Broadband optimized for Gaming :/?

[dlknight]

No, because Demon = Bulldog = Cable and Wireless = Electronic Arts / Sony Online Entertainment / <insert demonic evil cash cow institution here>

Seriously, awful awful company, awful awful awful with knobs on. Stay Away

I guess that they must have done something bad for you to feel this way?

I'm with xilo.net which is basically a reseller of Cable & Wireless LLU, I moved after being with several "uncapped" providers which used BT backbones. My local telephone exchange was over subscribed and trying to even browse the internet in the evening was impossible let alone trying to game or download.

After moving to C&W bandwidth and latency have been consistently high even during peak periods, and this is on the same exchange plus I get a higher sync rate now.

 

[Retromatic]

No, because Demon = Bulldog = Cable and Wireless = Electronic Arts / Sony Online Entertainment / <insert demonic evil cash cow institution here>

Seriously, awful awful company, awful awful awful with knobs on. Stay Away

+1 one of my old isp's. I had loads of problems with them. Out of all the isp's I've been with bethere was deffo my favourite.

 

[-Aura-]

Best thing I ever did to improve gaming latency was to (BT IP stream btw) contact my ISP and go from ADSL2+ Interleaved to G.Dmt Fastpath. Typical UK ping from 45ms down to 25ms.

I recently suffered a line fault. It was fixed but my line profile was tuck at 145k. Made no difference to gaming though, you will be gobsmacked when you realise just how little bandwidth is required for gaming. Often enough, there are four of us gaming on this connection (7.9Mbit up, 1Mbit down) with absolutely no slowdown.

When Demon say low latency, maybe it's just Fastpath in different clothing.

 

[Sleepery]

One of the best online experiences I've ever had was Tribes 2 64 player servers, over a 64k isdn line. I swear devs these days are just crap at writing decent netcode.

 

[arknor]

One of the best online experiences I've ever had was Tribes 2 64 player servers, over a 64k isdn line. I swear devs these days are just crap at writing decent netcode.

i remember the original counterstrike and having a 8ms ping but that was back when blueyonder ran all of the gaming servers on blueyondergaming

 

[Macky]

Lots of dodgy info in here. Your pings won't be effected by going from 20mbit > 50mbit (despite the increased upload speed). On ADSL the only thing you need to worry about is enabling fastpath on your line (not interleave).

The issues regarding oversubscribed centrals are real though...sadly :/ The decent providers (especially decent LLU ones, such as Be) won't have this issue though.

So should I request that TalkTalk put us on a fastpath? Our router is telling us that interleaving is on but it has been stable and fast enough for a good while now: ~35 ms ping to Maidenhead, 15mb dowm, 1mb up. Is it worth sacrificing some stability for maybe less latency?

 

[-Aura-]

Oh I agree. Self tweaking never did any harm, in fact, anybody that hasn't tweaked the Q3 based config_mp settings such as:

seta snaps "30"

seta cl_maxpackets "100"

... do so immediately!

A decent guide to shave a few more off here: http://www.speedguide.net/read_articles.php?id=2574

@Macky ... I'm 3km from exchange, if I can Fastpath and remain stable, anybody can! But reaching Talk Talk to ask in the 1st place might be your first stumblling block.

Even with all that done, I still get a 10ms overhead probably caused by crappy devving.

 

[Mean Mr Mustard]

So should I request that TalkTalk put us on a fastpath? Our router is telling us that interleaving is on but it has been stable and fast enough for a good while now: ~35 ms ping to Maidenhead, 15mb dowm, 1mb up. Is it worth sacrificing some stability for maybe less latency?

From personal experience, I'd say no. Used to use Be and they offered 3 choices of optimised for reliability, gaming performance or balanced. Tried the gaming option but got far too many disconnects for my liking. Really depends on your line quality though.

 

[Macky]

From personal experience, I'd say no. Used to use Be and they offered 3 choices of optimised for reliability, gaming performance or balanced. Tried the gaming option but got far too many disconnects for my liking. Really depends on your line quality though.

Think I'll leave it. Happy enough as me and my mum and dad can all simultaneously use the net and me game without problems.

 

[Rroff]

Its possible you will see slightly more stable pings (i.e. only 1-2% flux instead of 5% say) and maybe shave 1-2ms off your ping but all in all it won't be much different to normal broadband.

 

[billyboyd]

Zen Office package here, 20 to 30 ping and very smooth and consistent. Would not change it at all as i am very happy with Zen even though the package i am on is a lot more than double the Demon one.

100gb peak and unlimited off peak.. lol i wonder how long that will last before they start moving the goal posts.

 

[cainer]

Oh I agree. Self tweaking never did any harm, in fact, anybody that hasn't tweaked the Q3 based config_mp settings such as:

seta snaps "30"

seta cl_maxpackets "100"

... do so immediately!

unless things have changed in the last year since i stopped playing enemy territory (Q3 engine game)....
you forgot to mention that its not that straight forward, maxpackets are linked to FPS in the q3 engine, so if u used 125fps and MP @ 100 u'd actually only be sending 62-63 MP to the server (1/2 of 125)
theres a chart i can try to find that shows the TRUE maxpackets you are using on any Q3 engine game depending on frames per second chosen.


EDIT: wow cant belive i found it

http://www.challenge-tv.com/putty/q3table.html


.

 

[skullman]

One of the best online experiences I've ever had was Tribes 2 64 player servers, over a 64k isdn line. I swear devs these days are just crap at writing decent netcode.

I got myself an isdn line back in the day when I was playing q2, it gave me a lovely low ping - was like playing a new game.

 

[FrenchTart]

Its possible you will see slightly more stable pings (i.e. only 1-2% flux instead of 5% say) and maybe shave 1-2ms off your ping but all in all it won't be much different to normal broadband.

Not really. Depending on the level of interleave you could see anything from 4msec to ~40msec shaved from actual latency. This obviously wouldn't necessarily directly translate to ping reduction but you're likely to see something around the 10-15msec mark.

The points about line stability are the most important ones. The poster earlier that mentioned being 3km from the exchange probably wouldn't have a great experience with fastpath.

 

[Deadbeat]

 

[-BA-]

The glory days of Nildram were some of the best for me. Sub 15ms pings on ISDN and similar when I moved over to ADSL. Was the best ISP by a country mile 2000-2004. Contention is what has generally killed rock solid pings and it is only the bandwidth that cushions the blow.

 

[bigjimmyauk]

Just upgrade to 50MB, your upstream will then be 1.6MB which will give you lower pings. I've had pings as low as 5 while playing TF2 on 50MB Virgin Media.

+1 my 50meg has the lowest pings i've ever had usually between 5-10Ms

Oh and FYi i had a engineer out 2 weeks ago and said they are trialing 10Mb Upload and 100Mb download in selected areas and it's going quite well and it should be here by 2nd quarter next year

 

[BunnyKillBot]

Its possible you will see slightly more stable pings (i.e. only 1-2% flux instead of 5% say) and maybe shave 1-2ms off your ping but all in all it won't be much different to normal broadband.

There will always be a fair amount of fluctuation, that's just the nature of the internet. Plus dont forget that its a two way street; just because you have a super dooper low ping light speed quick broadband connection does not mean every opponent you meet in the games you play will. You are effectively limited by the state of the connection your opponents. Also, every single game in existence deploys latency compensation techniques which makes the whole point rather stale and irrelevant.

 

[cainer]

Plus dont forget that its a two way street; just because you have a super dooper low ping light speed quick broadband connection does not mean every opponent you meet in the games you play will. You are effectively limited by the state of the connection your opponents.

well we kick laggers off the server so its np4us also with most of the laggers its because they're playing a server thousands of miles away, not so much because of their low BB connection speed
if i had a pound for everytime some nub said.. hey your servers realy laggy, only to find they're trying to play on our UK server from brazil or japan or smth lol

 

[gatecrasherlok]

Hmm my 10 meg virgin broadband connection seems fine atm, not too sure this will make such a significant difference compared to what I have now other than more money thrown outta the window.