People on capped broadband. How do you get your games?

wunkley · 11 Oct 2017 at 09:36

Possibly moving soon to an area that doesn't have fibre broadband yet. ADSL over landline is about 1.5mb/sec (EDIT - note the small 'b'. It's as slow as it gets, part of the 5% club of total **** UK broadband, so just not viable.)

EDIT - Speedtest.net result for new house:

However, it has good 4g reception so I'm looking into possibilities of stuff like 4gee or three homefi. However, as its 4g data plans they come with pretty strict data limits, like 40-50GB per month, unless you pay the eye watering £100 a month for EE's new 200GB per month plan.

At the moment I'm on unlimited talk talk fibre, which is great. I know some people still have capped broadband packages, so how do you cope with buying new games these days, when downloads are massive and can wipe out your monthly allowance in one game?

Disco_P · 11 Oct 2017 at 09:55

Do overnight downloads on ADSL or take a laptop to places with good wifi and get the data there.

Rifte · 11 Oct 2017 at 09:56

When I first moved to India I had this.

Data caps are common over here unless you pay for a leased line, eventually I got fibre unlimited(after about a year) and it was all fine.

Until then I used to take an external HD into my office which had a leased line and get the data from a steam/origin client there and move it over when i got home.

If that's not an option, just run it overnight, I wouldn't spend 100 notes on 200gigs a month. TBH I would go through 200gigs in about a week anyway!

wunkley · 11 Oct 2017 at 10:27

Thanks for the suggestions chaps.

I can see this being a problem. With the amount of updates required these days, patches, etc etc, taking a laptop to a location with good wifi will be far too much hassle.
Getting an ADSL line alongside a 40GB capped 4G plan might be ok, but as a quick example, if I needed to download a 50GB game, which are quite common now, then using the ADSL line at 1.5mb/s would take about 3 days!

I've looked into satellite broadband also, but this is v expensive too, and has caps, but some plans have uncapped allowance between 12am-6am.

wnb · 11 Oct 2017 at 10:39

wunkley said:
Possibly moving soon to an area that doesn't have fibre broadband yet. ADSL over landline is about 1.5meg only, so just not viable.
However, it has good 4g reception so I'm looking into possibilities of stuff like 4gee or three homefi. However, as its 4g data plans they come with pretty strict data limite, like 40-50GB per month, unless you pay the eye watering £100 a month for EE's new 200GB per month plan.
At the moment I'm on unlimited talk talk fibre, which is great. I know some people still have capped broadband packages, so how do you cope with buying new games these days, when downloads are massive and can wipe out your monthly allowance in one game?

Don't move. I went from 1.5mb to 80 then back down to 2mb now I have 80 again.

Matteysan · 11 Oct 2017 at 10:45

wunkley said:
Thanks for the suggestions chaps.

I can see this being a problem. With the amount of updates required these days, patches, etc etc, taking a laptop to a location with good wifi will be far too much hassle.
Getting an ADSL line alongside a 40GB capped 4G plan might be ok, but as a quick example, if I needed to download a 50GB game, which are quite common now, then using the ADSL line at 1.5mb/s would take about 3 days!

I've looked into satellite broadband also, but this is v expensive too, and has caps, but some plans have uncapped allowance between 12am-6am.

It'll take about 12 hours to download 50gb at 1.5mb/s how do I know this? I just downloaded 58gb in that time on my 1.5mb/s line.

wunkley · 11 Oct 2017 at 10:57

Matteysan said:
It'll take about 12 hours to download 50gb at 1.5mb/s how do I know this? I just downloaded 58gb in that time on my 1.5mb/s line.

The ADSL is 1.5mb/s. Not MB/s. Massive massive difference. Its rural broadband. 50gb will take 3 days as its approx only 200KB/sec. Have a look at downloadtimecalculator.com

TheVoice · 11 Oct 2017 at 11:11

Won't help for download-only games (or the inevitable massive updates), but most big games are released on DVD too so that's always an option.

benjii · 11 Oct 2017 at 11:11

wunkley said:
The ADSL is 1.5mb/s. Not MB/s. Massive massive difference. Its rural broadband. 50gb will take 3 days as its approx only 200KB/sec. Have a look at downloadtimecalculator.com

I feel for you, I really do! My suggestion is to download over ADSL as much as possible, then save the 4G for when you get impatient or need bursts of speed, like unexpected patches and what not. Alternatively, is there anywhere local with free decent wifi?

Unfortunately, capped internet packages are just not suitable for this day and age. If you download games via Steam, then you either have to do without or find somewhere which you can piggy back on their wifi.

benjii · 11 Oct 2017 at 11:16

Oh, I've had a thought. Are you able to get bonded ADSL? As in, more than one line tied together through a special modem. It would still be awful speeds, but 3Mbps is a lot better than 1.5Mbps!

wunkley · 11 Oct 2017 at 11:30

Tell me more about bonded ADSL, I know nowt about this. Really basic question but will it cost twice as much as basic broadband as it's 2 lines? If it's getting to those costs, so around £50, then I may as well look at EE's 4G home plan that's 200GB/ month cap at £100 a month as it will be very fast and easy all round.

Rifte · 11 Oct 2017 at 11:32

wunkley said:
Tell me more about bonded ADSL, I know nowt about this. Really basic question but will it cost twice as much as basic broadband as it's 2 lines? If it's getting to those costs, so around £50, then I may as well look at EE's 4G home plan that's 200GB/ month cap at £100 a month as it will be very fast and easy all round.

100 notes for 200G is brutal, and I am guessing on a mobile plan its easy as hell to go over your allowance, and if its not PAYG you could end up selling a kidney to fund your over usage.

Personally I would work out how much data you use a month on average for heavy downloading, and if its just a game or so a month, stick with ADSL.

Disco_P · 11 Oct 2017 at 11:37

Is 1.5mbits an actual speed or an estimate? My parents estimate is 1-2mbits but in reality it's 5-6 mbits.

wunkley · 11 Oct 2017 at 11:55

Disco_P said:
Is 1.5mbits an actual speed or an estimate? My parents estimate is 1-2mbits but in reality it's 5-6 mbits.

1.5mbits is the estimate from Samknows.com. I then asked the vendors to run a speedtest.net and it came back with this:

Thing is, where I live now is approx 1.5 miles from the exchange, and before I upgraded to fibre last year (FTTC) I used to get a rock solid 6-7mbits over ADSL2+.
This new house (totally new area) is approx 1.5 miles from its local exchange, exactly the same distance, so I'm wondering why the speeds are so low?
If I could get the same 6mbits over ADSL at the new place that would be fine for a while.

Disco_P · 11 Oct 2017 at 12:12

Possibly a poorly configured line? Parents are 3KM from the cabinet with around 50db of line attenuation and an SNR margin of about 4db. However sometimes the SNR margin is set to something asinine like 18 which results in a absolute garbage speed. Of course a lower snr margin results in more dropouts but I'd rather a 99.9% stable 5mbit connection to a 99.999% stable 1mbit connection.

MikeTheNative · 11 Oct 2017 at 12:24

My friend had worse than that, he just had to download it on the work wifi or I would do it for him and copy it to an external hard drive.

benjii · 11 Oct 2017 at 13:22

wunkley said:
Tell me more about bonded ADSL, I know nowt about this. Really basic question but will it cost twice as much as basic broadband as it's 2 lines? If it's getting to those costs, so around £50, then I may as well look at EE's 4G home plan that's 200GB/ month cap at £100 a month as it will be very fast and easy all round.

In short, you do need two lines and a modem/router designed to bond the lines so by the time it reaches your PC, it looks like one. It may well cost twice as much, but it's certainly worth ringing your ISP to confirm or see if they can do a deal. It's a long shot, I know, but you have nothing to lose!

ttaskmaster · 11 Oct 2017 at 13:40

wunkley said:
ADSL over landline is about 1.5mb/sec (EDIT - note the small 'b'. It's as slow as it gets, part of the 5% club of total **** UK broadband, so just not viable.)

I'm on 0.7Mbps. Sometimes my upload is higher than my download, although it's officially "up to" 2Mbps.
However, I insisted on an Unlimited package, so I just set games to download overnight and then continue throughout the working day. Most of the time I come home to find it completed.