MWEB Gaming Feedback

[semaphore]

No actually I was trying to illustrate a point in terms of what might happen if the roles were reversed and gaming traffic was given higher priority than http and other protocols on a network wide scale.

Gents please, I understand that you're all very serious gamers and I am honestly doing everything that I can to try and address your needs and change the things I do have the power to change to improve the experience for you.

In return all I ask is that you please try to keep your eye on the bigger picture and understand that you are not the only customers on the network. What we change for you can have an impact on everyone, even if you perceive that change to be small at the individual level it may have a much larger effect when applied to a network hosting several hundred thousand users.

Thanks
Will

5,000 gamers does not equate to most likely 20,000 times the amount of people in this country refreshing facebook, or streaming youtube, or streaming radio. While its nice to see an ISP make an effort to improve the life of gamers. I believe that misinformation regarding traffic volumes for said protocols should also be established. HTTP will always eat more than game traffic. Mweb already choke all p2p protocols to stand still.

 

[7th day adventist church]

No actually I was trying to illustrate a point in terms of what might happen if the roles were reversed and gaming traffic was given higher priority than http and other protocols on a network wide scale.

Sorry but this is incorrect. I refer you to my previous post where I pointed out how I actually use less traffic when I am gaming, as opposed to downloading large files/browsing youtube when I am not gaming.

Higher priority on 15MB/h traffic will have less of an impact than higher priority on 100MB/h traffic.

 

[Will@MWEB]

5,000 gamers does not equate to most likely 20,000 times the amount of people in this country refreshing facebook, or streaming youtube, or streaming radio. While its nice to see an ISP make an effort to improve the life of gamers. I believe that misinformation regarding traffic volumes for said protocols should also be established. HTTP will always eat more than game traffic. Mweb already choke all p2p protocols to stand still.

semaphore you're obviously frustrated with the experience and I get that, but I really think I've made our position as clear as possible on this so can I ask that we please move the discussion forward from here.

As I said to Blustorm I fully support the idea of looking at products tailored specifically for gamers and I will take his suggestions back to our products team and ask them to add it to the customer wishlist, more than this I cannot do.

 

[semaphore]

semaphore you're obviously frustrated with the experience and I get that, but I really think I've made our position as clear as possible on this so can I ask that we please move the discussion forward from here.

As I said to Blustorm I fully support the idea of looking at products tailored specifically for gamers and I will take his suggestions back to our products team and ask them to add it to the customer wishlist, more than this I cannot do.

Lol, Will, i am not frustrated with the experience as i don't use your product. After getting the same old technical support about resetting my ports(lol), changing my MTU(lolz), and then the kicker my network is infected with a trojan(rolflolztrolls). I decided mweb clearly where trying to bull**** its users. So i promptly retired. I have been with axxess since and apart from the last few days of annoyance with regards to latency, it has settled down and been working perfectly. However with that said, this being a public forum i am just giving my input. As i did use it previously. Also i believe you guys made a product tailored for gamers isnt it some stupid price like 2,500R ? lol.

 

[Will@MWEB]

Sorry but this is incorrect. I refer you to my previous post where I pointed out how I actually use less traffic when I am gaming, as opposed to downloading large files/browsing youtube when I am not gaming.

Higher priority on 15MB/h traffic will have less of an impact than higher priority on 100MB/h traffic.

I really wish it was that simple You're talking about changing the quality of service on a network wide level, these are business wide decisions that simply cannot be taken lightly and the impact can be far reaching in very unexpected ways if these things are not planned carefully.

If we were to launch a dedicated gaming product we would have to essentially partition off a stripe of bandwidth which would be contended only with other gaming customers and apply a completely different set of traffic prioritization rules to this pool. a lot of time resources and careful planning would have to go into rolling something like this out - it isn't something we can just pull together overnight.

 

[7th day adventist church]

Yes I realise that but my point stands. It can be done, it is what people want, and the argument that people won't be able to browse facebook anymore is wrong.

In all honesty Mr. Will, you don't strike me as a person that hangs out with the network crowd at Mweb, so I don't really think you are providing us with the honest truth. I'm not saying you are being dishonest, I just don't think you are able to answer the technical questions and ideas we are suggesting here with 100% confidence, and from what I've seen over the past 2 pages it has become clear to me.

This is a fruitless conversation so I won't contribute to this thread any longer.

 

[Murmaider]

I really wish it was that simple You're talking about changing the quality of service on a network wide level, these are business wide decisions that simply cannot be taken lightly and the impact can be far reaching in very unexpected ways if these things are not planned carefully.

If we were to launch a dedicated gaming product we would have to essentially partition off a stripe of bandwidth which would be contended only with other gaming customers and apply a completely different set of traffic prioritization rules to this pool. a lot of time resources and careful planning would have to go into rolling something like this out - it isn't something we can just pull together overnight.

Hi Will

A solution like this or even some form of prioritizing on online gaming would make a lot of people I know switch to MWEB.
I'm not going to lie, the first ISP that comes out with a gaming prioritized solution has my business and I can assure you a hell of a lot of your gaming customers will jump ship if a solution like this is offered by another ISP.
As "7th day" pointed out, gamers can't download and play at the same time, so when gamers can't play, they queue up their HD series and movies for download... The bandwidth impact is far greater.

 

[Will@MWEB]

Thanks for your feedback 7th day. I really have given careful consideration to everything you've had to say and I will take these ideas further where I'm able to.

I'm sorry if you feel that my answers were not up to scratch in the technical department, or that I was attempting to be dishonest in some way. I am in fact in constant communication with our senior network engineers and I have a pretty clear picture of how the network is structured, how the traffic is managed and what the constraints are in terms of what we can and cannot change.

These are not always easy things to discuss without a whiteboard and 3 hours to kill

I hope that you will reconsider your stance and continue to voice your opinions in the future.

 

[Will@MWEB]

Hi Will

A solution like this or even some form of prioritizing on online gaming would make a lot of people I know switch to MWEB.
I'm not going to lie, the first ISP that comes out with a gaming prioritized solution has my business and I can assure you a hell of a lot of your gaming customers will jump ship if a solution like this is offered by another ISP.
As "7th day" pointed out, gamers can't download and play at the same time, so when gamers can't play, they queue up their HD series and movies for download... The bandwidth impact is far greater.

Agree 100% and I really hope we do look at this.

I was just pointing out that implementing the solution will not be quite as simple as bumping all the gaming traffic a few notches up the priority list and then printing a new pricelist (there that was a sarcasm)

Have a great weekend everyone and if anyone is playing Bad company 2 tonight - watch your six

 

[Murmaider]

Agree 100% and I really hope we do look at this.

I was just pointing out that implementing the solution will not be quite as simple as bumping all the gaming traffic a few notches up the priority list and then printing a new pricelist (there that was a sarcasm)

Have a great weekend everyone and if anyone is playing Bad company 2 tonight - watch your six

Hi Will,

I value your feedback and efforts, I guess a step in the right direction would be to try and solve the wide latency bar and the lag spikes as I mentioned in the last post on page 5 here :
http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthr...ing-Feedback?p=4747051&viewfull=1#post4747051

 

[Will@MWEB]

Again agree.

I'd like to try and understand what's causing this and see if it's something that is within my control to address. I am hoping that the change i mentioned from this morning regarding behavioral download is going to go some way towards improving this as I think that with MMO'S in particular this is what in game content delivery - such as WoW's preloading of terrain mentioned by semaphore - is being classed as.

Please let me know if you notice any difference this weekend.

I'm almost tempted to start playing again just to get a first-hand handle on what you guys are experiencing, luckily I gave away my account so I can resist the urge

 

[BluStorm]

I understand the complexities with regards to the network changes (deal with the Network people where I work), but I'd like to try to understand a "small" thing regarding the network.

Does the bandwidth space MWeb is allocated on National Backbones (eg Telkom) and international pipes (eg SEACOM/SAT-3) get any form or shaping prioritisation, or is that done at MWeb?

The reason I ask, is that if it's done at MWeb, it makes "easier" to configure a new gaming network. I realise "easier" is a mild exaggeration, but if the shaping/prioritising is done externally, then MWeb is essentially at the mercy of it's upstream providers.

I say "configure a new network" as separating gamers and "ordinary" users, will prevent (or atleast radically reduce) one from impacting the other. This will also allow more room to manouver when tweaking the gamers network (HTTP is pretty much it, but there are always new games and game servers). Obviously, there is the apportioning the backbone allotment between the two networks (which I think will be more of an issue than creating a second network internally), but I'm guessing that the people with the know-how will be able to find a solution.

Look, I'm NOT a network specialist, but I think this might make your network design easier. After 6 months of Uncapped MWeb, you guys must have some stats of how much bandwidth, which ports and addresses different things use, and apportioning a dedicated amount (eg 5%) of of your total network capacity to gaming, should be relatively straight forward. Also, perhaps requesting a poll from your users, to see what games (if any) they play, for how long etc.

 

[BluStorm]

Again agree.

I'd like to try and understand what's causing this and see if it's something that is within my control to address. I am hoping that the change i mentioned from this morning regarding behavioral download is going to go some way towards improving this as I think that with MMO'S in particular this is what in game content delivery - such as WoW's preloading of terrain mentioned by semaphore - is being classed as.

Please let me know if you notice any difference this weekend.

I'm almost tempted to start playing again just to get a first-hand handle on what you guys are experiencing, luckily I gave away my account so I can resist the urge

Long Weekend = Raiding to the Max.... Looking forward to seeing if these changes make an improvement. Besides my family, atleast 4 other guildes are MWeb members, so we can get a fair idea.

 

[killadoob]

Will@mweb dude since that high latency thread my latency locally has been 13ms no matter the time of day.

Did you guys or telkom change anything? Could they perhaps have upgraded my exchange?

 

[Will@MWEB]

I understand the complexities with regards to the network changes (deal with the Network people where I work), but I'd like to try to understand a "small" thing regarding the network.

Does the bandwidth space MWeb is allocated on National Backbones (eg Telkom) and international pipes (eg SEACOM/SAT-3) get any form or shaping prioritisation, or is that done at MWeb?

The reason I ask, is that if it's done at MWeb, it makes "easier" to configure a new gaming network. I realise "easier" is a mild exaggeration, but if the shaping/prioritising is done externally, then MWeb is essentially at the mercy of it's upstream providers.

I say "configure a new network" as separating gamers and "ordinary" users, will prevent (or atleast radically reduce) one from impacting the other. This will also allow more room to manouver when tweaking the gamers network (HTTP is pretty much it, but there are always new games and game servers). Obviously, there is the apportioning the backbone allotment between the two networks (which I think will be more of an issue than creating a second network internally), but I'm guessing that the people with the know-how will be able to find a solution.

Look, I'm NOT a network specialist, but I think this might make your network design easier. After 6 months of Uncapped MWeb, you guys must have some stats of how much bandwidth, which ports and addresses different things use, and apportioning a dedicated amount (eg 5%) of of your total network capacity to gaming, should be relatively straight forward. Also, perhaps requesting a poll from your users, to see what games (if any) they play, for how long etc.

As a short answer to the first part of your question. No We purchase capacity in 2 places - the IPC links that connect us to our clients on the ADSL last mile and the international circuits that are lit up for us on Seacom and this does not come 'pre-shaped' in any way.

In terms of your suggestions this is essentially something like what we would have to do, but the devil is almost always in the detail. the best answer I can give you at this point is give it some time. 6 months is still very young for a network on this scale and our guys have already made some very big steps forward in terms of expanding the capacity. We still have a lot of ground to cover before we are finished building Rome

 

[Will@MWEB]

Will@mweb dude since that high latency thread my latency locally has been 13ms no matter the time of day.

Did you guys or telkom change anything? Could they perhaps have upgraded my exchange?

killa I'd like to take credit but no

We have a fault open with SAIX currently on the Western Cape issues, but I'm still awaiting feedback on the situation with yourself and Pooky. I'm very glad to hear there has been some improvement though, Telkom still have a lot of maintenance on the go at this point though so it is possible. I also noticed an improvement on the Western Cape issue last night actually. Lets all cross our fingers for a low latency weekend

 

[Gordon_R]

killa I'd like to take credit but no

We have a fault open with SAIX currently on the Western Cape issues, but I'm still awaiting feedback on the situation with yourself and Pooky. I'm very glad to hear there has been some improvement though, Telkom still have a lot of maintenance on the go at this point though so it is possible. I also noticed an improvement on the Western Cape issue last night actually. Lets all cross our fingers for a low latency weekend

I don't think the latency issue has been properly 'fixed' yet (I'm not a gamer, but still notice spikes in ping times in CT).

What seems more likely is that the end of school term means less people are hammering the network, so congestion is less, and the network can cope with the traffic.

 

[Will@MWEB]

Don't worry Gordon I'm not that easily convinced either I'll keep the fault log open until I have some proper answers as to what is/was causing the problem.

 

[StevenC]

Popping in once again to say that last night and tonight on WoW has been pretty fantastic with regards to latency while raiding. First time in a long time I have seen yellow numbers on my latency All the haters in the thread - stop hating, for once we have someone doing some good for us and is listening to our concerns and answering our questions with as much info as he can possibly reply with.

Thanks Will, this kind of interaction goes a long way to satisfying customers and I hope to see more of it from MWEB!

 

[Will@MWEB]

Popping in once again to say that last night and tonight on WoW has been pretty fantastic with regards to latency while raiding. First time in a long time I have seen yellow numbers on my latency All the haters in the thread - stop hating, for once we have someone doing some good for us and is listening to our concerns and answering our questions with as much info as he can possibly reply with.

Thanks Will, this kind of interaction goes a long way to satisfying customers and I hope to see more of it from MWEB!

My pleasure Steven, I'm assuming you're playing on an EU realm if you were raiding last night?

Would love to hear some more feedback from the MMO players over the weekend.