International ping times on ADSL are always bad. Usually so bad that using game servers overseas is not really feasible.
However making use of a VPN can help. Playing Q3 on UK servers without a VPN gives me a ping around 400-700 or worse. Using a VPN gets me about 240-280 on the same servers, but more importantly the ping rate is fairly stable, not bouncing all over the place to 999 like with direct ADSL.
The interesting part is the VPN I connect to is hooked up the SAIX network via digitnet. I still use ADSL to log into the VPN, so basically by increasing the hops, distance and amount of processing done on the connection you get better results. Which implies the high ping times are artificial since the network traffic goes back out on the same network in the end anyway. Its fairly obvious the actual ADSL link itself is not to blame so the only conclusion is that Telkom/Saix are artificially slowing the international ping rates for ADSL users - no doubt to discourage people from using apps which require low latency. Telkom have nothing to gain by slowing down game servers, but they do have motivation to make IP phone and teleconferencing unusable, since this would erode profits.
The only other explanation would be that the port shaping cloud just takes too long to inspect packets, which would be ironic since it is there to supposedly “improve” my experience..
]
]