How much mb/s is the bare minimum to game with?

[LoLcano]

The mb/s doesnt matter as much as latency for online games you play, if i was you i would stay away from any sort of cellular based internet cause they got much higher latency than landline net .

[MikeBogina]

I used to play wow with 2-3 mb/s and to be honest, it feels the same as I do now with 100mb/s.

To be honest, when i had the 2-3mb/s my online gaming ran smooth, because i was the only one on it. I now have like 5 people all using my wifi now and it lags more than ever xD

[Celista]

A good internet connection is often high up on the priority list for many when buying a house. You are after all going to live there. And not being able to stream movies, youtube or play games can and will be a deal breaker for many people.

Internet connection should be A CONSIDERATION not "if I can't play wow it's a dealbreaker" like that's all you care about.

[Stormspark]

So me and my gf are about to buy a house. the only thing holding us back is that the internet there is kinda sketchy. Its a bit far away from civilization'ish.
Its via the phone line thingy and most companies say they can provide 13 mb/s down and 1-2 mb up connection.

Then another company boasts that they can boost that to 20-40 mb/s with Hybrid internet where they combine the phone line internet with the mobile network. theres a UMTS tower like 1km away from the house so we expect there to be at least decent 4g network. I just could NOT imagine gaming with 4g.

So my question is, how much badnwith is needed to game? I play WoW and dota 2 99% of the time - its kind of our dream house - but bad internet is 110% a dealbreaker!

any help is much appreciated. ty in advance.

That's totally fine for gaming. Downloading patches would be another thing entirely but just for playing games that is more than adequate. The only thing that matters for gaming is latency.

[Flame6]

I pay for 25 Mbps and actually get it, and gaming is fine with it. We used to have 15, and gaming was fine BUT anyone streaming video made it unplayable (this was 5 years ago). At 25 the kids all stream and I dont get any slow down. I sit around 75-90 ping in most games. You'll have to get used to over night downloads since you'll download 10 gigs at around 1.25 hours. The more important factor at those speeds is consistency. I would guess the hybrid connection is going to spike all the time.

[munkeyinorbit]

Where you live is so much more important than being able to game. It's a sign of really poor decision making that you MUST play these two games or it's a dealbreaker for the house, that shouldn't even be in your top 5 considerations when purchasing something that significant.

Or maybe you shouldn't be telling people what to do. Why are your values more important than OPs? I agree with OP. Shitty Internet is a deal breaker. Sounds like OP will be OK but what is the point of living somewhere for years when the basic services that you need are not provided? People need to judge less.

[Celista]

Or maybe you shouldn't be telling people what to do. Why are your values more important than OPs? I agree with OP. Shitty Internet is a deal breaker. Sounds like OP will be OK but what is the point of living somewhere for years when the basic services that you need are not provided? People need to judge less.

I interpreted the OP's post as, "all that really matters is my ability to game". I hope that's not what he MEANT but that is what it sounded like to me. I obviously am pro-gaming, why else would I post here.

[Aggrophobic]

They're in the US. Just for my own curiousity, please share with us what country you're in. Are you in a European country that's just about the size of one of our 50 states? Are you in South Korea, which is even smaller? Or...?

I mean, if you just look on the left there you'll see where I live.

Still though, the performance the OP is talking about there must be an absolute deal breaker in 2019.

[Ghier]

If you haven't already, make sure you call those broadband providers and make sure they service the address of the house you are looking at. If they do, make sure that they don't have any soft data caps, and look up reviews from their customers. If I was you, I would drive to that area with a laptop and phone to tether to, so I can test out the 4g. I have to rely solely on cellular internet where i'm currently at, and it is garbage half the time. That is even with a $400 signal booster. Its so bad that sometimes I get better internet by forcing 3g. When the soft data cap is hit on the cellular hotspots here, they are basically paperweights. I'm not trying to scare you out of buying the house or anything, but I hate this place i'm in now and want to move ASAP. It definitely seems like your situation is a lot better than mine, just make sure you will have adequate internet before you pull the trigger.

[Cruor]

As many already said, games don't need Bandwidth, they need good ping times. I game all the time on a 4G cellphone connection when traveling. Backwards Germany for some reason hates internet and only 3G was offered where I was and I played Diablo 3 with no issues, this was like 2015.

[Xjev]

Latency is the metric you need to focus on, bandwidth doesn't matter much as long as other members in the home are not streaming/downloading while you are playing, thats when higher bandwidth becomes handy.

Although its not just video streaming and downloads, a random windows update download on low bandwidth internet will kill your latency as well.

[zhero]

So me and my gf are about to buy a house. the only thing holding us back is that the internet there is kinda sketchy. Its a bit far away from civilization'ish.
Its via the phone line thingy and most companies say they can provide 13 mb/s down and 1-2 mb up connection.

Then another company boasts that they can boost that to 20-40 mb/s with Hybrid internet where they combine the phone line internet with the mobile network. theres a UMTS tower like 1km away from the house so we expect there to be at least decent 4g network. I just could NOT imagine gaming with 4g.

So my question is, how much badnwith is needed to game? I play WoW and dota 2 99% of the time - its kind of our dream house - but bad internet is 110% a dealbreaker!

any help is much appreciated. ty in advance.

you don't even need half a mb/s to game with, what you need to be concerned with is actual speed, aka, latency.

Ouch! In what country is this? You guys still use copper wires or something?
That sounds 100% horrible.

- - - Updated - - -



The heck? Are you serious? Thats what we had 15-20 years ago.

20 years ago, most people were still using 56k modems.

[breadisfunny]

So me and my gf are about to buy a house. the only thing holding us back is that the internet there is kinda sketchy. Its a bit far away from civilization'ish.
Its via the phone line thingy and most companies say they can provide 13 mb/s down and 1-2 mb up connection.

Then another company boasts that they can boost that to 20-40 mb/s with Hybrid internet where they combine the phone line internet with the mobile network. theres a UMTS tower like 1km away from the house so we expect there to be at least decent 4g network. I just could NOT imagine gaming with 4g.

So my question is, how much badnwith is needed to game? I play WoW and dota 2 99% of the time - its kind of our dream house - but bad internet is 110% a dealbreaker!

any help is much appreciated. ty in advance.

this is pretty much like you buying your "dream car" and then saying it's a deal breaker if it doesn't have a cupholder.

- - - Updated - - -

Or maybe you shouldn't be telling people what to do. Why are your values more important than OPs? I agree with OP. Shitty Internet is a deal breaker. Sounds like OP will be OK but what is the point of living somewhere for years when the basic services that you need are not provided? People need to judge less.

if it was internet for say everyday work then fine i could see his point. but using it just for gaming and nothing else is a LUXURY. not a neccessity.

[Stormspark]

Latency is the metric you need to focus on, bandwidth doesn't matter much as long as other members in the home are not streaming/downloading while you are playing, thats when higher bandwidth becomes handy.

Although its not just video streaming and downloads, a random windows update download on low bandwidth internet will kill your latency as well.

You can prevent this with QoS, but most consumer equipment doesn't have that capability. I'm using a Linux machine to handle routing on my network, and it's not particularly difficult to do with that. If someone does decide to go that route, I've made a handy script that pretty much automates it on my network. Just have to plug in the interface names, the up/down speeds, and the ports used by the games you will be playing that you want to prioritize. In my case, UDP 27000-27030 and 45000-65535 are for Steam (game traffic, not downloads) and Switch games. (Note: the TOS bits aren't strictly speaking necessary but they may be used by upstream ISP's to change traffic priority if they respect them - best case scenario they help, worst case scenario they just do nothing, doesn't ever hurt to set them though.) I used to have the ports for WOW, battle.net, and FFXIV in there as well but I don't play any of those anymore so I took them out. Absolutely zero lag even with a bunch of torrents running. This does assume you have a Linux machine handling all traffic coming into and going out of the network (meaning this machine has to be the one connected to the internet and handling all the routing).

#!/bin/bash
TC="/sbin/tc"
IFCONFIG="/bin/ifconfig"
MODPROBE="/sbin/modprobe"
MGL="/sbin/iptables -t mangle"
INT="br0"
EXT="eth1"
EXT_IN="ifb0"
UP_MAX=5120
UP=$(($UP_MAX * 95 / 100))
DOWN_MAX=25600
DOWN=$(($DOWN_MAX * 95 /100))
MTU=1500

${TC} qdisc del dev ${INT} root 2>/dev/null
${TC} qdisc del dev ${EXT} root 2>/dev/null
${TC} qdisc del dev ${EXT} ingress 2>/dev/null
${TC} qdisc del dev ${EXT_IN} root 2>/dev/null
${TC} qdisc del dev ${EXT_IN} ingress 2> /dev/null
${IFCONFIG} ${EXT_IN} down
${MGL} -F PREROUTING
${MGL} -F INPUT
${MGL} -F FORWARD
${MGL} -F OUTPUT
${MGL} -F POSTROUTING

if [ "$1" = "stop" ]
then
exit
fi

${TC} qdisc add dev ${INT} root sfq perturb 10
${TC} qdisc add dev ${EXT} root handle 1: htb default 11
${TC} class add dev ${EXT} parent 1: classid 1:1 htb rate ${UP}kbit mtu ${MTU}
${TC} class add dev ${EXT} parent 1:1 classid 1:10 htb rate $(($UP / 2))kbit ceil ${UP}kbit mtu ${MTU} prio 0
${TC} class add dev ${EXT} parent 1:1 classid 1:11 htb rate $(($UP / 2))kbit ceil ${UP}kbit mtu ${MTU} prio 1
${TC} filter add dev ${EXT} parent 1:1 protocol ip prio 0 handle 1 fw classid 1:10
${TC} filter add dev ${EXT} parent 1:1 protocol ip prio 1 handle 2 fw classid 1:11
${TC} qdisc add dev ${EXT} parent 1:11 sfq perturb 10
${TC} qdisc add dev ${EXT} handle ffff: ingress
${IFCONFIG} ${EXT_IN} up
${TC} filter add dev ${EXT} parent ffff: protocol all u32 match u32 0 0 action mirred egress redirect dev ${EXT_IN}
${TC} qdisc add dev ${EXT_IN} root handle 1: htb default 10
${TC} class add dev ${EXT_IN} parent 1: classid 1:1 htb rate ${DOWN}kbit mtu ${MTU}
${TC} class add dev ${EXT_IN} parent 1:1 classid 1:10 htb rate ${DOWN}kbit mtu ${MTU} prio 0
${TC} qdisc add dev ${EXT_IN} parent 1:10 sfq perturb 10
${MGL} -A PREROUTING -p icmp -j MARK --set-mark 0x1
${MGL} -A PREROUTING -p icmp -j TOS --set-tos Minimize-Delay
${MGL} -A PREROUTING -p icmp -j RETURN
${MGL} -A PREROUTING -p tcp -m tcp --tcp-flags SYN,RST,ACK SYN -j MARK --set-mark 0x1
${MGL} -A PREROUTING -p tcp -m tcp --tcp-flags SYN,RST,ACK SYN -j TOS --set-tos Minimize-Delay
${MGL} -A PREROUTING -p tcp -m tcp --tcp-flags SYN,RST,ACK SYN -j RETURN
${MGL} -A PREROUTING -p udp -m multiport --dports 27000:27030,45000:65535 -j MARK --set-mark 0x1
${MGL} -A PREROUTING -p udp -m multiport --dports 27000:27030,45000:65535 -j TOS --set-tos Minimize-Delay
${MGL} -A PREROUTING -p udp -m multiport --dports 27000:27030,45000:65535 -j RETURN
${MGL} -A PREROUTING -j MARK --set-mark 0x2
${MGL} -A PREROUTING -j TOS --set-tos Maximum-Throughput

[Agrossive]

My quality of life has gone up since going from 15 mb/s too 100+ mb/s, everything i enjoy is connected via internet. Unless the house is perfectly what your looking for id go elsewhere if possible.

[Taeldorian]

Internet connection should be A CONSIDERATION not "if I can't play wow it's a dealbreaker" like that's all you care about.

I feel like that’s probably up to the individual. I moved from NJ to VT so my internet is a fair bit worse but I game with 4G which is actually perfectly fine and Internet was a consideration for me however obviously where I moved mattered more. Was looking for a good sized house with 5-10 acres and a river/lake. I got all that the only thing I needed to give up was good internet. I use my phone to play WoW and do all that shit. I raid and do everything just fine but it was -just- a consideration, some people will have it as a requirement.

My point is if someone spends a majority of their time playing WoW or doing whatever on the internet thatll probably end up being more than a consideration for them. If they would rather move into a smaller home because it’s located in an area with good internet why is that a bad thing? Not everyone will care about how giant their house is or what area they’re in if they can’t even perform their basic hobbies.

[breadisfunny]

also if it's anything like satelite there is gonna be severe limits on what you can use and do.

[Zan15]

So me and my gf are about to buy a house. the only thing holding us back is that the internet there is kinda sketchy. Its a bit far away from civilization'ish.
Its via the phone line thingy and most companies say they can provide 13 mb/s down and 1-2 mb up connection.

Then another company boasts that they can boost that to 20-40 mb/s with Hybrid internet where they combine the phone line internet with the mobile network. theres a UMTS tower like 1km away from the house so we expect there to be at least decent 4g network. I just could NOT imagine gaming with 4g.

So my question is, how much badnwith is needed to game? I play WoW and dota 2 99% of the time - its kind of our dream house - but bad internet is 110% a dealbreaker!

any help is much appreciated. ty in advance.

When comcast jumps my rate after the 29.99 is over I switch over to DSL (phone line thingy) and its only about 10/1 at the best.... 7/768k normally.
but the latency is sub 30ms. better than cable at 100/5 and around 45ms.


I've noticed no difference in gaming in wow between the two.

like others have said, quality is key. took me 3 visits to get my dsl line up to snuff and get them to fix the noise/quality issues.
Turned out they just installed it wrong to the pole.

[dubious_doomhammer]

Most games don't need more than 100 kbyte/s down and even less up, so it really doesn't matter how much down/up you have, but rather how good your latency is.

100% this. I can get 600mbps down with wifi, but I spike like crazy. I have to use a powerline adapter in my current situation, and with that I only get around 150mbps down, but 0 spikes.

[Aggrophobic]

Yeah, I posted earlier using Sweden, if that's the right place...having Gothenburg AND Bangkok threw me off.

Actually, internet is great here as well. Probably not as good outside of Bangkok as in Sweden but Thailand has not had as many years to work on that seeing as the country was poor as heck just 20-25 years back. The US has no reason to be that far behind however. It should easily rival scandinavian countries, or so you'd think.

As others have pointed out, one can play with that but still, thats some slow downloads there and what about TV? You guys still use satellite? Heck, what happens when you stream and play on that?