Home› General Chat
If you need urgent support, call 999 or go to your nearest A&E. To contact our Crisis Messenger (open 24/7) text THEMIX to 85258.
Read the community guidelines before posting ✨
Options

Broadband data usage

Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
in General Chat
Hi everyone I'm new here :wave:
I was wondering if anyone knows how much data allowance would I need on a new broadband package for a lot of online gaming. Would I definitely need to go for unlimited data allowance each month or could I get away with and benefit from a capped rate package? If any of you are gamers, do you know how much in GB you tend to use each month so I can get a rough idea?
Cheers

Comments

  • Options
    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    a reliable connection should be priority

    at the moment i'm on virgin media who seem to be quite reliable compared to ADSL providers in the past, they have no real caps but at certain times they have temporary limits like peak times etc

    i've never broken it playing world of warcraft so that sholud say it all :)
  • Options
    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Yeah I agree reliable connection is a priority, I'm just concerned if I get a capped rate of going over the limit and running up additional costs.
  • Options
    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    A online game uses a few MB's every few minutes. I'd go with unlimited just to be safe. Though, download some network monitoring software and see how much WoW uses on average, work out the equation.
  • Options
    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    A lot of ISPs claim their service is 'unlimited', however, this is very rarely the case. Make sure you read the small print. How they get away with it beggars belief.
  • Options
    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Gaming uses very very little bandwidth.

    I'd suggest looking at be or o2 (o2 is using the same stuff, but is a bit cheaper, but apparently worse customer service).

    https://www.bethere.co.uk/web/beportal/homepage

    Very good in terms of contention because they do funky stuff with their boxes. Also no traffic shaping (meaning if you go on youtube at 7pm it wont cut out, whereas with some lesser companies... it might do).
  • Options
    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    online gaming itself doesn't use a lot of bandwidth, but i imagine all this new fangled downloadable content stuff accounts for a lot of traffic nowadays.
  • Options
    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Thanks very much for the advice, and ShyBoy thanks for the link, hadn't heard of them before!
  • Options
    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    CptCoatHanger wrote: »
    A lot of ISPs claim their service is 'unlimited', however, this is very rarely the case. Make sure you read the small print. How they get away with it beggars belief.

    Nothing is unlimited. Even if they don't monitor or cap a connection, it's still bound by the amount of data that can pass down it - 10 megabits per second, for example.

    Unlimited is about the worst term used in sales of products...
  • Options
    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Unmetered is the correct term, I have no problem with that.
Sign In or Register to comment.