Rumour: Switch Firmware Update 6.0.0 Seems To Limit User Upload Speeds

DAMN. If that is true, than it is REALLY BAD. I play Cloud based games. To play RE7 and Assassins creed, I need super high speed internet!

Glad to hear that my 400-500kbps upload speed wont be effected...

Glad you guys are here with this hard hitting journalism lol

Don't worry guys, put down the nooses. I'm sure we can still live our lives with less upload speeds.

I mean, it wasn't like the Switch was ever going to make use of my 200Mbps... I don't really mind this.

I guess they’re just looking for new things to complain about, I bet there will be complaints about the range on the joy cons next.

why is this even news ?

I'm guessing this is to do with cloud save servers, though I can't come up with a logical reason to cap the U/L.

Oh look at the mature people taking a stand against complaint by.... complaining more?

Truly we should be proud of the people who comment here.

@aiden0309 8Mbps upload is way more than you need to play streaming games.

As long as they don't limit download speed!

NINTENDOOMED!

So even if you had fast internet and are paying Nintendo for their greedy Online service, you will be force to get fgadg upload speed no matter what? Not good, not good at all if you're the kind that play games online most of the time.

@retro_player_22 Dude, watch your language!

Slow news day?

Yay another not fact checked news item presented as news.

If it's not on the patch notes, it might be a bug.

Most people in the US do not have 8Mbps upload speed regardless.

Spectrum in NYC has 5 Mbps Uplaoad across the board. Regardless of what plan you pick. And not like I'm getting 10Mbps upload at the Airport, Bus or Hotel when away from home either.

Not a big deal

Does make sense they would want to limit the upload speed to their servers when they announce you can cloud save your 5GB NBA save file. And 8Mbps upload is fine, most people in the US probably top out at 10Mbps anyway as the average is 22 and that's probably top heavy from people paying more for more.

Switch firmware 6.0 does seemingly nothing
PS4 firmware 6.0 does seemingly nothing
Fortnite Switch - PS4 cross-play confirmed
Coincidence?

Edit: megabits, megabytes, bite me.

@aiden0309 That's not true - you don't need anywhere near 8mbps up for streaming. Cloud saves will still be near instantaneous for the vast majority of games. Most residential internet connections have quite low upload speeds when compared to download anyway. I.E., My home connection is 250 down/10 up, so very little in the way of throttling for me.

@retro_player_22 Not everything above applies to you, but this is really non-impacting for 99% of scenarios. This will have no impact on your online gaming performance.

@roadrunner343 Um... I was talking about Cloud GAMES. Like RE7 or Phantasy star online 2 or Assassins creed odyssey, You Know. Which is only availiable for Japan...

@aiden0309 That has nothing to do with upload speed. Download speed remains unaffected. Your cloud streaming should remain just fine.

Had this been a cap on Capcom's or Ubi's upload speed, then yes, there would be an issue. However, your Switch is not the host; download speed should be your only concern, which again, remains unaffected.

@aiden0309 Which is exactly what I responded to. 100% cloud hosted games would have even less impact on your upload bandwidth, as your local machine will be uploading very limited amounts of data to the cloud. It will be 99% download bandwidth.

Nintendo seems to have missed the memo that when you start to charge for a service, it should improve, not the other way around.

Cya
Raziel-chan

@aiden0309 roadrunner343 is right. The limit is on upload speed. While playing Cloud games you only need high download speed to stream the video of a game being played somewhere on a server far away. The only thing you send (upload) is your button presses, which don't take up more than a few kilobytes/second.

THX A LOT, @pinta_vodki, @roadrunner343, @onex !!

This is probably just a precaution so that their servers don't get overwhelmed with simultaneous cloud save uploads in the first days after launch. That said, I hardly imagine many players have enough save files to cap the 8 Mbps for any significant amount of time.

Rabble Rabble Rabble!!! I'm wondering how users even noticed a difference, other than running network tests.
NoA site suggests an upload speed of 1 Mbps. ONE

"In case you were wondering, an 8Mbps upload speed is more than enough to support the functionalities of your Switch console, and shouldn't have any impact on your online play."

@pinta_vodki I'm with you. Though, despite me saying this is a non-issue for 99% of all scenarios, it is still an odd thing to implement. Capping users to 8mbps doesn't relieve the strain on their servers/isp - it just stretches out the duration. Makes me wonder if they're more concerned with some sort of malicious users, DDoS attacks, etc... Regardless - doesn't bother me in the slightest, but it is curious.

Wow that upload is high. I have fast connection but my upload speed is not even half of that.

@retro_player_22

Do you realize how fast 8 mb a second is for upload speeds? 8 mb is faster than anyone needs. Capping this isn't going to affect online play WHATSOEVER, but sure, get mad about something you don't even understand.

Also, I was under the impression that the PS4 did a similar thing, but for download speeds. My fiance says the the PS4 never downloads games nearly as fast as our internet allows.

8 Mb upload speed is noticeably slow.

Only in Japan.

@nhSnork

It is the Upload speed that has been limited not the download speed. Says so right in the story headline.

I noticed the 8Mb/s upload in my last network test and figured it was just Switch's lousy networking. Switch upload tests have always tested bizarrely low. Maybe it's a hard cap now. 8Mb/s is way more than you need to stream 1080p video, and Switch doesn't do 4k, so I don't see what it would actually limit other than uploading cloud saves at max speed.

@roadrunner343 Spreading the duration matters though. It lets more people use the same pipe at once (but occupy it longer) than bursts that just flood it and lock people out. I.E. the same amount of data is transferred, but it spreads the load for more users to hit it at once with equal speed rather than a sudden blast of everyone sapping it at max speed simultaneously. It makes sense.

@rjejr Edit:" megabits, megabytes, bite me. "

Shall you be bit once, or shall I byte you 8 times?

There's an important difference

@NEStalgia @rjejr @retro_player_22 @AcridSkull - My first thought is that artificially capping the upload speed, helps reduce lag for players with slower/poor connections; thus reducing your buddy on the other side of the world/city/whatever always winning the Splatoon/Smash match.

Edit: Could be other reasons, instead, or in addition to.

@Dalarrun PSN is slow garbage, but also the 2.5" HDD is what slows down downloads. I noticed on my X1X on the internal or 2.5" USB HDD I'd get 13-30Mb/s. When I switched to a 7200RPM external drive it jumped to 250-300Mb/s downloads - same as copying locally between drives (yes, fiber internet.) But point is, the download speeds are often HDD limited. Similar to Switch. Network test shows 40/8. (Switch networking sucks, clearly compared to the actual network speed) but downloads have been 6-10 most of the time. U1 SD card is the problem. It's just that slow on writes.

@Capt_N Nah, Splatoon doesn't use much bandwidth at all. It's latency that matters, and the cap doesn't affect that. That's just plain old physics at work.

@NEStalgia: I thought Splatoon was constantly "talking"/pinging to the other players. In any case, I didn't know about the bandwidth being low, so thanks for that.

@NEStalgia I'm not saying it never makes sense. It makes a ton of sense for certain things - steaming media, large file, and pretty much any other service you know you are going to have sustained transfers. For the miniscule amounts of data (In general, ignoring NBA2k18) needed to upload cloud saves, I'm not sure I would resort to throttling everyone to a static, arbitrary limit. Setup your QoS policies correctly, and if bandwidth is available, let users upload at full speed.

EDIT: And @NEStalgia, Don't forget to nibble @rjejr 4 times while you're at, if you are so inclined.

@NEStalgia There's an important difference

I know it's important technically, bits vs bytes, I just think 98% of Americans seeing 8MB don't know whether it's bits or bytes. 90% probably don't know for 8Mbps either. And 50% of those don't know which is faster, though they would likely correctly guess MB b/c CAPITALS.

What I'd really like to know is how fast is a Gbps.

@SBandy right, I noticed it as well, then decided against posting the comment at all. Turns out I somehow hit the button before getting distracted... or WHILE distracted. Takes being me to pull off stunts like that. /)_-) XD

Upload speed is way more important than download speed for online gaming. It's interesting they are capping it though. I wonder to what end - maybe an expert can illuminate?

I swear Nintendo could cure cancer and peeps would complain about it.

@nhSnork

Fair enough lol

@rjejr Well, yeah most people don't know which is exactly why they use those numbers on advertising

@roadrunner343 yeah, though there's a lot to be said about consistent experience versus bursty experience. I'd rather have a smooth, even 8Mb/s always than sometimes 30, sometimes 2. The disjointed unpredictability makes a service feel worse than one that's consistent in terms of user experience.

@Spiders Upload latency is important. Latency is the measure of actual speed (time it takes for one bit to get from A to B.) What we call "speed" is actually capacity, how many bits can be pushed in a fixed space of time. Online gaming needs low latency, Splatoon needs less capacity than most games with its low tick rate, it uses, what 500Kb/s max? And latency is determined purely by real world physics (time it takes to send light/electricity across physical distance, minus delays of switching nodes and attenuation/lost packets along the way.) I.E. 8Mb/s would be enough to play Splatoon, stream 1080p video of you playing Splatoon, and upload your cloud saves in the background just fine. But sucky latency to Japanese snipers would be the same on ten-gigabit-fiber. The internet switching would slow it down anyway.

It maybe a minor inconvenience, or none at all to some, but since it is a downgrade, its another point against the online service.

@Capt_N Splatoon 2 has a 16Hz tick rate, Splatoon 1 had a 25Hz tick rate, and the Splatoon 2 test fire had a 12.5Hz tick rate. This is very bad for a lot of the more competitive players as most online shooters (CoD, Battlefield etc.) Have 30Hz tick rates.

This means current Splatoon 2 sends a few Kb 16 times a second to all players, and it also sends the ink map to the "host" player(s) Compared to sustained downloads and such, is trivial. It's less data than your web browser is sending in this edit field as we type and NL caches your typed text every so often so if you reload the page it's still there.

@NEStalgia: Again, thank you for that explanation; I appreciate it! I also appreciate knowing the up/down figures. Actually, I was almost going to ask if anyone knew the upload/download of Splatoon, or Smash, just for the sake of curiosity.

I get it that people don't like limits, boundaries, or edgeboxes; but they also want optimization and fluid gameplay with no service interruptions. If we could all upload a 5gb backup file simultaneously at full data transfer capabilities, do you think the service would deny service to other Nintendo services? The answer is yes. Imagine an entire comic or anime convention trying to leave at the same time through a single wide doorway. That's what this is. 8Mb/s is more than enough for thr time being until Ninty can order a larger server farm to host cloud saves and more networking equipment to do load balancing.

The truth of the matter though is that Nintendo needs to shut down the Wii U and 3DS services to make space for the switch if they aren't going to buy new equipment.

@Capt_N Waaay back in the day @JaxonH measured how much Splatoon 2 was using (minus downloads for patches and updates of course) per hour (and that it was about half of Splatoon 1.) I don't remember the numbers off the top of my head, but suffice it to say it uses less than music streaming for the same length of time, and would work on a 1-2Mb/s connection. I think if you were to consistently play 4 minimum hours a day every day it would consume probably 30-50GB for the month, or something like that.

Smash I suspect will be a slightly hungrier since I can't imagine Sakurai accepting 16Hz play (that means multiple hits could be in one packet, and which takes priority? Splatoon 2 has that problem which is part of why you get one-shot by Splattershots

@NEStalgia

Oh okay, I didn't know that. I told her my Switch doesn't actually download games as fast as our internet allows either. I probably should have tested it myself haha

Meh, my internet is crap anyways.

@Dalarrun Switch is just plain slow in terms of its data transfer. Even the "speed test" shows up as 40/8 for me where any other device tests to varying degrees of very, and massively higher than that. So even wired, I'm betting the power saving states of the console prevents the NIC from running close to full power. And on top of that the SD itself is so slow it doesn't matter

I don't even mind the slow downloads on Switch but the constant pausing due to "errors" on downloads that it never tries to recover from unless it's docked are annoying! I set something to download, come back 2 hours later and realize it "erred" at 5% and never bothered retrying Then I manually retry, come back and find it erred at 64% and never retried. Then 2 minutes later it errs again while I watch it. But if I shove it in the dock it's done by morning.... Not exactly the most digital friendly console in that regard.

@NEStalgia: Yeah, I suspected Smash is a bit more needy, since it's a whole lot more, than just a simple "character is at x position" kind of a game/program. Again, thank you very much. I appreciate it.

@NEStalgia

I mean, I personally don't get that many errors while downloading games but I bought a pretty decent 200 GB SD card so maybe that had something to do with it. I do find it annoying that none of the newer consoles/handhelds I've had over the last two generations never seem to want to download as fast as my games do on PC. Dx

@Dalarrun I'd say it's my WiFi, but no other device gets disconnects like that, and it happens on more than one Switch in the house....and it happens wired with the USB adapter It's definitely an eShop thing. (Games, oddly don't disconnect.)

@Blizzia
You have 200 Mps upload speed?😮 May I ask what your download speed is?

Most here in the States won't bat an eye at that. It's not too surprising that players in Japan are noticing though. XD That upload speed is more than enough to do just about anything.

I laugh at those who judge me for staying on 5.1, I said it wasn't for me for several reasons.......example 1, #2 not far behind I'm sure

@MrBlacky the same, I have a 200/200 plan. Doubt I'm getting what they say I am, but that's the number on the paper with the stamp.

Since almost all multiplayer games in the Switch are peer to peer, isn't upload speed important since one person is going to be designated as the host and everybody else plays the game off of their console?

Time for people to reach as far as they can to find yet another thing to whine about. I wonder if Sony and Microsoft people do the same for their preferred platforms...

@Heavyarms55 ??? ??? Who's "Whining" ???
Not me, I'm getting a good laugh out of it, LOL

(btw: love the Bowsette icon, but on the thread that has all the pics of her, the third one down by "MasterClockwork" looks like she's riding Mario's FACE, LOL !!!

@jhewitt3476 It's Nintendo. There are people who will complain and whine about anything, even if it has zero affect on them.

[edit] Not unlike me complaining about their complaints. So, joke is on me, I guess.

I don't know about that but since this new firmware got itself installed on my machine, it freezes almost daily, requiring a full restart of the console.
There is definitely a glitch in the Matrix.

@Joker13z 2 Twitter comments and all of a sudden they write an "article" on this... so lazy

@AcridSkull Your comment was the first to make any kind of sense.

The upload limit is because of cloud saves, instead of improving their servers they are limiting each user's speed so Nintendo can deal with all potential Nintendo Online users uploading their save data. They have even lower limits on the eShop, at least on 3DS and Wii U, not sure about speeds on Switch eShop.

@pinta_vodki "is your button presses, which don't take up more than a few kilobytes/second"

When playing online an installed game you need muuuuuuuuch more than that for no lag, and you also need low ping. Thus, playing streaming you also need a decent upload speed, as playing streaming is more demanding than playing installed.

@aiden0309 It's not exactly as some people have told you (read my comment above) but 8 Mbps upload speed should be enough for playing, if it wasn't Nintendo would update it. The limit basically affects you when uploading save data, videos, etc.

@rjejr Wasn't the NBA2K18 5 GB "reserved space" for replays etc. but the actual save files were much smaller? I remember users reporting that.

@sanderev it is however correct. My ethernet connected Switch 6.0.0 downloads at 80 MBs and uploads at 8 MB/s according to its own network test. Checks out with my 75/25 connection.

@Kinoen yes kind of like, you can no longer have endless half gallon soda refills, merely 10 per day.
OMG downgrade! I will go elsewhere with my money now!

@Heavyarms55 you bet they do. It is the nature of the Internet. Remember John Gabriel's Greater Internet F*ckwad Theory?

@stevenw45 what do you need it for? Its not as if the Switch has any kind of heavy upload demand for streaming. I played Splatoon 2, Mariokart 8 and Teniss after 6.0.0. hit - and I was not able to feel any lag at all. It was just as before.
My savegames are uploaded in about 30 seconds to the cloud, which is fine by me.

@NEStalgia yes, howerver because the net code in Splatoon 2 is so, shall we say robust? - it is also quite enjoyable on an iPhone-as-hotspot netplay session. I did that this summer on a camp ground. The 3 bar 3G connection sufficed to let Splatoon 2 run almost as well as in my living room on Ethernet.

@phamster No, but I bet I should.

much more likely that it's just a bug in the connection test. connection tests never work reliably anyway

@phamster
Like I said, it may not concern many, if any at all, but it's still a downgrade.

@BlueOcean The only logic Nitneod needs is Nitneod Logic, dont' let facts go getting in the way of what they do.

@rjejr We all are addicted to Nintendo's replies and stances because they are absolutely unpredictable.