Internet connection, multiplayer xp, and downloading speed.

[William528]

I'm sure everyone here knows that the Multiplayer Expansion for Civ3 is about to come out.

At this moment, I'm thinking of getting Broadband connection so I can have better game play online for Civ3 PTW and a few other games, (also my mum want to download some old TV drama series).

But, I don't know Which company offers the best connection. At the moment I'm using AOL, according to AOL their broadband uses ADSL and has a downloading speed of 512kb/s. Does that actually mean you can download files at 512kb/s!???
Because although I have a 56K connection, when I download things (eg. the Double Your Pleasure mod for Civ3) the speed is about 4kb/s!

What's the best? And does 512kb/s mean 512kb/s for downloading speed??

 

[Lucky]

You are mistaking kb/s for kB/s!

The standard speed of ADSL is 768 BAUD. The baudrate gives you the speed in BIT per SECOND, or more conveniently kiloBIT per second. If you want to have that in kiloByte, you have to divide by 8.
So 768 kbit/s (768 kBaud or sometimes written 768 kb/s) equals to 96 kByte/second or kB/s.

You 56k connections means 56kBaud, which equals to 7kByte/s.

This calculation does not take into account any start/stop and parity bits, which are additional to the 7 or 8 databits. So for exact calculation you need to divide by 9 or even 10, depending on your settings. That´s why modems often reach only 4-5 kByte/s, they need more error correction bits than other things like ISDN.
With ISDN you have 64kBaud = 8kByte, which can be reached at max.

So yes, ADSL broadband is more than 10 times faster than your modem, sometimes even 20x, depending on your settings. Go get it.

 

[munzy76]

Or go get cable if it is available. I get 1.5Mbps download with my service and I used to get 2.5Mbps at my last place (1.5Mbps = 1500kbps or 187.5kBps). I only upload at 128kbps.

 

[Grisu]

Originally posted by Lucky
You are mistaking kb/s for kB/s!

The standard speed of ADSL is 768 BAUD./B]

Is this the standard of the ADSL-technology or just the standard most ISP's use (for exmple T-DSL)? In Switzerland most ADSL-offers are 512KBit/s, I'm not even sure you can get 768 (the only ones I have seen so far are 256K/512K/1M/2M).

A note to the bandwith: you hardly ever get to the situation where can download at full bandwith: I got ADSL 256 and the highest download I get is about 24KBytes/s (192Kbits/s).

 

[Lucky]

The ADSL technology is cabable of more, much more, 3-5 times as much.
But the standard ADSL connection you can buy is 768 kbit/s, in most countries. But of course it depends on the phone company you use.

 

[gonzo_for_civ]

But, I don't know Which company offers the best connection. At the moment I'm using AOL, according to AOL their broadband uses ADSL and has a downloading speed of 512kb/s.

Do yourself a favor and go elsewhere for service Cable modems are the better option

 

[GenghisK]

In japan, they pay €40/month for a T1
and now in Paris it's also €40 for a 1mbit/256k with another ISP, but this ISP doesn't cover my city