Gaming on wireless modems

Hi all,

Got a question - I game on my laptop frequently, and am generally outside of access to wireless networks. As you can imagine, this limits greatly some of the playing I can do - so I was wondering about the possibility of grabbing a wireless modem and trying to game over it....

I guess I was wondering if this was viable? Specifically,

1) if a 3G connection generally enough to game on for MMO's and online play?

and...

2) Is this a stupid idea as it's going to be too cost prohibitive when it comes time to get a data plan (I'm assuming I'll need something with unlimited data, right?)

Any other thoughts or experience (or advice!) about wireless modems would be appreciated, as I know nothing about them. (I've always just used wifi hotspots before, or waited until I get back home to play online...) So any thoughts are welcome, including telling me this won't work!

 

I can't speak for every 3G network, but pretty much every Pingtest I've ever done on my Sprint 3G connection shows between 400 to 1,000 ping. I haven't even bothered to try gaming with it.

 

Ping is definitely an issue. However I just did a speedtest with my Evo with 4G on tethered to my computer and got this:


I'm not sure why it says I am less than 50 miles away from Baltimore (that is the server that it thought was closest...) as I am in Boston; It just seems to work that way. However, the ping of 191 isn't that bad. I ran it again with a Massachusetts server:

The ping is 118 now. While this isn't spectacularly low, I could probably play online FPS's with it without too many issues; however I have never actually tried it.
The 3G speeds are less impressive and also pretty inconsistent:

 

if you mean by wireless router, then there's nothing to worry about.

This is my connection using TL-WR740N Wireless N router.

 

Just go for the Bieber 6G Fever!!!

<param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/_-aaSbW69F8?fs=1&amp;hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/_-aaSbW69F8?fs=1&amp;hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width='640' height="385"></embed>

 

My mistake - I did indeed mean one of the 3G or 4G options for connection through a cell phoone network. (I have a wireless router at home, and I'm very happy with that one!)

This was an offshoot of an idea I've been toying with for a while - I don't quite have enough need for work to have a cell modem connection on my laptop, but I'd never really considered the possibility of allowing me to play games through it, so I thought if I actually could that might tip the tables more towards picking one up. Trouble is, for gaming I'd imagine I'd have to have some sort of unlimited data plan, and those that I've found seem to be pretty expensive...

Anyway, thanks for the thoughts! Sounds like if I were to attempt something like this, I'd need to look at a 4G option, but it might be doable (expect for the data plan cost, anyway.)

I found a memory calculator on T-molibe's website that estimates 3MB of memory allotment per minute playing a connected online game or app - so the memory build pretty quickly! I plugged in an estimate of an hour a day average (seven hours a week or so) which nets a data requirement of 5.27 GB/month, which is a pretty hefty plan - and doesn't count any actual work I may want to do!

 

most games are ping sensitive.

the bandwidth of 3G/3.5G is more than enough for game data.

 

Hmmm... I thought it wasn't the bandwidth that I was buying necessarily, but the data transferred - that is, a 5GB/mo contract meant I could essentially transfer 5G worth of data, of which a game might burn through about 3MB a second.

But, I admit, I really don't know how this works...

 

Well my Sprint contract has unlimited data; otherwise I probably go over as I use my phone's connection a LOT. The plans are getting more reasonable in price now that so many phones are smart phones; they are at least a lot cheaper than they were a few years ago.

 

depending on your contract, you could be entitled to unlimited usage per month.

though, 3G connection speeds are not good for gaming. you'll destroy your data plan, and after constant high usage like this your provider is more than likely to contact you to stop using so much data, and may flag your account.

the networks aren't built to handle that type of traffic yet, so more than likely they will not like you hogging tons of bandwidth to play games.

4g connections allow for higher bandwidth and faster speeds, which may enable you to game on them currently seeing how most mobile networking plans are not running off 4g networks.

 

I know Sprint recently came out with a mobile "hotspot" device that uses 4G/3G. IIRC it costs around $60 a month for unlimited 4G data, and gives you X amount of 3G when 4G is not available. It is essential a router on the go, and can handle 5 devices at a time. If you have 4G in your area, might not be bad to check out.

 

Where I used to live I had no access to dsl or cable. I used a sprint 3g card to play games for almost 3 years, I had it attached to a kr1 modem. Real world download speeds were around 80-140 kb/s and uploads hovered around 50 kb/s.

For me pings hovered between 200-400ms and I was able to play wow succesfully for years. I raided and although every once in a while it caused me some trouble for the most part I adapted to it and never noticed. I was able to heal through most of the burning crusades raids on my pally.

I never played any fps shooters though and would not recommend it for fast paced games.

I have since moved and now my little brother uses the same exact same setup. He plays LoL every single day and has no trouble, he is still much better than I am. A couple of times we played borderlands together and he had just a few lag spikes that affected gameplay.

 

cool - can I ask if you had any data issues, or what sort of a data plan you'd have? If I was to do this, I'd like to be able to play MMO's pretty much whenever I want without worrying about data limitations...

 

Thats the big problem now. I'm not sure what service is provided where you live but I had/have an unlimited data plan from sprint. That plan has since been axed but luckily they let me keep my old plan. Verizon on the other hand always had a 5gb cap and thats why I chose sprint. Not sure about AT&T or any other gsm companys because they only had edge where I lived so I never looked into it. Also I think sprints 4g is unlimited just not their 3g anymore.

There was a place I got alot of info from called "evdoforums" and it should still be around.

Just gaming you will not use that much data (most gaming can be done on dialup if latency permits) but if you download patches you could eclipse 5gb easily.

If you have a smartphone you could always get an unlimited plan and just tether it, otherwise unlimited data is preferable imo.

 

As much as I agree with your post it comes to a screeching halt with something like "most gaming can be done on dialup if latency permits". I don't know what kinda gaming your doing but I never game on anything less then 100 ping in games like Black Ops.

Grantid I had this 250 ping the other day on one of the servers after I had been looking around for a nuketown server to test frames avergages with fraps on and I didn't notice it at all, I also always play on WiFi a good 4 rooms away between at least 6-8 walls and my ping never lowers any and I cant tell the difference.

 

I think the point he was trying to make is that online gaming depends far more on latency than bandwidth.

A connection that has 50Kbps bandwidth / 10ms latency will be far better at online gaming than a 50Mbps bandwidth / 150ms latency connection.

 

Yeah that was the point I was trying to make. Assuming you have just enough bandwidth nothing else matters except latency (to my knowledge anyway).

I used to raid Kara (when it was hard lol) with this girl that main tanked it every week as a bear druid. She played on dialup and never had any issues unless we all got on vent and talked at the same time, then she would lag out and d/c.

 

well from what I was saying my ms in Black Ops was around 250 and I couldnt tell a difference from my 40-50ms I always game with yesterday. Newer games might be changing some of how the netcodeing works.

 

Yep.

As games are being more console-ized, they need to make them as user-friendly as possible. So a lot of effort is put into making that happen to compensate for crappy internet connections that people may have (latency-optimized netcode, larger hitboxes, auto-aim, etc).

Very rarely will you find situations like the Quake 2/3 days, where you could get advantages in twitch-gaming multiplayer by spending money (faster PC with better framerates, signing up to ISP's with fewer hops to backbone, buying low-latency ISDN or broadband connections, etc).

 

Just in case anyone was curious - initial results after gaming for a couple of hours (playing Rift beta yesterday) was good; I'd say 90% of the time I didn't even notice the connection, with very slight lag maybe 10% of the time. (maybe even less - as I type that, it seems kinda harsh.) I did have one drop in the 2 hour session due to the connection quitting, then restarting when the connection hiccupped, but for me I'd say it was a success.

The second part of the test is how much of my data plan I'm burning by gaming on it - don't have solid numbers yet, but the initial results seem to be far less than I thought I would. I'll update when I have some more concrete results for anyone who is interested.

I should note that (as others have said) I'm quite certain this is dependant on the whim of my current connection and location - I did some ping tests yesterday, and got mostly grades of B with one C, so I've got an acceptable connection here. I am aware that elsewhere I may not have such good results...

 

i ahev AT&T and i get .4Mbps/.4Mbps and 150-400ms for me AT&T blows. I am in North Carolina and AT&T sends my signal all the way across the country somewhere northwest of texas and so if i try to connect to something on the East Coast it have to send the signal 2000 miles road trip or more so my latency is horrific. Also this is out side with 100% signal. For me AT&T blows. Now i have seen someone with sprint get 1.2Mbps/.4-.5Mbps with sprint 3g with 80-200ms and with 4g he had blazing fast speed and below 100ms latency. It is in a thread called FPS over wireless internet or something like that. Just google it. It's something that varies where you are and between carries. so find friends in your area with different carries and try them out. Also look into PDAnet to try to tunnel past the BS "mobile hot spot" so you don't have to pay another 30 bucks to tether.

EDIT: for bandwidth usage it varies. I remember planetside had a crazy system. in the home continet i had 50/50 bytes per second lol. I never knew a connection would stay and work and interact with people with that low of a connection speed. Note this was when i had a 144Kbps SDSL line. Than in battles with 200 people fighting over a base i maxed out with 16KBps/16KBps which was the max my connection would do lol. So it all depends on what game and how much data it transfers. I know in half life you can set it to use insane amount of bandwidth in an effort to keep lag and pings low or be a stingy butt and limit the bandwdth to a 2.5KBps or less. Some server hosts due this to save bandwidth. But I would say at most 16KBps both ways would be max unless you do some voice chat servers

 

Ummm, what?

 

there's nothing fundamentally wrong with a wireless connection. you just introduce more variability in latency, packet loss, etc.

decent wireless hardware should be fine for games.

 

huh........your statement makes no sense....what are you referring to?

 

... Run-on sentences, no paragraph separation... makes my brain hurt.

But it's irrelevant. Nevermind.

 

I travel quite a bit all over the US, and I'm in Charlotte currently. It's actually some of the worst service I've had with AT&T anywhere I've been. Slow to perform, slow to connect, and it eats my battery because of low signal.

 

I am on the coast of NC and it's terrible. When i move back home to Chicago I will be getting Sprint for sure. Also i got screen shots but they are on my broken computer so I won't be able to post forever. All i can say is AT&T does not have the fastest 3g network.....4Mbps/.4Mbps is terrible. Also routing my connection to a location 1000-1500 miles away is retarded