Originally posted by: Averox
I'll never use Comcast HSI again. Remember when they first started cutting people off for "using too much bandwidth" except they never stated what too much was?
I was actually in the first wave of cuts
Originally posted by: 50
Hey, I just got off the phone with a comcast representative and she told me that they were upgrading their systems to 6 megabits. She didn't know at the moment what the upload speed would be; however, this will be a nice upgrade from 4. I am in boston MA, I think this is a YMMV for other locations. I'll try to find more info.
EDIT: The representative told me the speed upgrade would be free; however, further research shows that it will actually COST MORE to get 6mbps. More info here
New Service/Price Chart
With these new speed offerings, Comcast will be offering the High-Speed Internet at the following tiers of service.
If you currently do not subscribe to any Comcast Cable TV or Comcast Phone services, you will have the following options for HSI available to you:
Down Up
(Mbps) (kbps) Price
4 384 $57.95
6 384 $67.95
8 768 $77.95
If you currently subscribe to Limited Comcast Cable TV service or Comcast Digital Voice, the following HSI options are available to you:
Down Up
(Mbps) (kbps) Price
4 384 $42.95
6 384 $52.95
8 768 $62.95
If you currently subscribe to at least Comcast Expanded Basic Cable TV service or above, the following HSI options are available to you:
Down Up
(Mbps) (kbps) Price
6 384 $42.95
8 768 $52.95
NOT SO HOT!
Originally posted by: manno
Would it be worth it to get the 8 Down 768bkps up if I want to run a "Battlefield 2" server? Is that going to be enough bandwidth? Are my actual uploads going to be anywhere near that?
Great post by the way, very informative, thanks.
-manno
Originally posted by: Chain777
I think the best bang for the buck is SBC. 1.5/384 for 14.95 or 3.0/512 for 24.99. I've had the pro package for years, and it's been rock solid.
It's a good deal...if you can get it.
* I had comcast for a few months on one of their promo's. I didn't have any complaints with the connection. The d/l speed was about 25% faster and the upload was about 25% slower than my dsl line. But the bottom line is the cost was about 75% more. And there's no worries of bandwidth restrictions with SBC.
Originally posted by: TimmyJ
ComCast has offered the 'Speed Tier' as per our databases for at least the last year. It was just recently that they upgraded the speeds so that 6Mb/384 is standard and the 8mb/768 is now the speed tier... too bad they didn't raise the upload rates. Not that it affects me here in the frozen north.
What part of Michigan?
Well you need to research how much bandwidth (BW) each person takes (this applies to any online game). For instance you could install a BW monitor and let it run while you play. If it records history, just exit after a few mins and check the graph.
If it only records total megabytes, then reset counter, play for exactly 10 mins (dont refresh full server list or anything else that might mess up the calculation, just go to a known server and play), then look at total meggage. Divide by 10 (mins), then divide by 60 (secs) to get the kbyte/sec.
You then compare that requirement to the amount of upstream bandwidth you have.
For example: Lets say you find that each person takes 10kbyte/sec. Thats 80kbps (8 bits in a byte). You have a little under 800kbps availible so thats under 10 people. Probably more like 8 people.
If battlefield 2 runs on dialup, then the number is probably more like 3 to 5kbyte/sec. If its 5kbyte thats 40kbit which means something like 16 ppl could be on the server.
Originally posted by: manno
Well you need to research how much bandwidth (BW) each person takes (this applies to any online game). For instance you could install a BW monitor and let it run while you play. If it records history, just exit after a few mins and check the graph.
If it only records total megabytes, then reset counter, play for exactly 10 mins (dont refresh full server list or anything else that might mess up the calculation, just go to a known server and play), then look at total meggage. Divide by 10 (mins), then divide by 60 (secs) to get the kbyte/sec.
You then compare that requirement to the amount of upstream bandwidth you have.
For example: Lets say you find that each person takes 10kbyte/sec. Thats 80kbps (8 bits in a byte). You have a little under 800kbps availible so thats under 10 people. Probably more like 8 people.
If battlefield 2 runs on dialup, then the number is probably more like 3 to 5kbyte/sec. If its 5kbyte thats 40kbit which means something like 16 ppl could be on the server.
Thanks for the reply unfortunatly it looks like it takes like 64bit/sec per person minimum. So a 64 player server is going to need at least a 4 meg pipe!
How the heck do people afford to run game servers unless I'm wrong a connection like that per month is going to run in the thousands right?
Originally posted by: Souka
I'm in the Seattle area....Comcast can keep their bandwidth.....why?
They've over loaded their routers....ping times are horrible.
Using tracert to varios IP's... I found my pings going from 5-10ms to 100+ms around the 4th hop....and it's comcast's 68.xxx.xxx.xxx routers. I've confirmed the numbers with two neighboors in my area.
Comcast said they'res nothing wrong since my service is working..... ugh...
Woopie... I have 4mbps down / 386k up.....but with such lousy latency I can't play on-line games anymore.....well, I can, but its not much fun.
I play CounterStrike (HL1).....I used to find dozens of servers that were sub 30ms..... now I'm lucky to find one sub 100ms.....a