Whos the best ISP for gaming?

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Ninja1

12 posts

Geek

#15556 28-Aug-2007 17:21

Im with Xtra at the moment who has some gaming services available but their speeds of late have been terrible..

Who do you recommend?

rscole86

4973 posts

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#84167 28-Aug-2007 19:07

TelstraClears cable service is generally more reliable with online gaming, as their pings times are quite low compared to most ADSL connections. Their speeds tend not to fluctuate as much either.

lurker

831 posts

Ultimate Geek

Lifetime subscriber

#84178 28-Aug-2007 20:30

Yep, Telstraclear cable is definitely best for gaming IMO but unfortunate that it's not available to everyone.

Ninja1

12 posts

Geek

#84227 29-Aug-2007 09:38

guttered.. im in auckland

what about servers? are ISP hosted ones the best? who provides them

excuse me, I = noob

barf

643 posts

Ultimate Geek

#84229 29-Aug-2007 10:04

an ISP who can turn off interleaving for you can offer a better ping than Xtra. The ISPs I know of that do this are Xnet and Orcon. Sometimes interleaving is necessary if you have a bad line though.

between ISPs' game servers there should be little to no difference. they don't discriminate they just plug the server in closer to their customers -if that makes sense.

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Zimsar10

210 posts

Master Geek
Inactive user

#84230 29-Aug-2007 10:18

Ninja1:
Im with Xtra at the moment who has some gaming services available but their speeds of late have been terrible..

Who do you recommend?

TelstraClear PDQ offers optional Interleaving off (you have to ask to have it turned off), Orcon have Interleaving off set as default & Xnet also offer Interleaving off for their ADSL plans, so any of these three would be recommended by myself. Interleaving is a form of error correction that Telecom add to their network to protect against burst errors. Interleaving can add up to 50ms more latency to your ADSL line, so by having it turned off, your ping time to servers drops dramatically & I have found my ping is also a lot more stable.

So, purely due to the fact that Xtra do not offer Interleaving off, then their ping times will generally always be higher, as opposed to someone who does have Interleaving turned off. From my personal experience when comparing ADSL with Interleaving off to a Cable connection, ADSL often equals & is sometimes better than Cable connections. However, if I had a choice, I would personally opt for Cable over ADSL (& any varient thereof) any day.

Also, a company called Gamers.Net of which you can hire very cheap gaming servers off, provide a large number of gaming servers of which are housed in the Orcon Data Centre. A list of their servers can be viewed here:

http://www.gamers.net.nz/gaming/servers/list.html

If you wanted the lowest ping possible, then you would be best to go with Orcon as the ISP.

Ninja1

12 posts

Geek

#84607 31-Aug-2007 08:29

btw..

stumbled across Slingshots forums yesterday, they can do interleaving off now too

Zimsar10

210 posts

Master Geek
Inactive user

#84608 31-Aug-2007 08:41

Ninja1: btw..

stumbled across Slingshots forums yesterday, they can do interleaving off now too

I wouldn't go anywhere near Slingshot myself, I have heard some many complaints about them on these forums.

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cokemaster

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#84627 31-Aug-2007 10:15

I've noticed in our IRC channel, that a few users on TCL, Orcon, and Xnet have had higher pings than a regular FS-FS Xtra connection. While interleaving does help in some situations, its not the magic cure for everything as the speedtests below illustrate.

Of course, pings from speedtests will no doubt differ from the ones in game.

Here are the results of the highly unscientific test (they were not taken from the same lines or locations), sorted by latency.
Xtra (23ms)

Telstraclear (cable, 53ms):

Orcon (66ms):

WXC (74ms):

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Zimsar10

210 posts

Master Geek
Inactive user

#84694 31-Aug-2007 17:29

Personally, I find the Speedtest.Net website to be inaccurate with regards to ping times, as opposed to a Command Prompt tracert/ping time. Here is what I found when testing from the Speedtest.Net website followed immediately by a tracert/ping test using Command Prompt. All results were taken from my TelstraClear PDQ MAX/MAX ADSL connection.

All of the Command Prompt tracert/ping times were taken from the following IP: 60.234.73.178 which is my UT99 Gaming Server, based in the Orcon Data Centre.

Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600]

(C) Copyright 1985-2001 Microsoft Corp.

C:\Documents and Settings\Grant Smith>tracert 60.234.73.178

Tracing route to 60.234.73.178 over a maximum of 30 hops

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms ***********

2 31 ms 17 ms 13 ms 218.101.61.22

3 11 ms 11 ms 10 ms jcore2-ge-0-2-0-927-acld.auckland.clix.net.nz [2

18.101.61.14]

4 15 ms 16 ms 12 ms g1-0-927.u11.tspn.telstraclear.net [218.101.61.6

]

5 12 ms 11 ms 11 ms ggis-gige-v906.telstraclear.net [203.98.18.67]

6 12 ms 11 ms 12 ms g0-1-0-4.akcr8.global-gateway.net.nz [210.55.202

.49]

7 13 ms 12 ms 12 ms orcon-dom2.akcr8.global-gateway.net.nz [202.50.2

45.242]

8 13 ms 13 ms 12 ms gi-5-8.dsw1.nct.orcon.net.nz [60.234.9.24]

9 14 ms 13 ms 12 ms 60.234.73.178

Trace complete.

C:\Documents and Settings\Grant Smith>

Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600]

(C) Copyright 1985-2001 Microsoft Corp.

C:\Documents and Settings\Grant Smith>ping 60.234.73.178

Pinging 60.234.73.178 with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 60.234.73.178: bytes=32 time=13ms TTL=56

Reply from 60.234.73.178: bytes=32 time=14ms TTL=56

Reply from 60.234.73.178: bytes=32 time=12ms TTL=56

Reply from 60.234.73.178: bytes=32 time=12ms TTL=56

Ping statistics for 60.234.73.178:

Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),

Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:

Minimum = 12ms, Maximum = 14ms, Average = 12ms

C:\Documents and Settings\Grant Smith>

barf

643 posts

Ultimate Geek

#84698 31-Aug-2007 17:57

ICMP Echo Request is different to how the 'ping' is measured in your game too.

games mostly use UDP and some routers handle the packet types differently. ICMP traceroutes are the most common example of this as they do not discover TCP offload engines, transparent proxies/HTTP accelerators and other higher-layer routers/firewalls.

ICMP Echo Req packets often use the full payload size too so report a higher value than you may see in the game.

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Zimsar10

210 posts

Master Geek
Inactive user

#84731 31-Aug-2007 22:17

barf: ICMP Echo Request is different to how the 'ping' is measured in your game too.

games mostly use UDP and some routers handle the packet types differently. ICMP traceroutes are the most common example of this as they do not discover TCP offload engines, transparent proxies/HTTP accelerators and other higher-layer routers/firewalls.

ICMP Echo Req packets often use the full payload size too so report a higher value than you may see in the game.

English please? :)

In game my ping ranges from 36-45ms on average. I have no idea what you are on about above, but it certainly sounds impressive. :)