{"id":42957,"date":"2012-08-15T10:05:43","date_gmt":"2012-08-15T08:05:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/?p=42957"},"modified":"2012-08-15T10:07:58","modified_gmt":"2012-08-15T08:07:58","slug":"capped-vs-uncapped-adsl-which-is-best-for-gaming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/business\/42957-capped-vs-uncapped-adsl-which-is-best-for-gaming","title":{"rendered":"Capped vs uncapped ADSL: which is best for gaming?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Capped ADSL products can prove to offer a better experience for gaming over uncapped ADSL products, but this also depends on users’ habits.<\/p>\n

Many of South Africa’s ISPs offer both capped and uncapped ADSL packages; the question is whether there is an advantage to using one versus the other in for gaming performance.<\/p>\n

We asked South Africa’s ISPs for their opinion on the topic.<\/p>\n

Web Africa’s Jeffrey Denning said “It’s a tough one to answer, but depends on a few factors.”<\/p>\n

Denning went on to explain how traffic on Web Africa’s ADSL products is prioritised. “Our standard Home Capped and Uncapped products offer a Silver priority, putting Gaming at a medium bandwidth priority. Capped will have this Medium priority until your cap runs out, whereas our Uncapped products work off a 7 day rolling window.”<\/p>\n

“Should you exceed this window and our network is near capacity, we’ll de-prioritise the account which may have an affect on gaming as well as any other protocols. Capped also offers a feature of a Pro ‘bolt-on’ service which would push your Gaming traffic levels up to High,” said Denning.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

In moments like these, 1ms of lag = death<\/p><\/div>\n

We asked if capped ADSL products offer a better\/faster experience to users than uncapped.<\/p>\n

“From Web Africa, it entirely depends on your package and whether or not a bolt-on addition is added to a capped package,” said Denning.<\/p>\n

MWEB’s Nathier Kasu, General Manager: MWEB Digital said: “Gaming is prioritised across MWEB’s network and this applies equally to both uncapped and capped products.”<\/p>\n

“Generally speaking, our uncapped customers perform multiple online tasks at the same time so we prioritise certain types of traffic protocols over others to ensure that the bandwidth-hungry protocols like peer-to-peer don\u2019t overwhelm things like browsing, mail, etc.,” explained Kasu.<\/p>\n

“Capped customers tend to be more cautious\/selective in their usage patterns to avoid reaching their cap, and this \u2018self-regulation\u2019 means that we do less protocol management on their products,” said Kasu.<\/p>\n

Afrihost’s Tyler Theron explained how their services managed gaming traffic. “For traffic to AfriGamer servers both capped and uncapped ADSL products by Afrihost benefit from traffic prioritisation. For external\/third-party servers you will likely have a better experience on our capped products as they are always running full speed whereas uncapped products are sometimes throttled.”<\/p>\n

“Capped products are superior to their uncapped counterparts as capped accounts are never shaped or throttled in any way, whereas if you use a lot on your uncapped account you might get temporarily throttled to balance things out,” said Theron.<\/p>\n

Telkom\/SAIX was asked for comment but did not respond by the time of publication.<\/p>\n

What is your experiences on uncapped versus capped ADSL products? Let us know your experiences with your service provider in the comments below and on the MyGaming forum.<\/p>\n

Related articles<\/h3>\n

Online gaming in SA on the rise<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

ADSL vs. wireless for gaming: surprising results<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Best ADSL network for gaming<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Best wireless broadband networks for gaming in SA<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Stuff ADSL \u2013 LTE is coming<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

South African ISPs detail how they manage their networks for gaming traffic<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":157,"featured_media":42961,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,20],"tags":[2289,4203,21,6239,217,6237,6238,297,295],"class_list":["post-42957","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","category-features","tag-afrihost","tag-capped-adsl","tag-headline","tag-jeffrey-denning","tag-mweb","tag-nathier-kasu","tag-tyler-theron","tag-uncapped-adsl","tag-web-africa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42957","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/157"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42957"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42957\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42963,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42957\/revisions\/42963"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42961"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}