Bandwidth usage per minecraft player

Question

I have a working MC server and multiple users who log on, however due to poor connection/excessive ping play can become unbearable

Does anyone know of a definitive or close approximation to the bandwidth required per player connected in a minecraft server?

Any information or links regarding this topic would be helpful :) thanks.

Edit

As has been mentioned, the amount will vary greatly.

Using the specific case of:

• 64 mobs hostile+passive
• 144 loaded chunks
• 4 players (not moving)

would someone with sufficient knowledge be able to break down net usage of this use case? e.g. usage per mob / usage per chunk...

and/or provide a total average usage of the above case

Please know that estimations WILL DO (per player)

Answer 1

If the chunks are not being updated, the players are still and the mobs are also still, it is only 1 byte per tick. So, 20 bytes/s.

If all the players are moving and so are the mobs, it is 42 bytes per tick per mob. So: 68 mobs * 42 bytes per tick * 20 ticks per second = 57.1kb/s.

Add in chunk updates: 68 mobs * 42 bytes per tick + 2 chunks per tick * 18 bytes + size of compressed chunk (16 kb for just 1 block 64x16x16) *20 ticks per second = 642.856 kb/s.

This is still very low usage because redstone would cause extra chunk updates as lava and water would. As well, only 64 mobs is quite few. Mainly, it is chunk updates that cause the problem. If the average player is exploring for new terrain, you can expect 10 or maybe 15 chunks to be updating at a time so then it becomes (using 15 as our number), 4.802 mb/s. It is all explained here: www.wiki.vg/Protocol

Answer 2

there are 8 bits (or 1 byte) of data in each block. Air blocks are not saved, so they dont count.. But if you had solid blocks all the way to the world ceiling, The maximum data per chunk is 16x16x256 bytes.. Or 65536 bytes = 65 Kilobytes. That is unless you have objects such as chests,etc in that chunk which holds more data due to the items in them. So basically 16 (FULL) chunks would be 1 megabyte... But do keep in mind, the average height of calculated blocks is a tiny bit over 1/3 of that... So on average, in a regular minecraft world, your looking at 1 megabyte per (around) 50 chunks. so roughly... 7x7 chunks = 1 megabyte. Broken down to Blockspace, that is 112x112 block area = 1 megabyte. So you can calculate based on your servers allotted render distance. The above answer is wrong in the sense that the calculations for spawning etc are not handled by the internet connection. It just says "monster is here". or "damage accrued" The calculations of movement is done at the server, then the x/y/z position is passed along which your computer then renders what the movement should look like from it's last known position.