Is 1 Mbps Connection Enough??

Is a 1 mbps connection gonna be enough to play battlefield 3 multiplayer?

The connection is going to be 1mbps providing a average download speed of 200-240 kbps. Is it enough to play battlefield 3 multiplayer smoothly? I don't wanna get called "laggy *****" in the servers. An accurate answer is needed as I am only going to buy the game if it is possible to play mutliplayer with my connection (No, I can't take faster connection because that's the max speed my provider could give me).

Thank You!!

 

I actually have a 3mb cable [the slowest speed my cable provides] and I still get great ping on local servers [15-40] [local meaning going as far as 100-200 miles away]. NOW, if you want to play in servers across the country, you'll need something better.

 

whos your provider in the uk as that sucks. also how much they charge you a month as theres got to be better providers than what your getting.
im with bt and should get upto 20mb but only get roughly 4mb as im too far from the exchange.

could you run this speed test to see what you are getting now Speedtest.net - The Global Broadband Speed Test

wow! mines gone up wahoo

 

I have 1.5Mb/s down at my house (Bellsouth ADSL) and that's good enough to play XBL, have two or three computers connected, several handhelds (iPod Touches, Nook and Nook Color), Netflix/HuluPlus going through the Xbox and two Roku devices.

Running Netflix/HuluPlus one all three devices at once is the only way I can experience any lag. Otherwise, I don't notice the difference between my home connection (1.5Mb/s) and university connection (15Mb/s).

 

well sky is my provider nd i dnt av any problem wiv them as um using a 20mb/s connection which gives me 10-12 ping which is great but soon um moving in Bangladesh nd well in there that's the max i can get. dats why um askin if anyone ever played or have experience with 1mb/s connection nd bf3 cud really help me.

 

I'm pretty sure we had a 1MB connection where I used to live. I never saw higher than 1MB down and 500KB up. It was fast enough to play CoD BO online.

 

ha i had 60k download speed for 2 months upuntil yesterday and i was playing bf3 very smooth just make sure you join a server tht shows low ping to you

 

it's almost entirely dependent on your ping and jitter. bandwidth means very little for BF3 (as well as most other games).

try running this (you'll need java installed on your computer)

pingtest.net

nevertheless, the fact is that service is sold by bandwidth (for physical lines), and that more expensive services also tend to provide lower pings and less jitter (more desirable). Knowing enough about the internet to know just how little I know, this makes some sense, but isn't strictly necessary for all cases. You could be provided a very low latency connection with a lowish amount of bandwidth, and that would be fantastic for BF3.

 

Yeah it's not about how fast your connection is, it's all about latency/ping

Unless you are downloading, using VOIP and gaming, then maybe worry about bandwidth.

 

just to reiterate- you can usually get an idea of how much bandwidth and latency are important for an application just by thinking about it.

In the case of a shooting game like BF3, most of the information which requires constant updating is the position and orientation of the players, and not necessarily all of the players, either. Only the ones you can interact with. Lets just say it's 16 bytes per player per update. That's a lot of space to hold what basically amounts to a position and orientation. There are some other things which need to get synced, but let's assume for now 16 bytes / player / update. If you get network updates 30 times per second, that's only 240 kbps. You're not even close to your bandwidth cap, and you would be extremely lucky to get 30 updates a second. You might get 10 updates per second, so that will be 80 kbps in our thought experiment. It may be slightly off, but I wouldn't be surprised if our figure was surprisingly close. All that really matters is how often you are getting updated, and how long it's taking for those updates to get there. That can't be measured in bandwidth, but your bandwidth requirements probably aren't more than about 100 kbps.

Compare that to say, streaming an online video in HD. Depending on the compression, you might be looking at about 6000 kbps assuming a 5 GB file and 2 hours. But the difference is that here, it really doesn't matter how long it takes each packet of data to get to you, as long as you're maintaining 6000 kbps. You can let the video buffer for a few seconds, and with a little bit of buffer, you even have a pretty big tolerance for variability, and now as long as you're averaging 6000 kbps, you're gold.

With something like skype or google voice, it's different. Now that you're communicating, latency matters again. We know about how much bandwidth audio streams take- maybe 64-96 kbps for a compressed voice codec. This is more like the video game now. Latency is going to affect quality more than bandwidth.

 

it is enough.

 

As already stated, ping is really most important. Most games would do fine on dial-up if ping was high enough.

 

1 mbps should be more than enought as long as the ping is reasonable.

For example my local ISP, Altibox uses brand new fiber optic networks they started making 2 years ago and the quality is superb.

I can actually play with US players with this. :3

Spoiler

Pingtest server in New York.


Pingtest server in Oslo, the closest one.


Actual network speed.

 

This, I have a 50meg connection and struggle to play smoothly with my Steam friends from America due to ping distance. *pouts*

 

Baka had been playing on 1mbps internet with 250~300 ping just fine ._.

When ping goes beyond 300 though, Baka rages

-Stabs Hearst doll with pocky-

 

I tested out my connection to the outside world. Not much to jump around in joy for lol. I get good result in my own country and in Europe, but everything else is just baaad. Wonder if it is the same for all? BTW look at my results from South Korea

My own country:


Then the rest of the world:
Europe:

North America:

South America:

Africa:

Asia:

Australia:

 

yes, it's the same for all. it's the nature of the internet. not much telenor can do about it

 

oh ok I thought mine was very laggy compared to the norm

 

their line quality test is absolute, not relative. you don't have a great connection to australia, but no one else does either

 

alrite although i dont know much about that ping and stuff but lemme get this straight everyone is saying ping and latency is the most important factor in this matter. but is it possible for providers to reduce the ping? i mean i know its to do with how close i am to the server (or is it?) but lets just say i dont have any bf3 servers in my country (which i think we don't) and i have to play in servers which are in another country, so in that case i will have very high ping? am i right? does it make sense??

 

The internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks. They aren't all controlled by your ISP. The further away you want to connect, the more routing will need to be done, the more latency you will experience.

That said, unless you are in mid-north africa or antartica, I don't think you will have any trouble finding a game in reasonable physical proximity.

 

Im guessing ping / latency is tied to the quality of the connection between you and the destination and also the amount of traffic.
Most european BF3 servers i play one usually stay in the 50ms range.
I can get as low as under 15ms on local servers but then i cannot play with friendlies here at NBR.

 

cool...so once again to clear it all up i will have 1mbps connection (200-240 kbps download speed) and um gonna be located in south asia. and...there is 90% possibility of me playin bf3 multiplayer smoothly. itzz soo good to be true

 

1 mbps should be about 125 kBps, or ~1000 kbps. different units. don't worry about it. 1 mbps is plenty for something like BF3. The only problems you would have would be trying to connect across the world (just like everyone else) or trying to stream certain HD videos (they can go up to about 5 mbps online depending on the source, but 1 mbps should still be plenty for all sorts of videos)

 

Thanks everyone....I've learned a lot and very happy to know that I'd be able to play BF3

 

I honestly don't think you'll be able to play BF3 with a reasonable ping. Currently located in Afghanistan on a 1GBPS connection (although shared with about a dozen others) it's nearly impossible to even play RPGS, the average reported ping for WOW or SWTOR is around 900 (and that's in the middle of the night when most others are sleeping). Even 1/2 of that would still be extremely unplayable for an FPS.

Unless there's a huge calling for the game within 100 miles of your location, which I highly doubt it, any other server will be unplayable at that connection. Sorry to burst your bubble.

 

i'll just play singleplayer nd watch ppl playin multiplayer on youtube then.

 

I wouldn't lose my hopes, if you're going to buy it anyway, try it out and see how it goes. I have a decent connection, but it's 25mbps

 

where are you trying to connect with those mmorpg games? keep in mind there are dedicated servers all over the world. he would need to find a reasonable close server, but SWTOR for example has basically 3 locations for everyone: one in the east coast USA, one in the west coast USA, and one for europe.

BF3 has active privately owned (or rented) servers all over the world... all across the united states, throughout europe, several in asia.