Avara, eh? "The Canadian Connection": Net Play

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Regardless of what you hear, I believe wholeheartedly that internet games are quite possible over 14.4K modems. In fact, I've played people in Australia and Europe with excellent response times... even some American opponents find themselves surprised by the quality of play. Case in point:

    From: jj33@evansville.edu (John Jetmore)
    Date: Fri, 25 Oct 1996 14:08:38 -0500 (CDT)

    howdy, falco!  just wanted to say that when I joined your server last
    night, I hadn't noticed you were running on a 14.4.  I usually avoid 14.4
    (no offence), but running such a smooth game with you last night has made
    me change my mind about being a bandwidth snob =).

    me ELOISE
     _____________ _____________________  _________________________________
    |John Jetmore | jj33@evansville.edu || "Time is a drug. Too much of it |
    |http://spruce.evansville.edu/~jj33 ||  will kill you."-Terry Pratchett|

Although I now hum along at 33.6K, don't be afraid to use your 14.4K or to join a game with 14.4K involved. Provided people have good connections to their ISPs and there is little in the way of packet loss, a good game can be had by all.

Finally, from the creator of Avara, Juri Munkki offers some hints on latency tuning, while from his penthouse office at Ambrosia Software, Andrew Welch offers his angle on bandwidth settings.

Both of these should help you understand what these numbers mean and how you can tune your games to get the best performance possible.