How much bandwidth does FFXI consume?

LadyKiKi

LadyKiKi

• Chaotic Neutral •
Adventurer
Joined
May 8, 2005
Messages
1,401
Location
UK
FFXIV
-----
I'm away from home and am looking at internet connections to use on a very low basis. This means probably chatting on MSN, browsing this board, and other odd browsing and of course, to play FFXI, about 1 or 2 hours a day.

I found one which offers me 1GB of data, as low as it sounds, it seems to suit my needs as I'll do the rest of the browsing/downloading/looking up info on traffic heavy sites such as allakhazham and such, but for those with a capped connection, and those that have programs to monitor your internet usage, without downloading music/videos etc or heavy surfing, how much data does FFXI transfer on a daily, weekly and monthly basis?

I got told elsewhere that FFXI is capped at dial up speeds and someone told me that they stay logged on 24/7 and only consume 10mb a DAY (4 hours playtime, 20 hours mule time, give or take, per day), so I'm wanting more info and evidence to back this up before I dive right in.

I don't need alternative suggestions or what I should get as my internet connection, but as soon as I have concrete proof/evidence from people that FFXI does indeed use very low data transfer, that will be fine.

If people provide their data, it would be nice if you can provide as well what you do with it (e.g. 30mb web surfing (10mb music download), 496kb e-mail, etc etc) so I can get a rough idea of what to be expected.

Just for anyone deciding to point out 1GB wouldn't be enough, I'll be browsing this board/the internet in general with most things -but- text turned off, I don't download big files (I don't P2P) and I don't do much else but MSN (chat), check e-mails and play FFXI. Only when I need something I'll go out of my way to find/download it.
 
All i know is it can run on 56k as thats standard dail up and was made for PS2 what at that time only had dial up
but i do think you can go up to 500k or something
 
PS2 was never dial-up only. Every modem has a phone line and ethernet plug in.
They capped it at 56k so that people on dial up wouldnt feel turned away and have a big disadvantage.
 
So no matter how fast your connection is you probably can't peak over probably 6kb/s? So even if one was to be on constantly, lets say 5kb/s is the peak average, then in 200 seconds it will only be 1mb. Multiply that by 1000 gets me 200000 seconds. That gives me 3333.333333333~ minutes of playtime (and other usages too of course), equating to 55.55 hours. Sounds not too bad then considering I might only break 12 hours a week if I'm "not" busy.
 
You'll be fine on dialup, i did it for years. The only thing that made it choke at the time was dynamis, which even then most of the problem there was an old video card.
 
There is no 'cap' on bandwidth requirements. The bigger pipe available to FFXI, the better. The packets are optimized for 56k, meaning they can be fairly small, but you'll notice less lag with broadband over dial-up.
 
Look for a program called net limiter, you can set how much each application is allowed.
 
Remember people, the interent is made of tubes. So the bigger the tube the faster data will go through.
 
Myrrh said:
Remember people, the interent is made of tubes. So the bigger the tube the faster data will go through.
Click to expand...
and for wireless?
 
I might have to work away from home for a while and stay in hotels. Are you telling me that I could play FFXI on my laptop over dial-up ?
 
Daipac said:
I might have to work away from home for a while and stay in hotels. Are you telling me that I could play FFXI on my laptop over dial-up ?
Click to expand...


A lot of best-westerns offer free hi-speed internet. You should try to find something like that.
 
Pasquale said:
A lot of best-westerns offer free hi-speed internet. You should try to find something like that.
Click to expand...
I live in the UK tho, Best Western is not a very popular hotel chain over here and even if it was, they would charge about £10-£15 a day to use the high-speed internet which then turns out to be slow ! LOL !

Hotels in the UK really suck for stuff like this and when they do have these amenities, they charge you silly prices.

:nono:
 
Daipac said:
I live in the UK tho, Best Western is not a very popular hotel chain over here and even if it was, they would charge about £10-£15 a day to use the high-speed internet which then turns out to be slow ! LOL !

Hotels in the UK really suck for stuff like this and when they do have these amenities, they charge you silly prices.

:nono:
Click to expand...


Ahh gotcha. That sucks.
 
Daipac said:
I live in the UK tho, Best Western is not a very popular hotel chain over here and even if it was, they would charge about £10-£15 a day to use the high-speed internet which then turns out to be slow ! LOL !

Hotels in the UK really suck for stuff like this and when they do have these amenities, they charge you silly prices.

:nono:
Click to expand...
travle in hotlers have a 54meg a sec wireless as i used it all week on my psp :£ but its £5 for 2hrs or 20£ for a day
 
Myrrh said:
Remember people, the interent is made of tubes. So the bigger the tube the faster data will go through.
Click to expand...
A friend of mine showed me an Internet the other day.
 
I think that the OP is wondering the feasibilty of using a "fixed transfer limit" type of billing. While the pipe may be dial-up, it's easy to consume bandwith. I can do a simple test of how much bandwith is consumed tonight if you like. I have a monitoring tool, but it's not installed on my system at the moment.

I'd take into account partying, muling (say overnight), or doing lots of zone transfers (tele-whore). Utlimately, how much data you consume depends on your activity in game.
 
I played on dial up for a couple years, and FFXI in it's worst (at the time lower jeuno or dynamis) would use maybe 20% of my connection, much less most the time. Max download speed was about 15MB/hr, so I'd say it probably uses 2-3MB/hr.
 
Crookedmidget: That'll be great if you can monitor your usage, even on broadband.

I will be getting some form of broadband, but it'll be provided by mobile phone services. That is the ONLY type of broadband I can get. Everything else is completely disallowed (long story, but basically they don't see it as a good investment to put these rooms with a phone line for every room. I stay in these accomodations provided by the company. Think university halls, except slightly worst. And moving out to somewhere in the town will cost me double of what I am paying now.)

What this broadband I am getting lets me do is to connect to the internet using this card that they will supply me, giving me between 58kb/s (dial up speed, or GPRS) to 384kb/s (near broadband, 3G, slightly under, in good conditions). This is limited to 1GB a month ("unlimited" they call it, but under some fair usage policy, 1GB). What I intend to do is to use that to play FFXI for a bit of the time while I can do all my other usual things (not including downloading or anything).

As unpractical and expensive (well, quite, but that doesn't matter for now, I'm only there for 1 year) this may sound, I'm going to at least try. If my FFXI connection drops too much to be playable, I'll just refund the card and contract. Problem sorted and I'll only play when I go home.

So yeh, if people can monitor their connections, it'll be very helpful! Thanks in advance.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top