Snel internet, voor velen nog steeds een droom. Mensen die geen snelle kabel- of satellietverbinding hebben kunnen hun hoop mi chien op ADSL zetten. Maar wat houdt ADSL nu in voor gamers. Eurogamer ging op onderzoek uit.

Het gaat wel over de situatie in Engeland, maar het is aardig te zien dat ze daar ook worden afknepen. Net als de mensen die hier MXstream hebben Gaming is reliant not on bandwidth but on latency. While you may be able to download at 200Kb/s, your performance in games like Quake 3 may leave a lot to be desired, because it takes too long for the data to be proce ed back and forth betwixt server and client. The

USB home user package has been specifically catered with latency problems in mind, and as such it may provide good gaming performance. At the price (approximately £50 setup and £30-50 per month thereafter) it doesn't come too cheap, but if you have seen the busine options price list you will be thankful.

Serious gamers will already be using ISDN or even a leased line from BT for their gaming, and if like me you are already experiencing perfectly good gaming performance you may turn around and quite rightly wonder just how you'll benefit from such a move. From a financial standpoint the argument is somewhat blurred. While ISDN use can incur normal per-minute phone charges, most people are now using free off-peak acce for gaming, and indeed in December BT intend to introduce a scheme of free local calls. Similarly, ISP costs are now around £10 per month, a far cry from what they once were.