High Ping only in games.

[Dewpyx]

Hey guys, got a weird issue here which hopefully someone can assist.

I'm with webafrica, 4mb line capped business. Recently we had outages in the area according to the telkom text messages and the issue has started after the outages so I assume the fault is with them?

It's the usual perfectly fine ping throughout the day with a high ping at night which made me think its a congested exchange but then, my ping on speedtests / tracerts is perfectly fine at night but my pings on games, both local (bf4) and international (WoT, Paladins, etc.) is high. I plan on emailing webafrica tonight and contacting Telkom tomorrow but just want to check here if anyone has had similar.

 

[supervegeta41]

Have the same thing with Telkom on Origin. 217ms to local servers and the game doesn't even load

 

[bruce_the_loon]

As far as I understand, World of Tanks servers are located in the US and possibly Europe. The Speedtest ping is for a local server as are the Mybroadband and Google traceroutes which have local cache servers. Those pings are misleading.

There is normally 220-240 ms traces to European networks and maybe another 100ms on top of that to US networks.

A better test would be to ping or trace to www.worldoftanks.com when you are testing since that server would be closer to the game servers. You should be looking at around 330ms at average to the www.worldoftanks.com server. If it gets worse, then that is a good indicating of congestion, and if the local pings stay constant, then that might indicate international link congestion.

 

[Johnatan56]

As far as I understand, World of Tanks servers are located in the US and possibly Europe. The Speedtest ping is for a local server as are the Mybroadband and Google traceroutes which have local cache servers. Those pings are misleading.

There is normally 220-240 ms traces to European networks and maybe another 100ms on top of that to US networks.

A better test would be to ping or trace to www.worldoftanks.com when you are testing since that server would be closer to the game servers. You should be looking at around 330ms at average to the www.worldoftanks.com server. If it gets worse, then that is a good indicating of congestion, and if the local pings stay constant, then that might indicate international link congestion.

That's dependent on where you are, e.g. Cape Town I get 165-180ms to London.
A better test would be to run a speedtest that goes to e.g. London.

What's probably happening is that games like World of Tanks (and most definately Smite) are using the p2p protocol and Webafrica is shaping that protocol/reducing it's priority, thereby increasing your latency.
Had the same issue with Afrihost uncapped until I moved onto their Capped accounts, they've probably added it to the exclusion list by now due to complaints at the time though (was years ago).

Try a game like League of Legends to see if you have the same latency issue, it uses UDP/IP I think.

@OP, try a ping test: ping vienna.at -t

In order to end, hit ctrl-c.
To copy in command prompt, right click and select all, then hit enter.

Paste it in here, just make sure you enclose it in

 [/ code] (remove the space before code).

 

[Dewpyx]

Reply from 194.183.128.94: bytes=32 time=220ms TTL=48
Reply from 194.183.128.94: bytes=32 time=224ms TTL=48
Reply from 194.183.128.94: bytes=32 time=369ms TTL=48
Reply from 194.183.128.94: bytes=32 time=274ms TTL=48
Reply from 194.183.128.94: bytes=32 time=241ms TTL=48
Reply from 194.183.128.94: bytes=32 time=266ms TTL=48
Reply from 194.183.128.94: bytes=32 time=238ms TTL=48
Reply from 194.183.128.94: bytes=32 time=220ms TTL=48
Reply from 194.183.128.94: bytes=32 time=220ms TTL=48
Reply from 194.183.128.94: bytes=32 time=220ms TTL=48
Reply from 194.183.128.94: bytes=32 time=220ms TTL=48
Reply from 194.183.128.94: bytes=32 time=220ms TTL=48
Reply from 194.183.128.94: bytes=32 time=220ms TTL=48
Reply from 194.183.128.94: bytes=32 time=219ms TTL=48
Reply from 194.183.128.94: bytes=32 time=220ms TTL=48
Reply from 194.183.128.94: bytes=32 time=261ms TTL=48
Reply from 194.183.128.94: bytes=32 time=219ms TTL=48
Reply from 194.183.128.94: bytes=32 time=220ms TTL=48
Reply from 194.183.128.94: bytes=32 time=219ms TTL=48
Reply from 194.183.128.94: bytes=32 time=220ms TTL=48

Ping statistics for 194.183.128.94:
    Packets: Sent = 20, Received = 20, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 219ms, Maximum = 369ms, Average = 236ms
Control-C
^C

This was the ping vienna.at -t. I don't know how reliable this is now as it usual lowers again towards normal levels later in the night.

@ bruce_the_loon - I'm having a bad ping even on local servers, BF4 being my only example. The ping gets so high or unstable that it doesn't even update correctly within the game, staying at 43 but actions are delayed by over 10 - 20 seconds. Funny enough, I see others getting kicked off for a ping of 300 yet here I am waiting ages for actions to happen. Similar issue in WoT, ping is 0 during the countdown till start and once the game begins, it's as shown in the picture 400-600.

Also just as more information, I play on EU servers and I'm expecting a ping of 160-200 as this is what I usually get (depending of game ofc).

 

[Johnatan56]

Reply from 194.183.128.94: bytes=32 time=220ms TTL=48
Reply from 194.183.128.94: bytes=32 time=224ms TTL=48
Reply from 194.183.128.94: bytes=32 time=369ms TTL=48
Reply from 194.183.128.94: bytes=32 time=274ms TTL=48
Reply from 194.183.128.94: bytes=32 time=241ms TTL=48
Reply from 194.183.128.94: bytes=32 time=266ms TTL=48
Reply from 194.183.128.94: bytes=32 time=238ms TTL=48
Reply from 194.183.128.94: bytes=32 time=220ms TTL=48
Reply from 194.183.128.94: bytes=32 time=220ms TTL=48
Reply from 194.183.128.94: bytes=32 time=220ms TTL=48
Reply from 194.183.128.94: bytes=32 time=220ms TTL=48
Reply from 194.183.128.94: bytes=32 time=220ms TTL=48
Reply from 194.183.128.94: bytes=32 time=220ms TTL=48
Reply from 194.183.128.94: bytes=32 time=219ms TTL=48
Reply from 194.183.128.94: bytes=32 time=220ms TTL=48
Reply from 194.183.128.94: bytes=32 time=261ms TTL=48
Reply from 194.183.128.94: bytes=32 time=219ms TTL=48
Reply from 194.183.128.94: bytes=32 time=220ms TTL=48
Reply from 194.183.128.94: bytes=32 time=219ms TTL=48
Reply from 194.183.128.94: bytes=32 time=220ms TTL=48

Ping statistics for 194.183.128.94:
    Packets: Sent = 20, Received = 20, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 219ms, Maximum = 369ms, Average = 236ms
Control-C
^C

This was the ping vienna.at -t. I don't know how reliable this is now as it usual lowers again towards normal levels later in the night.

@ bruce_the_loon - I'm having a bad ping even on local servers, BF4 being my only example. The ping gets so high or unstable that it doesn't even update correctly within the game. Similar issue in WoT, ping is 0 during the countdown till start and once the game begins, it's as shown in the picture 400-600.

Try signing up for a free 1GB crystalweb account and use it instead to see if the issue persists.

 

[Dewpyx]

Just tested WoT again and those pings to vienna are reliable as its still a issue, gonna try a free 1gb with another provider as John suggested. Will edit this post.

EDIT: NVM seems as though its fine now, will only be able to test this further tomorrow night.

 

[Johnatan56]

Just tested WoT again and those pings to vienna are reliable as its still a issue, gonna try a free 1gb with another provider as John suggested. Will edit this post.

EDIT: NVM seems as though its fine now, will only be able to test this further tomorrow night.

Well, it's fine at near exactly 11pm, so shaping is probably being applied to your game traffic during peak times. You're going to have to go talk with the WebAfrica support, you'll probably have high latency tomorrow evening again.

 

[Dewpyx]

Well, it's fine at near exactly 11pm, so shaping is probably being applied to your game traffic during peak times. You're going to have to go talk with the WebAfrica support, you'll probably have high latency tomorrow evening again.

Will be very disappointed if this ends up being true as I specifically went with a capped business account to avoid these issues, add on the fact that I've followed there ideal downloading times (12pm-6am) even while on a capped account just pisses me off more.

Guess I'll find out tomorrow.

 

[Johnatan56]

Will be very disappointed if this ends up being true as I specifically went with a capped business account to avoid these issues, add on the fact that I've followed there ideal downloading times (12pm-6am) even while on a capped account just pisses me off more.

Guess I'll find out tomorrow.

Seems like the MyBB Masters have answered all your questions. Thanks guys!

Just to confirm our capped accounts are NOT unshaped accounts and we prioritise our bandwidth as per the link supplied by 'Orihalcon' here.

Also home accounts will be subject to shaping during Business hrs (07h00-17h00) especially on P2P/NNTP traffic and will return to normal after 17h00 whereas business accounts will not get affected as much. Business accounts are still prioritised/shaped but only on non essential protocols like P2P/NNTP but again this hardly noticeable. Another point to mention is that if the network is under load or there is a major outage then Business accounts take preference over Home to ensure that those accounts run as close to normal as possible.

Best advice I can give you is to sign up for our free 2gb home capped account and give us a test

Above. Webafrica shape capped accounts.

 

[Dewpyx]

Above. Webafrica shape capped accounts.

Alright, who would be the current ISP to go with? I've let Telkom keep control of my line so can switch easily.

I'd like to add that I went with webafrica lasy year as someone suggested it here that they'd be the best

 

[Johnatan56]

Alright, who would be the current ISP to go with? I've let Telkom keep control of my line so can switch easily.

I'd like to add that I went with webafrica lasy year as someone suggested it here that they'd be the best

Well, if you have the budget, go with Crystal Web.
Find the package for your needs: http://crystalweb.co.za/