Eircom DSl for gaming?

DCULLY666

Guys ive heard that in terms of pings for gaming eircoms dsl is not spectacular.
Im on isdn at the moment but this new offering of 55 euros or so sounds good.At the moment my isp charge is 25 euro a month and my isdn is 20 or so.For 10 euros extra i can get dsl and 24/7 net access,ie im presuming the 55 euro covers the lot ie Eircom will also me my isp?
I rang eircom yesterday for a line test ,they said they will ring back on Friday and if i wanted to order then i could if test is successfull,im in Monasterevin ,Co Kildare [ not sure if this area is serviced?]
Has anybody any advice or experience with eircom dsl for gaming?
Thankyou very much people in advance.

DCULLY666

35 views and nothing?
Hmmm!

god's toy

ok tell you what,, ,when i get bb ill get back to you ok??

BArra

k,

eircom adsl has not got fastpath, thus giving bad to an extent pings, ie for counter strike ud be on 60ish for irish and 80 ish STABLE to most other countrys, and it would be VERY playable as its got a lot of bandwidth,

if its your only option, go for it, if not wait for wireless or something, or for other options from eshat and via, or even UTV

baz

Rnger

It's the best thing you'll find in the country right now.

Cian

I have it and it gives me 70-80 irish 80-100 uk and most of western europe. Esat gives lower pings by a long shot. About 30 to irish servers seems average for esat.

DCULLY666

Cheers guys.

melachi

Originally posted by Rnger
It's the best thing you'll find in the country right now.

It's definitely not.

I've got i-stream superpackage enhanced blabla.
It is perfectly fine for playing Counter-Strike but other games such as Quake 3 it's completely useless.

If you're playing Counter-strike then I'd say go for it.

Yellow Dog

I also am thinking of going for this Eircom offer.
I am currently with UTVip and have found their service good enough. They can not offer broadband just yet, but will as soon as Eircom give them a price for lines.
I am a "heavy" user (Or at leat Esat said I was before cutting me off!)
But seriously, I do use the internet a lot. My UTVip statement for March shows 220 hours for the month of which 190 were off peak.
I pay the extra €10 for cheaper peak charges.
So Eircom`s deal would save me money in the long term. However I am going to wait for UTVip to offer the service before I commit myself.
I mainly use the internet for Ultima Online
I have one small concern. It regards the Download Limit of 4GB.
Is there any danger I could exceed this limit just by online gaming? I was told by Eircom that I wouldn`t, but am still a little concerned as they also told me that this applies to all data downloaded.
Is there a way I can monitor how much I am downloading at present each day or week?

longword

Originally posted by Yellow Dog
Is there any danger I could exceed this limit just by online gaming? I was told by Eircom that I wouldn`t, but am still a little concerned as they also told me that this applies to all data downloaded.

Nearly all the games around today are designed to live within the confines of dialup bandwidth, and the main advantage of DSL for them is the reduced latency not increased bandwidth. As such you can play Quake 3 for about twelve hours a day, every day, and still not break your cap. Of course how you pay for a DSL line while gaming twelve hours a day, every day, is another matter entirely...

Is there a way I can monitor how much I am downloading at present each day or week?

There are a number of software packages that will monitor your bandwidth usage on your own PC. Eircom also have http://dslstats.eircom.net/ which for reasons best known to themselves is not available to the public. I suspect that if/when they start beating people up for exceeding the cap they will make this interface available. I've seen it and it's very pretty. Gives you stats on the last few months and a projection for this month based on how much you've used so far, as well as the raw numbers. Make no mistake people, they are collecting these numbers and always have been. Be careful out there.

Yellow Dog

Thanks for taking the time to reply, Longsword.
Even if DSL does not improve my performace when gaming, at least it will let me play when & for as long as I want.
At the moment my UTVip is costing me an average of €80 a month, so a reduction in this would be most welcome.

BArra

eircom havent charged any1 to my knowledge as of yet for exceeding the limit, i know if i had it i would have kazaa on 24/7 but sooner or later the convienience of having broadband would ware off and you would take it for granted

i feel sorry for those who HAD to downgrade their broadband back to dial up


baz

Boston

Originally posted by BArra
k,

eircom adsl has not got fastpath, thus giving bad to an extent pings, ie for counter strike ud be on 60ish for irish and 80 ish STABLE to most other countrys, and it would be VERY playable as its got a lot of bandwidth,

if its your only option, go for it, if not wait for wireless or something, or for other options from eshat and via, or even UTV

baz

Via and UTV would be reselling eircom product so neither woud have fastpath.(i say would because neither at this time actually sell a service, thought that will change soon) only esat have fastpath because they use unbundled lines.

Señor Juárez

Originally posted by Rnger
It's the best thing you'll find in the country right now.

eh, no it isnt. Irish Broadband (www.irishbroadband.ie) have pings to london servers of 15-20, 10-15 on their own infrastructure. they may even be running some servers themselves. and 8:1 contention is a hell of a lot better than the 50:1 offered by eircom

Sloth

Well I'm going for VIA 512k 32/1 contention. I don't know what pings to expect to be honest but I seriously doubt they'll be as high as 90, I mean atm I can ping some Q3 servers on my 56k in the 150 region so I'm expecting lower pings with VIA. I won't be able to know for sure though of course until I actually get it. Oh and to me 90 sounds perfectly playable, I mean I reduced the speed of my modem to make it smoother, just as long as your not lagging like a crazy broadband chimp you should be fine.

melachi

"Oh and to me 90 sounds perfectly playable, I mean I reduced the speed of my modem to make it smoother, just as long as your not lagging like a crazy broadband chimp you should be fine"

It's not. Not on an average level, not an a high level.
Better than 56k ofcourse but not good enough to compete with normal broadband pings. If you play someone on your skill level with 10-40 ping they WILL kick your *ss

Black is the best dye as well.

Cian

Originally posted by melachi
It's definitely not.

I've got i-stream superpackage enhanced blabla.
It is perfectly fine for playing Counter-Strike but other games such as Quake 3 it's completely useless.

If you're playing Counter-strike then I'd say go for it.

I play counter-strike, and I'd say don't go for it

BArra

maybe ur just not anygood Cian :DD:D:D:D:D:D


not trying to offend but heh 1mb or 512k bb cant be THAT bad for that type of game, and i play it, too much...



baz

Sloth

Yeah, you make it sound like it's worse than 56k which I seriously doubt.

Señor Juárez

there would be no difference between 512k and 1024k. it is all about pings. modems are so crap because they are converted to analogue and back again.

Cian

Originally posted by BArra
maybe ur just not anygood Cian :DD:D:D:D:D:D


not trying to offend but heh 1mb or 512k bb cant be THAT bad for that type of game, and i play it, too much...



baz

Nah, its not bad, but for 107€ a month I'd expect a ping of 15-40 not 60-100. Esat seem to deliver this. Ping may not be as much of an issue as quake 3 , but it does still make some difference.

Sloth

Yes it might make some difference but so would a super high tech surround sound system so you can tell in an instant where enemies are, a super ergonomic keyboard with a state of the art optical mouse to save a few ms, a voice activated chat system to save on typing so you can do more killing, a 3ghz pc so you can get an extra few frames per sec, 2gb of memory just in case you might jerk, foot pedals for shooting so your hands can be free for other stuff, a T1 line so you can have pings in the 0 range and a 3d virtual reality device that plugs directly into your brain so you don't have to rely on the slow response time the message takes to reach your fingers.
They all make a difference but that doesn't mean I'm actually going to get them

Rnger

Originally posted by BArra

not trying to offend but heh 1mb or 512k bb cant be THAT bad for that type of game, and i play it, too much...



baz

I've quit cs at this stage really. But are you that bastard I used to always come 2nd to on cs.irelandcs.net! You dont know how many times ive cursed the name BArra. Considering thats you of course.

Sloth

God it's been years since I played cs, last time I played was when it hit version 1 so many many many moons ago. Maybe I'll take it up again when I get DSL.

BArra

I've quit cs at this stage really. But are you that bastard I used to always come 2nd to on cs.irelandcs.net! You dont know how many times ive cursed the name BArra. Considering thats you of course.

yeah, it probably was


baz