Mobile Multiplayer Games, Bandwidth and Latency

Doug Twilleager rightly points out in Mobile Multiplayer Games and 3G, that 3G won’t necessarily bring multiplayer mobile games to a higher level. Because the bottleneck for such mobile applications is not the bandwidth but the latency. And, the latency on a 3G network still has a long ways to go.

On 2G networks, expect a ~1 second latency, if HTTP must be used, then think more of ~5 second latency. In lab UMTS produces >100ms latency, but generically “3Gâ€? doesn’t solve all problems. After deployment expect ~500ms latency. (figures taken from Greg Costikyan presentation on Designing Mobile Games)