Pings

[Psyduck]

After reading some tips in the SFIV thread I thought it was worth having something posted in here - personally I'd say it's worth having a sticky about this, as despite considering myself pretty techy, I didn't really know about this.
Basically it seems ISPs tend to set up your connection to be nice and steady by default, rather than optimising for gaming. Depending on ISP a quick phone call, click of a button in your online profile, or long difficult series of phone calls may get them to switch you over to the slightly less stable but faster option.

Quote from Hype2k in the SFIV thread

Just to add to what I was saying earlier.

I think anyone who is on sky broadband should give them a ring and get the interleaving (max delays) sorted.
http://www.skyuser.co.uk/forum/sky-n...ed-gamers.html

So anyone on sky can apparently get pings down from around 80ms to around 20/30, which is an absolutely massive improvement.
I'm on BeThere, and found that I could just click an option in my online profile. My pings from speedtest.net (not very scientific I know) have gone down from 27ms to 16ms. Not a huge leap but a massive proportional change, and it's noticable in sfIV.

Might be worth other people sharing their experience of this with other ISPs? Also maybe worth collating a list of ISPs and best ping times, so anyone else on those ISPs can tell if something's up - ie if someone else on BeThere is getting 50ms they know they could be getting a better one...

Feel free to suggest a better place than speedtest.net to use as a benchmark, as everyone should try to use the same thing for consistency. Or just tell me this is old news and I'm stupid!

[phillai]

I'm on O2... Is there anything similar for me on O2?

[Hype2k]

The best way to test your ping is in command prompt, just type ping or tracert then any www.
ie ping www.jolt.co.uk or tracert www.ntsc-uk.co.uk

Oviously your ping will depend on how close you are geographically to the server you are pinging and how good your isp and weather or not you have interleaving turned on by your isp.

I'm about 100 miles from london and get about 13ms to jolt and 16ms to ntsc-uk i'm on nildram isp no interleaving, fastpath.

As long as your pings are around 30ms ish you shouldn't notice any problems with online gaming but once they start getting over 50ms you might have problems.

I was genuinely shocked to find out that my friends on sky broadband were getting pings of 80ms minimum to servers in london ! Then we found out it was because sky put interleaving on by default as explained here http://www.skyuser.co.uk/forum/sky-n...ed-gamers.html

Think half the problem with xbox gaming is, your connection is rated by bars most of the time not ping times. When you play quake or counter strike etc on the PC its always ping times, so at the end of the round if your ping is 80 and the top player has a ping of 30 on the score board you think to your self why is my ping so high and do something about it.....

I'm no expert on network code for xbox games or ps3 but I do know that on the PC playing quake etc on a good stable ping of around 30ms is a 100 times better than playing on a ping of 80ms or higher.

Also on SFIV on the xbox before my friend got his connection fixed he had a hard time finding any 3 bar connections and couldn't find any 4 bars, this was before the patch. I was getting 4 bar connections to people in France, holland and germany. So big difference.

[phillai]

Right, I got ya.

I just tried the CMD prompt and I got a ping of 21ms.

I take it this is OK?

[Soi]

I'm on BeThere, and found that I could just click an option in my online profile. My pings from speedtest.net (not very scientific I know) have gone down from 27ms to 16ms. Not a huge leap but a massive proportional change, and it's noticable in sfIV.

I'm on BeThere too and I think I made this change too a a while back by calling them (asking to be put on Fastpath).

What did you change in your online profile, as I don't see any options for ping etc.

EDIT: I guess it is "gaming mode".

[Psyduck]

yeah, gaming mode is the one, that plus lowering the other thing down to 3, can't remember what the option's called.

[helicon2]

Hey, I'm with Bethere also but can't find the options you're talking about. Can you direct me to where you find these settings.

My ping time is 58ms according to speedtest.net but want to see if I can get it any better.

Cheers

[JP]

I think the switch from Interleaving to fastpath is pretty simple with most ISPs these days. This is from my ISP's web site.
What is Interleaving?

Interleaving is a feature of Up to 8Mb Broadband technology which uses powerful error-correction algorithms to improve broadband speed and stability on long or noisy phone lines. It is employed on BT broadband lines.

Whilst interleaving increases both the speed and stability of your broadband service, it can also increase the delay (latency) of a broadband connection by up to 40ms. Whilst not noticeable to most users, this can adversely affect some highly delay-sensitive applications such as certain online games.

Though not recommended, if you wish interleaving to be permanently switched off on your line, please contact us, allowing five working days for the change to be enabled. If you subsequently find your line performance has worsened and decide you would like interleaving re-enabled, then please contact us as above.

It's worth trying as you nothing to lose but they do quite rightly point out that it's possible that you're going to be worse off.If you are then you just get it switched back again, no harm done.

[Psyduck]

On bethere, sign in to your member profile

https://www.bethere.co.uk/memberhome.do

the options are in the bottom right - go for "optimise for speed" and "gaming mode"

[Soi]

Yeah, found it now.

This is what is does:

http://www.beusergroup.co.uk/technotes/index.php/Line_Profiles

Mine was already on "gaming mode" (i.e. fastpath -which turns off some error correction).

I set mine to "optimise for reliability", as with fastpath, your connection is less stable (as no error correction). Whether you choose "optimise for speed" or "optimise for reliability" affects your bandwidth, not ping. Mine varies from about 12meg down for "speed" and 7meg down for "reliabilty".

I choose to have less ping (gaming mode) and the best reliability (don't want to drop out mid game) over more download bandwidth.

[helicon2]

On bethere, sign in to your member profile

https://www.bethere.co.uk/memberhome.do

the options are in the bottom right - go for "optimise for speed" and "gaming mode"

Thanks for that. It's strange that these options don't appear on my members centre page. I've raised a ticket with them to see why I don't get these options.

[Psyduck]

I think I read that you only get the options on the higher of the two tiers of price/bandwidth. Can probably just ask for it changed anyway if you're on the lower one though.