Isp's Routing me out of London to Shefield, and they cant do nothing about it!!

[Rroff]

To be fair not all latency is equal (compared to the average ping number) - unfortunately this isn't a situation without precedent with BT - I used to have it back in the day:

BT Infinity & FTTx Discussion

How much extra for HD?

forums.overclockers.co.uk

Where I was being routed via places like Sheffield from South Somerset before getting to London! and even when the latency on paper was a similar number to more optimal routing it never felt as good to play on, sometimes you could measure/see more variance/jitter and it also exposed you to traffic conditions all around the country so you'd see more random ping spikes, etc. etc.

This is likely a BT problem (mostly) rather than down to the ISPs themselves (mostly) and only solvable really by badgering them until you get someone at executive level complaints on the case and even then they'll probably just special case your connection for however long that lasts for to avoid that routing.

 

[Caged]

If the OP is after help they will post a traceroute to the server they are having perceived latency issues with, if this is just a rant thread I'd appreciate if they could let us know so I can leave them to it.

 

[Rroff]

If the OP is after help they will post a traceroute to the server they are having perceived latency issues with, if this is just a rant thread I'd appreciate if they could let us know so I can leave them to it.

Nah this isn't just OP having a rant (though they might be) it is a bigger, though relatively rare/intermittent, problem with BT and cynically cheaping out on provisioning due to most people not noticing unless they are playing fast paced games and at least moderately good.

It isn't just latency issues to a specific server, all their traffic will be bouncing off a small number of BT nodes often Sheffield despite potentially being as in my case about as far from Sheffield as you can get.

I had a brilliant one with it back in the day, when I was directly assigned an ELC contact who was actually making an effort to fix it, and their request basically resulted in someone renaming the entry point to remove Sheffield from the name and claiming the problem was fixed :facepalm: probably in the hope I/we were just complaining and would go away :s

 

[Caged]

The reason I ask is that I don't believe an FTTC connection in London can go to Sheffield and then back to a London data centre and give a ping of 7ms when an ethernet service I have access to in Leicester is 4.3ms from bbc.co.uk. My suspicion is that this is a problem unique to this service being used, and it might not even have anything to do with Sheffield.

 

[Rroff]

The reason I ask is that I don't believe an FTTC connection in London can go to Sheffield and then back to a London data centre and give a ping of 7ms when an ethernet service I have access to in Leicester is 4.3ms from bbc.co.uk. My suspicion is that this is a problem unique to this service being used, and it might not even have anything to do with Sheffield.

I used to ping the Sheffield RAS or whatever it was at about 2ms from my dedicated server in London so it may be possible, though my routing via it was always at least 12ms, usually 15-17ms, sometimes as high as 25.

EDIT: Though in one of my old traceroutes:

8 10 ms 9 ms 9 ms acc2-10GigE-9-2-0.sf.21cn-ipp.bt.net [109.159.251.221]
9 19 ms 16 ms 15 ms core1-te0-0-0-6.ilford.ukcore.bt.net [109.159.251.157]

 

[Solz]

To be fair not all latency is equal (compared to the average ping number) - unfortunately this isn't a situation without precedent with BT - I used to have it back in the day:

BT Infinity & FTTx Discussion

How much extra for HD?

forums.overclockers.co.uk

Where I was being routed via places like Sheffield from South Somerset before getting to London! and even when the latency on paper was a similar number to more optimal routing it never felt as good to play on, sometimes you could measure/see more variance/jitter and it also exposed you to traffic conditions all around the country so you'd see more random ping spikes, etc. etc.

This is likely a BT problem (mostly) rather than down to the ISPs themselves (mostly) and only solvable really by badgering them until you get someone at executive level complaints on the case and even then they'll probably just special case your connection for however long that lasts for to avoid that routing.

Finally someone who know what they are talking about, rather then see things in black and white!

 

[Rroff]

Finally someone who know what they are talking about, rather then see things in black and white!

Unfortunately I've ran into this issue before and if you search these forums for BT and Sheffield you'll see while an edge case it isn't an entirely unknown problem with BT going back years and it seems still not gone away.

 

[Solz]

I might just try talk talk as maybe they can route properly as voda/plus cant do this because of how BT supply them, with the internet etc.. Its been like this for few years, and used to get a profile with isp's depending on your use case now its like you got whats given like it or lump it, gaming wise not to good I notice the difference in hit reg etc! not just a server thing as it happend all the time

 

[Rroff]

I might just try talk talk as maybe they can route properly as voda/plus cant do this because of how BT supply them, with the internet etc.. Its been like this for few years, and used to get a profile with isp's depending on your use case now its like you got whats given like it or lump it, gaming wise not to good I notice the difference in hit reg etc! not just a server thing as it happend all the time

Ironically, as they are now part of BT, I've seen more optimal routing on EE than BT, but not something I could guarantee will avoid this problem.

 

[ChrisD.]

I might just try talk talk as maybe they can route properly as voda/plus cant do this because of how BT supply them, with the internet etc.. Its been like this for few years, and used to get a profile with isp's depending on your use case now its like you got whats given like it or lump it, gaming wise not to good I notice the difference in hit reg etc! not just a server thing as it happend all the time

You seem to lack a grasp of fundamental understanding of how the internet works, no offence but throwing your toys out of the pram isn’t helping. If you want people to help you then at least show some understanding.

 

[Rroff]

You seem to lack a grasp of fundamental understanding of how the internet works, no offence but throwing your toys out of the pram isn’t helping. If you want people to help you then at least show some understanding.

I'm pretty rusty on the nuts and bolts myself, but this is a real issues within the BT network and quite a frustrating one if you have it as no one really understands it until they experience it for themselves and "complicated" apparently for BT to fix (I've had extensive discussions about it with a very knowledgable person within BT's executive level complaints team). The actual impact on multiplayer gaming, etc. goes beyond the face value ping numbers.

EDIT: I'm surprised it is still an ongoing issue though as the first time I encountered it was ~17 years ago.

 

[Solz]

You seem to lack a grasp of fundamental understanding of how the internet works, no offence but throwing your toys out of the pram isn’t helping. If you want people to help you then at least show some understanding.

No ones throwing anything out of the pram, maybe your knowledge is to basic to understand whats going on! and to be honest I don't think you could help anyone!

 

[Caged]

Give us one IP address you are having a "high" ping to along with a traceroute

 

[Rroff]

No human is able to differentiate ping under 30-40ms, once you go under that - it's indistinguishable from LAN, the input delay on peripherals and monitor is around 15ms....

When I had ADSL with interleaving on and solid 33ms latency I could definitely notice the difference in FPS games compared to fastpath and ~7ms latency and it would reflect in my performance in game and perception of "hit reg". For me it has to drop below ~20ms before I can't notice the difference and for other people will be different.

Though it gets a lot more complicated than that as differences in the whole setup and technologies involved can have an impact and even a small ms difference can push you over the boundaries of game update intervals, etc. etc. so even two people on the same average ping might not have the same experience.

 

[Felon]

For me it has to drop below ~20ms before I can't notice the difference and for other people will be different.

Nope.

 

[On Holiday]

Nope.

Hey, pro players will whine about anything

 

[Felon]

Ping is all in people's heads.

The fastest recorded reaction time is around 120ms (claims vary) but it's around that figure.

There's no way a difference in ping from 7 to 12ms means anything at all.

 

[Rroff]

Nope.

Sorry but having over 25 years experience of gaming on everything from LANs to dial-up I know the difference and been able to observe my performance over time periods of different quality connections, etc. etc.

Though with latency it is like frame rate/refresh rate as well - there is so much more to the story - for example 60Hz on an average monitor is a vastly different, much poorer, experience to 60Hz on a fast pixel response, variable refresh display, etc. etc. and sometimes you need a faster frame rate to get the same experience, or a lower ping to offset other inadequacies, etc.

 

[Rroff]

Ping is all in people's heads.

The fastest recorded reaction time is around 120ms (claims vary) but it's around that figure.

There's no way a difference in ping from 7 to 12ms means anything at all.

There is far more to it than reaction times - or no one would need less than 100-200ms latency.

(Many games use techniques like backwards reconciliation to try and compensate for latency but it still doesn't entirely offset for latency).

 

[Felon]

Sorry but having over 25 years experience of gaming on everything from LANs to dial-up I know the difference and been able to observe my performance over time periods of different quality connections, etc. etc.

It's all in your head.

Ping is like audiophiles with expensive cables.