Selected ISP Support > Speakeasy > POP vs. NAP? (change in Denver, CO POP)

POP vs. NAP? (change in Denver, CO POP)

Your ping should have minimal increase - I go from southwest Ohio to Chicago (viaz a NAP)and have EXELLENT pings.
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Brian
America's Army Forum Moderator and America's Army Beta Tester

reply to UncleA
We used to route you directly to the Seattle POP - no NAP involved - but will now be turning our Denver POP into a NAP. Instead of jumping out onto the 'net directly from Denver, your traffic will be routed via a private circuit to the LAX POP and then hit the 'net. This change is anticipated to add less than 5ms to your present latency.
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Kat Oak
Speakeasy
kat@speakeasy.net

OK, thanks for the answer!

I'll still have to find some new west-coast-based gaming servers to migrate to; thats 5ms dedicated, non-routed to LA, then a few more (guessing 10-30 depending, since its now routed) back to Denver, and then my normal ping from here to the east coast...and, yes, that much latency does make a difference


This leads me to another question: Is there a DSL-centric book or guide that will describe the architecture and design-decision processes that go on? It seems that SE spent $$$ to place the POP in Denver, and it will cost $$$ more to convert it back to a NAP (of course, saving $$$ in trunk lines and reduced rackspace in the Denver POP CO)...


Thanks a lot Kat! These guys don't lie: you do rule. Tell your boss that I said you should get a raise (or better yet, send me his email addy and I'll tell him what a rock star you are: UncleAlbert@dracaena.net).


UA

So is this a permanent change? or just temporary until they get everyone's speed upgraded?

I suspect that while my latency to the POP won't increase much, I do all my gaming on east coast servers, and routing from Denver to LA then to NY is going to suck big time. I already have problems with certain servers that only talk to SE through San Francisco, I can't imagine how much worse it'll be when ALL east coast servers behave that way. (min ping 150 or so).

I'd rather be backhauled to Chicago or NY. One of the main reasons I signed up for speakeasy in the first place was because they had a Denver POP. If it's temporary, I'll ride it out.

If not, Comcast just installed fiber in my neighborhood. If speakeasy is gonna lower my performance this may finally be the push that sends me over to cable.

reply to UncleA
Looks like the Denver POP was converted to a NAP this am.

Initial results show a 25 ms first hop latency increase, and a 40 ms increase to the east coast. My speed tests don't show much of a change though. Overall the connection seems pretty responsive. I just hope tweaking on their end will reduce latency a little. I've e-mailed Kat to see if this is what were to expect going forward.

Old Line Quality - Denver POP
»/quality/nil/1232622

New Line Quality - Denver NAP
»/quality/nil/1237113

New Speed Test
»/speedtests/12···71071554

What is everyone else in Denver seeing?
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reply to UncleA
»/quality/nil/1223065 BEFORE

»/quality/nil/1237535 AFTER

OK I'm PISSED OFF. Why do they do this? They added 50ms to my average ping. NOW routes From East coast to LAX to Denver...just plain stupid. Quit messing with stuff..unless it makes it faster OK.
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Preconceptions of limitations are the stagnation of the mind.

reply to UncleA

Looks like they did this to save costs. I am sure backhauling over a private ATM link to LAX is cheaper than having a POP in Denver.. At least that's what I assume..

reply to UncleA
Typical rule of thumb is 2ms roundtrip for every 100 miles. Denver to LAX is 1050 miles driving or 845 miles 'as the crow flies'. So that would add 17ms-22ms just to hit your gateway.

reply to UncleA
I play AA - I can go from 90 ms ping to 300 ms. I now average about 175-220 (SCI servers have more ping than HomeLan) and have zero problems playing with 175-220 average. In fact I never even noticed when I had a 300 ms ping - I happened to glance at the ping on the score board.

I did online racing when I averaged 120-170 ms to the gateway (from Ohio to San Jose - the ISP I had lied when they said they had a POP in Chicago) and did not notice a ny problems...
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Brian
America's Army Forum Moderator and America's Army Beta Tester

Well, it looks like my first hop is now 45ms when it used to be 20. I'm extremely disappointed.

I used to ping 45 to servers in texas and 90 to servers in jersey. Now I ping 75 to my favorite tex servers and 140-150 to east coast servers.

I'm still waiting for an answer to whether or not this is permanent or temporary. I'm scheduled for the speed upgrade in march, if the POP is coming back at that time then I'll stay.

I thought the reason I paid a premium price was for premium service. If the company to which I pay a premium price is going to cut my performance back to save money, it's the exact opposite of what they need to do to keep my business.

I play first person shooters. Ping time is absolutely critical for a good gaming experience. Anything over 100 is pretty much unplayable (unless you're accustomed to it and like hovering around the bottom of the scoreboard). Adding to my ping time will lose me as a customer.

They do not change POP's to NAP's then back again on whims and AA is a FPS and a ping over 100-170 is easily playable. The affect is being overstated in my opinion....
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Brian
America's Army Forum Moderator and America's Army Beta Tester

reply to UncleA
CylonRed I dont play AA very much, howerver I do play other games where ping under 75ms is crucial. What if Speakeasy were to Yank Chicago and route you to NYC and tell me how you would feel about that?

A note I just E-mailed to KAT about this.
Hi KAT,

I really need to tell you(and the big bosses at Speakeasy) I am very upset over the recent decision to change the Denver POP to a NAP. My latency has gone up over 50ms from east coast locations. My speed has dropped over 300kbps to east coast locations. When I signed up with Speakeasy the SINGLE LARGEST consideration for me was the local Denver POP. I was NOT notified about these changes and I feel betrayed. The truth is I expected thing to get better here. The talk of improving equipment in all the POP's, my participation in the Gaming trail was supposed to be an effort to keep the gaming community in mind and to make our connections faster. The price reductions were nice...as a matter of fact, necessary for me to afford this service. However I am not willing to pay a premium(DSL GAMER package) for service that is no longer, in my opinion Premium. I am an online gamer, I play Battlefield 1942, Desert combat, and game with friends(that live here in Denver)on my connection here in Denver, this decision has ruined the fast ping times and speed. I hope the powers that be understand what the hell they have done and reconsider this change. I know that my next door neighbor is getting 25-50ms ping anywhere in the country 3000/256 with Comcast broadband right now for less than I pay now. I hope you can use some of your "magic" powers that get most problems resolved. I am asking you to please speak to the appropriate persons in charge of this.

Thank you for your time and consideration in this matter,

I have been routed from Dayton, Ohio to San Jose (where the POP for me was located) with another ISP before (and raced online with a 180-250 MS ping to that gateway with all servers on the EAST coast)... Been there, done that, had no real problems. AA is probably the most demanding FPS out - in terms of info sent and raw horsepower needed.
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Brian
America's Army Forum Moderator and America's Army Beta Tester

reply to Maxxxt

I agree. While I'm satisfied with the stability of my connection, I don't believe a 100+ east coast ping is worth $90 a month. Looks like I'll be looking for an alternative soon. Fortunately lots of alternatives in Denver.

I would like to know what happened to the "less than 5ms increase in ping time" as referenced by Kat above.

Covad might be able to reprovision the line to see if it better... You have her quote wrong as well... you forgot 'anticipated" - she guaranteed nothing as you seemed to imply.

I did not imply anything other than the fact that I will not pay $90 a month for 100+ ping times. My exact comment was she referenced an increase less than 5 ms. Did she not reference that?

I don't see anything in my post about a guaranty so please don't try to read my mind!

Additionally, if you read the posts, everyone in Denver is getting 35ms+ additional east coast latency as a result of the NAP (choosing my words carefully so I don't imply anything)

Shouldn't a company like Speakeasy know what the impact of changing from a POP to a Nap will be. If Scooby2 in his post above knows what the impact will be shouldn't Speakeasy?

BTW - I like Speakeasy and have been very satisfied with their service, but this has been very disappointing.

said by AuroraMike:

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My exact comment was she referenced an increase less than 5 ms. Did she not reference that?

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The change was 'anticipated' to add 5ms to the first hop. we are all seeing first hop ping times with at least 25 ms added. This in itself isn't horrible, but definitely not world class. However, add the time it takes to go from LA to NY instead of Denver to NY, it becomes unacceptable.

Does AA have antilag in it or something? Because while 150 ms ping times may be acceptable in that particular game, Every other FPS i've played, which includes Quake, Quake 2, Quake 3, all quake 3 mods (such as threewave), Unreal, Unreal tournament, etc. do NOT have antilag.

Therefore ping time adds directly to your reflex time. It is a big deal. If this were $30 a month Earthlink DSL I'd expect this kind of service. It's not. It's $65 a month Speakeasy, the gamer's ISP.

Sure, you can learn to predict 150 ms ahead, but when playing against someone with 50 ping, they have a full tenth of a second to react to you before you see them. It turns into a huge disadvantage.

Nowhere did I suggest this was being done on a whim, I was suggesting that they may be doing significant hardware upgrades and was asking if the POP would be restored after those upgrades are done. Considering my speed upgrade isn't scheduled until March, it makes sense to me that they are doing a truckload of work here.

And regardless of whether or not you think I'm overstating the importance of sub 100 ping, every dsl junkie knows that a 50 ms gateway ping is not a high performance connection. They also know that routing from the center of the country to one coast in order to get to the other coast cuts the end user's quality and benefits nobody but the provider.

I pay more than anyone I hang with online for my internet service and I have always had the slowest dl/upload speeds. I used to justify it with the low pings and high reliability. Now I have the highest pings around and only average dl speeds.

This feature list is not worth a premium price anymore.