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Halo 2 online gaming mania worries ISP's

8 December 2004 11:50 by James "Dela" Delahunty | 9 comments

Halo 2 is by far one this years most anticipated games. It seems now that most gamers are getting increasingly interested in online gaming using their broadband service with their gaming consoles. It has been reported by network monitoring company Sandvine, that traffic on the Xbox live gaming network had increased fourfold on Halo 2's release date and is showing no signs of slowing down. Fears are that some networks may not be able to handle the amount of bandwidth that is now being demanded by gamers. But the surge in numbers and huge demands for bandwidth should be a wake-up call to the industry which must ensure that their networks can cope with the increases in traffic, said Sandvine's chief technology officer Marc Morin.

Since the demand for bandwidth has become very high these days, more and more service providers are implementing systems that make their networks more intelligent, and gather information on what bandwidth is being used for what purpose. With a network like this, ISP's could very easily prioritize or reserve bandwidth for online gaming through gaming consoles. However, if the hunger for bandwidth keeps rising it seems possible that more ISP's will move to a system of charging customers by the amount of bandwidth that they use.

One of the most annoying things for an online gamer is "lag". You know you are experience lag when there is a noticeable delay between the time you make an action using the controller and the time it happens on the network. Gamers tend to move onto networks with the least amount of lag.

Source:
BBC News

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Discuss this article!
djscoop (AfterDawn Addict) 8 December 2004 18:14
exactly how much bandwidth does someone use when xbox users play their precious halo 2 online? [ + quote]
indienemo (Inactive) 8 December 2004 23:09
id imagine quite alot becausew doesnt it live stream the gamers patches filers and updates? [ + quote]
tommays (Junior Member) 9 December 2004 3:56
they should be concerned it has become allmost inpossable to run a quake 3 server with out lag even when paying a good hosting company tommays [ + quote]
Toiletman (Senior Member) 9 December 2004 11:57
I have a 3MBps connection (about average for Canada), and I experience little to no lag when playing on the PC with old games such as Day of Defeat. And the netcode for the game isn't even that good compared to now. So I would guess Halo 2 has a bad netcode for this generation of games. [ + quote]
Ghostdog (Senior Member) 10 December 2004 11:23
Quote: should be a wake-up call to the industry which must ensure that their networks can cope with the increases in traffic ... and finally start to think about pushing for fibre-optic based technology instead of the different DSL-variants. [ + quote]
djscoop (AfterDawn Addict) 10 December 2004 11:30
i doubt that will happen for a while though. that'll cost a lot of money. isps are just looking for the cheapest way to upgrade [ + quote]
Toiletman (Senior Member) 10 December 2004 14:28
Quote: i doubt that will happen for a while though. that'll cost a lot of money. isps are just looking for the cheapest way to upgrade The day Half Life 2 graphics become "shitty", the day it'll happen. And it ain't too long, maybe 3 to 4 years max. Everyone is entitled to their own true opinion. Either respect that or don't. [ + quote]
Ghostdog (Senior Member) 11 December 2004 1:40
Quote: i doubt that will happen for a while though. Well the point is that it needs to happen. One day ISP�s will wake up to the fact that they can no longer improve on their offrenings using older tech and offer good quality connections. The investment has to be made sooner or later, seems a bit dumb to keep postponing it. [ + quote]
patNd (Inactive) 18 February 2005 9:14
How about Halo 3, they said it was coming out before march 2005? Or am i wrong? [ + quote]