Latency on Woosh wired broadband

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Stasis007

85 posts

Master Geek

#67476 2-Sep-2010 15:22

I'm currently using Woosh's wireless broadband and I may be an aberration, but I've had no problems.
I'd recommend even if you're looking for phone and web browsing or light torrent downloading, $60 for phone and 10G data is a great wireless deal.

I even play WoW on it, average 400ms latency (using wowtunnels) which is fine for end-of-expansion alt leveling/farming, and I haven't had service drop or any issues at all for the 6 months or so I've used it.

Speed isn't great obviously, but it delivers what it advertises. And after midnight I can happily download files at over 200 kB/s which is good enough.

I'm 900m from a tower, which helps.

/rant

Ok, to the point:

I'm moving house to an area that doesn't have wireless coverage so I'm looking at Woosh's wired phone line +30G for $99/month deal. I'd rather stick with Woosh than pay to break contract...

I'm curious about latency (since i'll be gaming).

Could i reasonably expect the ping to a USA West coast server to be comparable to Maxnet or Snap ( I live in Christchurch), or is there some specific reason why it could be worse (internal wiring etc aside). I can't see any positive posts addressing wired service so I'm somewhat wary.

I'm not so concerned with torrent throttling or customer service. Just latency.

Thanks!

Ragnor

8223 posts

Uber Geek

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#375888 2-Sep-2010 17:16

Latency for wow on ADSL with interleaving off should be almost half the 400ms you're getting on wireless.

Ragnor

8223 posts

Uber Geek

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#375889 2-Sep-2010 17:19

This page lists the servers ip addresses by data center
http://www.wowwiki.com/US_realm_list_by_datacenter

You can run some tracert's to the servers, eg:

start > run > cmd > tracert 12.129.225.21

PS: It's normal for the last few hops to not response to pings.
PPS: In game latency is usually higher than raw ping times to the servers.

Should look something like this:

Telecom ADSL Connection at Home

Telstra fibre connection at work

Stasis007

85 posts

Master Geek

#375924 2-Sep-2010 18:54

Cool, thanks for that.

I can't even play competitively at >200ms in-game latency so I'm certainly hoping to make a good ISP choice.

I guess that all ISPs use the same international gateways, so ignoring network congestion the ping times should be pretty much the same... yeah? Unless Woosh has internal issues of some sort.

I was hoping to go with Telstra cable but they stopped laying it a few blocks from the new house :( I was considering Maxnet or Snap but if Woosh will work then I'm gold. Would hate to save a $99 disconnect fee and end up crippled with less than standard pings

Ragnor

8223 posts

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#376024 2-Sep-2010 22:44

There are a few main resellers of the capacity on the Southern Cross fibre optic cables that link NZ and AU to the US west coast eg: Global Gateway (Telecom), Reach (Telstra), Alternet (MCI/Verizon), Asianetcom (Pacnet)

Different ISP's use different providers for international bandwidth which can indeed affect latency due to different routing and congestion.

You can see from the my two screenshots earlier my home Telecom ADSL and work Telstra fibre use different hops on the way to AT&T where most of the wow servers are hosted and it results in different latency.

If you do a tracert now while you're on woosh wireless you'll be able to see who they are using for international transit (I would guess asianetcom/pacnet) this part probably won't change in terms of the path taken but if you went from wireless to adsl the earlier hops would have lower latency meaning less latency overall.

Stasis007

85 posts

Master Geek

#376132 3-Sep-2010 09:40

Yeah it's asianetcom.

[wireless]

Tracing route to 12-129-225-12.attens.net [12.129.225.12]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1 122 ms 181 ms 97 ms lns1.c0pwc.woosh.net.nz [202.74.206.5]
  2 * * * Request timed out.
  3 203 ms 138 ms 102 ms g0-0-61.br1.sky.woosh.net.nz [202.74.206.161]
  4 182 ms 120 ms 159 ms Gi0-1.gw2.akl1.asianetcom.net [203.192.166.185]
  5 255 ms 180 ms 260 ms ge-0-0-0-0.gw1.akl2.asianetcom.net [203.192.185.45]
  6 358 ms 401 ms 380 ms po1-1-0.gw3.lax1.asianetcom.net [203.192.185.62]
  7 361 ms 358 ms 297 ms 12.119.138.33
  8 396 ms 339 ms 358 ms cr1.la2ca.ip.att.net [12.122.128.74]
  9 376 ms 363 ms 359 ms gar5.la2ca.ip.att.net [12.122.128.25]
10 417 ms 359 ms 362 ms 12.122.255.74
11 * * * Request timed out.

Not sure what's happening on the second hop. I've run tracert a dozen times, plugged straight into the Woosh modem, and always timing out there.

Asides from that it's looking pretty good to my untrained eye.

Gonna sign up with their wired broadband later today. I'll report back how it works out.

Ragnor

8223 posts

Uber Geek

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#376416 4-Sep-2010 02:50

Fairly common for some servers/hops to be configured to ignore ping protocol and just focus on their job.