12 replies to this topic

[Smooge]

This is just a quick post to inform people of the bandwidth that MWO uses. This may be useful if someone is going to be using mobile broadband and needs to know how much data Mechwarrior Online will consume. I was considering getting a mobile broadband card for other reasons, but now I'm pretty sure I would exceed any 5GB plan out there with as much as I play.

I am using Connectify Dispatch to tie multiple internet sources together, and it allows me to see how much data is consumed over time. Please be aware: ONLY THE YELLOW is MWO. The red is background clutter from other applications, and I have assigned the yellow connection to only MWO.
As you can see, this is shown in Mbps...NOT MBps. So factor that into your math.
Over the course of a 15 minute game (I was playing a Raven 3L on the Tourmaline Desert map) the connection never required more than 0.3Mbps, and it was quite steady for the entire round. I'm no math whiz, so do your own calculations. I just thought you'd like to know how much bandwidth the game was using.

[The Cheese]

Mobile broadband can be fast, but it's always horribly unstable. I'd recommend against using it for gaming, even if your plan's data quota is huge.

It's so bad that if I had the choice between using it for multiplayer gaming or being stuck playing against bad AI, I'd pick the AI.

Edited by The Cheese, 24 March 2013 - 09:34 PM.

[Smooge]

I'll post some data on a few rounds through my iPhone later. For now, this thread exists so that when people google "MWO bandwidth" they'll actually find something to help. I'm not going to tell people what to do with the information.

[Ralgas]

The Cheese, on 24 March 2013 - 09:33 PM, said:

Mobile broadband can be fast, but it's always horribly unstable. I'd recommend against using it for gaming, even if your plan's data quota is huge.

It's so bad that if I had the choice between using it for multiplayer gaming or being stuck playing against bad AI, I'd pick the AI.

Add to that state rewind combined with an unstable ping makes for everyone you target having a worse lagshield than 2 patches ago, and yeah it's really not advisable for MWO

[Thuzel]

I used verizon's mifi with WoW for a few years, and I was impressed with it. The latencies were high (150 - 300ms), but the throughput was never a problem. I traveled extensively, and can say it had coverage just about everywhere.

This was pre-LTE though, so the latency would probably be better now.

-- Edit --
btw, the latency on my connections were high, but they were usually stable. I would typically see less than a 10% waver unless I was in a highly congested area.

But those are just my own experiences, as always ymmv.

Edited by Thuzel, 24 March 2013 - 09:45 PM.

[The Cheese]

Smooge, on 24 March 2013 - 09:39 PM, said:

I'll post some data on a few rounds through my iPhone later. For now, this thread exists so that when people google "MWO bandwidth" they'll actually find something to help. I'm not going to tell people what to do with the information.

I'm yet to find an online game that challenges a modern connection as far as actual data usage goes. Packet loss and jitter are far more important factors (nearly to the point of making transfer rates irrelevant in comparison), and those always depend on the individual connection.

[Smooge]

The Cheese, on 24 March 2013 - 09:44 PM, said:

I'm yet to find an online game that challenges a modern connection as far as actual data usage goes. Packet loss and jitter are far more important factors (nearly to the point of making transfer rates irrelevant in comparison), and those always depend on the individual connection.

Since we're going down this rabbit hole together, I'll add my 2 cents as the OP. No unlimited plans remain for mobile broadband, at least not from any of the major providers. You will pay about $50/mo for a 5GB cap, and I priced a 10GB cap at about $90/mo. (If someone has a better solution, let me know.) The question is whether the graph I just posted implies that you would consume 5GB in a month, and I would propose that I would exceed my 5GB quota in a couple weeks based on what I've seen there. Someone with math skills prove me wrong, and I'll happily concede. I've seen the actual numbers for WoW, and you don't get to play all day with a 5GB/mo limit.

[Thuzel]

Smooge, on 24 March 2013 - 09:49 PM, said:

Since we're going down this rabbit hole together, I'll add my 2 cents as the OP. No unlimited plans remain for mobile broadband, at least not from any of the major providers. You will pay about $50/mo for a 5GB cap, and I priced a 10GB cap at about $90/mo. (If someone has a better solution, let me know.) The question is whether the graph I just posted implies that you would consume 5GB in a month, and I would propose that I would exceed my 5GB quota in a couple weeks based on what I've seen there. Someone with math skills prove me wrong, and I'll happily concede. I've seen the actual numbers for WoW, and you don't get to play all day with a 5GB/mo limit.

It's all about your usage. In my case, I would work a standard office shift and then go play for a few hours at the hotel a few days a week. I did that as well as some typical web browsing in between and I'd average about 3.5 to 4 GB a month.

I was able to play casually as well as keep a fairly active raiding schedule that way, and it worked perfectly.

I was also able to host 1 to 2 hour webex sessions for work once or twice a week, but that was just showing off.

[The Cheese]

I'm not arguing whether your 5Gb plan would be consumed by a game's transfers within a month. It very well might be, depending on your usage.

I'm just saying that I don't recommend mobile broadband for gaming. The main one reason being that it's unstable, the other being that games get updated pretty regularly nowadays. The game's transfers while it's running won't do much, but the updating will eat up your $90 plan pretty fast.

[Smooge]

Thuzel, on 24 March 2013 - 09:54 PM, said:

It's all about your usage. In my case, I would work a standard office shift and then go play for a few hours at the hotel a few days a week. I did that as well as some typical web browsing in between and I'd average about 3.5 to 4 GB a month.

I was able to play casually as well as keep a fairly active raiding schedule that way, and it worked perfectly.

I was also able to host 1 to 2 hour webex sessions for work once or twice a week, but that was just showing off.

Those stats are valid, and exactly the kind of discussion I was hoping to start here. I am going to tether my iPhone and play a few games tomorrow, monitor the data usage, and post the results here so people can at least know what they can expect. I will also comment on the quality of connection (aka latency) but as yall have pointed out, most mobile broadband providers will be unique. The only constant here will be how much data the game uses.

[MonkeyCheese]

mobile internet sounds terrible to me for online gaming, for the last 2 years ive been playing online games over a wifi connection thats connected to cable broadband. Its perfectly fine for me being in australia, never usually go over 250-280ping with NA servers.

[Smooge]

Here is some pertinent stats for data usage that I just gathered:
To start up the game and play a 7 minute round, 8.83MB of data were downloaded. 2.35MB of data were uploaded.
That averages 1.26 MB used per minute. If you were in sustained drops with absolutely no downtime in the mechlab, that would be 75.7 MB used per hour (worst case). For a 5GB plan, that would provide you with 66 hours of sustained gameplay, or in other words, 66 hours of drops. This does NOT include TS3/Vent usage, web browsing, downloading patches, or any other web traffic.

NOW...keep reading if you care about mobile broadband as a platform for gaming.
That data was gathered from a round I played while tethering to my iPhone 5. I ensured that only MWO was using that connection. Once I got in-game, here is what I experienced: my PING stayed below 100 the entire time, I saw no clipping, and I scored 3 kills and 276 damage. I would be quite comfortable playing MWO on this particular mobile 3G/4G connection. My current location does not have LTE, so I can only imagine what that would be like. Thoughts?

[Mystere]

Although I don't plan on using mobile broadband anytime soon, the usage info is very much appreciated.