Download / Upload Argument I'm sure we've all had one..

Danielh22185

Got into an argument with a friend today about download / upload speeds. Basically to cut it short and sweet I basically was holding firm on the idea if you don't utilize a lot of uploading content having a "fast" upload connection is near pointless. We got into examples of online gaming. Him claiming everything is about the upload. Which yes I agree to an extent that upload is crucial because we are basically telling a game what to do. However I returned with an argument that download is typically more required due to the amount of content being received is generally heavily than what is being sent.

Basically for instance in an online gaming scenario hosted by a server you hit the 'A' key you turn left. The downloaded information is your movement plus the environment changes.

After all speed is just capacity. If you don't need extra capacity to perform the tasks you are trying to perform then you don't need the extra capacity. The internet operates at the same speed (speed of light). We typically associate speed to capacity because more data can flow at a given time. However a packet that traverses a T1 will do so with the same exact speed as a 10Gb connection. The difference is capacity.

I feel like I am more of the correct person in this argument. Thoughts?

DevilWAH

how does a connection manage an incress of speed?

by sending more bits / signals down the line in the same time frame.

so imagen a really simple case

a 1 bps line vs a 10bps line..

the 1 bit line will take 1 second to send one bit right?

how long does the 10bps line take? well it takes 1/10th a second. the electrical signal still travel the speed of light but its just turned on and of 10 times in a second.. (square wave)

In games its all about latency and assuming you are sending small packets a higher line speed will result in faster transfer speeds and so lower latency So in fact your friend is correct in a way, if you are facing of to some one and you both press the fire key together if you are on a 10mbs upload and they are on a 20mbps upload, there command will reach the server before yours.

for gaming both upload and down load are not about the size, but how fast it can be transmitted. upload and download in gaming is in terms of Kilo bits per second per second, a 512K connection has the bandwidth just not the latency.

cnfuzzd

Confusing layer 1 vs layer 2

The "speed" rating of your internet connection is a capacity rating of the equipment, not a measurement of distance covered per unit of time. Consider that all of your various internet speeds offered by a vendor will cross the same medium.

Also, it is all about the upload, but thats primarily because the upload speeds offered by most ISPs are terrible. Also, if your download speed isn't going to allow you to play the game, you will never notice your terrible lagtime.

it_consultant

I noticed a bigger difference going from 20/768 to 20/5 than I did when I went from 20/5 to 40/5. Right now, I don't hear too many people argue about upload speed, it is "Bursting" speed that I argue about. I download big files over my 40DL link than people who bought the 100MB DOCSIS III stuff. I don't burst, they do, fine for web browsing, not so great for persistent BW usage.

Danielh22185

DevilWAH wrote: »

how does a connection manage an incress of speed?

by sending more bits / signals down the line in the same time frame.

so imagen a really simple case

a 1 bps line vs a 10bps line..

the 1 bit line will take 1 second to send one bit right?

how long does the 10bps line take? well it takes 1/10th a second. the electrical signal still travel the speed of light but its just turned on and of 10 times in a second.. (square wave)

In games its all about latency and assuming you are sending small packets a higher line speed will result in faster transfer speeds and so lower latency So in fact your friend is correct in a way, if you are facing of to some one and you both press the fire key together if you are on a 10mbs upload and they are on a 20mbps upload, there command will reach the server before yours.

for gaming both upload and down load are not about the size, but how fast it can be transmitted. upload and download in gaming is in terms of Kilo bits per second per second, a 512K connection has the bandwidth just not the latency.

Let dumb it down even more. Say you have a 10 Mbps line and a 20Mbps line both for sake of less complexity are connected point to point. Server is on one side I am on the other, same setup for my friend. Say we both can click fire at exactly the same time down to the micro-second. Would not time to reach / return be the same? Since it is all electrical signals its all the same relative speed. The line speed would only be faster for my friend if I was at capacity of my line speed but he still had some buffer room for more capacity? Then you would notice a slow down in speed correct?

ptilsen

DevilWAH, I hate to burst your bubble, but pretty much everything in your post is incorrect. A faster (as in higher gross bit rate) line does not necessarily "turn on and off" any more rapidly than a slower one. The rate at which a line pulses is the baud rate, and higher bit rates do not require higher baud rate. Higher baud rate, ceteris paribus, will mean higher bandwidth, but higher-bandwidth networking mediums do not always have high baud rates or vice versa.

Expanding on that, higher bandwidth does not necessarily equate to lower latency, which is typically affected more by routing and switching delays than by baud rate differences anyway. Saying all networks had equal extra-medium delays, higher bandwidth lines could in fact (and often do) have higher latency.

Where Danielh and DevilWah are both wrong is the speed at which data traverses the Internet. First, electrical signals do not travel at the speed of light outside of a vacuum, and even fiber optic networks will have microsecond transceiver delays. Generally speaking, network bits do not exceed 97% the speed of light. Again, these aren't big delays, relatively speaking, since routing and switching delays typically result in millisecond delays, and microseconds in and of themselves are not perceptible. I just don't want people thinking that port to port, network data travels at the speed of light, or God forbid that it goes that fast over the Internet. Just send an 8-byte Ping across a single switch and you'll see at microseconds, if not a millisecond or two latency. Until you eliminate switching, routing, and transceiver latency, you're not even getting 90% speed of light.

Now, all this being said, you are typically going to see lower latencies go hand-in-hand with higher bandwidth, again, not because they must by definition, but because: 1st. Better, faster networks use technologies that provide typically both more bandwidth and better latency, and 2nd. As ISPs improve their lines and equipment, they typically reduce routing and switching delays. Think back to the early cable and DSL, which often neared and exceeded 100ms latency. It tends to be under 50ms these days as network technology has advanced.

As far as games, it is going to vary a lot from game to game. Latency generally is the most important factor in a fast-paced online game, provided one has sufficient upload and download bandwidth. Thinking of an RTS or FPS, typically you are relaying mouse and keyboard commands, and these theoretically shouldn't require much bandwidth on their own. On the other hand, the traffic that goes into ensuring the games are connected any synchronized can vary quite a bit. You'll notice in, let's say any Blizzard RTS, lower bandwidth lines tend to have higher disconnection rates and are more likely to begin "lagging out." This can happen with low upload or download speed if the game client becomes desync'ed and can't keep up (although legitimate connection problems as well as PC problems are more often the culprit).

Finally, I agree for the most part with Danielh22185's assertion that "extra capacity" is wasted and will generally not yield big improvements. In the example of those RTS games, going from 50mbps to 100mbps will probably do nothing. It doesn't make packets get there any faster if the game isn't sending close to or more than 50 megabits worth of data every second. Only better code and lower latencies (driven by better media, routers, switches, and network configurations) make the packets arrive faster once the game is not utilizing available bandwidth.

As far as up vs down, I would hazard a guess that most games, whether client-server or peer-to-peer, need roughly equal up and down bandwidth. Client-server might be slightly download-heavy on the client side, but probably not by much. As with IT_c, I noticed bigger gains from the 1 to 5 and 5 to 10 ups than I have since upgrading from 15 down to 30something down to 60 down. Most games I've played in the last five years don't seem to really utilize more than 10 or 20mbps down during actual gameplay (obviously map and patch downloads still soak up as much as they'll give you).

DevilWAH

When people state a signal travels across the internet at the speeds of light, I think it is general assume that what is meant, is that the speed of the signal down a wire is a constant value that is close to but not quite the speed of light, it being an electromagnetic wave. and this constant remains constant no matter what the bandwidth of the actual connection is. the teampature of the wire, thickness, whats its made and how it is insulated will all to a small degree affect the actually speed of the propagation of the signal. And over the distances that copper will be used the differences to the the latency (even if only traveling at 60% such as down a coax cable is still 300,000,000 mph give or take) caused by this will be negligible for the few miles to the local exchange in the case of ADSL.

After that the signal is most likely to be on to Fiber and light traveling down fiber does travel with in a few % of the speed of light.

That aside I was in my post trying to explain in simple terms why a higher bandwidth could produce a better experience for small data load with better latencies, even when the bandwidth of the links in both cases exceeds the data volume requirements.