Gaming on RAIN LTE (or LTE-A)

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Napalm

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Hi Gents

Anyone here that actually does some gaming on Rain LTE or Rain LTE-A?

How has your gaming experience been sofar. Any outages or packet drops to the tower.


What games do you play and what is your average Ping speed (and does it spike often or is it fairly constant).


Things we want to know :
Which area are you in (And if you know which tower)
What is your average speedtest speeds - Some screenshots would be nice.
What pings do you get to League Of Legends, CSGO, Battlefield1 or WoW or Diablo3 or other online games.
Which gaming server do you normally play on (EU or US) - Do you know which specific one it is (maybe IP or so)
What is your general gameplay feel. Does your characters move as it should, is it sometimes jerky or is it smooth as butter. Very quick responsive clicks.


Just as an example. on Vox ADSL I run this check for the League Of Legends Server EU (Netherlands north)

ping 104.160.141.3 -t
I then let it run for 10-20 seconds or so.
Press control+C to stop the ping checks.



Results

Reply from 104.160.141.3: bytes=32 time=168ms TTL=53
Reply from 104.160.141.3: bytes=32 time=167ms TTL=53
Reply from 104.160.141.3: bytes=32 time=171ms TTL=53
Ping statistics for 104.160.141.3:
Packets: Sent = 8, Received = 8, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in mille-seconds:
Minimum = 167ms, Maximum = 184ms, Average = 171ms

(171ms is average over 8 hops, 184ms was max with 167ms minimum)
 
Last edited:
Napalm said:
/snip
Just as an example. on Vox ADSL I run this check for the League Of Legends Server EU (Netherlands north)

ping 104.160.141.3 -t
I then let it run for 10-20 seconds or so.
Press control+C to stop the ping checks.



Results

Reply from 104.160.141.3: bytes=32 time=168ms TTL=53
Reply from 104.160.141.3: bytes=32 time=167ms TTL=53
Reply from 104.160.141.3: bytes=32 time=171ms TTL=53
Ping statistics for 104.160.141.3:
Packets: Sent = 8, Received = 8, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in mille-seconds:
Minimum = 167ms, Maximum = 184ms, Average = 171ms

(171ms is average over 8 hops, 184ms was max with 167ms minimum)
Click to expand...

Are you using fibre? I don't even get those low results on my Neotel Fibre connection. If you are on fibre, why are you so interested in RAIN LTE-A?
 
Also, it's not a matter of IF you get packet loss, but rather how much you are getting which is tranparent to the end user unless you have a wireless sniffer handy.

I've said this all over the forums. Line of Sight and Non-Line of Sight wireless technologies always suffer from some for of packet loss but have a bucket load of recovery technologies built into them to counter such loss.
There it is seamless to the end user.

Gaming data however, requires guaranteed packet delivery within a certain amount of time and in the right order.
Seeing as you are doing things at about 50-200ms @ about 100-200 actions per minutes, the delivery of packets and the receipt of those packets is very important to keep server and client in sync.

You are far better served using Fibre or ADSL for gaming. (Unless its Farmville on Facebook, that you can do of wireless tech)
 
Rain

SharkBait said:
Are you using fibre? I don't even get those low results on my Neotel Fibre connection. If you are on fibre, why are you so interested in RAIN LTE-A?
Click to expand...


Nope, this is a normal ADSL line (copper telephony), ISP is vox
 
As for ADSL results are very poor. It is like they have some wireless link to the exchange, as my pings on Cell C LTE (not LTE-A) are exactly the same. On LTE-A I would expect 5-10% better. Today results are perfect, approaching theoretical maximum, but consider it is not always like that.
Code: 
Reply from 104.160.141.3: bytes=32 time=184ms TTL=50
Reply from 104.160.141.3: bytes=32 time=182ms TTL=50
Reply from 104.160.141.3: bytes=32 time=184ms TTL=50
Reply from 104.160.141.3: bytes=32 time=184ms TTL=50
Reply from 104.160.141.3: bytes=32 time=184ms TTL=50

Ping statistics for 104.160.141.3:
    Packets: Sent = 49, Received = 49, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 179ms, Maximum = 193ms, Average = 183ms
Control-C
^C
 
i'm actually impressed. The minimum and Maximum are very close (this makes the average very tight...) and by tight I mean stable.

0% loss, so not much interruptions.

That's not a bad connection for LTE and 183ms is totally fine for gaming... (obviously you would want 50ms.. but in SA anything around or close to 160ms is pretty close to the best)
 
Napalm said:
Hi Gents

Anyone here that actually does some gaming on Rain LTE or Rain LTE-A?

How has your gaming experience been sofar. Any outages or packet drops to the tower.


What games do you play and what is your average Ping speed (and does it spike often or is it fairly constant).


Things we want to know :
Which area are you in (And if you know which tower)
What is your average speedtest speeds - Some screenshots would be nice.
What pings do you get to League Of Legends, CSGO, Battlefield1 or WoW or Diablo3 or other online games.
Which gaming server do you normally play on (EU or US) - Do you know which specific one it is (maybe IP or so)
What is your general gameplay feel. Does your characters move as it should, is it sometimes jerky or is it smooth as butter. Very quick responsive clicks.


Just as an example. on Vox ADSL I run this check for the League Of Legends Server EU (Netherlands north)

ping 104.160.141.3 -t
I then let it run for 10-20 seconds or so.
Press control+C to stop the ping checks.



Results

Reply from 104.160.141.3: bytes=32 time=168ms TTL=53
Reply from 104.160.141.3: bytes=32 time=167ms TTL=53
Reply from 104.160.141.3: bytes=32 time=171ms TTL=53
Ping statistics for 104.160.141.3:
Packets: Sent = 8, Received = 8, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in mille-seconds:
Minimum = 167ms, Maximum = 184ms, Average = 171ms

(171ms is average over 8 hops, 184ms was max with 167ms minimum)
Click to expand...

It's very variable internationally, I expect they are still having some backend issues. I'm in Stellenbosch (Cell ID 52389891, full signal strength), but I use Rain as a backup and high upload speed connection. Ping to LoL server is not good:

Code: 
Reply from 104.160.141.3: bytes=32 time=278ms TTL=51
Reply from 104.160.141.3: bytes=32 time=311ms TTL=51
Reply from 104.160.141.3: bytes=32 time=345ms TTL=51
Reply from 104.160.141.3: bytes=32 time=281ms TTL=51
Reply from 104.160.141.3: bytes=32 time=304ms TTL=51
Reply from 104.160.141.3: bytes=32 time=288ms TTL=51
Reply from 104.160.141.3: bytes=32 time=321ms TTL=51
Reply from 104.160.141.3: bytes=32 time=276ms TTL=51
Reply from 104.160.141.3: bytes=32 time=309ms TTL=51
Request timed out.
Reply from 104.160.141.3: bytes=32 time=313ms TTL=51

Ping statistics for 104.160.141.3:
    Packets: Sent = 349, Received = 319, Lost = 30 (8% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 261ms, Maximum = 686ms, Average = 315ms


Local wise it's pretty good, there is some variability in ping, but it's sometimes better than my primary VDSL, however, it appears to route a lot of things through Johannesburg then back to the Cape, so peering is not the best. Here best ping is to Johannesburg, with Cape Town ping being hilariously bad due to routing:





They also appear to have something misconfigured on the modem/cell side, the router reports a private IP for WAN, but external tools give a public IP. I don't think they're doing NAT, since all my external access works fine into it.
 
Last edited:
Speedtest look very good. Local ping too.

But yes. I think some routing needs to be sorted there.

Have you found all your games to be in the 270ms to 300ms for EU games servers?




Herr_SturmGeist said:
It's very variable internationally, I expect they are still having some backend issues. I'm in Stellenbosch (Cell ID 52389891, full signal strength), but I use Rain as a backup and high upload speed connection. Ping to LoL server is not good:

Reply from 104.160.141.3: bytes=32 time=278ms TTL=51
Reply from 104.160.141.3: bytes=32 time=311ms TTL=51
Reply from 104.160.141.3: bytes=32 time=345ms TTL=51
Reply from 104.160.141.3: bytes=32 time=281ms TTL=51
Reply from 104.160.141.3: bytes=32 time=304ms TTL=51
Reply from 104.160.141.3: bytes=32 time=288ms TTL=51
Reply from 104.160.141.3: bytes=32 time=321ms TTL=51
Reply from 104.160.141.3: bytes=32 time=276ms TTL=51
Reply from 104.160.141.3: bytes=32 time=309ms TTL=51
Request timed out.
Reply from 104.160.141.3: bytes=32 time=313ms TTL=51

Local wise it's pretty good, there is some variability in ping, but it's sometimes better than my primary VDSL, however, it appears to route a lot of things through Johannesburg then back to the Cape, so peering is not the best. Here is a speedtest selected on best ping:

Click to expand...
 
Yeah, the best I've seen is 200ms, but I don't really game much internationally so I can't see if this is usual or unusual. Right now everything to Europe is pretty bad though. I've updated my post with packet loss and Speedtest to Cape Town.
 
Did you log a call with them to investigate? The packet loss and high pings to EU?


Maybe send them an trace route.

Tracert ipofserverinUK


Herr_SturmGeist said:
Yeah, the best I've seen is 200ms, but I don't really game much internationally so I can't see if this is usual or unusual. Right now everything to Europe is pretty bad though. I've updated my post with packet loss and Speedtest to Cape Town.
Click to expand...
 
Napalm said:
Did you log a call with them to investigate? The packet loss and high pings to EU?


Maybe send them an trace route.

Tracert ipofserverinUK
Click to expand...

The issue is that all routing is going through Johannesburg. After asking questions for two weeks Webafrica finally confirmed with me this morning that they do in fact use carrier grade NAT on the LTE service, I am... unconvinced, but okay. If routing is happening through a Johannesburg gateway and taking into account variation in ping from the tower to me (it's on the order of 20-40ms for me) then the pings are on par with ADSL. I retested this morning and packet loss appears to be gone at least.
 
Herr_SturmGeist said:
The issue is that all routing is going through Johannesburg. After asking questions for two weeks Webafrica finally confirmed with me this morning that they do in fact use carrier grade NAT on the LTE service, I am... unconvinced, but okay. If routing is happening through a Johannesburg gateway and taking into account variation in ping from the tower to me (it's on the order of 20-40ms for me) then the pings are on par with ADSL. I retested this morning and packet loss appears to be gone at least.
Click to expand...

Keep in mind its a new service, and there will be issues to sort out, thats why there are limited amount of routers etc...
 
It's a new service, but I think the whole idea of the "Early.Connect " is to iron out all the kinks.

Most people will be logging calls to have Priority routing done for their gaming port (wether it be for CSGO,Battlefield, League of Legends, Diablo3 or WoW or StarCraft.)

Obviously pointing out to them if there's any major spikes or packet loss (so that they than reroute traffic or identify issues on their system)

I've also applied to early connect, still waiting for mine. Luckily myself and my brother are gamers so we will do the tracerts and log it if it's too high. I'll also do speed tests and online monitoring with Spiceworks.


I don't think it'll be "shined and polished" from the get-go. It'll take a while to optimize it.
 
Last edited:
Napalm said:
It's a new service, but I think the whole idea of the "Early.Connect " is to iron out all the kinks.

Most people will be logging calls to have Priority routing done for their gaming port (wether it be for CSGO,Battlefield, League of Legends, Diablo3 or WoW or StarCraft.)

Obviously pointing out to them if there's any major spikes or packet loss (so that they than reroute traffic or identify issues on their system)

I've also applied to early connect, still waiting for mine. Luckily myself and my brother are gamers so we will do the tracerts and log it if it's too high. I'll also do speed tests and online monitoring with Spiceworks.


I don't think it'll be "shined and polished" from the get-go. It'll take a while to optimize it.
Click to expand...

WTF is Early.Connect?
 
Early Connect (is basically Iburst switchover to LTE-A). Having the old Iburst users with old hardware and modems. to Switch-over and test how the new LTE-A performs.

Once the actual packages come out.. you then have the opportunity to take a contract or month to month I think on new packages.
 
Napalm said:
Early Connect (is basically Iburst switchover to LTE-A). Having the old Iburst users with old hardware and modems. to Switch-over and test how the new LTE-A performs.

Once the actual packages come out.. you then have the opportunity to take a contract or month to month I think on new packages.
Click to expand...

Are the packages not the same as WA and Mweb?
 
I don't think so no... I might be wrong. But you only qualify for "Early Connect" if you were a previous customer of Iburst in end 2016 I think.

For the users that already had packages with them (I think they had packages of 20gig which was previously 10gig daytime/10gig night time for R199 on the old 1mbit Iburst). So they give you 20gig anytime data I think for same price... so one can maybe continue on that package I think.. or change to one of their newer packages. Maybe they have some special prices or something for their old customers.

You must also fall within one of their LTE or LTE-A zones. Otherwise no signal

I think some users were on a 20gig day/20gig night. so they will propably switch over to a higher package. Maybe the 50gig or 55gig.


there's a whole post about it :
https://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread.php/893768-Early-Connect
 
Last edited:
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