Mobile broadband, 3GB limit, how much gaming?

Scania

Scania

Scania

Caporegime
Joined
25 Nov 2004
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26,062
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On the road....
I'm looking to get a laptop & mobile broadband, and am thinking along the lines of a pay as you go dongle based setup.

a lot of the packages I look at have a 3GB monthly limit, would this cause me problems with browsing for a couple of hours and an hour or so gaming (Battlefield 2) per night over an average week?

I doubt I'll be downloading much and would try to not use the iPlayer etc too much.

And , most important of all I suppose, would I be able to play games such as BF2 via mobile broadband (subject to coverage, obviously) - is it any good for on-line games?

Thanks. :)
 
you can download *forgot name* and it tells you how much you have used during your session. i.e. 100mb's have been downloaded.

suggest getting one fo them and checking numbers that way.
 
When I moved into my house, Virgin couldn't connect me for two months so I bought an O2 dongle. The speed was fine for general browsing but I couldn't play games on it, the lag and loss was far too great and it annoyed me too much! :(

I had a 3 gig limit and didn't go over than in a month just browsing the web..
 
How much quicker are USB dongles than phone-based connection sharing because I just tried that and the results are below :eek:

16593051.png
 
Hmm, thats not good to hear. :(

I'm guessing crap pings will be a similar issue regardless of package...

Looks like I may as well ditch my idea of getting a decent spec laptop then....

Plan B will be to get a low ish spec, fit a huge HDD in it and fill it up with films & music I guess.......

Thanks for the information guys. :)
 
Azuse05 said:
*unable to test packet loss* ...

LOL, says it all really :D
Click to expand...

You need to be able to receive incoming packets to test the loss, over a phone you cant.

But like others have said expect 100-150ms ping with 3g. Shouldn't be too bad as long as it has a good signal as most modern games have some form of lag compensation.
 
I've played cod4 on a usb stick before, 30 min session was 26 mb or so ?? It was really little. A slight judder now and then but overall it feels the same as MW2 now does, had a ping of 110ish ms ingame, it's playable. If all the mw2 fanboys can play at that ping, so can you.
 
On average depending on the game your looking at just under 60MB for an hour of gaming.

As to connection quality, latency, etc. and gaming that depends massively. Sometimes I've managed around 80ms pings with fairly good consistancy, othertimes I'm lucky to see under 100ms with frequent spikes of over 1 second which obviously just doesn't work for gaming and annoys everyone who has to play in the same server. MW2 would be quite playable if you get a ping around 100ms without too much spiking tho.

Also depends on the game, something like eve online is relatively playable on 100-200ms pings if its not spiking too much, whereas quake 3 would be a nightmare.
 
Gaming itself hardly uses any data.

The issue is patches and latency. I've played WoW over 3G and whilst the latency is playable, the constant disconnects are an issue, something that might frustrate you with an FPS. Quite frequently even with full signal the connection will drop out for a few seconds, enough to cause a disconnect from the game.
 
well 3 shop here in town has a very good offer on 15 gig for £15 a month problem is its a 24month contract :/ but like others have said its ok for mmo games ive played wow and eve online fine with a dongle :)
 
If you're browsing the net with a limit..

I highly reccomend using Firefox http://www.mozilla-europe.org/en/firefox/ , with adblock plus https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1865 installed.

Once Firefox restarts after installing ABP, choose the 'Easylist' subscription from the menu.



This will strip out 99% of adverts and crappy banners on websites. Also, turn off signatures on OcUK, that will save a ton of bandwidth, 150 signatures is 0.1% of the bandwidth, it soon adds up

Also, to stop even more, install 'Noscript' for Firefox, this stops large elements of pages loading, takes a while to get used to it, ABP is far more set & forget
 
R420LA6X2/4MNA said:
Hmm, thats not good to hear. :(

I'm guessing crap pings will be a similar issue regardless of package...

Looks like I may as well ditch my idea of getting a decent spec laptop then....

Plan B will be to get a low ish spec, fit a huge HDD in it and fill it up with films & music I guess.......

Thanks for the information guys. :)
Click to expand...

Just out of curiosity - would this be for using when away in your truck? I've been asked to assist in the production of one of our trucking shows publications and I was thinking of getting a couple of the mobile internet providers to run a few features/editorial on the use of them for truckers... would this be at all of interest to the truckers to read? I know, obviously, people just do research online but I thought it would break up some of the less interesting articles we often run in the magazines...
 
Kol said:
Just out of curiosity - would this be for using when away in your truck? I've been asked to assist in the production of one of our trucking shows publications and I was thinking of getting a couple of the mobile internet providers to run a few features/editorial on the use of them for truckers... would this be at all of interest to the truckers to read? I know, obviously, people just do research online but I thought it would break up some of the less interesting articles we often run in the magazines...
Click to expand...

Yes, thats exactly the purpose. - Sorry for the late reply, I've been away all week in the truck! :o:D

I'd think it certainly would be of interest to truckers, plenty of the "Trampers" - the guys out all week - have laptops, some seem to use dongles, some use their phone for internet and a few use the free wireless internet that some Motorway service areas have , and when I used to take my old, long dead, Dell laptop with me in the truck, it never ceased to amaze me how many insecure networks I used to find on industrial estates...... :D


Anything you'd like to as, feel free, either here or via my e-mail which is in my "trust".
 
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