Woosh for playing world of warcraft

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psychnurse

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Topic # 7275 3-Apr-2006 09:36

Just an idea, I am hardcore at home and have adsl however at times I do nightshift and am thinking of using woosh to play wow on
my laptop. I'm aware that wossh is no good for FPS however wow isnowhere near as taxing on the bandwidth as BF2.
So the question is: Does anyone use woosh to play world of warcraft or similar games and if so whats it like Lag wise?
Cheers
Psych

nickgrieve

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Reply # 32061 3-Apr-2006 10:11

I have found the latency of my woosh connection can vary greatly depending on the time of day. I'd say your best bet would be to just try it and see how you go...

But I guess you don't have a woosh account...

Best bet it to find out what a good ping time is for acceptable WoW game play, and compare it to mine...

As far as I can tell New Zealand WoW players connect to US west coast servers... I think they block ping as I was unable to get a reply simple tests to www.blizzard.com

I do know apple are on the west coast, and I know the higest latency will be on the woosh side of things... so here is a sample to www.apple.com that may serve as a rough guide.

white:~ ngrieve$ ping www.warcraft.com
PING www.blizzard.com (216.148.223.72): 56 data bytes
^C
--- www.blizzard.com ping statistics ---
5 packets transmitted, 0 packets received, 100% packet loss
white:~ ngrieve$ ping www.apple.com
PING www.apple.com.akadns.net (17.112.152.32): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 17.112.152.32: icmp_seq=0 ttl=240 time=557.602 ms
64 bytes from 17.112.152.32: icmp_seq=1 ttl=240 time=354.648 ms
64 bytes from 17.112.152.32: icmp_seq=2 ttl=240 time=375.983 ms
64 bytes from 17.112.152.32: icmp_seq=3 ttl=240 time=335.815 ms
64 bytes from 17.112.152.32: icmp_seq=4 ttl=240 time=374.364 ms
64 bytes from 17.112.152.32: icmp_seq=5 ttl=240 time=334.779 ms
64 bytes from 17.112.152.32: icmp_seq=6 ttl=240 time=252.967 ms
64 bytes from 17.112.152.32: icmp_seq=7 ttl=240 time=509.571 ms
64 bytes from 17.112.152.32: icmp_seq=8 ttl=240 time=372.046 ms
64 bytes from 17.112.152.32: icmp_seq=9 ttl=240 time=448.677 ms
64 bytes from 17.112.152.32: icmp_seq=10 ttl=240 time=650.631 ms
64 bytes from 17.112.152.32: icmp_seq=11 ttl=240 time=369.315 ms
64 bytes from 17.112.152.32: icmp_seq=12 ttl=240 time=346.855 ms
64 bytes from 17.112.152.32: icmp_seq=13 ttl=240 time=406.827 ms
64 bytes from 17.112.152.32: icmp_seq=14 ttl=240 time=306.045 ms
64 bytes from 17.112.152.32: icmp_seq=15 ttl=240 time=326.492 ms
64 bytes from 17.112.152.32: icmp_seq=16 ttl=240 time=327.070 ms
64 bytes from 17.112.152.32: icmp_seq=17 ttl=240 time=326.570 ms
^C
--- www.apple.com.akadns.net ping statistics ---
19 packets transmitted, 18 packets received, 5% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 252.967/387.570/650.631/94.888 ms

hope that helps.

just as a note, the packet loss is from me killing ping before the last replies had been recived. Just look that the icmp_seq numbers, no packets dropped.

chiefie

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Reply # 32065 3-Apr-2006 10:50

from many woosh users here, it seems that the latency is pretty high, hence woosh is not suitable for online gaming.

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Jama

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Reply # 32070 3-Apr-2006 11:31

Those latencys are shockers! Ping > make coffee > Reply > Ping > mow lawn > Reply.

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psychnurse

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Reply # 32075 3-Apr-2006 12:04

cheers for that ping test.
Thats not too bad. my adsl ping is ususally around 200-500 and is very playable.
I think the best bet is to go to a woosh outlet withWOW loaded in and see how it plays, if its good i buy it.
Thanks again.

nickgrieve

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Reply # 32103 3-Apr-2006 16:05

Jama

You'd be surprised, its not that bad for everyday use.

I use FreeBSD and the PF firewall from OpenBSD, the high-latency runtime option makes a noticeable difference, I believe if adjusts the send and receive TCP window from the default you'd use on a LAN.

The trick with high latency connections is to get as much going as you can to make use of the available bandwidth. As you can imagine a single ftp connection to a server would be slowed down by the delay in the sending and receiving of ACKs (acknowledgments) (for example) will be affected by the latency. For the 300 ms it takes to send back the data required for flow control the link sits idle. So I get it loaded up with traffic so that "window of idleness" is reduced. There are some good download accelerators that help dramatically by requesting ahead more segments of the same file. So basically even if I am just fetching one file I can reduce the effects of that high latency to the point where it has a negligible over all effect on throughput.

anyway...

juha

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Reply # 32562 8-Apr-2006 12:39

nickgrieve: Jama

You'd be surprised, its not that bad for everyday use.

I use FreeBSD and the PF firewall from OpenBSD, the high-latency runtime option makes a noticeable difference, I believe if adjusts the send and receive TCP window from the default you'd use on a LAN.

The trick with high latency connections is to get as much going as you can to make use of the available bandwidth. As you can imagine a single ftp connection to a server would be slowed down by the delay in the sending and receiving of ACKs (acknowledgments) (for example) will be affected by the latency. For the 300 ms it takes to send back the data required for flow control the link sits idle. So I get it loaded up with traffic so that "window of idleness" is reduced. There are some good download accelerators that help dramatically by requesting ahead more segments of the same file. So basically even if I am just fetching one file I can reduce the effects of that high latency to the point where it has a negligible over all effect on throughput.

anyway...

That "trick" (large TCP windows, selective ACKs, time-stamping etc) does help, but it can't cure the lack of responsiveness when you're sending and receiving small amounts of data - like loading a web page with lots of small elements or ssh remote access.

It doesn't help with UDP traffic, which is what most games use...

Juha

Satyr

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Reply # 32803 11-Apr-2006 14:34

Ive got woosh, and I dont recommend it for gaming.

I always get booted from games for having a high latency, but for downloading files/ browsing the web it is very good.

because woosh is wireless you get alot of variation in the latency. In diablo 2 I get a ping of around 350 - 400, I think the lowest ping I ever had was around 250, but that lasted for all of 5 seconds. and sometimes the ping will rise to 1600 which is REALLY bad.

Im actually thinking of switching ISPs because I play alot of games online and theres nothing more fustrating then lagging during a game.