E:D connection for abroad countries?

copain · Nov 30, 2013

Would this speed and ping, from South East Asia, be enough for a playable p2p multiplayer, say with UK/NA players?

DOWNLOAD
1.05Mb/s
UPLOAD
0.42Mb/s
PING 328 ms

(Speed test from my ISP in Indonesia to London ,Vorboss Limited
http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/3134575827 )

the thing is i have had bad experiences with p2p multiplayer games before (ie Awesomenauts), as in lag spike, delay and connection issues.

Sparticus · Nov 30, 2013

copain said:
Would this speed and ping, from South East Asia, be enough for a playable p2p multiplayer, say with UK/NA players?

DOWNLOAD
1.05Mb/s
UPLOAD
0.42Mb/s
PING 328 ms

(Speed test from my ISP in Indonesia to London ,Vorboss Limited
http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/3134575827 )

the thing is i have had bad experiences with p2p multiplayer games before (ie Awesomenauts), as in lag spike, delay and connection issues.

I do not know my self - but I hope so...

Greeboski · Nov 30, 2013

copain said:
Would this speed and ping, from South East Asia, be enough for a playable p2p multiplayer, say with UK/NA players?

DOWNLOAD
1.05Mb/s
UPLOAD
0.42Mb/s
PING 328 ms

(Speed test from my ISP in Indonesia to London ,Vorboss Limited
http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/3134575827 )

the thing is i have had bad experiences with p2p multiplayer games before (ie Awesomenauts), as in lag spike, delay and connection issues.

idk how you connect but that is 1 meg bandwith. we have no info on minimum bandwith tho i would imagine that will be borderline at best

Hellhawk666 · Nov 30, 2013

I can't speak to this with any authority, but if it is of help we typically have a latency of 250-270ms when connecting to servers in the US or UK (from Sydney) and don't have any problems. Worst we usually see is 300 max.

FrogsFriend · Nov 30, 2013

FD themselves haven't yet said anything regarding max latency (ping) between players in an instance but that may well be something they'll be testing during Alpha.

Having said that, I imagine that the behind-the-scenes mechanism, that decides whether to merge your instance with the other player's, once within 10s of kilometres of each other, could take into account the latency between you (as well as the Group, Friend, Ignore and Alliance settings of each player).

That would ensure that you always had a reasonable latency to any players you meet, but if you live somewhere remote in the real world you possibly wouldn't meet many players in the game from distant real world locations (except in stations which shouldn't have the same peer-to-peer connections).

Your latency to the main game server will probably not be a concern as it's only dealing with background data and not the moment-to-moment flight info.

And a final thought. Upload/download speeds don't usually need to be very high at all for this sort of thing, it's all about your ping and your jitter (how much and how fast your latency varies up and down).

Long story short, you may need to wait a month or two for a definitive answer from FD.

Oddball · Nov 30, 2013

I would have thought that FD would be running servers from Canada as well because some of their offices are based there and this would cater for people in North America as well as other area's in that part of the world.

As for South East Asia, I suppose it would depend on the amount of traffic from that part of the world. I suppose that if there was a demand for it or the connection was not good enough, FD would set up something to cater for people in that region.

strooka · Nov 30, 2013

ping 30 would be good

had that in my former quake times

300 would be a bit too much for me to aim.... i think ping arround 100 is max what one could handle.

Norbert · Nov 30, 2013

I am myself in East Asia and I think it doesn't matter much cause the interactions between players will be p2p so as long as the local bandwith runs smoothly with p2p client it should be ok. As for the updates of the world related to other players actions, they don't have to be necessarily real time.

Cmdr Eagleboy · Nov 30, 2013

Oddball said:
I would have thought that FD would be running servers from Canada as well because some of their offices are based there and this would cater for people in North America as well as other area's in that part of the world.

As for South East Asia, I suppose it would depend on the amount of traffic from that part of the world. I suppose that if there was a demand for it or the connection was not good enough, FD would set up something to cater for people in that region.

There's one meta server, which I really doubt can be placed anywhere than UK. However, question how big latency it will tolerate

huwthomas · Nov 30, 2013

My hope is that the size of the updates being sent between peers can be quite small, so for the smallish max. no of players per session being mooted, the bandwidth won't actually be that much...

It would also be nice if peers with faster up-stream connections could help load-share on behalf of peers with slow connections. This happens organically with P2P file sharing of course, but with a game I guess it would have to be done deliberately.

Slawkenbergius · Nov 30, 2013

I think that there will be 'cloud' servers rented from Amazon to handle player-load, and so they could be rented in different countries. Frontier's investor report touched on this tech, though it's not clear how they'll implement it for Elite.

Aewarin Jameson · Nov 30, 2013

Slawkenbergius said:
Frontier's investor report touched on this tech, though it's not clear how they'll implement it for Elite.

Indeed it did.

copain said:
Would this speed and ping, from South East Asia, be enough for a playable p2p multiplayer, say with UK/NA players?

Don't worry too much .. I am in the UAE and have similar pings to the UK but there are a few things you can do. (VPNs help, as do services like "lowerping")

Initially the Alpha will not include any multiplayer aspect but once they bolt that on I will let you know

Patrick_68000 · Nov 30, 2013

A professional test site, here's what they say : "For multiplayer online games, it is recommended to have less than 60 ms ping.". But he does not speak P2P

Greeboski · Nov 30, 2013

Patrick_68000 said:
A professional test site, here's what they say : "For multiplayer online games, it is recommended to have less than 60 ms ping.". But he does not speak P2P

so 10 is acceptable then

kindfox · Dec 1, 2013

I also have this concern.
Does FD ever mentioned that if the connection to central server is too bad for some countries? They will allow players to setup private central server of their own?

I know it will divide the community, but comparing to not being able to play at all, it is a better solution.
What do you guys think?

Greeboski · Dec 1, 2013

kindfox said:
I also have this concern.
Does FD ever mentioned that if the connection to central server is too bad for some countries? They will allow players to setup private central server of their own?

I know it will divide the community, but comparing to not being able to play at all, it is a better solution.
What do you guys think?

as has been said , the game play is P2P (peer to peer) , so in effect you set up a server with the people in your instance. AFAIK the only possible issue would be player based events/galactic changes which you get the data from the server , but that will be more like background updates of anti virus/malware software.

Crystles · Dec 1, 2013

I find that ping trumps bandwidth, and at 300M/S that might be too high. 1 full Mb download isnt bad at all. My mental image of how this game plays says 200 should be max. Much beyond that and you start to rely on whatever system theyre using to make up for lag...

On that note, i wonder how the game will handle lag.

copain · Dec 2, 2013

Regarding ping, on my experience on dedicated server games, usually the server location determines ping.. in Dota 2 from my location to US the ping easily got to 300-400ms, while to Singapore its only 30-40ms. and its quite great already on 30-40ms. and 400ms, while bad, still playable and at least stable.

p2p games on the other hand, f.e. on Awesomenauts it requires quite a bit of an upstream, especially to distant regions.. so if i, or the other players, doesn't have a proper upstream bandwith, multiple disconnection throughout the game will appear.. at least that's my theory for that particular game's issue..

so basically the concern is on p2p aspect, as i am a bit dissapointed by p2p connection on other games

although it's true, i guess i will have to wait quite a bit for alpha or beta to see how it goes with p2p instancing.

Slawkenbergius said:
I think that there will be 'cloud' servers rented from Amazon to handle player-load, and so they could be rented in different countries. Frontier's investor report touched on this tech, though it's not clear how they'll implement it for Elite.

great!

Liqua said:
Indeed it did.

Don't worry too much .. I am in the UAE and have similar pings to the UK but there are a few things you can do. (VPNs help, as do services like "lowerping")

Initially the Alpha will not include any multiplayer aspect but once they bolt that on I will let you know

will be lurking in the forum as alpha starts

thanks for all the replies, and good to see some folks from distant countries. :smilie:

kindfox · Dec 2, 2013

after reading this thread: http://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=8148&highlight=mirror+server

I'm still a little worried if P2P along is sufficient enough. They mentioned in that thread that mirror server is needed to break bottleneck in the p2p network.
I will keep an eye on this kind of discussion.

I wonder what kind of Plan B will be for FD, if it doesn't work well

huwthomas · Dec 2, 2013

I'm sure they will have tested the P2P session system under various simulated network conditions (that reflect anticipated real-world conditions), so I don't think there is anything to worry about.