Broadband For Online Gaming – Our Guide.

Back in the days of dialup, gamers had to work to squeeze every last kilobit out of their connections. As broadband was adopted in the UK there slowly became a digital divide for gamers who could afford the new service and gamers left on dial-up, who rarely stood a chance against their broadband comrades unless they were exceptionally skilled. Gamers today will almost certainly choose a broadband package, but in a world where there are hundreds of ISPs to choose from with packages for everyone from the elderly to working mother, are there any ISPs which are better for gaming?
 

Broadband For Gaming – What to look for

 
Let’s ignore any specific packages for a minute and work out exactly what matters to gamers. The first and most important thing is speed. Almost all broadband packages are capable of playing today’s PC games as well as using Xbox Live and Playstation Network. However, the differences in speed can certainly translate into differences in gameplay, especially in fast paced games like First Person Shooters. In these games, your ping rate – the time it takes for your computer (the client) and the game (the server) to talk to each other. This is generally measured in milliseconds so as you can imagine, the distance is small, but it matters more than you think.
 

Let’s say you’re using a standard UK ISP and are playing Counterstrike on a UK server. If you have a ping of 100 and your opponent has a ping of 30, he’s got nearly .1 of a second more time to react than you. That means if you both clicked the mouse and exactly the same time on target for a killing shot, there’s every chance that you would still lose the fight. Not exactly fair, is it?
 

Speed isn’t just about getting the fastest package available, however. Advertised speeds are nearly always ‘download’ speeds but with gaming, ‘upload’ speeds are also important. Gamers in mainland Europe often enjoy upload speeds of around 10mbit, but in England having even 1mbit upload will put you above half the broadband using population. Other things out of your ISPs control can affect your speed such as the way the game has been coded. The main increase in speed can be found by making sure you play on UK servers, preferably as close as possible to your location. On a standard ISP, you might be able to get a ping of between 20-40 but joining a server even as close as France could double that, so be aware of where the server is.
 

The other important thing gamers require is bandwidth. Faster ISPs have a habit of advertising ‘unlimited downloads’ and then implementing a ‘fair use’ policy which means if you go above a certain amount of downloading per week, month or sometimes even day, you can have your broadband speed cut severely for a number of hours. Games themselves actually don’t use a massive amount of bandwidth compared to say, streaming video, but don’t forget there’s a good chance you’ll be downloading game updates, patches, software updates, demos and trailers on a regular basis. Most gamers will also be using their net connection for the same things as everyone else, and while checking your emails doesn’t exactly hit any bandwidth limits, all of these things can add up faster than you might expect.
 

Choosing The Right Package For Gaming

 
With bandwidth and speed our main priorities, we can actually start to see what ISPs might be good for gamers. Many of the bigger well known ISPs can actually be thrown out due to their incredibly restrictive fair-use schemes which will see your speed ruined after downloading just a couple of demos during prime time hours. Smaller providers can offer slightly fairer packages but we’ve also got to keep in mind that speed is factor. Anything offering less than 8mbit is going to put you at disadvantage. Don’t forget that most ISPs offer ‘up to’ 8mbit speeds, and it’s unlikely you’ll actually find your connection as fast as advertised, so make sure you do a line test first to see what sort of speeds you can get in your area.
 

With this in mind, there are two stand-out options for people looking for broadband designed for gamers. Plusnet Pro, and Be Pro. Plusnet offers enhanced ping times, access to their own gaming servers and prioritised traffic. All of these features will help give you that slight edge over the competition and playing on gaming servers run by your ISP will ensure you have an incredibly good ping. Although geared towards gamers, there’s one major drawback of Plusnet Pro – a rather restrictive 15GB monthly usage policy. That works out at only around 500MB a day which one of the most restrictive usage packages available in the UK. Luckily the service allows unlimited downloads between midnight and 8am, but with costs involved for going over the limit, Plusnet is quite a restrictive service. It’s still a good option if you only really use the web for gaming and light surfing however, and it may be the only option available to you if you don’t live the right are for Be.
 

And our Gaming Broadband winner is…

 
Ironically, the best package for gamers available right now isn’t actually advertised as a gaming package at all. Be Pro offers speed of up to 24mbit, the fastest DSL service in the country and only beaten by the 50mbit Virgin cable package which it’s still very much in its infancy. On top of this, Be offers an amazing 2.5mbit upload speed – enough so you can not only experience smooth, flowing games on other servers but you can also host your own server with friends without fear of massive slowdown. This is further aided by a static IP – a single ‘address’ that people can connect to your games with that never changes. Most ISPs, give you new address every time your connection drops.
 

Even better, Be Pro offers unlimited downloads. It does have a fair use policy like every ISP, but it’s users have long applauded Be for not slowing down lines just to push more users on and earn more money. You might not be able to download constantly all day every day, but you won’t have to worry about hitting a limit and being charged for overuse.
 

Be Pro’s incredible speeds are available for an incredibly good rate, but unfortunately there’s a good chance you might not be able to take advantage of them in your area. There’s no point paying for 24mbit broadband if your line can only support 4mbit, so talk to your phone company and ISP before signing any contracts. Good gaming!
 
 
 

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