3Mbps is NOT a good upload speed for ANYTHING.
This part of the guide will focus on your Internet connection. Your internet connection is the most important part of your entire production as it will allow you to play games with no issues, upload your future videos in a timely manner and maintain a steady stream to your streaming service of choice. I want you to stop reading and go to speedtest.net and run a quick test of your connection. After you finish the test, you will notice that there are three things that are shown to you at the end of the test: your Ping, your download, and your upload speed. What does all this mean? Let’s break it down:
Ping describes how long (in milliseconds) it will take network traffic to flow between your local network (your home) and the outside world via the internet. Ping determines the quality of your connection overall and whether you will experience lag. Lag is a phenomenon that causes a delay between what you input into the game and what you see in the game. The lower your Ping, the less lag you are likely to experience. If you have a high ping, you will experience a lot of lag. Anything under 40ms is acceptable ping for all but the most hardcore gamers, while anything above that will start to experience lag. High ping can lead to game-breaking issues such as rubber banding in games.
Download speed is the maximum amount of data (in Megabits per second) that your local network can receive at any given time. An example of download speed being used would be watching a YouTube video, or downloading a file from the internet. Another name for this and upload speeds is your bandwidth. For our purposes, anything above 50mbps will be acceptable. However, if you’re in a house where multiple people are using internet connected devices, this will eat up your available bandwidth and cause issues.
Upload speed is the maxinum amount of data (in Megabits per second) that your local network can send back out to the internet. This is used for things such as video chat, sending email attachments, and Streaming/uploading video. Anything over 20mbps will suffice but, just like with download speeds, if you have a lot of people using your connection you will experience issues.
Do note that the lag you will experience with oversaturated bandwidth on Downloads and uploads will differ. If you are overloading your available bandwidth on the download speed, you will experience lag in game. On the other hand, if your available bandwidth on the upload speeds are saturated, then your stream will be extremely choppy and any videos you try to upload can take an obscene amount of time. Note that these issues may not necessarily have to do with a oversaturated connection, but rather a issue with your Internet Service Provider (ISP). Its always best practice to contact your ISP in the event of consistent network issues as they have the means to properly diagnose your issue.
The last part of the network equation is your physical hardware. In most people’s household’s, you will have a Coaxial cable (usually a thick, white cable) which goes from the outside world into a modem in your home. from the modem there will be an Ethernet cable that goes from the modem to another box, which is the wireless router. The router is what takes your connection and allows you to send data to/from it either over Wi-Fi, or through another Ethernet cable into a device. Some companies provide you with one box that is both a modem as well as a wireless router. For the purpose of this guide, you should use a wired connection through Ethernet whenever possible. A wired connection is more reliable compared to Wi-Fi, especially since people who use wireless devices in your home (like an iPhone) can affect the quality of the connection. There are many, many wireless routers available out there, of which I won’t be covering here (this will be covered in depth in part 4). The router I personally use is the Apple AirPort Extreme (Link) It is a very solid router and is easy to manage (given you own a MacBook). In the next post, we will explore what makes a “setup”
*Disclaimer*
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