Need advice for online gaming

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Gohan_SS

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Hey guys

I recently came from Namibia to study in CT. I pretty much just moved into a new block of flats with 24 hour free internet connection. I think it is a 256k lease line and from what i heard from the administrator everyone should receive 64k at least. What bothers me is the fact that only 7 out of a hundred percent of the network gets utilized and my ping is normally 200 in UT 2004. Ive tried everything from netboosters to tweaking internet settings to lower my ping, nothing seems to help. Is there any advice to get the network utilization higher and is it possible to utilize at least 30 percent?
 
Firstly, your network usage at 7% is probably 7% of 100Mbps. The 100Mbps is the connection between your pc and the hub/switch that it's connected to. That has nothing to do with the speed of the internet connection.

Secondly, i'm assuming you're playing UT on local (South African) servers. If you're not, then that would explain the high pings. I'm not sure how much bandwidth UT uses, but it is possible that you're not getting enough bandwidth to run the game smoothly. When i was on ISDN, which is also 64k, my ping would sometimes reach 200 on busy servers (playing call of duty; which doesnt use an awful lot of b/w).

Also if other people, who are sharing that leased line, are using heavy bandwidth (downloading etc) that could cause to lag too i think. I'm not too sure how the whole sharing bandwidth thing works. If it's a 256meg line, and the admin says that everyone should get 64k, that means that there are only 4 people using the connection.

Hope all this helps!!!!
 
Thanks, i dont really know where to find SA servers. Im really new to this whole internet thing. So what you are saying is that even if the connection to the switch is a hundred percent,its not going to help me anything? Ive done some speed checks and according to most of them the speed of my connection is about 60 k. As soon as i start downloading, it has decent transfer rates of about 50kbps.The problem is it lasts for about 2 seconds and then drops to 7kbps. I can get a private lease line,anything you would recommend for a decent price. I want something that will support online gaming and emails.Thanks
 
Gohan_SS said:
...
As soon as i start downloading, it has decent transfer rates of about 50kbps.The problem is it lasts for about 2 seconds and then drops to 7kbps...
Click to expand...
:confused: Now why does that 256K leased line (Diginet?) sound like it is Sentech MyWireless in disguise?
 
Thanks dominic but can anyone tell me whether 60K is efficient for local UT 2004 servers and if not for any reason what connection would be recommended. Sorry for asking these stupid questions but we that come from primitive places dont really know much about these things. I just wanna have fun playing online with no lag...............
 
Well, if your shared line is indeed a sentech mywireless line, you're buggered. Get adsl if u can afford it. Good for local gaming. Get isdn for good to average local pings. Isdn also has better international pings than adsl.
A leased line is an expensive option.
I suppose for adsl the best option currently available is the Home DSL384, though u do get capped after 3gigs. Dont get the 24month contract, buy your own modem to avoid that.
 
Gohan_SS, like Strobemeister said, also for some background I recommend reading the [post=156775]MyADSL January 2005 Broadband Ratings Report[/post].
 
How does ADSL exactly work, is it a 24H connection which you only pay say like 500 bucks every month. How fast is the connection and what in the world is capping? please explain the whole process..........Thanks alot
 
Gohan, first and foremost, find out WHAT internet connection your administrator uses. If it's sentech, kill him immediately, take his entrails, wrap it around your head and dance a victory dance, because you did human kind a favour.

There is a difference between kbps and kb/s

a 256kbps line would give you a download speed of approx 32kb/s

If everyone shares that line, and your admin says you will get a minimum of 64k (which is equal to around 8kb/s) that means that only 4 people (as suggested earlier) share your connection.

However, if it drops to 7kbps, it means you're getting a download speed of 0.875kb/s!!! Which is slower than a normal 56k dialup modem. In fact, it's slower than the very first modems every produced! (@ 9600 baud, stand to be corrected, 9600 would give you 0.9kb/s)

This could explain your 200 ping, however, I suggest you open your command prompt (if you have windows 2000 or high, click start -> run -> type in 'cmd' (without the single quotes) and in that box type 'ping -t www.iburst.co.za' (without the single quotes)

Now keep an eye on that for a minute or two, if you get request time out messages, and irratic pings to the server, it would most probably mean you wont be able to game smoothly on the current connection you have. After a while, press ctrl+c to stop pinging the server. (You could also try different websites to check)

If your ping stays stable @ around 150-200ms, I won't be much concerned. I have played on modems with 3 times that ping and I kicked ass. In fact, I rememered a match where my ping was 1900ms... it's all a matter of skill. :D

If you're really hardup for some gaming action, seeing as you have a local network over there, that means you could organize a game of UT between you and your block mates. Pings would be sub 20ms.

Ciao
 
Gohan_SS said:
How does ADSL exactly work, is it a 24H connection which you only pay say like 500 bucks every month. How fast is the connection and what in the world is capping? please explain the whole process..........Thanks alot
Click to expand...

an ADSL connection is 24/7. You get capped on international bandwidth as soon as you rack up 3 gigs (that is upload AND download from local or international servers) but you stay uncapped on local servers. (meaning they throttle your connection to a slower speed)

If you take the DSL384 option, your speeds will me around 40kb/s download, if you take DSL512, it would be around 60kb/s download. Your upload speeds would be 12kb/s and 32kb/s respectively.

This makes ADSL perfect for gaming locally. You could also find alot of people using p2p software to download and share files amoungst each other locally.

ADSL needs a current phone line, so on top of the R500 you spend on the renting of the ADSL line, the normal phone line (around R100) needs to be paid for as well. Now, after paying that, you still need an account from an ISP. This would set you back around R300. Depends who you get.

To get a clear indication of what you should get, and a quick view of price comparisons (ISP-wise) goto www.hellkom.co.za, they have a price comparison to tell you who is the cheapest. And they have interesting facts on our favorite telco monopoly.

You could also take UUNET's uncapped option. They install a realm (which is able to take 10 ADSL lines, so you could share the cost with friends) which costs you R240 odd a month. Then the line rental of R600 a month (for the DSL384) and the account from UUNET @ R560. This would mean that you're able to download and upload as to your little hearts content without worrying about SHAPING and CAPPING of your account.

If you do not get the uncapped version from UUNET, keep in mind, it doesn't matter which ISP you use, everyone goes onto the SAIX bandwidth pool, meaning, Telkom is still in charge of it.

So going to MWEB for instance (which isnt the cheapest) doesn't mean that you'll have faster pings than someone using an account from some dude who fell on his head and is charging R100 less than MWEB.

Hope that helps
 
I definitely understand a bit better but jeez, ITS EXPENSIVE. Cant one get something for a total cost of 500 rands a month? I just spoke to my administrator again and he said its a 256K lease line but didnt specify anything. And just for the record, I download slower than what was mentioned above,which is insanely slow if you take what the administrator said and the actual download speed. Do you think it is possible that the setup of the connection is crap, the funny thing is when i played last night i kept a stable ping of about 48 throughout. This morning it takes me two minutes to open msn homepage. My pings struck 985 in UT 2004 on a local server, its insane. I dont know what to conclude or think anymore......plz help :(
 
I just did the ping check on iburst NOONE and my ttl was 114, whatever that means but the ms was like 46 then 196 then 76 then 98 then 343 and so on, it was up and down all the time. I got request timed out about 4 times in in a minute, so can you comment on this.................i suppose it cant be good.
 
The connection sharing setup could be the problem. Thing is, if you normally share out your connection with several people, if only 1 person downloads excessively, your ping (and your connection) would be shot to hell. There are load balancing software out there (for free too)

I suggest finding out what type of leased line the admin is using (then apologizing for being a n00b :P ) and ask him who his ISP is.

It is expensive, you can't get a 24/7 connection under R500 in south africa, unless you go with a wireless ISP. There is one or two in Cape Town, www.hellkom.co.za would have more information on that too.

ttl = time to live. It means that after a period of time, if the program hasn't received a response from the destination, it gives up waiting and gives you a "request timed out"
 
I see, now another thing i noticed, i know someone said that my network utilization has nothing to do with my connection speed, but as soon as my network utilization goes up to about 0.07 percent out of 100 the browsing speed is as fast as lightning and therefore my pings is also lower but as soon as the network utilizes about 0.03 percent everything is slower than someone walking with no legs. I dont understand, my logic tells me if your connection to the switch is utilized more then your internet connection should pick up or at least your bandwith should increase. I dont know if this makes any sense to you guys but to me it kinda does. I was on hellkom.co.za and im just getting confused, what is capping and upload and download and all the rest of the greek spoken, im studying IT engineering but we haven't come as far as the internet module yet, so i dont have a clue guys, only know well about hardware. Sorry if i sound like an idiot. One of my other friends back in Winhoek installed a lease line and he pays something like 400 dollars a month, and no isp costs involved, its really fast. If i understand capping correctly i think he is uncapped as well. I mean how much do you really need to just play online games nicely??????Should my isp homepage open as soon as i connect because MSN opens when i connect??????

From your fellow idiot gamer
 
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lol, thats just what your homepage is set to, you can set it to connect to www.ratemyboobjob.com/rate and that will be the first thing that pops up.

It would be that the network utilization between you and the switch has nothing to do with anything, but that someone else is copying big files between PC's alot of the time which would max out the switch and thus make you lag a whole lot.

Ask your admin why it's slow and why its super fast at times, and that if there is some kind of bandwidth limiting throttle on the local network because you feel that if someone is copying something from another PC, they are impacting severely on the preformance of the internet.
 
Yeah, i think noone is right. You don't know how the connection sharing is set up, so you can't speculate what kind of connection you have there or how the bandwidth is shared etc. The fact is that you've got a horrible connection and that's probably not likely to change. You said that your downloads level out at about 7kB/s (i'm assuming kB/s not kb/s; cos 1Byte=8bits) which is about right for a 64k connection (that's what my downloads on isdn were).

If you want to get serious about gaming online, go for homedsl384. It's by far the best for online (local) gaming. As noone mentioned above, you have to pay line rental of R80 per month and on top of that R450 for ADSL line rental. Then your ISP will set you back around R250 per month.

For all of that you'll get 24/7 internet access (no dial-up costs). You will be however limited to a total of 3gb worth of downloads AND uploads combined per month. Downloads constitute all the data transferred TO your computer, and uploads constitute all the data send FROM your computer. Example, if you download a 30meg file, you're transferring it TO your computer. If you send a 2meg email, you're transferring data FROM your computer (hence upload). Once you've exceeded this, you're "capped" which means that your INTERNATIONAL (any site/server outside of SA) bandwidth is almost non-existent. But you can still play games/ surf/ download locally to your hearts content.

And yes, you're quite right about what you said about the network utilization figures. What i meant earlier was that the speed rating (ie 100Mbps) has nothing to do with the speed rating of the internet connection there.

Can't really tell you too much about leased lines cos i don't know much about them. But what i can tell you is that if they were better than ADSL, most people would have leased lines instead of ADSL!!
 
Thanks KICKTHEBUCKET, im actually starting to understand alot more now, but as soon as i hear the word limit or youve reached your cap, then i put my tail between my legs and run away. Cant you get a 24\7 128K line which is uncapped or am i asking stupid questions? My admin said that he will speak to his ISP or whoever is responsible for this connection and there might be a chance for the line to get upgraded to a 512K connection. I also asked him if i cant pay extra on the rent in order for them to allocate more bandwith to me. Is that possible or will i be paying for a mindfu_k? Ag but im sure they can allocate more bandwith to a apartment. Then i would rather do that to avoid 800 bucks a month....................any comments. Is there other cheaper(uncapped) options by any chance.
 
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