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Which is more important for SL: download speed or upload speed?
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IndiaRose Muircastle
Hello all, and thanks in advance for any advice.
I am in the US, on the East Coast. I currently have FiOS for my internet service (as well as phone and television.) My contract with them is up in about 5 weeks. Due to the cost of their service, I am seriously considering a change to high speed internet through a cable company instead. There is a difference in the connection speed offered by each provider, and I would love some clarification about how this may affect Second Life for me (if at all!)
My current connection with FiOS is 25Mbps/25Mbps. Using speedtest.net I find that I do get those speeds consistently (usually 2-3 Mbps higher on download speed and 1-5 Mbps lower on the upload side, but that is still very close.) I've found it great for running SL, but the cost is high and will only go up even with a 2 year contract.
The cable service is offering 30Mbps/6Mbps with "PowerBoost." (I must admit, I'm not really clear about how PowerBoost works, or for how much data, but I'm told it can be a big help!) There is a possibility I could upgrade that to 50Mbps/15Mbps with PowerBoost again, but that would probably cost at least another $25 a month. I'm not sure the extra speed would be worth the cost.
I've looked through the forums, knowledge base, etc. and cannot get a clear idea of whether it is download speed or upload speed which affects SL performance from the user side. Could someone please explain that to me, or point me towards an article or post where I can learn a bit more?
If it's download speed that affects things from my side, I'm concerned that the drop from 25Mbps to 6Mbps may be a real shock (even with the help of the mysterious "PowerBoost"... then again, for my first year or so in SL I used a laptop and a wireless connection... ANYTHING is an improvement over that! ) If you have made a similar change in connections and speeds, did you notice a major difference?
I will include my system information as well, in case that may play into this at all:
OS: Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit Service Pack 1
Processor: Intel Core i7 930 @2.80 GHz
RAM: 6.00 GB Triple-Channel DDR3 @ 534MHz (8-8-8-20)
Graphics: 1024MB GeForce 9500 GT (EVGA)
Thanks for your patience in reading this, please let me know if I can give any further information (and I am sorry if I have gone on too long already!)
Be well,
India
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