How important is DLS speed?

Further to my recent posts regarding my upgrade dilemma...

I visited my local Apple store today and they very kindly allowed me to download SL.
I tried it out on a 20" iMac with 2GB ram and a 128MB graphics card and have to say I was extremely impressed. It absolutely flew compared to my current iMac (2 year old 20" iMac, 1GB ram, sad 64MB graphics card).

They guy in the shop thought that the broadband connection they were using was a 10MB business line, but it turned out to be a 4MB line. My current connection is on 2MB.

So I was wondering how important is DSL speed for a good SL experience?

2 mbps should be more then enough to run sl without a hitch..There will be hitches however. I would say the absolute minimum to run SL would be 256k. would be a nightmare but. 1.5mbps is the max bandwidth sl uses anyhow. So within those two ranges you should be ok. And anything more is just gravy. Hope this helps.

I was running SL on DSL until very recently, download speeds varying between 1.5 and 2.0 Mbps. Was generally okay, but teleports and other significant scene changes took a while to download. Otherwise performance seemed fine. Recently, I had the opportunity to advance to fiber optic. Download clocked on same test site at 16 Mbps! Scene-change downloads much faster. Otherwise, performance at least as fine.

I think if I were on anything less than DSL, I would play on-line checkers until I got DSL.

And when you get a chance to go fiber optic at anything like a reasonable price, go for it! Dat de future!

Thanks for the info guys. I suppose it should have dawned on me really. I do remember seeing the bandwidth setting in Network Prefs.
Looks like I may be investing in a nice new Mac soon...
Maybe I should see how Age Verification pans out 1st!

Macs FTW!

I"ve noticed a BIG difference between DSL and Cable Internet when running SL. DSL was fine, but rather lunky. Cable is much faster. And for my area, the cost is the same.

cable vs dsl all depends on your area

on my side of town cable is up and down like a rollercoaster with its speed, it has horrible latency problems and its only good for web page browsing, nothing streaming, DSL is full on 6mbs verry little to no latency and streams like a dream

on my parents side of town DSL is total crap, like it disconnects every cupple hours and it had bad latency whereas cable modem is fast and latence free

shrug

FTW? Please enlighten me

Cable is not an option for me anyway. They never got as far as putting it in in my neighbourhood!

I ran 25mbp for the first 1 1/2 years then moved to 100mbps Fiber Optical line. But as one might assume the 100mbps fiber connection is better.

Thanks for reminding us non-Japanese, non-Korean, non-business internet subscribers how far behind in internet technology we are . At least I get 15-30 ms latency to SL servers!

My current 6 Mbps DSL service affords me faster sim load times than my old (1 week ago) 1.5 Mbps DSL service. Bandwidth greater than 2 Mbps definitely makes a difference. Especially if more than one person/computer in the house is running SL.

Edit: FTTH (Fiber to the home) technology isn't being deployed fast enough in the US for residential customers. 20+ Mbps would be so awesome... with symmetric upload that would just be icing on the cake!

I am sorry i did not mean it that way......price wise adsl and optical connections are about the same price.

But 2mbps and UP is even to play decent here......

Hehe, that's alright, I know that, I stated it jokingly .

Alot of Internet service providers like to throttle speed to fit more subscribers into the same pipeline here in the US (very common but definitely BAD business practices). On top of that the connection speed isn't symmetrical. Upload speeds tend to be at 384 kbps on average among all the different kinds of internet connections (with the exception to FTTH) outside of Asia.

we are not "CAPPED" as they say........But I say this much i use alot of connect during the month!

I recently tried a new iMac at my home on my normal DSL line, and the performance improvement was amazing. A lot of the slowness that I attributed to server lag or download lag is actually due solely to my poor underpowered Mac Mini. The most dramatic improvement was in texture loading... it takes 1-2 minutes on my Mini, but was nearly instantaneous on the new iMac. It was also far more responsive, and the motion all looked much smoother.

So at least based on my experience, the performance improvement you saw was due to the computer rather than the network connection.

Sadly I couldn't keep the new iMac, and I have to admit it had a few weird glitches. The worst was that all the animations were running at hyperspeed... trees that normally sway gently in the breeze were jiggling so fast it looked like an earthquake.

I searched the forums for a possible solution, but it seems nobody complains about SL being too fast.

FTW = For The Win. A common expression in World of Warcraft and other on-line games intended to bestow high praise on a superior weapon, device or tactic.

ROFL, thats great! hahaha, I'll have to remember that one

Its a blance between Connection bandwidth and contention ratios. With dial up you had all the 56kbps bandwidth (unless you were on one of those dreadful shared lines). Business contention ratios are in the region of 20:1, thats 'sharers' of that bandwidth, domestic ratios are in the region of 50:1. Its quite rare that ISP's will actually tell you the contention ratios.

As you share the bandwidth connection, at peak times you can expect no more than the simple calculation of Max bandwidth potential, divided by the maximum 'users' of that bandwidth (2mb bandwidth / 50 users = 40kbps minimum bandwidth per user) although this is based on perfection, whereas in reality ASDL is dynamic and the nature of the signal loss, combined with packet loss, and the very nature that the bandwidth usage is not a continous stream, your connection speed will vary very rapidly.

Carryout a simple series of checks here http://bandwidthplace.com/speedtest/ and you will see variances in the connection speeds. At peak times, your bandwidth will drop. ASDL, as with most connections to the internet, have two readings. Upload and Download. Usually cheaper packages, not only cap your total bandwidth usage, but offer a slower upload speed (2mb download, 256kbps upload). As most online games/platforms, don't require as much flow in upload, that makes playing quite feesible. FTPing to a website is where you will notice it most of all.

Nice 1, I like that!

Actually I'm suprised nobody's been Mac bashing... yet