MWEB Gaming Feedback

[WGS2010]

I'm using NO proxy whatsoever on a 384 line (with my bro playing aswell sometimes) and raiding 25mans. No issues for me everything runs smoothly. However there are some things you can do to make it better

1. Put off your combatlog
2. If you use recount type /recount sync to disable the feedback thingy it gives to other recount clients in the group.

Thanks for the advice - will try that and hope for the best.

 

[StevenC]

I have had a very great experience with 25 man raiding on MWEB with just a hiccup here and there, namely I will get disconnected on Cho'Gall on the second phase when all the adds spawn. I have been on holiday since Friday but I will check it out either tonight or tomorrow with my Skada damage meters disabled just to see if it makes a difference.

Other than that, very smooth going.

 

[Beanbag]

On a 384k line StevenC? And are you using a proxy? Also, do you use a voice chat program?

 

[Will@MWEB]

BFBC2 servers is still deserted As is the Gamezone forums.... I can't even see any announcement on the GameZone forums...

I'm sure they will start to fill up once more people become aware, we are still really in live playtesting mode - forum areas and so forth are Work in Progress and there will be a big bang announcement when everything is ready.

 

[Will@MWEB]

Hi Will

Ive been an Mweb customer since the uncapped option was made available. Since then i have had mixed results in terms of gaming. At the moment im still currently experiencing huge issues with steam and have been for the last 5 months or so. I can now connect to steam and update games (a couple months ago my steam account would not even login) however i cannot find any servers to play on. I refresh for instance counterstrike source and find zero results. When i manually enter in server ips and try connect it fails. I also get dropped from Call of Duty - BO and BFBC2(cant connect to EA servers on startup). Other issues are with Starcraft 2 as i get dropped from games occassionally.

I live in Rondebosch and have no issues with afrihost account. As soon as i dialup i can connect to all games no problem. It seems i only have an issue with Mweb isp.

Please may i get some feedback on these issues.

I really can't see why anything on our side would cause steam to behave like that, there must be an underlying issue. You can try going to the myaccount pages and disabling protected access although I somehow suspect it won't solve the problem. The only other suggestions I can give you is to check your local firewall if any, do a fresh install of steam (perhaps it's corrupted) and also to go into your download region settings and force it to use your closest MWEB server.

 

[StevenC]

On a 384k line StevenC? And are you using a proxy? Also, do you use a voice chat program?

No proxy (too cheap xD ) and yes, we use Ventrilo. Like I said, I am seriously loving MWEB at the moment because I didn't even know that these kinds of latencies were something I would see in my lifetime!

 

[Beanbag]

Guess I'll have to get traceroutes for Will@Mweb tonight... Also, Im using a Telkom 105W ADSL router, havent had any problems with it before, and it was free Guess I should also check what codec our GM is using on TeamSpeak, the higher the quality the higher the ammount of bandwidth usage, right?

 

[smokemaryjane]

Guys, for those having lag issues on a 384 line. Blizzard have claimed that they now use the term Broadband for lines which are 4mb down and 1mb up. Anything slower than this is not classified as 'true' broadband by the FCC.

If you raid, you most likely have Recount installed. Next time you raid with 10 or 25 people, open this addon's settings, and select the option to display realtime-bandwidth. Watch the meters climb as you enter a fight, you will realize that 384 just cannot handle the amount of data being sent/received. (I stand to be corrected but on 384, max speed, you get something like 40kb max.) It turns into 'backlog' almost. Now this is not something an ISP can fix for you, only you can fix it, by upgrading your line speed.

Mweb had issues last year. This thread got started to inquire what was happening to gamers, and it progressed to a point where I cancelled my account, as did many other users. However during December, Mweb corrected their lag issues, I re-instated my mweb account, and I am now running at 176ms almost every night. End of the month/ peak times, my ping jumps at worst to 225ms or so.

Mweb, what you guys did for us in CT was great. Thanks for that.

EDIT: Just for interest's sake: I run 4mb uncapped shaped account. With a Telkom-paid dsl line.

 

[Chaosza]

Thanks alot for your assistance Will changing the download region worked.

 

[knobshine]

I'm on MWEB shaped 384 and can't do 25 man raids atm. I'm fine on trash but will often if not always dc on boss fights, mainly ones that have a lot of aoe healing/dps happening. Not blaming MWEB though as I know WoW uses more bandwidth than it used to.

Since I'd rather have an uncapped 384 line than a 4mb capped line it looks like my raiding days are over, unless I can find a 10 man raiding guild which will hopefully be easier on my thin internet tubes.

 

[Raedwulf]

However during December, Mweb corrected their lag issues, I re-instated my mweb account, and I am now running at 176ms almost every night. End of the month/ peak times, my ping jumps at worst to 225ms or so.

Mweb, what you guys did for us in CT was great. Thanks for that.

EDIT: Just for interest's sake: I run 4mb uncapped shaped account. With a Telkom-paid dsl line.

What did they do in cape? And what are you getting 176 ms on?

 

[Gtx Gaming]

they made all ct clients run though sat-3 and not seacom anymore.

 

[Will@MWEB]

Guys, for those having lag issues on a 384 line. Blizzard have claimed that they now use the term Broadband for lines which are 4mb up and 1mb down. Anything slower than this is not classified as 'true' broadband by the FCC.

If you raid, you most likely have Recount installed. Next time you raid with 10 or 25 people, open this addon's settings, and select the option to display realtime-bandwidth. Watch the meters climb as you enter a fight, you will realize that 384 just cannot handle the amount of data being sent/received. (I stand to be corrected but on 384, max speed, you get something like 40kb max.) It turns into 'backlog' almost. Now this is not something an ISP can fix for you, only you can fix it, by upgrading your line speed.

Mweb had issues last year. This thread got started to inquire what was happening to gamers, and it progressed to a point where I cancelled my account, as did many other users. However during December, Mweb corrected their lag issues, I re-instated my mweb account, and I am now running at 176ms almost every night. End of the month/ peak times, my ping jumps at worst to 225ms or so.

Mweb, what you guys did for us in CT was great. Thanks for that.

EDIT: Just for interest's sake: I run 4mb uncapped shaped account. With a Telkom-paid dsl line.

Glad you're still enjoying it smj, at some point I should fully express my gratitude to you guys for getting me back to playing WoW as well

 

[Will@MWEB]

I typed out a full and detailed response for this and when I posted it just vanished lol. So here we go again.

I had a issue with my pings, local at over 500, uk over 600, us over 700 and korea over 1000. I disconnected all the pcs from my network except my own, and removed all unnecessary processes, restarted and it turned around completely. Added back all pcs and processes and it still worked, so I have no idea what was wrong there. Oddly after I cleared everything off, and I ran my first test after restart, my local was still up over 350, but when I came back to it after 2 or 3 more tests it dropped down, despite the fact nothing had changed.

My current numbers are Cape - 12 ms, no packet loss, 1 ms jitter. Milton Keynes in UK - 165 ms, no packet loss, 1 ms jitter. Washington DC - 244 ms, no packet loss, 1-2ms jitters. Seoul, S Korea - 485 ms, no packet loss, 7-9 ms jitter.

These numbers are all from pingtest.net.

Specific games we're playing include League of Legends US (ping from around 300 on a good day, 400-500 average, spiking up near 1000.), WoW US (350, spiking to around 600), and Uncharted Waters Online, which does not provide proper latency numbers, instead settling on a spinning colour coded ring.

My question is are these numbers about standard for Cape Town, or even just South Africa in general? Or is there room for improvement?

For the most part I'm quite satisfied, with the exception of that last game, Uncharted Waters, which is giving me a real issue. Servers are located in Seoul, and after some effort, I have found this to be their IP. 121.78.238.151
I ran winmtr on that, and found quite a few reasons for my poor game performance.

The route taken include 30 hops which go from Cape Town, via the UK and then via the US, starting at the US west coast, jumping along a few stops to the east coast, doubling back to the middle, and then back east and finally on to Korea via the pacific.
The lowest the ping goes is 450 ms, averaging between there and 500, but bounced up as far as 800 or 1000 occasionally. I have also noted that packet loss goes as high as 5%. Back on pingtest, I also experienced a few runs where I could not even get a test on Seoul as no packets came back at all. Jitter has jumped as high as 50 ms.

Any way you look at it, the game is unplayable, lag spikes are vicious, and disconnects are very frequent.

So to summarize, are my numbers about on par with everyone else? Is there anything I can do to improve my difficulties with reaching that Seoul server?
Finally I also wanted to ask if I would get better latency results if I bumped up to the 10 meg service? Or would the 4 meg uncapped be the better options?

Thanks,
Raoul

Hi Raedwulf, apologies for the delayed response:

Firstly your pings to the US are probably about normal. In terms of our current international routes European destinations are definitely preferable for gaming - it's just a much more direct route and physically closer. Your speedtest to Milton Keynes and your local speedtests look 100%.

In terms of Uncharted Waters those really don't sound like ideal conditions and I'm not surprised its unplayable. Unfortunately once we break out in London with our peering partners there we don't have any control of the upstream experience so I can't really offer you any assistance on this one.

Finally in terms of the difference between 10mb and 4mb I don't think you should expect to see any difference in latency, I have run WoW tests on a line syncing at 8mb and seen very little difference.

Kind Regards
Will

 

[Beanbag]

I'm on MWEB shaped 384 and can't do 25 man raids atm. I'm fine on trash but will often if not always dc on boss fights, mainly ones that have a lot of aoe healing/dps happening. Not blaming MWEB though as I know WoW uses more bandwidth than it used to.

Since I'd rather have an uncapped 384 line than a 4mb capped line it looks like my raiding days are over, unless I can find a 10 man raiding guild which will hopefully be easier on my thin internet tubes.

Same here knobshine. That is why I wanted to know if there is anyone else raiding on a 384k line. Some say they can, some cant. That is why I am going to give BattlePing a try this Wednesday raid night on the 25man and see how it goes.

Will@Mweb, i know you are swamped, but I had a technical question regarding gaming proxies, any feedback?

 

[Will@MWEB]

Will@Mweb, is there any difference in the priority of wow traffic via proxy VS via normal connection?

An interesting question. I would say from our point of view there should be very little difference. I haven't specifically examined how the shaper categorizes proxy traffic, but my logic tells me it should show up as SSH, which should carry a similar priority to the gaming traffic itself. I think there are definitely benefits to running through a proxy if you are very serious about getting the best connection possible, but as an alternate suggestion to laying out money on a proxy service have you considered testing on a 512k line to see how much difference that would make?

I'm really at a bit of a loss as to why some of you say that the experience on 384k in WoW is great while others are struggling to raid at those speeds - I think the add-ons advice probably carries a lot of merit and I would suggest a complete strip down of add-ons, even if it's just to see how much difference it makes.

 

[Raedwulf]

they made all ct clients run though sat-3 and not seacom anymore.

Oh I see, how do I get onto this? Doubt it is automatic, almost positive I am gaming on seacom. Or am I wrong? In which case how can I try running through Seacom? If I am running via sat 3, might explain why my connection to S Korea game server is running via the US.

 

[Raedwulf]

Hi Raedwulf, apologies for the delayed response:

Firstly your pings to the US are probably about normal. In terms of our current international routes European destinations are definitely preferable for gaming - it's just a much more direct route and physically closer. Your speedtest to Milton Keynes and your local speedtests look 100%.

In terms of Uncharted Waters those really don't sound like ideal conditions and I'm not surprised its unplayable. Unfortunately once we break out in London with our peering partners there we don't have any control of the upstream experience so I can't really offer you any assistance on this one.

Finally in terms of the difference between 10mb and 4mb I don't think you should expect to see any difference in latency, I have run WoW tests on a line syncing at 8mb and seen very little difference.

Kind Regards
Will

I see, its all pretty much what I thought, thanks for the confirmation. Would I see any significant improvements if I went for 4 meg unshaped instead of the 10 meg shaped?

 

[Will@MWEB]

Oh I see, how do I get onto this? Doubt it is automatic, almost positive I am gaming on seacom. Or am I wrong? In which case how can I try running through Seacom? If I am running via sat 3, might explain why my connection to S Korea game server is running via the US.

It's not a question of being able to choose, rather the physical network layout. We have two IPC nodes, one in JHB and one in CPT. We provision international bandwidth from Seacom onto our JHB network and from SAT-3 onto our Cape Town network. Our customers are routed either onto the JHB, or CPT node based roughly on geographical location (the split is actually done at the level of which Telkom edge service router you connect to).

To answer your other question regarding unshaped, its difficult to say, but as we do give gaming traffic a very high priority on the shaped products I don't think you will see a big difference. It won't make a difference to your routing to South Korea which is ultimately what's causing your problem in this case.

 

[Raedwulf]

It's not a question of being able to choose, rather the physical network layout. We have two IPC nodes, one in JHB and one in CPT. We provision international bandwidth from Seacom onto our JHB network and from SAT-3 onto our Cape Town network. Our customers are routed either onto the JHB, or CPT node based roughly on geographical location (the split is actually done at the level of which Telkom edge service router you connect to).

To answer your other question regarding unshaped, its difficult to say, but as we do give gaming traffic a very high priority on the shaped products I don't think you will see a big difference. It won't make a difference to your routing to South Korea which is ultimately what's causing your problem in this case.

Ouch, sounds like there is very little hope. Thanks for the quick and informative response nonetheless. One final thing then, is there some method, maybe proxy settings or whatever the case may be, that I could try the results of my connection being routed with the JHB traffic instead of the CPT I imagine it is currently on? I thought maybe with a east coast route I might be able to get a better route to Asia by some chance, rather than the current trek across both the world's major oceans.

Thanks again for the info on the unshaped, clarifies the potential benefits I am going to see by upgrading to either. 10 meg its going to be.