Well, boys and girls, it seems we will soon be entering the world of massive and ongoing/continuous internet downloads with MSFS2020.

Microsoft/Asobo recommend a best speed of 50Mbps and my previous speed was about 90Mbps, but I still wanted a bit of headroom, and trundled to the telephone to contact my ISP, whereupon I learned some quite interesting things.

Several years ago, when I first chose a plan, it was for 60Mbps,with a monthly cap of 1.5TB and I have been happy all of this time because I was handily exceeding the rated speed.

However, I found out that in the interim since we last spoke, my ISP had jumped my speed to 250Mbps and unlimited monthly downloads.

I switched to 500Mbps, and they said that my current modem could not support that, and they would need to send me a higher speed one. I assumed that this was also why I was not getting the 250Mbps I should apparently have been getting for quite a while.

The service tech arrived, the new modem was installed....... And my internet speed stayed exactly the same. The tech went to the pole, changed/redid the wiring, and anything else he could think of, and still my speed would not change from a max of 95Mbps.

He announced he had done all he could, and left, which left me to do some research.

The first thing I found was that my old-style Cat cables were not rated for modern internet speeds (Above 100Mbps)

The second thing was that my two year old Netgear router was also not rated for anything above 100Mbps....... 😿

So first, I spent the day replacing all my wiring........ and got a top speed of 135Mbps, and it would only go to the full 500Mbps if connected directly to the computer.

Next I changed out the router, and after a lot of fiddling after getting no service at all, got everything to see everything else and got it all working.

Bingo! 500Mbps to the entire home. (Though thinking of it, just remaining at the 250Mbps I was supposed to have all along is probably more than enough........)

I guess the lesson to be learned is contact your provider occasionally to see whats up with your plan! The second thing I guess, is not to assume that just because its working, that that old router in the corner is actually still up to technological snuff.

In the meanwhile, how are the rest of you doing for matching or exceeding the speeds required by this new sim?

 

 

I have 100 Mbit. At my place it is upgradable too 200Mbit but so far I had no need for it.

I found that I could push the bandwidth limit at 35 MBps.  That means that 50 should be sufficient for anything.  Of course, anything faster would make the initial download a lot faster. 😄 

Hook

 

Definitely behind the curve here and something I'll be addressing in plenty of time...

 

4 minutes ago, Will Fly For Cheese said:

 

Definitely behind the curve here and something I'll be addressing in plenty of time...

 

Yikes! I would absolutely positively not want to try downloading the entire 170 gigabytes of the Sim, at that speed.

I'd recommend most people holding off on upgrading their Internet speed until you find out that whatever you have isn't enough.  

Of course there are reasons to have more speed than the flight sim, so that's up to you. 😄 

Hook

6 minutes ago, HiFlyer said:

Yikes! I would absolutely positively not want to try downloading the entire 170 gigabytes of the Sim, at that speed.

With your internet speed cool white cat you would demolish my monthly allowance in about 20 seconds flat!

15 minutes ago, Will Fly For Cheese said:

I have pretty much the same speeds (albeit slightly slower upload), but sadly nothing to upgrade to. Patiently waiting for VDSL to save the day. At least it meets the simulator's minimum requirement...

4 minutes ago, Will Fly For Cheese said:

With your internet speed cool white cat you would demolish my monthly allowance in about 20 seconds flat!

I'm told it matches some run-of-the-mill plans in Europe, which kind of tells you how slow the United States average speed is. But I agree it's probably a bit over the top. The only reason I actually went for it is that my ISP is giving it to me for a year for the same rate that I'm already paying, so why not? 😻

3 minutes ago, ChaoticBeauty said:

I have pretty much the same speeds (albeit slightly slower upload), but sadly nothing to upgrade to. Patiently waiting for VDSL to save the day. At least it meets the simulator's minimum requirement...

I have a suspicion that that's why you're not already on the alpha, when otherwise you would be an obvious shoe-in.

Just check the original thread on this last year, same thing being asked again and again still it pushes the post count up.

I'm getting 195mbps down and 185mbps up. That's wireless and my computer is upstairs with the router pretty much right below it.

If I connected directly, I'd probably get closer to the 1000mbps my fiber connection is rated for.

16 minutes ago, HiFlyer said:

I have a suspicion that that's why you're not already on the alpha, when otherwise you would be an obvious shoe-in.

Actually my system does not meet the minimum requirements, which I think is the main culprit. I guess no reason to test on a system that might barely or not even run the game when most of the optimisation is yet to be done. I'm guessing the Closed Beta will be more about testing compatibility on systems close to the minimum specification and stressing the infrastructures.

I wonder if the pop-ins and jitters we've seen in certain videos are reflecting low bandwith?

 

The one thing I positively, absolutely never want to see again is anther bunch of trees popping-in ahead of the aircraft. It's the biggest immersion killer. I don't know if it's more noticeable with Orbx.

I can't believe MS2020 isn't at least doing an alpha-blend of autogen. Maybe they are and the popping is because of bandwidth. In some ways - I hope so.

Interesting there's such a difference between min bandwidth spec and Ideal bandwidth spec.