bear with me...

[Captain Red]

OK, I've been thinking about trying out doom multiplayer, and have grabbed most of the tools required to make a start. However, It's has come to my attention that my pitiful connection speed (dial-up 28K) might affect more people then myself. since I really don't feel like having my name shunned more then it already is, I'm wondering if it's best to steer clear all together?

[Erik]

if you play zdaemon it wont affect others other than that you will teleport around the map like crazy and wont be able to to hit anything.

[Draconio]

28K? I'd reccomend that you just get a bot. DoomBot and ACBot make good choices.

[Biffy]

I've played lots of doom2 online with a 28K modem and it is entirely satisfactory for doom2.exe. For Zdaemon, it may be OK if your internet connection to a server is "solid", meaning that your ping is under 250 if possible and does not fluctuate much. Leave your "rate" setting in zdaemon at the default 2500, do not increase it. Make sure your internet connection settings are optimized for modem...if you don't know about that, check into some of this (pasting from an old post on the zdoom forums):

First and most important, you should determine that you have a "controller" modem, not a "Winmodem". My experience is that to some servers my ping with a winmodem is around 250 and switching to a controller modem (I have a 3Com/USR) my ping drops to 150.

Other basics include setting the modem to use hardware flow control, compression and probably error control. You can try to connect to your ISP without error control and if your connection is stable, you will probably drop another 10-20 ms. An option for compression is to try the software compression found in the server types tab of your dialup networking properties. While there, check the tcp/ip settings button, use IP header compression.

My modem and ISP allow me to connect with the v.90 protocol (you hear a few distinct "bong" tones as the connection is initialized), but also the X2 protocol if I add something to the init string to disable v.90. X2 resulted in a bit lower ping in general for me.

There's a common belief that you can further improve modem speed by setting the "MTU" in Windows to the largest your ISP allows without data packet fragmentation. Supposedly Windows MTU is set by default to 1500 which is better for LAN but the best setting for modem use is 576. There are some free utilities which allow you to view and set these things, such as MTUSpeed and DrTCP.

[999cop]

I used to be on 28.8k as well, not to mention my isp used to be from Netzero then switched to America Online, and I have owned a lot of people with my BFG >:D

[Captain Red]

Biffy said:
I've played lots of doom2 online with a 28K modem and it is entirely satisfactory for doom2.exe. For Zdaemon, it may be OK if your internet connection to a server is "solid", meaning that your ping is under 250 if possible and does not fluctuate much. Leave your "rate" setting in zdaemon at the default 2500, do not increase it. Make sure your internet connection settings are optimized for modem...if you don't know about that, check into some of this (pasting from an old post on the zdoom forums):

First and most important, you should determine that you have a "controller" modem, not a "Winmodem". My experience is that to some servers my ping with a winmodem is around 250 and switching to a controller modem (I have a 3Com/USR) my ping drops to 150.

Other basics include setting the modem to use hardware flow control, compression and probably error control. You can try to connect to your ISP without error control and if your connection is stable, you will probably drop another 10-20 ms. An option for compression is to try the software compression found in the server types tab of your dialup networking properties. While there, check the tcp/ip settings button, use IP header compression.

My modem and ISP allow me to connect with the v.90 protocol (you hear a few distinct "bong" tones as the connection is initialized), but also the X2 protocol if I add something to the init string to disable v.90. X2 resulted in a bit lower ping in general for me.

There's a common belief that you can further improve modem speed by setting the "MTU" in Windows to the largest your ISP allows without data packet fragmentation. Supposedly Windows MTU is set by default to 1500 which is better for LAN but the best setting for modem use is 576. There are some free utilities which allow you to view and set these things, such as MTUSpeed and DrTCP.

That sounds helpful... But I'm not to knowledgeable when it comes to modems... don't suppose you could dumb it down a shade?

from what I do understand; If i'm lucky, I can get a ping at around 300. and that's on a good night, useully it's jumping between 400 and 500. witch isn't much fun. so it really isn't solid.

[deathz0r]

red_undies, you should wait for mordak whenever his server comes up. i ping 19-35 to it.

[Night-Fang]

Spend $40 bucks, get yourself a shiny new 56k modem.

[deathz0r]

welcome to arsestralia, where the US dollar equals to 2 AU dollars.

[Captain Red]

deathies right. and I don't have $80 laying around at the moment.

[Purp]

Ct_red_pants said:

deathies right. and I don't have $80 laying around at the moment.

Then save up and make sure you get a 56k modem as soon as possible. Not that your ping will be much better mind, I hardly play any more because I'm on 56k and it just gets annoying. I'm waiting for Broadband ADSL to be available in my shitty town, but I probably won't be able to get it for ages after cos I only get £15 a week for my paper round.