Mobile EQ2 in a moter home? Anyone do this?

[TaylorAnnNesselroad]

<p>Hello. My family travels 2-3 weekends each month in a motor home.  The kids and I want to play EQ2 on the road.  What's the best internet connection and systems to set this up?  We are in rural areas of Iowa, Illinois, Missouri so don't have metro area wireless capability.</p><p>1) What's the best internet connection? Satellite? DirecTV?  A cell phone source like Verizon?</p><p>2) Is there a laptop that can play EQ2?</p><p>3) Is there a wireless network in the motor home for two computers to use the same link through to the internet?</p><p>4) How do you play EQ2 mobile?</p><p>Thanks so much,</p><p>mobile MMPORG maniacs.</p><p> P.S. Husbands/Dads- get the kids hooked on EQ2 and you get quality time Daddy credits for playing EQ2!</p>

[Norrsken]

<cite>TaylorAnnNesselroad wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>Hello. My family travels 2-3 weekends each month in a motor home.  The kids and I want to play EQ2 on the road.  What's the best internet connection and systems to set this up?  We are in rural areas of Iowa, Illinois, Missouri so don't have metro area wireless capability.</p><p>1) What's the best internet connection? Satellite? DirecTV?  A cell phone source like Verizon?</p><p>2) Is there a laptop that can play EQ2?</p><p>3) Is there a wireless network in the motor home for two computers to use the same link through to the internet?</p><p>4) How do you play EQ2 mobile?</p><p>Thanks so much,</p><p>mobile MMPORG maniacs.</p><p> P.S. Husbands/Dads- get the kids hooked on EQ2 and you get quality time Daddy credits for playing EQ2!</p></blockquote><ol><li>Not sure of the US intarwebs infrastructure, but in EU I'd go for 3g cellphone networks.</li><li>Yes, plenty of them.</li><li>Just set up a router that shares the connection an you're set. </li><li>Same as always, only with some kind of wireless internet connectivity.</li></ol>

[Skywarrior]

<p>My personal recommendation would be to go with a wireless service such as Sprint or Verizon Wireless.  You may not always get great broadband speeds but as long as you have a signal you should have enough bandwidth to run two clients doing at least basic things.  My wife and I shared a dialup connection for years running two game clients (including EQ2 and SWG) simulaneously over less than 56kps.  Wireless service will easily give you at least twice that as long as you have service at all.  Obviously, you will need to research what service provides the best coverage in the areas you commonly travel.</p><p>Satellite is not good for gaming generally.  The reason is signal latency, not bandwidth.  Satellites used for internet (and TV) service are flown in geosynch orbits, at 20,000 nautical miles altitude.  That means your connectivity with any game is going to be a minimum of 80,000 nm away from you (two round-trips of the signal).  Even at the speed of light that is a measurable distance to travel and will give you, under most conditions, anywhere from 500 ms to over 1 sec delay in your signal.  In practice, this means you will basically not be able to play your game successfully.  DirectTV is a satellite service, by the way, so this holds for it as well.</p><p>I live in a rural area and do not have access to any reasonably affordable wired broadband.  My affordable alternatives are basically the same as yours - wireless and satellite.  I have Sprint Wireless and am very happy with the service.  I am outside of their EVDO footprint but I still draw 1200kps download speeds routinely.  While many would scoff at that as being very slow, it sure beats the pants off sharing a 56k modem.</p>

[FluffyGoat]

I highly doubt cell internet coverage would be reliable on the roads like that.  But what do I know.  I know there are mobile sat connection services available but dunno how reliable they are either.  I would call a cell company and get some info on how reliable their internet is.

[Araxes]

If all you were going to be doing was browsing the web, sending emails, and the like, a satellite would be dandy.However, for something like gaming, where it is essential that information be sent very fast to the servers from your PC, a satellite would cause unacceptable sluggishness that would basically render your game unplayable.  Each time you clicked a button that required a server action, it could take a second or more to execute, and beyond that, the servers do thousands of back-end calculations every second and send them to the game, which then confirms or denies those actions, and reports the results back to the server.  A satellite connection would prohibit this from happening in a timely fashion (due to physical distance.)  In short, satellite connections work just fine for passive internet use, but not so well for active use.I think your best bet would be to contact your local wireless providers for those areas you will be traveling to, and sign up with them.  You are surely not the only person with an RV who wants to be connected, so I would bet that this would not be an uncommon question for them to answer. 

[Ualday]

<cite>TaylorAnnNesselroad wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>Hello. My family travels 2-3 weekends each month in a motor home.  The kids and I want to play EQ2 on the road.  What's the best internet connection and systems to set this up?  We are in rural areas of Iowa, Illinois, Missouri so don't have metro area wireless capability.</p></blockquote>There are plenty of laptops capable of playing EQ2, but I do think you're going to run into problems getting a reliable, low latency connection in those areas.  Satellite under best circumstances have too high a latency to really play EQ2 (imagine everything you do taking an extra second for the server to realize you did it).  Cell phone can be much lower latency, but it is heavily dependent on signal.  An EVDO connection in a full signal area seems to get around 150-200ms,  a CDMA 1x connection in a full signal area seems to get around 500ms.  That would still be playable.  Go in a bad signal 1X area and it would become unplayable.  Do you have a cell phone right now?  Do you get 1-2 bars, or the full 4 or 5 bars (depending on phone)?Of course that's on a CDMA/3G network like Sprint/Verizon/Alltel.  There is another cell phone standard called GSM/EDGE which is what AT&T/Cingular and Tmobile use.  GSM/EDGE tends to be quite a bit slower than CDMA/3G so keep that in mind when you pick the cellular company you are trying to find coverage through.

[TaylorAnnNesselroad]

<p>From the discussion to this point, it seems the cell phone carrier is the best option.  For our area, that's Verizon.</p><p>I think that would be better than the satellite based on the delays you described.</p><p>I will have to run a ping through the system to see what to do.</p><p>Does anyone play EQ2 on the road?</p>

[Nemoscat]

while not in RV, I travel quite a bit at times and have not had any problems using my cigular(now at&t) pda as a internat mode for everquest. The only issues are downloads if you are on a slow EDGE network. Edge connection generally vary from 50-200 kbs, while HSDPA usually gives you 600-1200 Kbs.

[bleap]

Yes, I travel all over the east coast US and I can play EQ2 with my AT&T broad band mobile card as long as I have a decent signal. Sometimes the connection is only enough to do harvesting in safe zones or trade skills, and I don't think it would work for raiding. My laptop is a newish Dell with 1 gig of RAM and a decent video card. You will probably need a decent laptop OR if you can put your desktop in an RV you could use a PCMCIA adapter...It's not cheap though...it cost about $80 a month for unlimited internet access..

[Zhandar]

Most cellular carriers have language in the contract that says you can't use the service for anything other than web surfing.  read your contract carefully or they can terminate your service with no recourse for you.

[kjfett4]

Call the campsite ahead of time. There are likely to be some that run a wireless access point. There are not many places left in Missouri that have yet to catch up with the 90s at least. <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

[Skywarrior]

<cite>Zhandar wrote:</cite><blockquote>Most cellular carriers have language in the contract that says you can't use the service for anything other than web surfing.  read your contract carefully or they can terminate your service with no recourse for you.</blockquote>Current wireless broadband contracts no longer carry this stipulation.  At least the two companies I checked before getting my current subscription with Sprint (Verizon being the other carrier).  Also, there are a number of wireless modems that come equipped with USB connections now and are easily connected with either a desktop or a laptop computer.  My contract with Sprint is unlimited service for about $60 plus tax.  The only issue I have with them is Sprint charges me for 911 service (its a small fee but its the principal) even though my service is data only and has absolutely no voice capability.  Well, unless I contract with some service for VoIP, which has nothing to do directly with the modem itself.

[kjfett4]

thye charge a 911 fee? That's pretty funny when you consider that any phone, on an active account or not is supposed to be able to call 911 with no charge. I can pull out an old phone on a long disconnected and closed account, and it is required that I be able to dial and reach 911 at no cost to me. and there you are with a phone on an active account getting billed for it.....phone companies and their bills....who can understand them? /rolleyes.

[Dark_Grue]

<cite>kjfett4 wrote:</cite><blockquote>thye charge a 911 fee? That's pretty funny when you consider that any phone, on an active account or not is supposed to be able to call 911 with no charge.</blockquote><p>The ability to do so is mandated by law, but how that's funded is that cellular carriers recoup the costs by charging a fee to existing customers to support the capability. You're confusing the ability to place a 911 call with the billing for taxes and fees to make sure that ability is in place.</p><p>There's some question as to whether a data-only service should really have those fees, to be sure. Some (most?) data cards can effectively act as E911 devices (just by virture of being able to connect to the cellular network), even if that ability isn't presented to the user, so arguably, the charge is appropriate. On the other hand, since you can't generally pick up your laptop and call 911, many would feel that the charge isn't.</p><p>It's an infrastructure fee, basically.</p>

[kjfett4]

<cite>Dark_Grue wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>kjfett4 wrote:</cite><blockquote>thye charge a 911 fee? That's pretty funny when you consider that any phone, on an active account or not is supposed to be able to call 911 with no charge.</blockquote><p>The ability to do so is mandated by law, but how that's funded is that cellular carriers recoup the costs by charging a fee to existing customers to support the capability. You're confusing the ability to place a 911 call with the billing for taxes and fees to make sure that ability is in place.</p><p>It's an infrastructure fee, basically.</p></blockquote><p>I not confusing anything.  The ability is there regardless of a tax as its the same system running for their paying customers.  </p><p>That the company charges a "tax" is abuse.  I highly doubt the hundred calls a month across the country are putting such a strain on the network that they can't reasonably offer it as a community service...furthermore...where is all the money going?  Millions a year collected to support a at most a few hundred calls?  I'm sorry, I just don't see them costing that much when the network is already in place and paid for by customers under their contracts.</p>

[TaylorAnnNesselroad]

<p>From the Verizon website and customer agreements:</p><p> These Data Plans and Features MAY NOT be used for any other purpose. Examples of prohibited uses include, without limitation, the following: (i) continuous uploading, downloading, or streaming of audio or video programming or games; </p><p>If more than 5 GB/line/month are used, we presume use is for non-permitted uses and reserve the right to terminate service immediately. </p><p>How much volume does EQ2 require to play?</p>

[willnotuse]

<cite>TaylorAnnNesselroad wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>From the Verizon website and customer agreements:</p><p> These Data Plans and Features MAY NOT be used for any other purpose. Examples of prohibited uses include, without limitation, the following: (i) continuous uploading, downloading, or streaming of audio or video programming or games; </p><p>If more than 5 GB/line/month are used, we presume use is for non-permitted uses and reserve the right to terminate service immediately. </p><p>How much volume does EQ2 require to play?</p></blockquote>More than that per month.

[TaylorAnnNesselroad]

<p>Hello,</p><p>I checked Verizon.</p><p>They specifically prohibit streaming video, online games, and file transfers.</p><p>They warn that if anyone exceeds 5gb/month they will be terminated:</p><p>These Data Plans and Features MAY NOT be used for any other purpose. Examples of prohibited uses include, without limitation, the following: (i) continuous uploading, downloading, or streaming of audio or video programming or games; (ii) server devices or host computer applications, including, but not limited to, Web camera posts or broadcasts, automatic data feeds, automated machine to-machine connections or peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing;</p><p>Anyone using more than 5 GB per line in a given month is presumed to be using the service in a manner prohibited above, and we reserve the right to limit throughput speed or immediately terminate the service of any such person without notice. We also reserve the right to terminate service upon expiration of Customer Agreement term. </p><p>Question is this: how much does EQ2 use?</p>

[TaylorAnnNesselroad]

<p>From Verizon website- contract small print:</p><p>These Data Plans and Features MAY NOT be used for any other purpose. Examples of prohibited uses include, without limitation, the following: (i) continuous uploading, downloading, or streaming of audio or video programming or games; (ii) server devices or host computer applications, including, but not limited to, Web camera posts or broadcasts, automatic data feeds, automated machine to-machine connections or peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing;</p><p>Also:</p><p>Anyone using more than 5 GB per line in a given month is presumed to be using the service in a manner prohibited above, and we reserve the right to limit throughput speed or immediately terminate the service of any such person without notice. We also reserve the right to terminate service upon expiration of Customer Agreement term. </p><p>How much does EQ2 require to play for a given amount of time?</p>