Gaming on international servers

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nicvw

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I play Star Wars Galaxies a MMORPG, my character is on a European server. Thanks to Telkom's wonderful packet shaping / port prioritization my gaming experience is worse than I had on ISDN. :mad:
Since switching to ADSL I now have higher pings and 10% - 95% packet loss when playing and as of this week I cannot play any more because the game update downloads keep stalling. :mad: :mad:
Is there some way for me to take my case (and that of all other SWG players using ADSL) to Telkom and attempt to get them to stop giving my packets such a low priority? :confused:
 
nicvw - ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.
You have bought a shaped service intended for browsing, emailing and sometimes ftp'ing shared with an unknown amount of people from Teklom.
The service does exactly what it is supposed to do, and there is no way in hell that they'll change it.
Your only option is the unshaped service (RIPOFFFFF), or find a different service provider.
 
Not necesarily true. I know for a fact that Telkom have in the past made exceptions for online gamers. Notably CS and JOps authentication on international servers.

Furthermore I see no reason why Telkom shouldn't accomodate people using their service to play games internationally. I mean its not like online gaming requires large chunks of bandwidth, all we want is low latency and no dropped packets.

As for sharing the service with an unknown number of other people that would imply that there was no bandwidth available to be used for my game. But while SWG struggles to connect to the update server and download the latest patches I can still download at the max speed of my line.
 
I want some clarification. I have the DSL384 package but have the 3Gig package with Blackdot. Is this a shaped service?
 
If it was unshaped they would have told you, so its quite safe to assume that it is in fact shaped.
 
I have experienced the same thing, my gaming experience has become shocking. I can only realistically play Saturday and Sunday mornings early. Otherwise my lag sucks.

So let me get this straight, in order to improve my gaming experience, which btw was better on ISDN :eek: , is to buy the unshaped service for an extra, who knows how much :( .

Ah welcome to helkom, has anyone on the 512 package experienced the same problems?
 
I have just moved over from Mywireless. The speeds on the 384 package are fantastic compared to mywireless.

I thought I could get away with shaped 3G at R249pm, but after last night, when I tried to trade, it gave me the same sh?t that I used to get with Sentech..."connection failure"...meaning packet loss, so I actually don't know what to do, because to spend R 879pm on 4G unshaped is a lot of cash.

There are a few choice words to say, and maybe this is not the right place, .....###8#&......I might as well be on a dial up service.

So I am with you if you want to do some lobbying, as my needs are the same as you need for gaming
 
It actually pays to go back to ISDN for gaming. It was costing me R120/month for ISDN access and I didn't lag anywhere as much as I do now. Just can't justify another R600/month for gaming. So count me in :D

Has anyone tried gaming on iburst?
 
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Have a look at the UUNet Uncapped offering.

Unshaped and uncapped for less than the 4GB Telkom account. The main topic is in the "General ADSL discussions" section. A few guys here are already using it with good results.

The best part about the UUNet account IMO is that your bandwidth is wholly through UUNet's network - it does not use Telkom's network beyond the DSLAM at your exchange. This is good because UUNet as a whole is a much better company when it comes to technical competence and service.

Oh, and IS will also be offering IS network accounts soon - beginning of March I'm told is when they launch...
 
Where can I go to look at the UUNET uncapped offering? I don't see anything about it on their website... :confused:

Besides we had two test accounts from UUNET for the uncapped ADSL and the performance was poor. But that may just have been because we got in at the end of the test phase. I have seen several people posting about their uncapped UUNET accounts but I can only assume that the reason they have these is because they are "buddy, buddy" with someone within UUNET. :D

As far as the Telkom unshaped 4GB accounts go : Why the $*#& should I have to pay about R800 bucks for a package I'm not going to fully utilise (I maxed out last month at 2.7GB and that only because I seem to have been packeted) just so that I can play a game online. Thats utterly stupid :)
 
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nicvw - I agree wholehartedly. Why can I not get a package that charges per MB instead of fixed at 3/4GB. It's so damn FRUSTRATING.

Lets see -
3GB shaped = R 200.00 / 3 = R 66.67 for 1 GB(1000MB) = R 0.07 per MB.
4GB unshaped = R 880.00 / 4 = R220.00 for 1 GB(1000MB) = R 0.88 per MB.

I want to use the normal shaped service @7c per MB for the usual stuff and then just switch to unshaped when I play games @88c perMB.

But I want to pay PER MB.
Whomever thought of this whole 4GB / 3GB crap should be shot.
 
Now that's a brilliant idea

P.S. I don't think he got shot, more like a promotion with a huge bonus :mad:
 
Wholeheartedly agree that the unshaped service is over-priced. Unfortunately, I need low latency access around the clock for gaming and trading purposes. Pricing aside, the quality of service is excellent with stable pings and zero packet loss no matter the time of day. e.g. below, just after 4.30pm in the afternoon. Pretty much get these results around the clock, about 10ms quicker in the evenings and week-ends.

Pinging clarity.jolt.co.uk [195.149.21.11] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 195.149.21.11: bytes=32 time=259ms TTL=50
Reply from 195.149.21.11: bytes=32 time=256ms TTL=50
Reply from 195.149.21.11: bytes=32 time=259ms TTL=50
Reply from 195.149.21.11: bytes=32 time=265ms TTL=50

Ping statistics for 195.149.21.11:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 256ms, Maximum = 265ms, Average = 259ms
 
I am currently playing CoH.

My 2 cents...

I have been capped (384 ADSL shaped) for about a week before the end of the month, at that time I had a ping of of about 600 but the lost packets were very annoying esp early in the evening but it was playable from about 9 in the evenings and Saturday's and Sundays was awesome.

Last nite when I came back up I logged in to find that a new pach was released. Whoopi, 5.1 meg, no big deal..yea right... (Took nearly 2 hrs to d/l at less than 1k/s)

I had however noticed last nite that i was now pinging at 450, but the p/loss was terrible... (It is however the end of the month and it defnately degrades at that time .. (leachers?))

I still had a account for the last few days of December 2004 and into January on the SWG servers in europe and had a ping of about 520 with a 30 to 40% p/loss (normally 380 with zero p/l from about 7 in the evenings) it was terrrible.

The service is most definately degrading.... (reason: No idea... Tellschum (tm)? )

I have no intention to however pay R800 for a unshaped account, Tellschum (tm) and their lackey's can go to he!!..... before I do.

I'd rather play CS:Source (bleh!)
 
sybawoods - doing a icmp ping does not show shaping in action. you need to actual join a game and transfer data for it to "kick" in.

Shaped or unshaped, icmp ping wont show the effect.

Regarding uunet unshaped, they are thinking of shaping the service afterall since they noticed trial users abusing the torrents and so forth. I did however ask them to look into gaming or atleast certain gaming ports. Waiting to hear from them in about a week.
 
Damn the more I read this thread, the more I get depressed. Gaming is a right I tell you. That said allot more hobbies are way more expensive. And so the justification begins to warrant spending the extra R800/month for the 4gig unshapped service :p
 
I actually had an amazing ping when I played on a BF1942 German server about 3 months ago. It was about 60-65ping and they weren't complaining. Maybe the Telscum people were sleeping on the job that day?
 
OK, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that the people at telkom who make decisions regarding the prioritization of traffic on their ADSL network can't all be complete idiots. Surely it must have occurred to someone that a) gamers (for the most part) cannot afford to pay for 4GB unshaped accounts and b) games don't a lot of bandwidth. By combining these two revolutionary concepts together someone must surely have thought that it would be a good idea to do some research and start prioritizing the traffic for popular games (and other latency sensitive applications) where the servers are located outside of ZA.
/rant
Or is there just some kind of corporate mindset within Telkom that gamers are no better than those dirty P2P h@x0rs and shouldn't be allowed to use their 3GB of bandwidth (that they payed for and should be allowed to use as they please) for anything except getting mail and downloading usage stats of telkomsa.net?
/end rant
 
I can sympathize with you, but why stop there. Why should it be ****tated to you how you use your 3gig anyway. Surely if you choose to use the 3gig in day 1 dl stuff on torrent, so be it! It's bad enough living with a cap, but to shape, that's just plain evil. This is just another way of telscum trying make a huge profit before someone takes the rug from under their feet (eternal optimist coming out here) , if your brave enough to try and get this resolved on telscum I am sure there are loads of gamers that will stand behind you.

For now I will just rise at sparrow's fart on the w/e and try and enjoy a few games b4 everyone else wakes up.
 
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