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Question of the Day: Which is the most hair-raising South African mountain pass you've driven?
MWEB Gaming Feedback
- Thread starter Will@MWEB
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7th day adventist church
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Not a chance. People need up-to-the-millisecond updates on their facebook status messages and unshaping wow ports will cause people to not be able to even browse the web! They can't take these chances.
Screw facebook ;p
@darryn
WoW ports are already unshaped. We also removed the shaping on 'behavioural download' a few weeks back, which is what some unrecognized in-game content delivery gets flagged as. Note that this does not mean that we prioritize gaming traffic. In terms of the overall network performance http traffic and other high priority services will still be given preference. There was a fair amount of discussion regarding this earlier in the thread if you'd like to read back, where I have explained in more detail how the traffic prioritization currently works.
Kind Regards
Will
WoW ports are already unshaped. We also removed the shaping on 'behavioural download' a few weeks back, which is what some unrecognized in-game content delivery gets flagged as. Note that this does not mean that we prioritize gaming traffic. In terms of the overall network performance http traffic and other high priority services will still be given preference. There was a fair amount of discussion regarding this earlier in the thread if you'd like to read back, where I have explained in more detail how the traffic prioritization currently works.
Kind Regards
Will
Last edited:
acidrain
Executive Member
Indeed, but there's a thread explaining the reasons for it. My only question is, why not have a temporary solution... hard or not we paying for a service and they are aware that it's sub-par at the moment.. :/
I'm just waiting for monday since app the problem will be resolved this weekend
7th day adventist church
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Mweb needs to stop acting like there's a difference between shaping something and prioritising it. Shaping IS THE SAME THING as prioritization - you're just doing it the other way around. Lets call it 'negative prioritization' instead of 'unshaped' from now on, yes?
There's no point in saying something is 'unshaped' when you're giving higher priority to other types of traffic.
Call it what it is - WoW traffic is shaped by having a lesser priority.
Hi 7th day
Thanks for joining in the conversation again.
We have three levels of traffic on our shaped products.
Level 1 is traffic that is guaranteed priority, call it QOS if you like.
Level 2 Traffic which is not managed (shaped) in any particular fashion.
Level 3 Traffic which is actively shaped and shares a contended sub-pool of bandwidth to ensure that it does not impact on levels 1 and 2.
If you consider this in comparison to an unshaped product you can effectively remove Levels 1 and 3 on an unshaped product.
I completely understand that you would prefer it if gaming traffic was also prioritized and given the same QOS treatment, but at this point the reality is that the best option I can provide for you is that I will do my best to ensure that all gaming traffic is kept at the unshaped level.
There was some very valuable discussion earlier in the thread about other ways that we could approach this and the possbility of having a dedicated bandwidth pool for gamers with different traffic management priorities and I assure you that this is input I have taken back to the business and it will be given serious consideration as soon as we are in a position to do so.
Kind Regards
Will
Thanks for joining in the conversation again.
We have three levels of traffic on our shaped products.
Level 1 is traffic that is guaranteed priority, call it QOS if you like.
Level 2 Traffic which is not managed (shaped) in any particular fashion.
Level 3 Traffic which is actively shaped and shares a contended sub-pool of bandwidth to ensure that it does not impact on levels 1 and 2.
If you consider this in comparison to an unshaped product you can effectively remove Levels 1 and 3 on an unshaped product.
I completely understand that you would prefer it if gaming traffic was also prioritized and given the same QOS treatment, but at this point the reality is that the best option I can provide for you is that I will do my best to ensure that all gaming traffic is kept at the unshaped level.
There was some very valuable discussion earlier in the thread about other ways that we could approach this and the possbility of having a dedicated bandwidth pool for gamers with different traffic management priorities and I assure you that this is input I have taken back to the business and it will be given serious consideration as soon as we are in a position to do so.
Kind Regards
Will
7th day adventist church
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That's fine. I do remember the explanation of the "levels" from earlier in the thread - thanks for the refresher.
I do however request that you stop referring to Level2 traffic as unshaped seeing as it has to "step aside" for Level1 traffic - thereby implicitly stating that it gets shaped to make way for other traffic.
If level2 traffic was in fact unshaped, the speed would remain consistent. It doesn't though.
Here is how you can refer to it:
Level 1 traffic gets the highest priority on the network. Positive prioritization.
Level 2 traffic gets slowed down if it gets in the way of Level 1 traffic. Negative prioritization.
Level 3 traffic gets rate limited during specific times of the day. Dice prioritization.
I'm really just replying here for the benefit of others. I hate it when marketing people throw words around to appease the crowd. Today's uncapped ADSL market uses any jargon it can get it's hands on to describe their product but 9 out of 10 times they get it wrong - further confusing the general populace.
Hopefully someone will at least understand what I'm getting at and have a realisation as to what they are being offered as opposed to what they are getting. It might also cut down on all the "OMG MWEB SUXX" threads that litter the discussions page. Realistically, however, it will end up getting lost in the cesspool of mybroadband posts and get drowned out by more marketing crap.
Don't get me wrong - I love Mweb and my 4mb uncapped account. What I hate is the apologists trying to cover up a very obvious hole in the uncapped market where a tiny amount of gaming bandwidth gets treated as "general" traffic in the lesser priority queue but we are told that it's not shaped at all but what we are seeing goes against what you are telling us.
90% of all serious gamers probably bypass your prioritisation rules by using VPNs and SSH tunnels anyway, so the traffic is already added to your "level 1" pool - it's just a pain in the ass to have to deal with the extra level of admin required to get a decent latency to our night time entertainment. These things do however suffer from malfunction and going from that to connecting straight to the gaming servers shows you the immense difference in latency between "unshaped" and QoS.
Don't feel that you have to reply to this post - I know you're an mweb employee and if I see a "Hi 7th day, thank you for your comments" reply I'm going to kill myself.
Not really.
I do however request that you stop referring to Level2 traffic as unshaped seeing as it has to "step aside" for Level1 traffic - thereby implicitly stating that it gets shaped to make way for other traffic.
If level2 traffic was in fact unshaped, the speed would remain consistent. It doesn't though.
Here is how you can refer to it:
Level 1 traffic gets the highest priority on the network. Positive prioritization.
Level 2 traffic gets slowed down if it gets in the way of Level 1 traffic. Negative prioritization.
Level 3 traffic gets rate limited during specific times of the day. Dice prioritization.
I'm really just replying here for the benefit of others. I hate it when marketing people throw words around to appease the crowd. Today's uncapped ADSL market uses any jargon it can get it's hands on to describe their product but 9 out of 10 times they get it wrong - further confusing the general populace.
Hopefully someone will at least understand what I'm getting at and have a realisation as to what they are being offered as opposed to what they are getting. It might also cut down on all the "OMG MWEB SUXX" threads that litter the discussions page. Realistically, however, it will end up getting lost in the cesspool of mybroadband posts and get drowned out by more marketing crap.
Don't get me wrong - I love Mweb and my 4mb uncapped account. What I hate is the apologists trying to cover up a very obvious hole in the uncapped market where a tiny amount of gaming bandwidth gets treated as "general" traffic in the lesser priority queue but we are told that it's not shaped at all but what we are seeing goes against what you are telling us.
90% of all serious gamers probably bypass your prioritisation rules by using VPNs and SSH tunnels anyway, so the traffic is already added to your "level 1" pool - it's just a pain in the ass to have to deal with the extra level of admin required to get a decent latency to our night time entertainment. These things do however suffer from malfunction and going from that to connecting straight to the gaming servers shows you the immense difference in latency between "unshaped" and QoS.
Don't feel that you have to reply to this post - I know you're an mweb employee and if I see a "Hi 7th day, thank you for your comments" reply I'm going to kill myself.
Not really.
Sadly for us gamers, we're still the minority. We see local game servers from ISPs, but the reality is business is where ISPs make money. So along with the "millions" of technically challenged home users who browse FaceBook, check their mail, and update their Twitter account, Business HTTP and Mail make a huge portion of internet traffic. I know my company receives and sends about 2GB of mail (each way) alone, every hour during the day, and more afterhours. Not to mention the 5000+ employees that could be surfing on our 50Mb connection. Small fish really, but times a few 100 times, and you start to see huge bandwidth numbers....
This thread is a small step, but it's a step. Even with all the netowrk upgrades due in the next week or so, I don't expect vast improvements (although a return to the old norm would be nice). They really need to have a gaming model implimented thoughout their system, and if what Will says is true, then one day we might actually get it.
In the mean time, let's just play nice, and provide feedback as needed.....
This thread is a small step, but it's a step. Even with all the netowrk upgrades due in the next week or so, I don't expect vast improvements (although a return to the old norm would be nice). They really need to have a gaming model implimented thoughout their system, and if what Will says is true, then one day we might actually get it.
In the mean time, let's just play nice, and provide feedback as needed.....
Thanks darryn
In all honesty I personally feel that we still have a long way to go and I think that 7th Day makes some really valid points (and I do thank him for his comments and feedback
). Our uncapped service has only just broken the 6 month mark in terms of age and as our CEO announced in the week, by the end of this month we will have already grown the network capacity by about 50% in that space of time.I know as a gamer myself, that we are not known for our patience, but there is definitely a lot of positive feeling in the business in terms of taking the needs of our gaming customers seriously and working towards better solutions for them.
If nothing else, I can give you my assurance that I will continue to listen to your feedback, both positive and negative and take it back to the business at every possible opportunity and I will continue to share as much information as I can with you about the current state of the network and the things that impact on the gaming experience.
Kind Regards
Will
Basjohn
Expert Member
On the uncapped unshaped 384k package Guild Wars latency has gotten quite a bit worse over the last week as before it was averaging in the 300ms region and now it's either in the 500ms or 600ms region, the package is unshaped though so I'm not really sure what would be affecting that latency all of a sudden.
Either way it's not unplayable but 300ms was certainly nicer.
Either way it's not unplayable but 300ms was certainly nicer.
SirFooK'nG
Executive Member
I can concur with that, I have had to dial up with my Afrihost connection in order to get steam to connect. BTW I have a 4mb uncapped MWEB account.
Everything is still on track for the International upgrades at the weekend, which really should make a very substantial difference to the international connections.
The networks team are also working overtime to smooth out the experience in Cape Town. We had some peering links go live last night and there will be other optimization tasks completed over the next few weeks that should put everything in a much better space.
The networks team are also working overtime to smooth out the experience in Cape Town. We had some peering links go live last night and there will be other optimization tasks completed over the next few weeks that should put everything in a much better space.
Basjohn
Expert Member
You should see an improvement next week after the additional international capacity comes online.
PS : How is Guild Wars these days - are people still solo farming Ectos in UW?
Will look forward to possible latency improvements then!
As for GW, I just got back into it after purchasing the expansions I was missing and starting a new character so I'm not quite far enough to tell....but if basic indications (like the most common set of keystrokes ANYWHERE being "/dance") are correct then I presume the answer is "Yes".
I live in PE, the wow ping was decent the last couple of days, but now again it just went sky high. No timeouts, pinging jolt.co.uk at 290ms but in wow its 2k +
I really do hope it gets fixed this weekend...Cant have half the month with this absurd latency for no apparent reason.
I dont want to lose my uncapped but games >> tv series
I really do hope it gets fixed this weekend...Cant have half the month with this absurd latency for no apparent reason.
I dont want to lose my uncapped but games >> tv series