Help needed with getting EQ ports unblocked

[Ramlador]

Today, without warning, the group at my university that controls the network blocked access to all online games (EQ, Counter-Strike, you name it) along with all peer-to-peer file sharing and several other internet services, and living in the dorms I'm directly affected.

Due to the fact that many of these services are required on a daily basis by many departments and organizations on campus, this most likely won't last through tomorrow, but they will most likely try something refined later.

Seeing as how their main argument against all of these things is bandwidth usage, I'm looking for hard data to use against them. I need any access I can get to show the amount of bandwidth typically used while playing EQ, as showing proof that EQ uses extremely little bandwidth they won't have much of a leg to stand on.

Thanks.

[Ngreth Thergn]

um... EQ is HUGE bandwith I am sorry to say... It takes what it can get... if you ahve a big pipe, it uses more... if you only have a small pipe.,.. you get lag, ghosting and Linkdeaths :/

Yes, serverfilter does HELP, but it is still alot of bandwidth...

At least that is how I understand it...

But try this for the time when you get access back.

http://www.inetmeter.com/

compared to Peer to Peer, the EQ BW is probably small. Compared to web browsing, it is rather large.

[Torgamous]

If it's anything like my university did to the poor bastards in the universtiy network, you're pretty much screwed. Even if it takes up marginal bandwidth, you're still trapped with the "It's still just a game" argument.

Of course, you could always do what one person I know did, and that's to find a proxy server that http, and work though that. I think that's what he said he did. (Don't ask me, I just was nodding and going "That"s nice". Paying for your DSL does come with nice things.)

[Skeeno]

As Help Desk Coordinator at a college, we use a packetshaper to limit the amount of bandwidth for non-academic Internet usage. Our firewall does not block outbound transmissions, only unsolicited inbound communications.

All of our students can use any of the filesharing apps, or games they want. We still get quite a few Cease & Decist orders from various companies of students sending files that shouldn't be sent, and we shut them down immediately.

[KyrosKrane]

um... EQ is HUGE bandwith I am sorry to say... It takes what it can get... if you ahve a big pipe, it uses more... if you only have a small pipe.,.. you get lag, ghosting and Linkdeaths :/

I don't know, I've never experienced this myself.

At home, where I run EQ, I'm on a 64K ISDN dialup connection (don't ask). I run EQ almost exclusively, only occasionally downloading email or browsing the Web. I've noticed over long connection periods that EQ normally uses maybe 1MB bandwidth per hour. Maybe this scales up as you get faster connections; I wouldn't be able to test. I do know that over a 24 hour period with 1 session of EQ (bazaar trader with everything filtered off) running for the whole period and another session (my main) running for about half that, my bandwidth consumption was 35MB.

[tabrizia]

Have to weigh in on the EQ using next to no bandwidth, I have played with my husband over a 26k modem before and not had any problems at all except zoning taking 30 seconds to a minute. EQ was originally written for a modem connection and they have done fairly well sticking to that piece at least. I have never had a problem with EQ hogging bandwidth on any connection I play it on.