buy low, sell high?
Many people interpret the bandwidth setting to be synonymous with their connection speed: low modem speed equals low bandwidth setting. However, this assumption is not always correct, especially given the possibility of packet loss between players.

Andrew Welch explains the details behind bandwidth settings in a posting to a USENET newsgroup:

From: andrew@AmbrosiaSW.com (Andrew Welch)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.games.action
Subject: Re: [Avara] Playability through 14.4?

In article <daniel_t-2409962119220001@10.0.2.15>, daniel_t@gate.net (Daniel
T.) wrote:

> In article <R.19960921134012251745@slip202-135-5-134.jk.id.ibm.net>,
> rmaris@ibm.net (Yuma S. Maris) wrote:
> 
> >Anyways, I've done a few great, nerve-racking duels so far.... and I
> >must say Avara handles net connections pretty well.  I've had latencies
> >of between 6 and 8. What do you think Andrew? Is this a good speed?
> >(Admittedly it is a bit slow, you aim then a half sec letter the HECTOR
> >moves)
> >What speeds did you get when playing against Juri in Finland? Maybe I
> >could speed things up? (Bandwidth setting: moderate, Automatic latency)
> 
> Drop your bandwidth setting to low or minimal and only play one-on-one and
> you should see some improvement.

I'll explain a bit about what the "bandwidth" setting does, because there
seems to be some confusion.  In an ideal world, everyone would set their
bandwidth usage to "minimal" and have slick Internet games.  However, the
Internet is far from ideal, and ditto with modems.

What the various Bandwidth settings do is they send redundant packets so
that if some get lost on their way, you won't see any jerkiness or lag.  So
why not just jack it up to high and leave it there?  If you're using ISDN
or Ethernet, you can and should.

However, if you are using a modem, it isn't so simple.  The first problem
is bandwidth: each player in the game uses up a bit of your bandwidth, so
while two people on 28.8 modems would both be able to have their Bandwidth
set to High, the same is not the case with, say, 6 players on a 28.8 modem.

Think of it as a pie.  Each player in a net games takes up a slice of the
pie.  The higher your bandwidth setting, the larger the slice of pie that
each player gets -- too many players, and you just simply run out of
bandwidth at High Bandwidth settings.

Additionally, PPP software on the Mac can be a rather severe drain on your
CPU -- the more packets you're sending out, the harder your PPP software
(and thus your CPU) has to work.  This leaves less processing power left
over to play Avara smoothly.  This is one reason why we recommend
OpenTransport or OT/PPP on PowerMacs: it is native, unlike MacTCP and
FreePPP.

So how can you tell what to set Bandwidth to?  Click on the player's tab in
the game and look at their LT times.  If the pessimistic time is much worse
than the estimated time, you're experiencing packet loss, and upping your
bandwidth can help.  Click on their LTs a few times (the text) to "ping"
the other player and recalibrate the LT times.

Other than that, just trying out the various settings briefly can help you
figure out what works best in your particular situation.

+------------------------------------------------------------+
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