ADSL poor for online gaming? (In the UK!)

[Pace]

I was just browsing BT's (UK Telco for non Britons!) website and reading about their proposed ADSL when on this page they mention this:

as the service is asymmetric the data does not flow the same in both directions and therefore gives bursts of available bandwidth, not neccessarily suitable to applications such as videoconferencing.

Does this mean that online gaming will be laggy in bursts too? I mainly want this for downloading files etc. but I really want to start playing online (my modem don't cut it at the moment) - does anybody know about this or possibly have tried the ADSL trial?

Thanks,

Paul.

[Rick]

Online gaming is great. I've got a ADSL service that limits my upload speed to 14KB/sec. That's more then enough for UT and Quake 3. Normally get ping times between 40-60ms.

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[ahartman]

What ADSL means is that the upload and download speeds are different. For instance, the DSL available to me is 768/128. Meaning I can download at 768 but can only upload at 128. I don't think this is much of a problem for online gaming as most data is coming from the server to you rather than you sending to the server.

Even with a 128 ISDN both ways, you should find 150 pings on quite few servers - very playable.

Andy

[Pace]

I already knew of the assymetric but it was the:

gives bursts of available bandwidth

that worried me - as getting a large burst of data and then waiting for another could make online gaming pretty disastrous.

Thanks for the replies though!

And, with regards to general downloading - what kind of speeds can be expected from sites such as ftp.cdrom.com, sunsite.ac.uk and mirror.ac.uk - I would be downloading Linux ISOs etc.

And finally, I'll probably stick this in the gaming later, I take it that I could connect my whole LAN party to the internet and play the bunch of us on an Internet server?

Thanks again,

Paul.

[Himself]

DSL can be better for gaming than cable if you have a lot of cable users in your area and/or if the cable companies setup is screwed up like it is here.

[Buuri]

Paul,

Worry not. The wording in that FAQ is just misleading.
Those "bursts" described are a normal method for limiting the bandwidth. You know, electrons only go one speed in the copper wires so the only way to limit the bandwith is to toggle the connection on and off in a fashion that averages to a certain bandwidth.

:
B

[Buuri]

that worried me - as getting a large burst of data and then waiting for another could make online gaming pretty disastrous.

By the way, this happens so fast that you could say the stream is continous and of some steady speed. It's done in all the data communications, Ethernet included.

:
B

[Pace]

Yea, thanks Buuri, misleading it was! And it will surely be suitable for video conferencing anyway then?

Anyhow, I'm all sold on it so now it's up to BT to get it in my area !

Paul.

[ahartman]

I wouldn't be too sure about the video conferencing. The upload speeds are generally much slower than the download speeds with ADSL.

Depending on what type of service you are offered, I'd guess video conferencing wouldn't be very good unless you get a constant 350-400kb upload speed. Even w/my cable modem (avg 650k), streaming video isn't crystal clear.

DSL upload speeds here in Chicago are limited to 128 (to prevent people from running servers and such).

[merchant2112]

1.5/128 dsl service ping for halflife servers range from 50 to 80 (min of 100) and the rest depending on where they are 100 to 300 ms (id say 1000 servers ping like that on a given day.) all playable. dsl rocks

[Himself]

I get 16-20KB/s up to someone else on DSL locally, but to folks with cable in the same area I get 70-80KB/s up. It all depends on how they implement the restrictions.