by admiral 1 » 04 Apr 2005 19:49
128 K that is bit / s is more then enough for hosting an 8 boat race.
anything under 125 ms ping would be okay too.
Those that join should watch out for the connection quality, when joining a race a ping is indicated from * to **** .
A 3 ghz rig should be adequate also.
I would start to look for video settings that are to demanding of the CPU, and background applications that eat up CPU cycles and possibly your internet bandwith.
Lastly consider wheather your ISP guarantees the bandwith you signed for, or find out what their devider is. AKA to how many clients the bandwith was sold, figuring that on average you only use yours 1/24 of the time, you may have to share the bandwith with 24 other of their clients....
What may be of help a bit is to have your ISP turn off inter-leafing for your connection. That may hurt the stability of the connection slightly but would boost speed.
BTW. cable modems have the same basic problems as DSL.
The only real help is a dedicated line (1 client) with high enough (reserved) bandwith. (128 K is more then enough)
An ISDN connection has lower, only 20ms ping compared to 40 ms for my first hop with 2Mbit DSL. Between two clients that knocks 40 ms off of a 90 ms ping (Suburban Germany - Suburban France) that's almost 50%.
Theeuwes de Jong, skipper of Admiral
"As far as I can remember, there aren't a lot of points of land or holidays named after people who sat at home and criticized Christopher Columbus."
( Paul Cayard, from the Pirates base, in an e-mail to race HQ. 25 Jan 2006 volvooceanrace.org)