Xbox Live Bandwidth Usage

[aubergine]

So our caps been reached and the finger pointing begins.Telstra's done some funny numbers just like they did at the last place I lived.

I've been trying to find out the Mb per hour usage of Halo Reach with voice chat. Searches have people talking about kps which isn't very helpful, although as the net is choked here now looking anything up is pretty much impossible.

One thing that was mentioned in what I saw was that if you are designated "host" your usage will be higher, no detail was given though.

Telstra are saying we used a gig a day, I find that very hard to believe. Does anyone know something?

[HiredMan]

multiply the kbps figure by 3600 to get your usage per hour

[FX-GTZ]

If you are the host of a server, especially in a sandbox world such as gta iv, you are always going to have high mb usage, why do you think your'e lag is nearly single player comparable when you host?

[Natrak]

I always thought it was because of magic

[AranchineD]

Posting to say that I don't ever have to worry about this, because I have unlimited downloaded and uploads

Good day

[HiredMan]

Posting to say that Aran is an irrelevant turd toucher

Good day
















:p

[Stevorooni]

Posting to say that HiredMan has a mermaid fetish but can't decide whether he wants the ones with the human top and fish bottom or fish top and human bottom.

Good day

[aubergine]

multiply the kbps figure by 3600 to get your usage per hour

Apparently that's "kilobits per hour" and we are to divide that by 8 to get kiloBYTES per hour.

[HiredMan]

I only found out the "8 bits to the byte" thing about a month ago. Yep, I'm that good with computers!

[Shorty]

Posting to say that HiredMan has a mermaid fetish but can't decide whether he wants the ones with the human top and fish bottom or fish top and human bottom.

Good day

It's such a pity that you don't have reputation enabled.

[Silverwolf]

One thing that was mentioned in what I saw was that if you are designated "host" your usage will be higher, no detail was given though.


Usage as "host" will only be higher if your service provider counts uploads. If you're with Telstra you're almost guaranteed to have uploads counted.

Easiest thing to say is that Telstra is your problem.

[TrinityJayOne]

I'm pretty sure everyone counts uploads these days.

Anyways, online gaming will use some bandwidth, but certainly not equivalent to downloading movies or something.

[Ezri]

My provider (Westnet) neither counts uploads and actually places Xbox Live traffic in their freezone.

Easiest thing to say is that Telstra is your problem.

This.

[Silverwolf]

I'm pretty sure everyone counts uploads these days.


I know Exetel don't, Internode and Amnet too. It's probably 50-50 these days ;o

[Slippery]

Optus do.

[CrimsonFury]

Hosting increases your usage on downloads as well as uploads.

Eg you are in a 16 player game: If you are a client (non-host) you are downloading data only from 1x source (the host). If you are the host, you are downloading data from 15x sources (each player). Thus you are using alot more bandwidth. Not nessacarily 15x more though, because the amount of data from each source will be a smaller amount, but the end result ends up larger (I would guesstimate something like 3x the bandwidth usage as host)

In general I have found gaming (PC or consoles) to vary anywhere from 5-20Mb per hour as a client player depending on the game. Around 3x that much as host. If you have multiple people in your house gaming at the same time, multiply that bandwidth figure accordingly.

Westnet\IInet count Xbox Live as Freezone (online play, demos, trailers, DLC etc). The exception is Zune marketplace content (Movies\TV shows). They also do not count uploads.