Xbox network play.

[NeilI]

We had our first proper 16player Halo session for ages on Saturday and what a blast it was too.

The only thing was I noticed a lot of slowdown. We were playing Bloodgulch mostly, 4 people to a box, obviously.

At the moment, all we use is a trusty little Netgear EN104TP. It's only a 10Mbps hub.

does anyone know if a 100Mb switch sch as the Netgear FS105 would aleviate the situation??

Thanks.

[directhex]

depends on how much traffic is being sent & when

if you have a 24-port hub, and machine 1 wants to send data to machine 16, then it just sends it EVERYWHERE. if another machine tries to send data at the same time then they have to both stop, wait a random amount of time (i.e. induce some lag), then try again. a switch sends data where it belongs, so there are no longer any data collisions

most unbranded switches use the same internals as low-end netgears, so a £15 ebuyer jobby would do the same thing - and MAY help reduct the slowdown problems

no promises though!

[NeilI]

Okay sound.

I also assume increasing the available bandwidth ten-fold would also help?

I was interested to know form Xbox owners if it was a dataflow bottleneck or a lack of power from the Xbox itself?