College wifi?

[Yuber]

:bb: Well, on the 2nd i'll be heading to good ol' johnson and whales to become a chef.Now i'd like to keep playing ffxi during these days so i was wondering.I have a HP pavilion laptop so it can detect wifi all around me.Yet i was worried that the school wifi is going to be ether a-to weak or b-some many people use it ill r0 every 2 secounds.Should I try it out? or is it worth the 20 bucks or so a month to get te verizon connection for my laptop?please any info would help.:bb:

 

[Arctyrael]

If you are talking about Verizon's National Access plan, then you should pray to God your WiFi connection is semi-decent. The latency on the National Access Plan (when I tried it) was absolutely horrendous. Their National Broadband Access (yes there is a difference) should have lower latency, but it also costs about 3.5x more than what you said you were going to pay. ($79.99/month)

As far as playing over WiFi, any signal a school sends out 'should' be good enough to play XI. I single-quote "should" because I knew a player, Welkin, who's school had the shittiest internet in the world. Poor guy, hope he's doin' alright. He just sorta up and left suddenly.

Anyways, I say expect the signal to be strong enough. The only thing you have to worry about then is that none of the FFXI ports are blocked.

 

[Ranpha]

I found most college connections to be horrid while playing any type of mmo or downloading anything. There are usually rules in the housing contract that say no MMOs or downloading movies/music. This can also apply to some off campus housing where the internet is included in the leasing deal. Good luck.

For those who are continuing their education in a college system, USF's system is bad.... even for regular internet browsing.

 

[Mai Ikari]

To put it simply... you're probably better off getting a 56k connection than trusting your school's wifi. If it's a good connection (Like NEIT has), they'll have ports blocked so FFXI, WoW, and others can't function. If it's a bad connection, they won't need to, because those will be already near-unplayable.

And man, I remeber Welkin... He got GMs called on him for warping about zones, he lagged so bad.

 

[Arctyrael]

I must say, I'm extremely fortunate. ETSU has wonderful WiFi and Internet. The only restriction is file sharing = nono, and download is capped @ 200k.

I can totally live with that.

 

[Mai Ikari]

I must say, I'm extremely fortunate. ETSU has wonderful WiFi and Internet. The only restriction is file sharing = nono, and download is capped @ 200k.

I can totally live with that.

Roughly the same at NEIT, things finish downloading before I can tell what speed they downloaded at, but, as said earlier, all important ports for non-firefox activities are blocked.

 

[Arctyrael]

You can't play XI at your school? Shit, the only gaming thing I know of that is blocked = X-Box Live.

If you are a Computer Science student, you gain access to the server that controls port blocking. So when you take Networking Fundamentals, you get the creds to unblock your connection.

 

[Sharpe]

Manchester Univeristy (England) tries to force you to play X-box. When Xephon set his internet up there he kept getting asked if he wanted to connect his X-box up. He doesn't even have one!

 

[Arctyrael]

Hmmmm... Microsoft is seeking the throne to England I bet. Yes yes... that must be it =3