WoW Bandwidth requirements?

[edro]

I am hosting a WoW LAN this New year's Eve... I know... it's uber geeky

There will be 6 of us playing WoW. Will my Road Runner handle it? It has handelled Counter-Strike, back in the day, but I dunno about WoW.

 

[imported_obsidian]

Well the thing is, your download will be more than adaquate. It's the upload that will kill you. You might want to go download a bandwidth monitor and run it while playing WoW to see real usage. Assuming you have 256kb upload, you will be pushing it with 6 people.

 

[BlueWeasel]

I've heard that WOW is very playable on 56k dial-up, so it might work. With 6 people, I would think your upload speed would be more of a bottleneck than the download speed.

How much is your upload speed capped at? If it's playable on 56k, then just assume 56k x 6 = 336kbps. So if your upload speed is 384kbps (typical ISP cap), then it probably won't be a problem.

Granted, I don't play WOW and those are just the basic numbers, so take the above with a grain of salt.

 

[BlueWeasel]

Then again, if you can play CS with 6 people on the same connection, then I don't think WOW will be a problem.

 

[mchammer187]

World of Warcraft I have found to be really inconsistent with dialup

if you are in a zone with a lot of people expect it to lag more

this is still true with cable but with dialup it amplifies the problem a whole lot more

PVP in a highly populated zone a huge lag fest

i think the cable connection should be able to handle it though

 

[AdamSnow]

I play with no issues at all over 56K dialup... and I am in the middle of no where, getting about 44K connection speeds.

 

[Malladine]

6 is gonna be awkward, max group size is 5 and a raid group cannot complete quests

I'd say your connections should be alright.

 

[LeetViet]

Your connection should be alright.

The reason some 56Kers lag in areas with alot of players is because the server is sending update packets for all the new objects (players, bonfire, etc.).

 

[torpid]

Hm... I don't know. When I switch out of WoW to look something up on the net or check my mail, it takes a LONG time (5-10 sec minimum just to lookup the DNS entries). As soon as I close WoW it's fast again (1 second or so). This leads me to believe that it does hog a log of bandwidth (my guess is upload bandwidth). I would be somewhat worried if I were you.

I have DSL with I believe 256k upload.

 

[edro]

Originally posted by: Malladine
6 is gonna be awkward, max group size is 5 and a raid group cannot complete quests

I'd say your connections should be alright.

Ah, its ok... we have anywhere from lvl 15 to lvl 50's. We wouldn't all want to group anyway.

 

[Codewiz]

Originally posted by: torpid
Hm... I don't know. When I switch out of WoW to look something up on the net or check my mail, it takes a LONG time (5-10 sec minimum just to lookup the DNS entries). As soon as I close WoW it's fast again (1 second or so). This leads me to believe that it does hog a log of bandwidth (my guess is upload bandwidth). I would be somewhat worried if I were you.

I have DSL with I believe 256k upload.

There is something else going on. I tab out of WoW all the time to look up quests and I don't notice a slow down in the least.