 |
 | Semi751
join:2006-01-03
Waddy, KY | Re: no Sadly if I had ping problems I would consider giving it a try for one month but frankly I don't understand how this would work but who knows. | |
|
| splat121
join:2006-12-12
Yulee, FL | no. I feel that if it's possible to have a lower ping it should be my ISP's job to provide it, not some third party. | |
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| | 
jsimmons
Premium,MVM
join:2000-04-24
Falls Church, VA
| Re: no Unfortunately your ISP only controls latency and prioritization of packets through its own network - and then only to a point limited by physics and geography. And with perhaps strong peering agreements with performance clauses may have some small say in how packets are handled through adjacent networks. But it cannot guarantee any latency end-to-end over third-party networks and servers through which your gaming traffic flows and for which the ISP has no control..
Its kind of like traveling.... the cab company may guarantee getting you to the airport in a certain time, but it cannot guarantee how quickly the airline will get you to another city. Air traffic congestion around the airport, on the tarmac, weather, etc. are all beyond the control of the cabbie.
If some company can successfully negotiate an end-to-end latency SLA with all intermediate carriers for specific traffic and charge users a premium for it - more power to them.
But also remember the price of prioritizing one man's traffic is the de-prioritization of others', given fixed capacity.
--
"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not one bit simpler."- Albert Einstein | |
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Fluker
join:2005-04-07
West Lafayette, IN | Re: no Well put thank you for that. | |
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| | Coolhandler5
join:2003-05-16
Foresthill, CA | Right on the button!  | |
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| 
BIGMIKE
Premium
join:2002-06-07
Westminster, CA | FIOS internet finally became available at my residence. ... Low ping times as well.
--
Type "miserable failure" in Google | |
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| 
kyramilan
join:2006-11-26
Pensacola, FL | Nope. Not a gamer. | |
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| 
EnasYorl
Thieves World
join:2001-12-02
West | Not $15. Maybe $7.99 if it works for the servers I play on.
It is a novel idea. | |
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| 
batageek
Slave To The Duopoly
Premium
join:2003-01-25 | Re: This brings up the dreaded "Net Neutrality" issues for once, I agree with you... | |
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| | 
dr3yec
join:2002-12-19
00000 | Re: This brings up the dreaded "Net Neutrality" issues Yup for once, I also agree with TCH.  | |
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| | | 
Topmounter
Sent By Grocery Clerks
join:2001-02-20
Evergreen, CO | Re: This brings up the dreaded "Net Neutrality" issues This is EXACTLY why I am pro-competition and against government regulated "net neutrality".
Who defines "net neutrality", gamers? No, of course not.
I want 31 Flavors, not 31 scoops of vanilla. | |
|
| | | | moonpuppy
join:2000-08-21
Glen Burnie, MD | Re: This brings up the dreaded "Net Neutrality" issues When they put the same rules in place when celluar service first started in this country, then I will agree with you. | |
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| | | | |
| | | | rradina
join:2000-08-08
Chesterfield, MO
| I'm pro-competition too but until we have competition, don't we need some regulation to control the oligopolies?
Regarding prioritization, it's natural for every business to carefully utilize limited resources. Consider a grocery store that allocates some lanes to express, some to self-checkout and the rest for big shoppers. I think the idea is the big-box stores were losing to the convenience stores because the guy that only needs milk may not care that he pays $4.00 for a gallon if he can be in and out. But if he can go to the regular store and buy it for $3.00 a gallon and not wait behind someone with two shopping carts of groceries, it's a win for everyone.
Now consider what I hear are the desires of broadband last-mile providers. They too want to carefully utilize resources. But instead of making sure chatty but light bandwidth applications such as games and VOIP get good performance and FTP, bit torrent and long-winded HTTP traffic get second fiddle, only their own products get priority -- unless you pay to get equal footing. In my opinion, this is extortion. This would be similar to the grocery store only allowing you in the express lane if you buy their brand of bread, canned vegetables and potato chips. If you buy Wonder, Del Monte or Frito Lay, it's the slow lane for you! How is this different from a crime syndicate selling fire insurance at the end of a flame thrower?
But at least in the grocery hypothetical you know you're being screwed. With your ISP, you have no idea that your third party VOIP gets super low priority. Hell, they might even screw with you and prioritize ICMP above the RDP packets used by VOIP. If you ping, it looks great but your RDP packets will suck and make third-party VOIP impossible.
I'd love to get my cable company's phone service but in terms of features, my third party VOIP has more and it still costs less. If I already pay for high speed, I don't see why my local cable company (or AT&T) cannot offer a competitive product. Instead of matching price, they want to charge a premium to make sure my third party VOIP works and then their price and the third party VOIP are equal.
I wonder what would happen if one insurance company bought all the hospitals in America. If you bought their insurance, you received priority care in the emergency room and went to the top of any waiting list for surgery. | |
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| 
Wills
join:2001-01-03
Port Charlotte, FL
| Net Neutrality is a double edged sword.
While it will stop deals like this from being illegal, it will just cause the providers to give every unoptomized connections like they do now.
The answer isn't net neutrality or gaming accounts. The answer is putting your foot in your providers asses and get them to give everyone optomized connections. There's no reason we shouldn't given the outrageously high prices we pay for what little speed we get. | |
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| | rradina
join:2000-08-08
Chesterfield, MO
| Re: This brings up the dreaded "Net Neutrality" issues I agree about the double edged sword. I also agree providers should provide everyone a decent connection, reasonable speed and a reasonable price. The problem is, what's reasonable? I propose that only competition defines what's "reasonable".
Consider the average American car company (Ford and GM). If the German and Japanese companies didn't provide competition, AMC might still be in business and there might even be a modern-day Pacer on our roads. The Maverick and Pinto might still be killing people when rear-ended. Chevy trucks might still be exploding when hit from the side.
We need regulation until there is competition. If there's competition for the last mile (and not just DSL or cable -- perhaps three or four WiMax / Cell providers too), then when we don't like the pings on our cable or DSL connection, we can try a wireless or fiber connection. If we don't like that we can try something else. Now there's motivation for each company to improve its service and reduce costs -- or else lose customers.
I just don't think that exists even in areas where FTTC/FTTH is competing with cable. | |
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|
EnasYorl
Thieves World
join:2001-12-02
West
 ·Verizon Online DSL
1 edit | said by TKJunkMail  :Special higher prices for better service brings the whole "Net Neutrality" issues in to play. If net neutrality legislation were to pass as currently proposed, deals like this would be illegal. In this case it's a bit Gray, cause your paying to get on basically a 2nd ISP's Network, whereas Net neutrality is charging for certain traffic priorities for people on their network.
This is more of paying for a Toll Freeway to get somewhere faster then back roads.
I think it's interesting to have a choice to try a different or direct route to reduce hops to a gaming server.
I think the cost is too high. I think $5 to 8 bucks should be the pricing. | |
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| |
Aleck79
join:2003-07-23
College Station, TX
| The Speed of Light is Still the Major Bottleneck When you really get down to it, you can have all the best "prioritization" and "optimized routes" you want, but in the end you can't transmit faster than the speed of light.
The well coded games have turn the lag issue into one of the least important over the years. By using techniques such as prediction algorithms and smoothing, users don't feel the lag like they did in the past. | |
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| 
FiL
Premium
join:2005-08-16
Silver Spring, MD
| Re: The Speed of Light is Still the Major Bottleneck I play ut2k4 religously...
Ping sometimes messes things up but its MY connection doing so, PL'ing somewhere along the line. Its more so hardware that you gotta be concerned about these days as opposed to net connection. A good graphics card and some ram would prolly eliminate half of the "Im laggin!" cries. | |
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| | ender7074
join:2006-11-21
Saint Louis, MO
·AT&T Southeast
| Re: The Speed of Light is Still the Major Bottleneck Yah, I got into that argument with someone in WoW. They said the "server lagged" when there were a bunch of effects on the screen. I said that I had no lag at the same time and that it was probably his graphics settings are too high or he needed more ram. He insisted that it was Blizzard's servers selectively causing lag for him only. Idiot. Come to find out, he was on a GeForce4 Ti4600 and had 512 megs of ram. I dont remember the proc but the card sticks in my mind since I had one years ago... Gotta love people like that...... | |
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Fluker
join:2005-04-07
West Lafayette, IN
| Re: The Speed of Light is Still the Major Bottleneck well. a computer that can't render a game quickly is one problem.
But I definitely feel the difference where I am now. I used to have no clue what "leading off" was in halo because with comcast I had 11-30ms pings.
Now at my new place with only no name 384/128 internet @ 90-120ms ping people walk circles around me like I used to them.
that guy with the 4600 probably has some local issues but it's also possible there is a bottleneck somewhere that is keeping him behind the rest of the game. | |
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| mobbo
join:2005-04-13
Denton, TX
 ·Verizon FIOS
| LOL I totally feel ya. I used to work at a datacenter here in Dallas and we received a complaint from a guy in the UK that his ping was in the 100's... which, after doing calculations, turned out the be the best possible ping limited only by the speed of light.
As usual with about 99.9% of customers, he didn't grasp the concept even after we did the math.
So naturally I told him to put in a support ticket with God asking to speed up the speed of light. That should fix the problem. | |
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FiL
Premium
join:2005-08-16
Silver Spring, MD | Re: The Speed of Light is Still the Major Bottleneck Stupid Speed of Light...
Cant you go any friggin' faster? I mean Im PAYING for this!  | |
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batterup
I Can Not Tell A Lie.
Premium
join:2003-02-06
Netcong, NJ
clubs:
·Verizon Online DSL
| Re: The Speed of Light is Still the Major Bottleneck said by FiL :Stupid Speed of Light... Cant you go any friggin' faster? I mean Im PAYING for this! Actually yes you can by warping the space time continuum. What better reason to warp space then to be able to play a game. | |
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FiL
Premium
join:2005-08-16
Silver Spring, MD | Re: The Speed of Light is Still the Major Bottleneck Cold Case solved...
How much a month does time-folding cost?
It ain't no floozy ISDN-from-Nigeria scam, is it? | |
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batterup
I Can Not Tell A Lie.
Premium
join:2003-02-06
Netcong, NJ
clubs:
·Verizon Online DSL
| Re: The Speed of Light is Still the Major Bottleneck said by FiL :Cold Case solved... How much a month does time-folding cost? It ain't no floozy ISDN-from-Nigeria scam, is it? I trust you so I will fold time for you. Please wire 10,000 US dollars to my private Swiss bank account to cover the paper work. | |
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LilYoda
Feline with squirel personality disorder
Premium
join:2004-09-02
Mountains
| Re: The Speed of Light is Still the Major Bottleneck Add serialization delays for at least 4 devices on the way, and you're getting in the hundreds...
100ms transatlantic sounds real good to me... I regularly see them around 150 to 200ms with all the hops in the way...
--
"the two most abundant things in the universe are Hydrogen and stupidity." (Harlan Ellison) | |
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| 
Anonymous_
Anonymous
Premium
join:2004-06-21
127.0.0.1
clubs: | That is Why you increase the Speed of Light | |
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inteller
Sociopaths always win.
join:2003-12-08
Tulsa, OK | tiered routing already exists in todays world Sad though that you have to PAY to get the best route between two points. I guess we get to pay for lazy network engineering now?
--
"WHEN THE LAUGH TRACK STARTS THEN THE FUN STARTS!" | |
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| RJ44
join:2001-10-19
Nashville, TN
| Re: tiered routing already exists in todays world said by inteller :Sad though that you have to PAY to get the best route between two points. I guess we get to pay for lazy network engineering now? There ain't no such thing as a free lunch. (With apologies to RAH) | |
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| Tikker_LoS
join:2004-04-29
Regina, SK
·SaskTel Saskatchewan
| said by inteller :Sad though that you have to PAY to get the best route between two points. I guess we get to pay for lazy network engineering now? it has absolutely nothing to do with lazy network engineering
the internet was never designed for low latency gaming | |
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| | 
BodyBumper
join:2004-06-21
Beverly Hills, CA
| Re: tiered routing already exists in todays world said by Tikker_LoS :said by inteller :Sad though that you have to PAY to get the best route between two points. I guess we get to pay for lazy network engineering now? it has absolutely nothing to do with lazy network engineering the internet was never designed for low latency gaming or streaming audio/video, images, email, etc.
--
"War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength." | |
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FiL
Premium
join:2005-08-16
Silver Spring, MD
| no I wouldn't pay for better ping.
When asked why a solid server is laggin', I simply say "its not laggin' for me...your connection sucks."
So basically, hi-ping is USUALLY your own fault. I highly doubt this company can decrease ping times. And hope it will not because this is another notch in the 2 tier system some tube-heads want to see happen. | |
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| BuzzDar
join:2006-01-28
West Frankfort, IL
 ·magicjack.com
| Re: no I know i for one Already pay a higher price for my cable internet though mediacom to get faster speeds (15/1) i for one WOULD NOT pay anything for to get a better ping time i think if mediacom would offer something like that i would get it with the package i have now.
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»www.mediacominternetsucks.com my mediacom internet complaint blog | |
|
ender7074
join:2006-11-21
Saint Louis, MO
·AT&T Southeast
| Hell no! Having worked for Charter for 3 years in the internet department let me just say that this is a load of crap. They honestly expect me to believe that the SAME equipment that barley ran before is going to provide some sort of "improved" ping times? There were areas of St. Louis that went down on a daily basis. I'm sure those people are willing to pay more..... I'm one of the lucky ones that have a fairly stable connection and there's no way that I'm going to pay them more than the already expensive prices they charge. You can bet I'm going to be watching ping times to see if I get a degradation in service. Very poor idea and its no surprise to me to see it implemented by a very poor excuse of a company. | |
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| 
exactly323
@vif.net
| Re: Hell no! Exactly! They aren't going to make the existing 'pings' better, they are just going to degrade the people that don't pay.
after all, ping rates aren't listed in the TOS.
And, nobody is going to know better, except the tech-savvy users here, and game players with crappy pings.
hopefully those people that are affected, have a 2nd ISP to goto, that doesn't do that sort of thing. | |
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| | ender7074
join:2006-11-21
Saint Louis, MO
·AT&T Southeast
| Re: Hell no! Our default reply when we would get calls about ping is to tell them its not Charter's problem. We would test the ping times within the network and basically tell them tough cookies. As bad as their internet support is now, I cant wait to see how they handle this. I still have friends that work there and some of the stories I hear are just incredible. Makes me glad I jumped off that sinking ship. Just one more way Charter is trying to nickle and dime its customers. | |
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DaSneaky1D
one wall to block them all
Premium,MVM
join:2001-03-29
The Lou
 ·Charter Pipeline
| Charter's Peers are the problem! When I game on my Charter connection, my pings are always extremely low. I mean, like 20ms.
If you look through the Charter forum, though, you'll (usually) see people with 300ms at the upstream hand-off. You can have 50 routers between you and the destination, and still end up with a decent latency. Minimizing peers and optimizing routes is snake oil.
Until Charter fixes their own internal problems (upgrading their upstream bandwidth), this is a thorough waste of money.
You can't upgrade your baseline speed to 3mbps and not expect to do any other work simultaneously
--
:: my trivial ramblings :: | |
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|
FiL
Premium
join:2005-08-16
Silver Spring, MD
| Re: Charter's Peers are the problem! heh. Its crazy how online gaming has become one the best teachers in Proper-Net-Connection 101.
Long live multiplayer gaming...Its your internet diagnostic tooly, your teacher, mentor, lover, multi-part vitamin...
All that good stuff the ISP's don't want it to be... | |
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nuftjedi
formerly nuftcrow
join:2000-09-11
Baltimore, MD
clubs: | not me what a joke | |
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kd6cae
P2p Shouldn't Be A Crime
join:2001-08-27
Lancaster, CA
·RoadRunner Cable
·DSL EXTREME
| suboptimal routing I don't see how a company can decrease ping times if your pings already aren't the greatest. A while back, the charter connection I use had very nice routes to most locations here in Southern California, since the route would go directly over level3's backbone, and most sites around here connect with level3 as well. I use to get a nice 25-35MS ping to www.ucr.edu which is right here in Riverside, a couple networks away. Now however it seems all traffic is being routed out Charter's AT&T connection, and now I kid you not, the ping time to the same site mentioned above is now between 77 and 83MS! That's the kind of ping I should be getting to sites in Chicago, not sites here in Southern California! And yes, ping does effect speed in my experience. Charter has a connection to level3, I hope they'll begin using it again, because that'd be the best route to sites in this area. | |
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| 
somitho
JNCIE
Premium
join:2004-08-17
Richmond, VA
 ·Verizon BroadbandA..
| Re: suboptimal routing Well heres the easiest way I can explain it, and let you grasp it.
AS16787 (Charter National) has transit from AS7018 (ATT), AS701 (VZ Business), and AS209 (Qwest). AS22291 (Charter Los Angeles) has transit from AS7018 (ATT), AS209 (Qwest) and AS16787 (Charter National). Settlement based peering to AS3356 is available to AS16787 (Paid peering) meaning they see strictly Level(3) routes.
AS6106 (Cal Riverside) has 2 transits; AS2152 and AS2153 both cal state networks. I see AS3356 over AS2152, but not AS2153. Along with a number of other transit uplinks, and peers.
Charter very likely is running OSPF and looking for the quickest way to get it off the network, not the most efficient aka deflection routing or hot potato. As with 95% of networks.
Cal Riverside probably is using MEDS to determine how they want people to access the network. Giving priority to peers first, and then transit; and then cheaper transit compared to more expensive transit. AT&T is very likely cutting them a hell of a deal for being a cal based school.
Charter could solve this by just peering with UCal Riverside directly, or the cal state network.
What GameRail has done, is nothing new at all. It's simply optimizing the routes using cold potato routing to find the BEST route rather than the quickest route. You'll see Charter control the route as long as possible, and then hit a GameRail pop which will probably have 10-12 uplinks and lots of peering. GameRail might peer directly with the major game server players, managed hosts; or be within a few hops by using its uplink as a peer/transit provider. (See ATT Managed Services aka ATTENS for an example regarding Blizzard and Sony)
Read up on OSPF, MEDS and BGP for further information.
--
"If everyone is thinking alike, someone isn't thinking." General George Patton Jr | |
|
notmebubba
@comcast.net
| Let's be honest here... Gamers ain't exactly rocket scientists... I mean they are pretty lame and don't have a life, so yeah a lot of them are dumb enough to piss away an additional $15/mo for a perceived faster Ping, even if in reality it isn't any faster. I mean they are lamers after all - what would you expect from these socially challenged people? Obviously they have money to piss away on games but they can't buy a clue. Go figure. | |
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moonpuppy
join:2000-08-21
Glen Burnie, MD | If they won't guarantee speeds....... ....what makes you think they will guarantee ping times? An extra $15/month for "best effort?"
 | |
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| 
dvd536
as Mr. Pink as they come
Premium
join:2001-04-27
Phoenix, AZ
| Re: If they won't guarantee speeds....... said by moonpuppy :....what makes you think they will guarantee ping times? An extra $15/month for "best effort?" it would be just another pure profit center.
--
You can never be too rich, too thin or have too much Bandwidth | |
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| | omniscient
join:2002-10-29
New Orleans, LA
| Re: If they won't guarantee speeds....... Isn't that the point of business? Providing what a customer believes is a service worth their money? As long as the business does not lie about what they provide I see nothing wrong with that. The responsibility should fall to the customer to discern whether its worthwhile or not. | |
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| | | moonpuppy
join:2000-08-21
Glen Burnie, MD
·Verizon Online DSL
| Re: If they won't guarantee speeds....... Under the Terms Of Service used by many high speed providers, legally, they can provide dial up speeds and they are still within their right to collect money from you. If you are under contract, you could endure 11 months of crappy service without recourse. Read one when you get the chance for a laugh. | |
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| 
TK Junk Mail
Go ahead, make my day
join:2006-07-30
Ocean Gate, NJ
| Comcast: "Thanks for calling Comcast internet support, how can I help you today?"
Customer: "I'm trying to play WoW and my pings are tEh suck"
Comcast: "Well sir, the TOS you are under does not guarantee good ping times. If you would like, for $15 more a month, we can upgrade you to our l33t package with better pings"
Customer: "Cha, WTF!!??!!" | |
|
omniscient
join:2002-10-29
New Orleans, LA
| Possible but unlikely Yes it is possible to SLIGHTLY improve latency time with regards to actual routing by increasing priority of UDP packets...but its slight. The 25%-75% improvement is a hyperbole at best. If you actually do a visual route trace when pinging a server, often times you will see your packets head out in the entirely wrong direction then bounce around a few hops then head to the server. What they are proposing is for the extra fee, they will try(doubt it will happen) to use prioritization to force the routers to route the packets in a shortest distance to destination path. Yes it is possible, but getting it to actually work correctly? Doubtful. There was a west coast DSL company that "guaranteed" best routing to game servers if you bought their game-tier DSL, the name eludes me now but most of you know the company. To all of you that say the only limiting factor is the speed of light, yes that is the greatest issue, but poor routing (and the transmission delay tacked on from each router(admittedly minimal but when every ms counts...)) is still common place and many ISPs still do not care if your ping is "too high". | |
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|
FiL
Premium
join:2005-08-16
Silver Spring, MD | Re: Possible but unlikely Thats pretty tight...
15 bucks a month for these guys to put up their "best effort" in "trying" to speed up packets that can't travel any faster. LOL. | |
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| | omniscient
join:2002-10-29
New Orleans, LA
| Re: Possible but unlikely The whole issue is routing, not "speeding up packets". Less routers to pass through and a more direct path to the destination is what they are claiming, which would work...but its not that simple. Dealing with network congestion and programming the router to intelligently decide which is the best path for each UDP packet can be a complicated matter. It's not impossible...just not feasible I would imagine. The net is too convoluted to implement this in such a way as to fulfill their claims. I will be quite curious to see how well they pull this off, if at all. | |
|
whizkid3
Premium,MVM
join:2002-02-21
Queens, NY
·Earthlink Cable Mo..
1 edit | Pay 15$ monthly for simply turning off interleaving??? quote:
by "increasing the quality of the transmission you receive through your current broadband provider."
In actuality, the quickest way to decrease ping times, is to turn off or reduce the error correction in your cable modem.
This is most likely why they will need deals with the broadband provider, as opposed to the major backbones to give priorty routing. It certainly will not improve the quality of the transmission; but will speed it up by reducing the latency that is inherrent in coding and error correction schemes.
I'm sure they will also assign your game traffic a higher QOS through broadband provider routers as well. | |
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| omniscient
join:2002-10-29
New Orleans, LA | Re: Simply turning off error correction Games generally use UDP... | |
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| |
whizkid3
Premium,MVM
join:2002-02-21
Queens, NY
·Earthlink Cable Mo..
| Re: Simply turning off error correction Except that the error correction I am referring to is layer 1, and has nothing to do with higher layer protocols such as UDP or TCP. In the case of cable & DSL modems, it is know as interleaving.
The broadband modem (and its counterpart at the other end) basically store blocks of raw information. This is because of the sometimes noisy analog channel (coax cable or dsl line) that it must pass through. When enough bits and blocks are collected, the modem checks for block and burst errors, and makes corrections if possible. Only then are these blocks sent on to the ethernet side of the modem. The time it takes to store, check and forward this raw data is the major part of the latency on this hop.
There is a ton of links regarding this subject at the following post:
»Re: DSL and Cable Latency | |
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| | | omniscient
join:2002-10-29
New Orleans, LA
| Re: Simply turning off error correction Thank you for explaining that. It has been a long time since I studied network protocols. I often forget that cable/dsl work on the same basic principles as all other networks. I apologize if my previous response seemed condescending, it was not intentional. I read it over again and felt as though I should apologize. | |
|
batterup
I Can Not Tell A Lie.
Premium
join:2003-02-06
Netcong, NJ
clubs:
·Verizon Online DSL
| Read and learn. If you read their web page it explains it all. They have a private network to game servers so game packets do not enter the public internet. They need a deal with ISPs so the ISP will rout game traffic to the private network not to the public internet. Do you really trust politicians ability to write a law that will exempt this form net-neutrality laws? | |
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| omniscient
join:2002-10-29
New Orleans, LA
| Re: Read and learn. Sadly, I doubt any of us read it, hence the speculation. In that sense it would be possible to control congestion and use routing algorithms optimized for shortest path for UDP packets, being that it is their network and much less "patchworked" than a public infrastructure. An interesting idea, but if they can not hold to their promise...gamers are not too forgiving after all. | |
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| |
batterup
I Can Not Tell A Lie.
Premium
join:2003-02-06
Netcong, NJ
clubs:
·Verizon Online DSL
| Re: Read and learn. said by omniscient :Sadly, I doubt any of us read it, hence the speculation. In that sense it would be possible to control congestion and use routing algorithms optimized for shortest path for UDP packets, being that it is their network and much less "patchworked" than a public infrastructure. An interesting idea, but if they can not hold to their promise...gamers are not too forgiving after all. If it is a month to month plan no problem, cancel it. | |
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| | | omniscient
join:2002-10-29
New Orleans, LA
| Re: Read and learn. The hardcore gamers I knew when I played would not forgive that easily. They would yell and scream and slander the company to anyone that would listen if they did not receive the promised ping. Gaming websites would batter them with stories of how they failed to keep their promises etc. It would become a nightmare for them if they promised the moon and did not deliver. | |
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| 
ssj4android
Redefining Reality
join:2002-04-14
Wyoming, MI | Which game servers though? It seems like this could actually make the ping worse to some server. Most games I play are peer to peer, so I definitely wouldn't buy this. | |
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deadi
Premium
join:2001-08-26
Perry, OH
| PFFT! Snake oil! The only ways to improve ping that I know of on someones line is to
1, provide a bigger pipe(lower saturation on an over subscribed loop).
2, Fix crappy phone/cable lines(interference).
3, Move the equipment closer to the user(signal quality due to distance).
Some people with DSL have the option to enable "fastpath" which turns off error checking between the modem and the DSLAM, which is good if distance and line quality is not a factor. I have had this done and ping greatly improves.
I seriously doubt they will improve your ping using the first three methods for for what amounts to 15 dollars a month from a few gamers on a single loop.
They should be providing good service to all regardless. I think they will be making all kinds of excuses to raise prices in the future until they get what they want with "Net Neutrality", with no thought to what the people want.
I watched "The Aviator" yesterday and can't help but see similarity's to the big businesses getting there way with Congress and the American people.
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batterup
I Can Not Tell A Lie.
Premium
join:2003-02-06
Netcong, NJ
clubs:
·Verizon Online DSL
| Re: PFFT! said by deadi :Some people with DSL have the option to enable "fastpath" which turns off error checking between the modem and the DSLAM, which is good if distance and line quality is not a factor. I have had this done and ping greatly improves. Your understanding of interleaved/fastpath is as flawed as the rest of your understanding.
An interleaved setup sends packets interleaved with other packets, thus longer ping times. Fastpath sends the packets together so one gets lower ping times but is susceptible to greater data loss. On a marginal loop interleaved reduces data loss. | |
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RARPSL
join:1999-12-08
Suffern, NY
| said by deadi :Snake oil! The only ways to improve ping that I know of on someones line is to 1, provide a bigger pipe(lower saturation on an over subscribed loop). 2, Fix crappy phone/cable lines(interference). 3, Move the equipment closer to the user(signal quality due to distance). I'll add some more.
4) Use your own network to handle the session for as long as possible instead-of/before handing the connection to another network. This is due to IPv4 not having any way to do end-to-end priority for a session.
5) Switch to a IPv6 session since IPv6 DOES allow for end-to-end priority (so that the requested priority is preserved as the packets move from network to network). | |
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ColorBASIC
8-bit Fun
Premium
join:2006-12-29
Corona, CA | Perhaps with an SLA It would depend on what happens if they don't deliver it. | |
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InFloW
join:2002-08-10
Fergus, ON
·Cogeco Cable
| Interesting What they are doing is providing better routes because ISP's generally will not fix routing issues. By routing issues I mean instead of using local peering they have they send it on their network cross country then back again. For example I've seen ISP's in california send users to tx,ga,ny then back to ca. These are routing issues whether people want to admit them or not. What's worse is when the return route does not even leave the state.
I'm pretty skeptical on if they can improve things. Most ISP's are pretty good bandwidth wise and pretty diverse as is. The issue is choosing the best bandwidth for the routes is the problem. They could accomplish quite a bit by using something like an Internap FCP Hardware (gathers data and attempts suggests better routes). So I guess GameRail is really their solution of giving someone else the fun of trying to find the best route.
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Chkgrniv
Premium
join:2005-12-22
Fayetteville, NC
| Gamerail.com I went to their website. From what I read I believe you are paying for access to their private backbone. Therefore you are avoiding some of the hops and network congestion of public backbones. By keeping it private they can control who has access to it and what they hook up to it. So here what they have to say about it.
"First and foremost GameRail will improve your “latency” (network delay) to connected game servers by providing an optimized path. The total latency for a given server is created by a number of factors including the number of network hops, the presence of network congestion (e.g. more traffic than a given network segment can sustain) and the quality of the handoff from one network to the next in a given route. This last item is of particular importance as difficulties most commonly occur when traffic leaves one institution’s network and travels onto another.
Sometimes the route to a given server on the Internet will seem completely illogical. For example, if you live in St. Louis and seek to reach a server that is also in St. Louis your data might first travel up to Chicago—or worse, even half way across the country—in order to reach the closest interconnection point between two networks along the path. In fact, the total distance of a network path plays a critical role: the speed of light adds about 8 milliseconds (ms) of delay for every 1,000 miles of travel through the glass medium of a fiber optic cable. Thus, a coast-to-coast connection of 3,000 miles will have an absolute minimum round-trip delay of 48 ms prior to adding in other considerations. Further, even under ideal circumstances each piece of network equipment along a path creates a bit of additional delay during the process in which it converts data packets from optical to electrical format, inspects the packets, routes them toward their destination and potentially converts them back to optical format. While GameRail can do nothing about the speed of light, it improves upon the haphazard nature of standard Internet connectivity by routing your gaming traffic onto its optimized network and thus reducing the number of hops, the attendant opportunities for quality degradation and the nonsensical routing often experienced on the Internet.
GameRail will also improve upon packet loss caused by network congestion and a phenomenon known as jitter. Packet loss, the failure of portions of a data stream to reach their destination, is typically caused by over-saturated network links or overburdened network routing equipment. Although data is sometimes discarded outright due to a lack of capacity, in other cases a congested network link will cause jitter: a variation in the delay of different packets within a data stream causing them to arrive out of order. In order to minimize network delay on well performing networks, a vast majority of games are designed using a protocol that does not allow for the reordering of such out-of-sequence packet streams. Instead the disordered packets are simply dropped creating further packet loss. GameRail avoids this situation entirely by providing an optimized, un-congested path to connected game servers.
Seems like it could work. But I'm no network engineer. | |
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Dan46456
@enta.net
| Re: Gamerail.com This is nothing new!! This is what Wireplay used to be like about 7 years ago when gaming started to take off on the internet. Back then you dialed into their network (which was only local to the UK) and then once in there you connected to their game servers and it did result in lower pings it was very good and you didn't have to pay anything only the phonebill.
Wireplay still exist today but now their servers are open to everyone and the pings are similar to other servers. | |
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acid343211
Hallo lisa Aus Amerika
Premium
join:2001-08-31
Byron, GA | NO NO | |
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join:2002-10-29
New Orleans, LA
| Why should they be doing it? The whole point of broadband from a corporate perspective is surfing and downloading, gaming is a small concern. As long as your download speeds are consistent and your connection stable, they have fulfilled their obligation to the user. If the company touts specific or lower than X pings for online gaming, then yes, they are responsible for such, but unless they do, then there is no room for complaint. | |
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ih Pets
join:2004-02-07 | Its always about the ping And never about the Pong | |
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Will You Pay $15 More A Month For A Lower Ping?
This brings up the dreaded "Net Neutrality" issues
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Re: NO