FAQs

Can I use 3G/4G Broadband for Xbox Live

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Details: Parent Category: Frequently Asked Xbox Live Questions; Created on Friday, 04 June 2010 19:03; Last Updated on Tuesday, 30 April 2013 09:51; Written by Administrator

Below is an insight into using 3G/4G/Wireless Radio Broadband for Xbox Live, first up its important that you understand what delay sensitive and non delay sensitive applications means

Delay sensitive

A delay sensitive application means just that, if there is a delay in the application sending and receiving its information from A to B it will cause an issue, if the application was video you would see a choppy jerky picture on screen it may also stutter and pause, if the application was an online game such as Xbox Live you would see lag represented as a delay in firing your gun, or other players jumping from one location to another. This type of application information is "fire and forget" it cannot be resent again if lost in transit as it won't make sense as things have moved on as it is a time based application, so if data is lost it will equate to a less than satisfactory experience

Non delay sensitive

A non delay sensitive application can work just fine even if there is a delay, many of these types of applications will just resend the information again if lost, so if your e-mail takes 10 or 20 seconds to send or receive it doesn’t really matter, the email will still get sent or received and work fine, it will have no impact on the outcome the same goes for web browsing, if a page takes 2, 5, or 20 seconds to load it will still work fine, whilst it might be a little frustrating for the user at a 20 second load time it will still work all the same

Now we’ve got through that 3G/4G Broadband is great for Non delay sensitive applications, but not very good for delay sensitive. 3G/4G Broadband is at a very basic level just a wireless network on a much larger scale, you may find that you sometimes get interference on your own wireless network in your own home and it is the same for 3G/4G Broadband but over a much greater distance

In summary here are the issues you may run into with 3G/4G for Xbox Live Gaming

NAT Issues

Many ISP’s that provide 3G/4G and Wireless Radio Tower broadband now supply private IP addresses, this means that they translate your IP Address to a real world IP Address within their own service, unlike other ISP’s where you do this yourself on your own router this is now out of your control. So for NAT issues on the forums you will usually see a lot of suggestions like “Enable UPnP, Forward the Xbox Live Ports” you cannot do this in your case as the address translation is done by the ISP not you, so it is totally out of your hands you do not own the device that needs the configuration change your ISP does. So if you must use 3G/4G the first question to your ISP’s sales desk is do you provide a private or public IP address?

Latency

As already described above 3G/4G is basically a wireless network on a large scale and with that comes the possibility of interference, if some of your Xbox Live traffic gets lost in transit this will show up as lag

Speeds

Speeds can vary for your connection depending on the distance to your nearest mast, if too low this can have an impact on your gaming

Data Usage/Allowance

Many 3G/4G ISP’s have a very strict data usage allowance as the service is aimed at browsers and e-mailers which is generally low usage, if you go over that limit you will be billed every Mb you go over the monthly limit, this could turn out to be very costly if you do not keep track of your usage, whilst gaming traffic alone doesn’t use up a huge amount it does add up especially if you are downloading updates, demo’s and videos from Marketplace.

Summary

I understand that for some people they simply have no other choice and 3G/4G Broadband is their only option, peoples experiences with this type of service vary some have no problems, but on the whole most people do.

For the best experience with any on-line gaming service I would recommend using a hard line broadband service such as Cable or DSL, if you must use 3G/4G or a Wireless Radio service please bear in mind the points above