Mb per hour, connection speed

[Vital]

I have some connection speed related questions:
Will there be any significant difference between 512, 320 and 256kbps while playing online(for example some spacesim), if the game will consume not more than 115.2 MB per hour? 256kbps is 115.2 MB per hour, 320 is 144MB per hour, 512 is 230.4 MB per hour max download speed, that’s why I decided to ask about traffic consumption of the game.
(I can hardly remember a game that eats more then 110MB per hour(assuming that framerate is not way too high and are normal, 100-150 per second), so if any game including this one will consume max less then 115.2 MB per hour(linage 2 does no more than 100mb during sieges, read on some forum), then there’s no use to have higher speed connection(for game purposes). Am I right here guys?.. Or those MB per hour in games are only incoming traffic consumption, and the client also sends much information to sever, so that with 256kbps I will be able to receive not more than, let’s say, 115.2/2 = 57.6 MB per hour?

And how about traffic consumption of different online games, spacesims and FPS? I guess FPS eat much more traffic.
Anybody knows?

[Keshi]

As far as I know, most games don’t actually take up a whole lot of bandwidth, as they employ various tricks to send as little data as possible. Of course, if the game tries to use more bandwidth per hour than you have, you’re definitely boned, but it “usually” doesn’t come to that. I think what’s more likely to happen is for you to have some other applications that occasionally use bandwidth, and combined [with each other and] with a not very steady stream of data coming from the game, may end up bottlenecking whenever it matters.

If a program needs to transfer 115 MB per hour, and your connection is capable of 115MB per hour, and the program spends 60% time transferring at a rate of 50MB per hour, you’ll be pretty darn screwed for the other 40%!