Internet Plan Choice And Troubleshooting For Gamers

Online gaming is a lot bigger than the Everquest and Counterstrike days of the late 90's and early 2000's. The worlds of bigger, there are more players, and there are a lot of games out there ready to bring you into a new adventure. Unfortunately, many internet users only know about the speed needed to make their downloads or websites faster. If you're an online gamer and can't figure out why your system lags so much, or if you're just getting started and want to make your gameplay as sleek and elite as possible, here are a few internet details for online gamers.

Consistency Over Speed

Most Internet Service Provider (ISP) ads promote fast speeds. For most internet users, this is what matters the most; faster internet means downloading movies, music, videos, and other files faster. it also means streaming video from services such as Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon can load faster with high quality and fewer interruptions. For online gaming, high speeds are somewhat useless.

You need fast internet to download the game and any updates quickly. Having to wait hours for an update to download just to play your game isn't helpful at all, so there's no point in switching up and down every month as needed. The average internet speed in the US is also faster than what most downloaders need, so you're usually at a good speed with a basic internet package as long as your area isn't far below the average. Anything above 20mbps (megabits per second) is fine.

What matters to gamers is consistency. Everything from online gameplay to videos and music is data, and data is a series of bits that are transferred in small packets. These data packets can be sent as small bytes, kilobits, or as large as megabits per second--although the basic unit for modern internet is usually kilobits per second. This means that very small pieces of information are sent very fast, and must be accounted for.

With websites and file downloads, losing a few bits here and there only results in a slightly slower speed--if you notice it at all. Any information lost in transfer just needs to be sent again, and as long as the internet connection doesn't have constant failure because of line problems, it'll send faster than most people can see.

Online gamers, unfortunately, have bigger problems when data is lost.

Lost Packets, Performance Problems, And Lag

Online gaming is actually part of streaming technology. Streaming is a form of downloading that sends small pieces of information that can be watched, viewed, or used as soon as they arrive instead of waiting for a bigger delivery. This means watching a video as its playing instead of waiting for a whole file to download.

With online gaming, all of your actions, the server's actions, and the actions of other players are sent via this fast streaming. To get that quick, almost seamless feel of the game reacting as soon as you press a button or move your mouse, there's no time for computers to say "did you get that?!" and respond with "hold on...yes!" because that confirmation is wasted time.

A connection with consistency issues will drop too many packets, and these packets can't be sent again. Your character will run in place because the request didn't make it again, and the only way to "send it again" is to try to move again.

To avoid these problems, speak with an ISP that can prove their consistency with online game testing. It's less work for you and more time to game.

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