Best Internet Speed Requirements for Live Dealer Casino

I have hosted guests from three continents in this room. The industrialist from Hamburg preferred cable because it was stable. The gentleman from Singapore used mobile hotspot and lost connection twice. The lesson: stability beats speed.

A live dealer game requires a minimum of 2 megabits per second to function. That is for standard definition video. Most modern games stream in HD, which requires 5 to 8 megabits per second. If you have 10 megabits, you are comfortable.

But bandwidth is not the constraint most people face. The constraint is latency. Latency is the delay between when something happens and when you see it. A live dealer game cannot tolerate more than one second of latency. If the delay is longer, you see the outcome before the dealer finishes the action.

0x01The Experience of Latency

When latency creeps above one second, the game becomes unplayable. The dealer places a card. You see the card land face-up on the table after a two-second delay. You have already placed your bet based on not knowing what the card was. The game collapses.

This is why fiber internet is preferred over satellite. Fiber has consistently low latency (20 to 40 milliseconds). Satellite has variable latency (500+ milliseconds) because the signal has to travel to space and back.

A mobile hotspot can have good latency if the signal is strong and the network is not congested. A mobile hotspot can also have terrible latency if the signal is weak. The variability is the problem.

0x02The Stability Requirement

The game does not care if your connection is 5 megabits or 50 megabits. The game cares if your connection drops. A brief disconnection (one second or less) will usually allow you to reconnect and continue. A prolonged disconnection will get your session terminated.

A casino's perspective: a stable 5 megabit connection is better than a fast 50 megabit connection that drops frequently. The stable connection gets complete hands. The fast connection with drops gets incomplete hands that have to be refunded.

This is why I recommend cable or fiber to guests. Both are stable. Both have sufficient bandwidth. Wireless is only acceptable if the signal is strong.

0x03The Testing

Before sitting at a live dealer table with substantial money, test your connection. Open a speedtest site. Record three consecutive tests. Your connection should be:

Download: 5+ megabits (10+ if you are streaming video on another device simultaneously) Upload: 2+ megabits (for chat interaction) Ping: Under 50 milliseconds (to Monte Carlo from North America, expect 80-120 milliseconds) Jitter: Under 10 milliseconds (measure consistency)

If your jitter is high, your connection is unstable. Unstable connections should be avoided. If your ping is very high, the dealer's actions will have a noticeable lag, but the game will still function.

0x04The Practical Setup

Sit in a location with good signal if using wireless. Keep other devices off the network. Close all other applications that use bandwidth. Disable auto-updates on your computer. These steps reduce network contention.

Use an ethernet cable if possible. A wired connection is more stable than wireless, even if the speeds are identical. The stability matters more than the speed.

If your internet is unreliable, do not play live dealer with money. The frustration of disconnects is not worth the experience.