Joe Rogan Installed a T1 Line at Home for Quake

In the 1990s, Joe Rogan got so hooked on Quake that a computer upgrade wasn’t enough. He had a T1 line installed at home to improve his connection. Recalling it with Kevin Rose in April 2016, Rogan said it had been worth the expense. Rose remembered those lines costing around $10,000 a month.

That’s a lot of money to put between yourself and a bad ping. But if you played online back then, you probably remember the frustration: you turn, fire, and wait just long enough to wonder whether the server saw what you saw.

Before the podcast, there was the studio LAN

It started with the writers on NewsRadio. In his 2024 conversation with Elon Musk, Rogan recalled joining their Quake games on the studio’s local network. Before long, he was deep into the hobby, even putting computers together with parts from Fry’s.

One game with people at work can do that. Soon you know the maps, want another match and start wondering what else you could improve in your setup. The game follows you home, along with everyone’s bragging rights.

The upgrade that reached outside the PC

Home was where the connection let him down. In episode #781 with Kevin Rose, Rogan described poor ping from his place in the Santa Monica hills. He couldn’t get cable service, so he went looking for something better.

The $10,000 monthly figure comes from Rose’s memory during that conversation. Rogan agreed the line was worth it, but they didn’t produce a bill. It’s best understood as their recollection of a very expensive upgrade.

A T1 ran at 1.544 megabits per second. That sounds painfully slow now. At the time, though, this was the sort of reliable, symmetrical connection businesses used. Rogan was bringing it home for deathmatch.

The appeal wasn’t just download speed. Ping is the time it takes data to make the trip to a server and back. A bigger connection won’t shorten every route, but when your current service feels terrible, finding a better one becomes a tempting project.

Why Quake made the delay matter

Quake gave you plenty of reasons to notice the delay. Someone appears around a corner. A weapon is just within reach. You get a shot off, or think you do, and the result comes back a beat later. In a fast fight, that beat feels enormous.

You could spend hours learning those dark corridors and still want one more match. After a bad encounter, you’d know exactly what you wanted to try next: a different route, a quicker turn, a shot you were sure you could land this time.

id Software was working on the connection problem too. Its QuakeWorld source archive includes client prediction work aimed at helping the game respond over a network. Players felt the problem immediately, and the programmers had to find ways to make it less intrusive.

An extravagant version of a familiar feeling

Most of us stopped at a new mouse or another stick of RAM. Rogan called about a line to his house. That’s the part of the story that still gets a laugh: the gaming setup had expanded well beyond the desk.

It’s an extravagant answer to a familiar complaint. Anyone who lost a fight to lag can understand wanting a better connection. Very few people took that desire all the way to a T1 installation.

Sources

• The supplied JRE #781 interview clip, for Rogan’s T1 account and the price discussion.
• The Joe Rogan Experience #781: Kevin Rose and its searchable transcript, around 1:52–1:54.
• JRE #2223 transcript, around 4:15–4:50, for the studio LAN and computer-building recollection.
• Cisco: T1/E1 and T3/E3 and connectivity and network service options, for the T1 rate and business context.
• id Software’s QuakeWorld source archive, for the multiplayer networking branch.
• Joe Rogan portrait by Rebecca Lai, via Wikimedia Commons.