asterisk20xx
join:2008-04-22
Marshall, TX
 ·AT&T Southwest
| reply to ahammer
Re: is this right for me
Welcome to the ISDN forum 
I just got ISDN about a month ago myself and while I miss my old DSL, I found ISDN to actual be a much better connection than I expected. I can usually maintain a constant 15-16 KB/sec downloading and uploading.
My wife and I both play Guild Wars together and very rarely have any lag. The only bandwidth problem we've ever had is game updates take a lot longer to download and install, but as far as playing the game itself I can't see any difference between my 128kbps ISDN and the 7mbps DSL I had before I moved.
I've also played Battlefield 2 and 2142 in many 32 player matches and had little to no lag as well, though I have not tried any 64 player matches or tried playing either with my wife at the same time yet. My ping times run anywhere from around 70 to 250 and tends to hand around 130 for the most part.
Most online games do try to keep bandwidth requirements low so I don't think bandwidth would really be a problem in most cases.
Also, a note about satellite internet, you will have VERY high ping times (upwards of 1 to 2 seconds or maybe more depending on how crowded your ISP is). That makes the majority of online games pretty much impossible to play. The same is the case for 3G internet as well.
Another thing to keep in mind is your phone company will probably NOT provide ISDN internet access. So definitely be sure to call the ISPs in your area and ask them if they provide ISDN access.
Some other things that you may need to know is that ISDN does NOT use a normal phone jack. When I had AT&T install my ISDN line I signed a 2 year contract to lower the installation price to $78. It would have been $300 to install without a contract. But what they didn't tell me is that "installing" does not include installing an ISDN phone jack and charged me an EXTRA $140 to install the jack, which I didn't find out until I got my phone bill a month later.
And that may or may not be the case with your phone company but that's something that caught me by surprise that you might want to be aware of.
Another expense is that you'll have to buy a special piece of equipment called a terminal adapter to be able to use ISDN as well. I got mine on ebay for about $30, tho I might have just got a lucky deal on that, I don't know.
But don't let any of that discourage you. Aside from the initial expenses in getting ISDN it's been a great little internet connection for gaming for my wife and I and we're quite pleased with it. Browsing is of course much slower than dsl or cable but it's easily 3 or 4 times faster than on dialup, so all in all it's a pretty good setup. |
