Kutark
join:2009-12-14
Colorado Springs, CO | Gamer/Multi-User Question reg Comcast HSI vs DSL (We're in monument/cosprings btw)
Ok guys. I've been using Qwest dsl now for the better part of 4 years on a 7meg/896kb. My 2 roomies and i are getting rdy to move into a new place and we're trying to determine if cable has improved enough for multiple users sharing a connection, vs DSL (i say this with the caveat of the following backstory).
What i mean by that is, back before we got into DSL, comcast offered a 6/768 connection, and qwest had the 7/896. Initially we had cable b/c it was the only high speed internet available at the time. What we absolutely abhorred about it, was if you had one person playing say EQ2, another playing CS:S and one person trying to surf the web, the connection would basically take a huge dump on itself, pings would jump through the roof, packet loss would increase, connections would time out, etc.
We read at the time that it had to do with the size of the packets cable modems sent, and that since DSL sent a larger number of smaller packets, it was able to handle multiple users better. Well, finally qwest offered DSL and we hopped on it and were immediately pleased at being able to do those three things at once.
Well, torrents started becoming popular at that point, so what we've noticed (and this is true up to today) is that if anyone is uploading a torrent at more than ~30kbps, it basically screws the connection in terms of latencies, packet loss, dropped connections, etc.
Now, i theorize it has to do with the number of connections torrents are nefarious for making, not really to do as much with the bandwidth.
Either way, getting to the point of this post. We're getting rdy to move into a new place, i saw that comcast has a 8meg/2meg connection with powerboost to 16/2 (i've read extensively and from what i've seen the powerboost applies only to the download, at least in this area). I'm not so much concerned about download speeds, but i'm hoping the increased upload bandwidth will assist with multiple users in a household vs DSL. I was wondering if anyone has any experience with comcast and having a similar situation. Sorry for the long winded post, i just figured background would be useful.
Also, not sure if it matters, but the house will be networked via cat5e on gigabit switches, connected to a pfsense based router (old athlon 2800+ i had laying around /shrug) with QoS set up for HTTP priority over everything, and torrent traffic on low priority vs everything else (this made a substantial difference on the DSL, but still didnt seem to overcome it completely). |
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 Quaoar
join:2004-08-11
Fort Collins, CO
 ·Comcast
| The only way to approach perfect gaming experience (which I have on Xbox Live) for multiple gamers, is for each gamer to pay for their own dedicated broadband connection.
You are asking too much of your broadband with several people demanding their own private segment of your single connection.
Just my opinion. |
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 EGThe wings of lovePremium
join:2006-11-18
Union, NJ
kudos:9
1 edit | reply to Kutark
The Powerboost feature won't help you with gaming/multiple gamers. And BTW that's likely to be bursts to 16/4 depending on conditions. It is just a short lived burst of speed at the beginning of a FILE transfer.
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Happy holidays to all ! |
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jus10
join:2009-08-04
Sterling, VA Reviews:
·Comcast
| reply to Kutark
Your main issues with gaming are going to be total upload bandwidth and latency. The Comcast connection is going to have more upload bandwidth; I'd imagine latency to be roughly the same.
For PFsense bittorrent throttling to work, you have to make sure all of the clients are in the 6881-6889 port range. Modern clients to randomize so make sure they're set to use the range. PFsense 1.2.3 doesn't have layer 7 smarts yet.
If you have QOS setup, you probably also have the bandwidth max's coded in the setup - be sure to update them for the Comcast connection or the PFsense router will artificially limit the upload.
All of that said, bittorrent tends to drown any connection regardless of the router, QOS, etc, etc. You can get it to work, but I'd always expect it to somewhat suffocate your connection. I'd also consider Comcast's Network Management Policy and the 250 gig cap. If your BTing madness causes you to trip the congestion management rules, you traffic will be deprioritized as I understand it and I can't imagine that helping your gaming performance. |
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Drizew
join:2004-09-17
Los Lunas, NM | reply to Kutark
If it makes you feel any better, I have had 2 instances of utorrent active while gaming/downloading and I don't have any problems. The 1 thing that it DOES affect is searching for servers on the games I play. Modern Warfare is the worst, but there are a few times that it takes some time for steam (CS:S TF2) to pull up servers. If I shut down 1 instance of Utorrent it clears up the problem. This is on the 16/2 tier, but when I had 8/2 I had the same results.
Anyway, I wish you the best of luck with whichever ISP you decide to go with. BTW, this is all with no QoS. I just set a max limit to connections on Utorrent and limit the speeds to say 80Kb/s for each torrent instance, and game with the remaining 90Kb/s. Pings stay consistently lower then 60 unless I am playing on an east coast server. |
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evo7
join:2009-01-03
Audubon, NJ | Don't completely saturate your connection especially upload with one instance and you'll be fine. If you saturate your connection no matter what type it is, everything will go to crap. |
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 Tgrable
join:2004-02-12
Little Rock, AR
·Comcast
| reply to Kutark
I have been on Comcast for probably 7+ years now. I remember the original 3mb/256kb connection I had..
Anyways back then I did have the problem with pings and speeds when we had several people using the connection.
Then they bumped it up to 6mb/512 and the issue was still there just less so.
Then I got bumped to 12/1 but opted to pay the 10 more a month for 16/2.. around this time I also went with Voip service and got a new modem and away from the old rca doc 1.0 i had.. With my new modem Arris 502 that i was provided I no longer had any issues with my connection. I even ran one of my pcs as a torrent upload machine and just limited its upload to 150KBs or 1.2 Mb up. Even while running the torrent at a little over half my upload cap I could still game and browse the web with several users with no noticable slowdown.
I will say this though, if you are having ping issues try out the leatrix latency fix »www.wowinterface.com/downloads/i···Fix.html
It works on any TCP connection and it reduced my pings in most games around 50-60%.. Take wow or aion for instance.. I use to see 80ish pings in wow.. after this "fix" I see 28-35 pings... same for aion.
So to answere your question, I would say you will have little to no issues with multiple pcs running on a comcast connection, atleast not now that the docsis 2.0 and 3.0 stuff is out.. all my problems came from that old RCA doc 1.0 modem |
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Kutark
join:2009-12-14
Colorado Springs, CO | reply to Kutark
Sorry for the late response guys, i just wanted to say i appreciate all the info, definitely helping me make my decision. Right now i'm trying to determine if i want to spend the extra associated with the comcast business class connections. Either way, thanks again. |
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