MWEB Gaming Feedback

So played much of the day with better latency than I have ever had. My wife and I used the 384 line at the same time for quite a while and we were both under 550ms latency. This goes contrary to the pattern I've experienced recently, so it is a bit of a head-scratcher.

Happy to be able to play today, although I had to open a ticket after losing my Battered Hilt, but I'm sure MWeb had nothing to do with that.
 
It's a complete head-scratcher considering I was able to replicate MindSlyde's problems on Dunemaul today.
 
KinsZA said:
Well latency's do vary from server to server...
Click to expand...

I was with Will on my server for about an hour and he had great latency for the first 40 minutes or so (500-600) then pow... disconnects, lag, everything.

Like someone flipped a switch (Will's exacts words). It's bizarre.
 
Gents hold onto your hats please, I think I might have made a breakthrough... I can test this a bit further, but at this point I think the quicker I get the information out into the wild for further testing the better:

I was going through the O2 thread again and spotted more than one mention of TCPOptimizer, which of course we know doesnt work, but they specifically mentioned that at some point a GM had recommended a radical reduction in the MTU value and said it had worked. I tried this logged in and immediately had latency of around 450ms.

I didn't want to believe it so I immediately set the MTU back to windows default, rebooted and had latency in the thousands.

I then ran optimizer again and this time chose its optimal values, which don't change the MTU. If anything this was worse - I couldn't see the latency in Dalaran because it stayed at 0 and I had two DC's back to back.

So having now done sufficient control tests I set the TCP stack back to defaults lowered the MTU to 1000, rebooted again and I'm currently sitting in Dalaran, with a ping moving between 550 and 650 (this is on MindSlyde's realm Dunemaul).

For reasons of stating the obvious you need to apply the MTU value to your primary NIC, you need to run the optimizer with elevated privileges and you need to reboot after making the change.

Can't wait to hear your feedback on this one.

EDIT: This is the Optimizer I used - I am running up to date Avast, no alarms went off, standard disclaimer applies :D

http://www.speedguide.net/files/TCPOptimizer.exe

Change the settings to windows default if they are not already, reboot after that change and then put it on custom and change *only* the MTU on the primary adaptor down to 1000.
 
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Very interesting.

Moving through realms, 350-400ms in the NE start area on Twilight Hammer.

Moved to Lightbringer where I have a toon standing in the middle of a very busy Stormwind with Halloween craziness going on.

The latency started at 2200 and then dropped 500ms before continuing to drops slowly. It's currently at 780 and still on a downward trend.

EDIT: Settled down at 600ms
 
No, not MTU!

But why would it only affect Mweb and not other ISPs? I've been running WoW on Afrihost (2nd PPPoE connection) for over a week now without any latency issues whatsoever.

So maybe you have a clue for your engineers, but I would be squeamish about mucking about with client MTUs.
 
Gatecrasher said:
No, not MTU!

But why would it only affect Mweb and not other ISPs? I've been running WoW on Afrihost (2nd PPPoE connection) for over a week now without any latency issues whatsoever.

So maybe you have a clue for your engineers, but I would be squeamish about mucking about with client MTUs.
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Gatecrasher honestly at this point I have no idea, but the indication is that this worked for some of O2 and Virgin Media's clients in the UK as well and none of them reported any adverse effects to applying this. As a final control I just set my MTU back to 1500 logged into Lightbringer and had in game latency immediately reported as 14000. If you're squeamish about mucking about with MTU settings on a single PC consider how squeamish our network engineers will be about mucking about with them in an environment which impacts on several hundred thousand clients - if this works we may have to live with it as a workaround in the medium term.

EDIT: and after that further control check its back on 1000 and latency on Lightbringer in StormWind is in the mid 500's, now if you gentlemen will all excuse me I'll be on Twighlight Hammer doing some proper testing with my newly created NE Rogue :D
 
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Hmm i set my MTU to 1000 with program and the latency was about 1k with some weird spikeyness in using skills. Small improvement yet still unplayable. At least we on the right track kinda. Will, what should the MTU be set at for a 384 line?

Nvm saw your post above just now, will give it a shot tomorrow and report back. Thx for the research and info.
 
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It's okay, Will. I was just wondering if you had been on an Iburst helpdesk 101 course.

It is not a biggie to try it out. I can't try this out myself at the moment because I'm away on a business trip for the rest of this week, but I'm very interested to see if this helps others.

My question is if I change the MTU on my router will that suffice, or do we have to do this on individual pcs? Or both.
 
Quoted from Virgin Media:
Since the latest World of Warcraft update we have seen that the type of packets used by Blizzard to deliver the on-line gaming has changed significantly. This means that Virgin Media's National (ADSL) traffic management system is unable to recognise the packets as gaming traffic and assumes that they are peer to peer traffic. Due to this the traffic management system does not place the packets within the gaming queue which has the highest priority and lowest latency within the VM network, instead they fall into the peer to peer class which gets a low level of priority within our network and by default a higher level of latency.

We are working to try and rectify this as soon as we can with our traffic management supplier however it will take us a few weeks to upgrade the traffic manage solution so that is can recognise the new traffic class and correctly classify it as gaming. Unfortunately due to the nature of most traffic management solutions we can not manually move these packets into the gaming queue as the solution can not work out which ones to move.

We appreciate that some customers will have noticed a similar issue with the previous World of Warcraft update. The reason behind this is because gaming companies are not prepared to share the updates with Virgin Media or traffic management suppliers prior to its release and so the first time we see the new packets is when people start to use the new updates. We are trying to change this view point of the gaming companies however at present they are un-willing to work with us.

We apologise for the affect that this has on your gaming experience and we will update you when we have a confirmed fix date for this.
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I dont know if this is true or not.
 
In a raid using my Axxess account at the moment so cannot test this out but will give it a bash after. Just to note, it is kinda spikey tonight even on the Axxess account, something has fluffed recently!
 
StevenC said:
In a raid using my Axxess account at the moment so cannot test this out but will give it a bash after. Just to note, it is kinda spikey tonight even on the Axxess account, something has fluffed recently!
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Last day of the month and people are using up their caps, so you are possibly seeing some localised congestion.
 
Seems to be also network issues at Telia .net (Blizzard's ISP)
 
My latency to Silvermoon is quite ok tbh, not as great as before the patch though. Was always like 350-550 ish and now its 500-600, still playable and no spikes :)
 
Got this reply from Blizzard awhile ago and posted it on here as well:
1) Download and run DrTCP -> http://www.dslreports.com/drtcp
2) Select your Network Adapter and change MaxMTU to 1400. (Default value is 1500)
3) Press 'Apply' and try the game again.

Tried it at 1400 as suggested but didn't notice any change, will try setting it to 1000 tomorrow, and give some feedback.
 
Jovs said:
Got this reply from Blizzard awhile ago and posted it on here as well:
1) Download and run DrTCP -> http://www.dslreports.com/drtcp
2) Select your Network Adapter and change MaxMTU to 1400. (Default value is 1500)
3) Press 'Apply' and try the game again.

Tried it at 1400 as suggested but didn't notice any change, will try setting it to 1000 tomorrow, and give some feedback.
Click to expand...

I'm guessing there is a middle ground somewhere between those values, I'll try adjusting it up slowly tomorrow night and see what the effect is.

Also make sure that the setting is actually being applied and that DrTCP works on your OS - the one I linked earlier definitely works on Windows 7.
 
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Once again, Latency in WoW has cost me some nice achievements that we are backtracking and doing. Observed (25 Man) and a friggin chance at a Ashes of Alar mount. THANKS U LOVELY ISPS!
 
Ok /rant over, it's just pixels anyways but I am still pissed off about it. When the backup plan fails and there is nothing one can do about it, it is just frustrating.

Tried the MTU setting on MWEB account, it's pulled my WoW latency down to the 500-600ms range, solo'd mount bosses in ZG with no hassle then ported to Dalaran where I was met with brief loading lag (384k line, it was a bit titchier than usual). Ran around in Dala sorting some stuff, latency held up. Will give it a bash in raiding conditions tomorrow night, hopefully this is a short term fix (would expect a long term thing from MWEB!).
 
man still waiting for telkom to active my dsl at exchange, want to help testing etc.

atm im still 300-320ms on 3g , 25 man raiding :)
 
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