Can you multi-table on a dial-up connection?

[pocketpair100]

Hello,

I am not sure if anyone still does this, but are there any speed/connection issues with playing online with a dial-up connection? I normally multi-table (4-6 tables) at Party if that makes a difference. I've been using broadband until now but looks like I will have to go through a stage with the old dial up.

The ISP itself should be fairly reliable, so don't think/hope disconnections will be a big issue. But bandwidth/speed?

Thanks!

[BiPolar_Nut]

w/ a 1.5m/384k link, I hit disconnects at ~30 tbls at another site (UB...loaded up a bunch of play tables and tourneys to find the limit). I believe the uplink to be the determining factor in this case.

This is purely conjecture, but if 30 tbls craps out on 384k upload speed, then it seems the threshold is around 12.8k per table. On a 56k dialup, you only have 33.6 upstream, which to me says 2 tables should be fine, 3 is highly questionable.

[disclaimer] I'm not saying this is the way it is...just putting out my thoughts based on my experience.[/disclaimer]

I'd be interested to know if this is indeed true or not.

[CORed]

I have played 4 tables on Party on a dialup at 26.6 K with no problems. Online poker doesn't really take much badwidth. They need to transmit cards and other players' actions from server to client, and your actions from client to server. If this data is encoded even semi-efficiently, it should be no more than a few hundred bytes per hand (much less with a really efficient coding scheme). Note that most poker clients store card images, sounds, etc. on the client. The RNG, dealing, etc. is handled by the server and displayed on the client. The main issue with dialup, IMO is that you do get more disconnects, but this is dependant on quality of phone lines, modem and ISP.

[pocketpair100]

Thank you both for your responses. Thats a really interesting way to tackle the problem BiPolar!

Has anyone else out there tried 4-6 tables of Party?

CORed, was that before/after the Monster thing? I assume Monster is more of a CPU hog than bandwidth, but maybe takes a bit more bandwidth too?

[BiPolar_Nut]

Nice to know, CORed. I knew that bandwidth *shouldn't* be an issue and the data sent *should* be minimal....but who does things efficiently these days? [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

Anyway, glad to know 4-tabling (+?) on dialup is possible. Hope I never have to actually try it tho lol.

[Terry]

I got DSL less than two hours ago. I've been playing on dial up for the past six (or is it seven already?) years. No problem up to 10 tables.

Some ISPs are more stable than others. If you get a lot of disconnects, try a different ISP. Once I found the right ISP, disconnects were very very rare.

[CORed]

I agree with Terry about ISP's. I think some of the poorer ones with not enough lines per customer will deliberately boot you to let somebody else connect, rather than give new connection attempt a busy signal. The quality of phone lines is also important. If you have noise/static on voice, you will also have disconnects and slow speeds on modem connections. This can result from problems with inside wiring or on the phone company network. I had this type of problems in one old house I lived in and eventurally checked wiring and found twist and tape splices. Running new cable helped a lot. If the problem's on the phone company network, all you can do is bitch at the phone company and hope they fix it.

[BiPolar_Nut]

[ QUOTE ]
I think some of the poorer ones with not enough lines per customer will deliberately boot you to let somebody else connect, rather than give new connection attempt a busy signal.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is off topic...but it seems the OP's question has been definitively answered and that line reminded me of my suspiscions that cell towers work the same way. They'll bump the longest call to make room for the newer ones once they hit the per-tower bandwidth saturation point. Does anyone know for certain if this is the case?

[CORed]

I have played very little on Party since the monster stuff came in and none on dialup. I've had DSL for ove 2 years now, but sometimes play on dialup when visiting my Mom. For some reason, I can't get anything better than 26.4 or 28.8 on dialup at her place.