply QOS to your home network. You could give priority to your gaming connections so that all other uses have to wait. This would not impact your roomates as your needs are quite small, you just have to have them passing as quickly as possible. This would be cheaper in the long run than another ISP would be.