Gaming Latency Help.

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27 Feb 2004
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446
Location
Durham NE England
Basically my friend has some latency problems in Counter-Strike.

Me and my friend both live in the same street.

I ping 25-30 he pings 45-55.

I was on Pipex (2mb) and recently switched to IDnet Max (4.5mb) and have been pinging roughly the same throughout.

He was on Pipex (1mb) also and switched to Tiscali (5mb) and is still pinging rather high.

After a switch in Internet and still a much higher ping than mine (despite living 15ft away) we decided it might not be the ISP thats the problem.

We are pretty sure his interleaving is off. He has formatted his computer several times and even after clean installs of everything he still pings high.

He has tried two different routers Belkin realtech and Speedtouch.

His router is downstairs while his computer is upstairs and he connects via a 15M cat5 cable.

Does anyone know if putting a phone socket in his bedroom would reduce latency? since he could use a shorter cable. Also is there any difference between a cat5 cable and a ethernet cable? or are they basically the same cable?

Any help appreciated.

Thanks,

Majik.
 
Majik said:
His router is downstairs while his computer is upstairs and he connects via a 15M cat5 cable.

Does anyone know if putting a phone socket in his bedroom would reduce latency? since he could use a shorter cable. Also is there any difference between a cat5 cable and a ethernet cable? or are they basically the same cable?

That's the best way for it to be. You want the phone wiring to be as short as possible. The wiring on the LAN side isn't going to make any difference - the cable could be 100 metres long and it should still ping at sub 1ms. To test this, get him to ping the router's IP from the PC.

Ethernet is a general term - CAT5, 6 etc are all types of ethernet cable.

Also, just because you live in the same street, it doesn't mean that your phone lines underground/overground take the same route. However, it's more than likely to be an ISP thing rather than anything to do with the phone line itself.
 
Majik said:
I ping 25-30 he pings 45-55.
First of all, whats wrong with a ping of 45-55? That kind of ping shouldn't affect gameplay at all.

Majik said:
He was on Pipex (1mb) also and switched to Tiscali (5mb) and is still pinging rather high.
I'd say a switch to Tiscali was a very bad move if he's an avid gamer. I wouldn't be at all surprised if his choice of ISP is adding a few ms to his pings.

Majik said:
Does anyone know if putting a phone socket in his bedroom would reduce latency? since he could use a shorter cable. Also is there any difference between a cat5 cable and a ethernet cable? or are they basically the same cable?
Putting a new phone socket in his room is a rather drastic thing to do over a few ever-so-slightly high pings, and it wouldn't achieve anything. The cat5 cable will be adding less latency than the phone cable – and yes, cat5 = ethernet.

Why don't both of you try running tracerts to a game server then compare the results. That should give you an indication as to where the problem lies :)

*av
 
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Itll be tiscali, i had a never endng line of bother with tiscali and gaming pings. He wants to think himself lucky they are 50ish rather than the 300ish i got every night.
 
Sry to hijack the thread but im curious to my high ping problems too.

Was on aol 512k speed pings were better.

Was on nildram 1mb pings slightly worse by 10 or 20.

Was on nildram 2mb pings bit wose by 5 max more. unstable connection.

Now im with ..... and on adslmax sync at 4mb and interleaving is on. I got interleaving on (bt did it) cos i was having unstable connection as in disconects. Tho that was with a bt voyager 105 modem. I am using a better connection with router and cat5 cable compared to usb modem and using a buy at shop kind cheap telephone extension cable. Pings are 80/90/100/110 ish in games whereas in the past they were bit better.

Line stats are

55 att
5 snr
12 tx power

upload is

30 att (i think)
20 snr (i think)
19 tx power

Sam knows says 1.56km from exchange straight line. And checker says 2mb fixed able and 2.5mb adslmax.

I just moved to new isp and was supose to be put on fixed 2mb but was put on adslmax. Now i was furious at first as i hate the idea of max and was worried about interleaving as i play a lot of online games. But i kinda like the better upload ability and im getting about 90k more speed compared to 2mb so about 290k a sec on torrents etc.

My pings to anywhere is about 50 (even local newspaper site ip gives 60 ping) and ping in games using tracert is 50-70 and ingame its ping is like 90 ish to 100. Which is unplayable in mohaa speahead as i play on tsi server and theres a ping limit of 100 so i get booted off now cos of the pings.

What can i do to get better pings.

Isp moving didnt help kinda even tho diff packages and all. I duno about this 10 day adslmax period and how it effects pings. But would like to know if this could be why im getting awful pings.

If i remember i got about 40 less pings with aol on 512k lol.

Need any more info let me know.

---
---

Here is my tracert to tsi server for medal of honor spearhead.

Tracing route to www.86id.nl [80.69.77.160]

over a maximum of 30 hops:



1 58 ms 61 ms 56 ms twanghg2.ealing.broadband.bt.net [217.47.145.73]

2 55 ms 58 ms 54 ms twanghg2.ealing.broadband.bt.net [217.47.145.73]

3 56 ms 55 ms 55 ms doc-ciscsw1.core.twang.net [62.105.160.200]

4 54 ms 54 ms 55 ms doc-bgp1.core.twang.net [62.105.160.31]

5 55 ms 56 ms 54 ms v297.mpd01.lon01.atlas.cogentco.com [149.6.83.197]

6 57 ms 58 ms 54 ms v3490.mpd01.lon02.atlas.cogentco.com [130.117.2.218]

7 54 ms 56 ms 54 ms flag.lon02.atlas.cogentco.com [130.117.14.2]

8 56 ms 59 ms 77 ms so-2-2-0.0.cjr02.ldn001.flagtel.com [62.216.128.197]

9 69 ms 70 ms 69 ms so-1-3-0.0.ejr01.ams001.flagtel.com [62.216.128.186]

10 72 ms 70 ms 74 ms cust-mbl-14-kar1.flagtel.com [62.216.144.14]

11 73 ms 70 ms 70 ms v867.m7i.transip.net [80.69.67.220]

12 71 ms 71 ms 71 ms www.86id.nl [80.69.77.160]



Trace complete.
 
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Hi

If BT turned on the interleaving you can try asking your ISP to state that interleaving is NOT turned on no matter what. This will result in you getting a higher SNR level on the line which results in a slightly slower speed but without the added lag of interleaving so depends if you want the fastest ping times or the fastest line speed as to which way you want to go. Interleaving will add about 20ms - 40ms totally lag on the line.
 
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