Network Lag
Lag has killed more online game players than any other player or entity on earth. Not even the addicted or professional gamers can outscore the frags that lag has played a part in. Ever since the beginning, people have always found themselves lacking in bandwidth. It doesn’t matter whether you’re surfing the net over dial-up, playing MMORPGs over dsl or ripping ISOs over your fat 6mbps pipes. you will always feel that lag (or delay) that would make you wish that you had more.
however, if you think that there will be a day when you can have more than sufficient bandwidth at cost-effective prices, you’re wrong.
ISPs won’t allow this
in the utopic world that i envision, ISPs would have uber-cool facilities that should be able to serve every household with 15mbps connections. these connections should allow people to copy dvds over the net as if they were on a lan (or close to it). beautiful isn’t it?
but ISPs won’s allow that. not everyone needs a 15mbps pipeline. there is no need to upgrade due to the lack of demand from customers who are willing to pay for such quality / quantity of service. if we have to convince the major ISPs to upgrade their system because it is technically feasible, we would get a big No because it is not economically feasible.
Application Service Providers should work on this
even though online games and file transfer activities have become so popular to make the user net experience suck, there is little pressure on the ISP bigwigs to upgrade. people might want that extra bandwidth for their wonderful net experience, but people do not want to pay for such services. that is why dsl has become so popular in the philippines only recently with the cost-effective (read between the lines) dsl connections.
until online applications are able to max out the supplied bandwidths, upgrading facilities to make the user experience enjoyable sometimes isn’t good for business. if the facilities will be used thoroughly for only half a day (eg daytime), the other half of the day would leave such assets / resources idle and unprofitable. charging the users for the machine idle time drives the costs up and the marketing team nuts.
unfortunately, very few people complain in such a situation. the closest thing one can ever hear as a protest would be the bold and outrageous cost-effective (read between the lines) services of competitors. think dsl (globe and pldt). think mobile (sun and globe/smart).
the politechs can drive you too
oh, and until IPTV, IPphone and IPwhatever-hogs-your-bandwidth becomes widely available, fat and cheap net connections are still wishlists for santa’s next visit. unfortunately, as i read somewhere from the net, such technologies face stiff competition from government-backed brick-and-mortar establishments that stand to lose market share from the same line of service. enough said.
Lag == Money
so if you have to think about it, everytime that you experience lag / delays, think about money. an online game that lags is a happy game because its servers are working double-time (the company is currently profitable, assuming their hardware doesn’t just suck). a surfing experience that sucks means that your isp is happy (their bandwidth is being consumed, realizing their max-bandwidth-consumption-means-max-profit projections). a frag from your friend that was caused by a lag means you blame the lag (everyone knows you’re better than the others, right?).
until then, stay connected.
