Life In 19x19

Hi chaps,

I'm back after a while off. (about 10 months). Go has come full circle in my extensive list of hobbies and I'm reading some books again. I'd like to get back into playing a few games online (due to lack of available players in Nottingham (there is a club but it's at the wrong end of the city and it's on the same night as chess club)).

.......anyway, I've moved to a cottage and my MAXIMUM download speed is 39KBps (kilobytes, not kilobits). My ping latency is ooh, about 26 ms on a good day.

What is the best place to play online with such a slow connection?? I'm thinking OGS is out because it's web based, which leaves KGS and Pandanet. Anywhere else? I'd play on KGS but the mac client is a bit pants (sorry, it's a beautiful bit of software but just not aesthetic on non-Windows machines, in my opinion. Plus sound issues).

If you can be happy with turn-based I would suggest DGS. You can have many games going at once so there will usually be a game waiting for a move every time you log on.

DGS is a good option for minimal.

KGS fixed the sound issue a while back.

You might actually try OGS. I looked at it and DGS with the network tab on, and while OGS is a little heavier, it has a few features that might be nice, like the ability to do analysis or look backwards in a game without reloading anything from the server.

Of course, both sites will be very slow to load until you get the resources they have cached.

hyperpape wrote:Of course, both sites will be very slow to load until you get the resources they have cached.

Agreed, but after that, you can play OGS perfectly fine on 40kbps. KGS too. This is go, not Quake 26ms ping is very good - are you sure about that?

I only play on OGS, but I find it almost unplayable on patchy mobile internet connections (though they have fixed some of the really annoying interface issues with that) like on a train.

I'd love to write a low-bandwidth, connectionless frontend for it - in theory there is nothing preventing this since they present a public API.

A while back I tried playing on KGS in a place where the only internet connection was dial up speed via my mobile phone - I found it was unplayable. I asked about it here (could have been on GoDiscussions) and wms said it was chat that required the extra bandwidth. I had better luck when I closed the chat windows. I like DGS which is fine for any internet connection speed of course.

I *think* I'm good on Pandanet's client, I guess there's only one way to find out - play a game!

Does DGS have a dektop client or is it web based? It's my guess that desktop clients will be less intensive on the network because they just transmit a telnet one-liner somewhere instead of doing stuff with JavaScript / polling servers / sending data through sockets.

Of course, if anyone in the house uses the internet at the same time, the connection drops on Pandanet. I might have to play at night or at 6am! That won't be good for the concentration...

There may be a DGS client for a desktop but I generally use my android phone (the anDGS client, not browser based) to make my moves. There's iphone clients too.

http://senseis.xmp.net/?DGS

I never had any problems on KGS when I had a dial-up connection. At least, not bandwidth problems.

Jujube wrote: Does DGS have a dektop client or is it web based? It's my guess that desktop clients will be less intensive on the network because they just transmit a telnet one-liner somewhere instead of doing stuff with JavaScript / polling servers / sending data through sockets.

The DGS webpage doesn't do any of that. Check it out. It's kept very simple.