The Indian gaming scene has been growing at an unprecedented rate since the past years. The availability of high-end gaming PCs, attractive rewards for gamers, next-gen consoles have all been heavily contributing factors to the increasing gaming craze among the youth. Gaming is being chosen by a lot of enthusiasts as the prospects are endless, also the coming of the latest e-sports trend which is being fuelled by the sites like YouTube and Twitch adds a whole lot of essence to the new hype.
Gaming has been known to demand a high-end hardware setup and a great internet connection. While a lot of information exists regarding the gaming hardware setup and assembling of gaming PCs, the presence of a reliable Internet Service Provider has often ignored which might, in turn, become a hassle in the near future for the gamers who depend heavily on the internet connectivity to play their games. We put together a list of deciding factors which must be kept in mind before finalising an ISP from a gamer’s perspective.
Latency and Ping
Latency is the time which the data packs take to reach your device from the game server, whereas Ping is the time which the data packs take to reach from your device to the game server. Latency and Ping contribute heavily to the performance of a game. The higher the latency and ping, the more troubling it becomes for the gamer to keep a check on his game and might resulting in him losing track of the gameplay.
A better latency and ping means that real-time communication is maintained between the gamer, software and the server to ensure smooth gameplay experience and to avoid lags and glitches which might otherwise prove to be unpleasant.
Wired or Wireless Technology.
While wireless technology may seem like the common norm in today’s houses but when it comes to gaming, a wired connection proves to be the most reliable way to establish internet connectivity. The wireless technology is although very useful and also widely used, but it also is unstable especially for a large amount of bandwidth and gaming purpose and might cause heavy latency and ping.
In such cases, while taking a wired connection, gamers should also ask for a fibre optic cable. The latest Fibre to the Home (FTTH) technology ensures that the user gets fibre optic cable connection which provides gamers with bizarrely fast speed for their perfect gaming experience. On the other hand, copper cables in these cases aren’t usually the right fit for the gamer’s needs.
Symmetrical speeds
As the name suggests symmetrical speeds refer to equal download and upload speeds on a broadband line. While for normal users a good line with decent download speed does the job but gamers have different requirements such as streaming their games live on Twitch or YouTube which creates a dire need of equally good upload speeds as well. Hence it is important to note that the ISP we choose for our gaming needs provides equal speeds for both uploading and downloading.
Contention Ratio
Contention Ratio is a measure of how many people consume bandwidth from a particular connection. The higher the contention ratio, the lower is the speed of the connection. Thus, it becomes essential to get a connection which has a lower contention ratio. Ideally, a contention ratio of 1:1 is deemed as the best number. From a gamer’s perspective, it’s important that you don’t overlook this parameter as having a higher contention ratio may result in sudden dips and spikes in the bandwidth speed.
Data
As a standard measure 100GB of data per month mostly suffices for regular gaming. However, for streaming enthusiasts who stream their games online, it is recommended to target a higher amount of monthly data. Also, it is suggested that although unlimited data plans might seem like an attractive deal and give us endless data but they do so at the cost of other things like FUP and by also sacrificing on fronts like symmetrical speeds.
