International gaming

[BladeRunner]

So what are you guys saying, can I go get my Star Wars Galaxies
account? Will that be viable with a Sentec, lets say, 128k account?
There will be no problems with my connection to an overseas game
server? I need some convincing arguments before I opt for a Sentech
account guys.

[:)]

[AcidRaZor]

from what i've heard, international ping is 500ms at the moment, might improve, but they started testing today, only releasing on the 19th of jan, so wait till i get sentech and lemme show you! :) mwhahaha

[Cerberus]

BladeRunner your connection i.e KB/S speed will be fine if not better but your ping i.e how quickly an instruction will reach your serve will be delayed due to the Satellite connection if you plan on doing real time overseas gaming Sentech won't suite you unless you are playing in Europe somewhere(They have a cable to melasia) Anywhere else the pings will be 600+

[chopsky]

Out of interest, what else are you GOING to opt for for international gaming? Think Telkom ADSL is any better? I think not!

[Cerberus]

I've heard that ADSL gets 200-300 ping to overseas servers because they are routed through the Sat3/Sat2 Cable but I could be wrong(since I don't have ADSL) So if you want international gaming I think ADSL will be good just remeber to buy an exstra account for when you hit the cap and you should be fine:)

[SK33T]

Its very difficult to play on oversees servers,Ive tried all over europe and the best Latency I ever got was 400 and that was about 1 in the morning.The states was even worse.

[SK33T]

BTW thats on my ADSL line[:(!]

[Dtox]

Using ADSL for international online gaming, i get about 700 ms ping time. with ISDN i used to get 350ms. The packet loss is generally better with ADSL than with ISDN though.
Unfortunately due to the port priotisation online gaming during the week is impossible, i go LD every 3 minutes with ADSL, whereas friends with ISDN can connect just fine during the week. On the weekends however my ADSL outperforms the ISDN. This is with playing DAOC and Everquest. I understand that SWG is even more bandwidth intensive so untill i get a better option i cant even try it.

[Cerberus]

I think the first thing Sentech should post right now is the ping to an overseas site from one of their towers that way atleast all the clients will have an estimate of how slow/fast the connection is to a overseas server.

[chopsky]

Cerberus, I wouldnt say that's the first thing they should do. I'd rather want to see actual download speeds overseas/locally before seeing ping times overseas. Gaming overseas really shouldnt be their first priority. I think at the moment, we can make do with what gaming servers we have here. They arent TOO bad. Over time though, maybe that can improve the latency overseas

[Cerberus]

Chopsky the reason I say they should post it is to aviod the question of how fast it is becuase well no one really knows :) I think they should post this soonish and it's such a quick and easy test as for speeds well they won't have more than 20 tester so the speed will be better than what we will get eventually becuase their towers in JHB have a huge pipe (152mb/s or something like that) and 20 people won't even dent that. :) The real speed test will be when the product is launched right now the Beta test should be about ping times and how long they can keep the connection up without problems and if there are issues getting to other networks and if their setup is efficient and effectively set up.

Just my opinion:)

[Karnaugh]

International gaming is in my view both a waste of time and effort for ISP's to bother supporting (Well actualy I think any online gaming is a waste of time to support :P). It is cheaper and more sane to implement local servers, as has been done.

What I can suggest is that Sentech routes FTP and HTTP traffic over satelite and the rest over a smaller international link.

<hr noshade size="1">iActive internet services
http://www.iactive.co.za

[AcidRaZor]

*slap* online gaming is our lives! *slap*

besides, we don't have big gaming companies over here that is willing to setup servers for FREE, because SWG you have to pay for... and getting a license to get an official server costs money, and who here wants to actually PAY to play a game........ hmm? personally, I'd pay, but there are ALOT of people who would bitch about it, trust me, been there done that, flamed the **** out of them! :)

[chopsky]

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">besides, we don't have big gaming companies over here that is willing to setup servers for FREE<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

*SLAP*
SAIX Games - games.saix.net
Mweb Games - www.gamezone.co.za

[BladeRunner]

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Out of interest, what else are you GOING to opt for for international gaming? Think Telkom ADSL is any better? I think not!<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

hehe yeah I love gaming so it tends to intrude into all my thinking when comes to the internet [:)]. But yes good point, DSL aint working for gaming. I fully agree with Skeet's and Dtox's analysis. Dont know someone else might have a different view. The point you make is fair, Sentech is a better option from all points of view.

[ProAsm]

Just reading your posts here shows me how things have changed over time.
When I first got my ISDN in 1998 I had an account with WorldOnline and I played UT in the UK and France almost every night and my ping never went above 200 - it was great.
As time passed this ping got higher and by mid 1999 I stuck to local servers only and today I have ADSL and pings to the UK average 300 - 400 [V]

[AcidRaZor]

chopsky, i was talking about OFFICIAL gaming servers, not the ones thats for free... you know, like ultima online you pay for to play, and need a license to setup an official server, and pay to play etc...

[jus]

From what I can tell Sentech is using IS for outbound intl traffic, and their own satllite infrastructure for the return-path. This is peered in the UK.

What this means is that you can expect at least roughly 600ms pings to the UK, and a bit more to the states, as it has to route ZA-&gt;UK-&gt;USA.

[chopsky]

forget Ultima Online.....<font face="Arial Black"><font color="green">XBOX LIVE !!!</font id="green"></font id="Arial Black">

[AcidRaZor]

couldnt they route game traffic via cable? i'm sure they must have a link via optics somewhere...

[Staind]

what fun is it playing games overseas if you can't even see who you playing against, and laugh at him afterwards? with ur mywireless connection why not host a server for urself and stuff.. what games in SA don't have servers? Uo has, cs has, mweb do some and saix do others...

also the reason the cable isn't used if i understand correctly, it's the cheapest way to avoid telkom for sentech. don't quote me i could be wrong :)

[chopsky]

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">also the reason the cable isn't used if i understand correctly, it's the cheapest way to avoid telkom for sentech. don't quote me i could be wrong :)<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

I'd like to think that's part of their reason....but also this 3G based wireless is a great technology with a huge future ahead of it.
All-round, this technology that Sentech is using , should prove to be MUCH better for both Sentech, and the end-user

^^ My 2c [:p]

[mithrandi]

It's not always about servers, it's also about players. For example, there is at least one CPMA (http://www.promode.org/) server in .za, but there are practically no players. Or, a more mainstream example; MMORPGs like http://www.medievia.com/ and http://www.eve-online.com/. You can't just "run your own server", and even if you could, it would suck. Gaming isn't the only activity that latency affects either; ever tried to ssh over a 2000ms latency link? Not a very pleasant experience.

Not trying to be negative, just stating the facts.

mithrandi

[chopsky]

The problem is in the past, not enough people had an ISDN/ADSL connection to get decent enough pings on even local servers, so we just didnt (and still dont) have enough players. I think now, more people will be able to afford a <u>proper</u> high-speed connection and we'll begin see more players on our local gaming servers.

[mithrandi]

Maybe. I'm not convinced, though; the gaming community in South Africa just completely sucks. Unless you're playing one of the boring, mainstream games (*cough* counterstrike *cough*), there's very little action around; and even then, the level of play is sadly lacking a lot of the time. (Note that I'm talking about gaming in general, not just online gaming.)

mithrandi

[AcidRaZor]

..not to mention the childishness accompanied by it... i kick ass, sue me! [:D]

[mikkelz_za]

You cannot play Warcraft III online locally :/ There are local "pvpgn" servers, but they aren't official.

[mithrandi]

Official or not, they work just fine [8D]

[Strobemeister]

Well, I agree with Mithrandi, the local War3 servers work fine. The problem is, there's often nobody playing. Well, thats on the Gosu server anyway.
My cousin and his mates play Wolf ET and Americas Army on local servers every night. He has no probs using his ISDN line on local servers. While i was up at his place in Joburg a coupla weeks ago i tried a game of War3 on their US East server. It was a bit choppy, but i suppose it would b fine if it was just 1 on 1 instead of the team game i played. Also, you could go 128k on weekends, which would prob b fine for international servers.
A few of them tried ADSL a while back, but it sucked except on the local servers. Thats why i'm opting for ISDN.

Telkom - South Africa's Handbrake to progress.

[Andre]

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by mithrandi</i>
<br />Official or not, they work just fine [8D]
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

Mithrandi, can you post a list of local WC3 servers?

[BladeRunner]

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">what fun is it playing games overseas if you can't even see who you playing against, and laugh at him afterwards? with ur mywireless connection why not host a server for urself and stuff.. what games in SA don't have servers? Uo has, cs has, mweb do some and saix do others...
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

Agreed local hosting is pretty good. The point, however, about getting a decent ping to overseas servers is mainly to play all those juicy games you hear about, SWG and Everquest, for instance. None of these are hosted locally. What gets to you sometimes are the overseas folks playing on our local servers with very decent pings. Trying hard to rationalise this situation away.

[:)]

[mithrandi]

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Mithrandi, can you post a list of local WC3 servers?<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
I haven't played war3 (WC3 is Wing Commander 3 [:p]) for ages, but as far as I know, the only two remaining servers are:

<ul><li>war3.gosu.web.za</li><li>reason.za.net</li></ul>

mithrandi

[Andre]

Thanks, couldn't get the gosu one to work last time I tried, but will give reason.za.net a try.

[freeek]

Warcraft 3 server reason.za.net
Is reasonable growing, there are always at least 20 ppl after 7.
Grows up 2 70 users online sumtimes. It has a ladder going with ranking. Im from ct and have noticed tht there are mainly ct ppl on using dial-ups like me, it works ok, for 1v1. My average latency is abt 250. adsl and isdn users get abt 50-90. To view the users on reason goto reason.za.net

..- dot dot dash ;)

[freeek]

i meant www.ents.za.net for local listing/ranking of war3 players in SA

..- dot dot dash ;)

[Andre]

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by freeek</i>
<br />i meant www.ents.za.net for local listing/ranking of war3 players in SA

..- dot dot dash ;)
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

How on earth do you actually get on the server?

[freeek]

How To Get On To The Local Warcraft Server:
1. You Have To Get An App Called BNetGatewayEditor.exe
I can't remember where I got It From, but if you can't find it
email me and i will email it to you. (freeek@webmail.co.za)
2. Using The Editor Add A New Server To Your Battlenet List.


..- dot dot dash ;)

[freeek]

dammit i pressed enter by mistake.

How To Get On To The Local Warcraft Server:
1. You Have To Get An App Called BNetGatewayEditor.exe and w3l.exe
I can't remember where I got It From, but if you can't find it
email me and i will email it to you. (freeek@webmail.co.za)
2. Using The Editor Add A New Server To Your Battlenet List.
2.1 Press Control + A
2.2 Server Name:Reason
2.3 Host Name: reason.za.net
2.4 TIme Zone: 8(mine is on 8 but im not sure wat it suppose 2b
3. Run w3l.exe and click battle net create a nick and you are online



..- dot dot dash ;)

[Andre]

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by freeek</i>
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

Ok, thanks for the info. I got BNetGatewayEditor.exe installed and configured like you said, but running w3l doesn't actually launch anything. I have FT installed. Is Reason not meant for Frozen Throne, or am I missing out anything?

Should I reinstall War 3 without the expansion?

[chopsky]

Guys...maybe take this discussion to the Gaming forum. Let's keep this sentech only.

[freeek]

sorry chopsky last post.

nope, u must just put it in your game directory. its for warcraft roc and/or frozen throne! mainly frozone throne. when u double click w3l.exe frozen throne suppose to run. if it doesn't work email me freeek@mailbox.co.za i will send you the file over

..- dot dot dash ;)