Playing P99 off Dropbox and/or Online Storage?

[DannyDynamite]

I am able to play P99 directly off a portable USB hard drive.

What if I drop all of those files together on dropbox (or another suggested platform) - is it possible to play directly off dropbox or the cloud?

Thanks!
Danny

[paulgiamatti]

Possible, yes. Feasible, no.

Think of it this way - when you launch EQ and it begins to load the game data, all of that data would be streamed off of your cloud storage at whatever speed your internet connection allows. So for me, that'd be about 1 MB/s, whereas my 7200 RPM SATA drive or USB 3.0 external drive would do it at about 5 GB/s (5,000 MB/s). In other words, it would probably take about an hour to launch EQ on my internet connection. However, Moore's law dictates that this is how things will be done in the future, probably within our lifetime - eventually download & upload speeds will be fast enough to match IDE, SATA, and eventually SSD transfer rates. In the future, local data storage will be a thing of the past.

So if you have a fast internet connection that can download a few GB in minutes, you could certainly store your EQ folder on Dropbox and just download it to your computer whenever you want to play, but you wouldn't want to actually read and write data to Dropbox in real time. Another way you could do it is download the Dropbox app on the machines you use, which essentially lets you access your Dropbox folders as if they're local folders, but all of that data gets downloaded and stored in a hidden local folder as soon as you install & run the app, so it'd be the exact same thing as just downloading your EQ folder off Dropbox and then running EQ from your hard drive.

[renordw]

Originally Posted by paulgiamatti [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Possible, yes. Feasible, no.

Think of it this way - when you launch EQ and it begins to load the game data, all of that data would be streamed off of your cloud storage at whatever speed your internet connection allows. So for me, that'd be about 1 MB/s, whereas my 7200 RPM SATA drive or USB 3.0 external drive would do it at about 5 GB/s (5,000 MB/s). In other words, it would probably take about an hour to launch EQ on my internet connection. However, Moore's law dictates that this is how things will be done in the future, probably within our lifetime - eventually download & upload speeds will be fast enough to match IDE, SATA, and eventually SSD transfer rates. In the future, local data storage will be a thing of the past.

So if you have a fast internet connection that can download a few GB in minutes, you could certainly store your EQ folder on Dropbox and just download it to your computer whenever you want to play, but you wouldn't want to actually read and write data to Dropbox in real time. Another way you could do it is download the Dropbox app on the machines you use, which essentially lets you access your Dropbox folders as if they're local folders, but all of that data gets downloaded and stored in a hidden local folder as soon as you install & run the app, so it'd be the exact same thing as just downloading your EQ folder off Dropbox and then running EQ from your hard drive.

Ok, what's a happy medium then? I can't run P99 at work, because the bits that look for third party software trigger IT's virus scanners.

[Sorn]

Don't play at work. =\

[Pep]

Try a remote desktop connection, most Windows already have it installed and you'd just need to active it. The game won't run as smoothly as a local installation but it should still beat doing what your employer pays you to do.

[paulgiamatti]

Yep - RDC is the way to go, unless you can find a way to subvert your employer's antivirus. You won't be able to do stuff that requires low latency, but you could definitely tunnelquest or maybe even hold down some easier cash camps with the right fine-tuning: https://www.google.com/webhp?sourcei...op+performance

[Tupakk]

You could put in a work order to white list eqgame.exe at the IT dept. best idea!

Bring in a second machine that doesn't have their software on it and double down the network. Bring in a second router and configure it to block their visibility. Again though a good IT crew will spot the new device. Optional idea!

RDC won't work the way you really want it to and the high volume of packets will red flag IT anyways and prolly shut down the connection after a few day.

[maddysinko]

Hey, I need a cloud-based platform for file storage, and I was thinking of trying Dropbox. What do you think? Is it good?

[WarpathEQ]

I did the remote desktop connection via chrome on my chromebook in the office and found it unplayable, the input delay made it not really possible to play even for simple things like a scout roll during office hours.

Fast forward RDCs were shut down by IT (obvious security concern to let people RDC off of the work network) so now the only option to RDC in the office requires using my phone as a hotspot which basically killed it for even tunnel questing.