No satellite or dialup provider is going to be able to provide a really playable connection on XBL. The minimum latency for dialup is around 150 to 200 ms, and the same or higher for satellite, while DSL and cable modem players will be dealing with 20-60ms on average.

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Rampant for over five years.

[quote=]
You can play in rooms with up to 12 people fine. And ofcourse everyone in the broadband community will say "oh man you are LAGGING me out" are full of "SHIT" XBL servers auto balance the load so unlike pc gaming its almost impossible to lag someone out on dialup on Xbox Live they just want to RAG you because they have broadband and you dont.Bottom line it works and works well.[/quote]

What you say is true; it is possible using this method to play on Xbox Live using a dialup connection. I did so myself about two years ago.

It is true that under certain conditions (extreme distance, large latency, network congestion) that a bad "broadband" connection between two or more Xboxes can be as bad or worse than a good dialup connection.

When you talk about users having broadband (DSL or Cable) or dialup, you're only talking about the so-called "last mile"-- the connection between the end-user and his or her ISP. There are a great many number of other factors involved. You may very well be able to play in a decent game using dialup with opponents on the same ISP as you, whereas two DSL users in different countries may not. That's just reality.

However, to say that Xbox Live "auto balances the load" or that other users cannot tell you are on a slower speed, higher latency connection is not entirely accurate. Xbox Live attempts to match Xboxes in games when the latency between all the different Xboxes is as low as possible. Once the match is made, Xbox Live is no longer involved. Those broadband players complain because if they usually end up playing other broadband users in the same country, their latency will be 100ms or less. In a LAN game, that would be 10ms or less.

Meanwhile, on dialup the best you are ever going to see is 150ms; and when games reach 200 or 250 ms any player can notice the difference.

Above that, and things seriously start to fall apart. Players and objects start to "warp" as they instantaneously disappear from one spot and reappear somewhere else. The game will start to lose track of the position of enemies, projectiles and objective items.

The player list in a Halo 2 game shows the quality of each Xbox to the host; players can easily see whose connection is worse and will blame lag they experience on you. They are largely correct.

Where they are wrong is in blaming that for failing to kill you. Lag nearly always affects the lagged player worse than everyone else. The only difference is, as a high ping player, you're used to the lag. Everyone else on broadband isn't.

For tips on weapon choice and using vehicles on high latency connections, see our High Ping Guides.