sybawoods
Expert Member
This will only be of value to those who require low-latency international connections for trading, gaming, VOIP, or some other latency dependent internet activity.
I do lots of international gaming, and some on-line trading, which requires low latency connections. The dreaded cap is not much of an issue for me. So when hunting for an internet connection, the most important things I look for are:
- international pings to the US and UK (anything less than 350 is good)
- stability of pings (no spikes i.e. shooting from 200-300 every few seconds)
- packet loss (a higher ping with zero packet loss, is better than a low ping with even 5% packet loss).
I have been testing fairly exhaustively after acquiring a UUnet account over the week-end, and comparing it to both Telkom shaped and unshaped. I have access to ISDN as well, but did not bother testing for this exercise.
I have posted some screen-shots below from ping-plotter, which are simply one minute snap-shots of results taken earlier today. I have a lot more data saved in ping-plotter, but these samples are really represenative of what I have been experiencing since the week-end. So... here goes
UUnet - uncapped (not completely unshaped apparently)
The graph at the bottom of the image shows stability of ping. You want this to be a straight line in an ideal world, or as close to it. The "manhatten skyline" on the UUnet graph is terrible, with pings spiking up and down from 375 to 796 in the one minute test window. Furthermore, the big red bar indicates packet (data) loss. Not a good thing for either gaming, or trading.
SAIX shaped - homeDSL512
Here can you clearly see that the graph at the bottom shows much more stability than the UUnet account. The "Manhatten skyline" is much flatter, indicating very little spiking of pings. In fact, it hovered between 429-450 in the one minute test window, which isn't too bad. Zero packet loss in the test window. The biggest downer is that pings are relatively high, and outside my 350ms thresh-hold.
SAIX unshaped
Very stable skyline - in fact, it very seldom gets any flatter than this for an international connection. Pings hovered between 264-275 in the one minute test window, also with zero packet loss
Conclusions
Sadly, Saix unshaped still offers the best performance for latency. In my experience, SAIX shaped seems to outperform the UUnet account in terms of stability. While UUnet seems to offer lower pings, they are very unstable, and suffers intermittent packet loss. Both are no-no's as far as I am concerned. Like I said before, these samples posted above are fairly representative of tests taken at various times of the day, and on different days, including week-ends, evenings, after mid-night etc. Both SAIX shaped and UUnet results were very dependent on time of day, while the SAIX unshaped account returns identical (or close to identical) results irrespective of the time of day. For my purposes, right now, SAIX unshaped, sadly, still represents the best quality ADSL experience, at a very unhealthy price.
Disclaimer
The tests and conclusions above are very one dimensional i.e. only looking at latency. Obviously, everyone has different needs, and when evaluating the best internet connection for yourself, there are many other factors that need to be taken into account including costs, band-width, caps, etc. In my world, latency is the deal-breaker, and that's what I evaluated above. For a more comprehensive evaluation of local broadband offerings, please consult MyADSL's broadband ratings . The tests above are also not intended to deter anyone from taking up any of the UUnet offerings currently advertised on the forum. The two companies who advertise here, that I have dealt with,both offered excellent service, and for your purposes the uncapped component of the offer may be the deal-breaker
.
I do lots of international gaming, and some on-line trading, which requires low latency connections. The dreaded cap is not much of an issue for me. So when hunting for an internet connection, the most important things I look for are:
- international pings to the US and UK (anything less than 350 is good)
- stability of pings (no spikes i.e. shooting from 200-300 every few seconds)
- packet loss (a higher ping with zero packet loss, is better than a low ping with even 5% packet loss).
I have been testing fairly exhaustively after acquiring a UUnet account over the week-end, and comparing it to both Telkom shaped and unshaped. I have access to ISDN as well, but did not bother testing for this exercise.
I have posted some screen-shots below from ping-plotter, which are simply one minute snap-shots of results taken earlier today. I have a lot more data saved in ping-plotter, but these samples are really represenative of what I have been experiencing since the week-end. So... here goes
UUnet - uncapped (not completely unshaped apparently)
The graph at the bottom of the image shows stability of ping. You want this to be a straight line in an ideal world, or as close to it. The "manhatten skyline" on the UUnet graph is terrible, with pings spiking up and down from 375 to 796 in the one minute test window. Furthermore, the big red bar indicates packet (data) loss. Not a good thing for either gaming, or trading.
SAIX shaped - homeDSL512
Here can you clearly see that the graph at the bottom shows much more stability than the UUnet account. The "Manhatten skyline" is much flatter, indicating very little spiking of pings. In fact, it hovered between 429-450 in the one minute test window, which isn't too bad. Zero packet loss in the test window. The biggest downer is that pings are relatively high, and outside my 350ms thresh-hold.
SAIX unshaped
Very stable skyline - in fact, it very seldom gets any flatter than this for an international connection. Pings hovered between 264-275 in the one minute test window, also with zero packet loss
Conclusions
Sadly, Saix unshaped still offers the best performance for latency. In my experience, SAIX shaped seems to outperform the UUnet account in terms of stability. While UUnet seems to offer lower pings, they are very unstable, and suffers intermittent packet loss. Both are no-no's as far as I am concerned. Like I said before, these samples posted above are fairly representative of tests taken at various times of the day, and on different days, including week-ends, evenings, after mid-night etc. Both SAIX shaped and UUnet results were very dependent on time of day, while the SAIX unshaped account returns identical (or close to identical) results irrespective of the time of day. For my purposes, right now, SAIX unshaped, sadly, still represents the best quality ADSL experience, at a very unhealthy price.
Disclaimer
The tests and conclusions above are very one dimensional i.e. only looking at latency. Obviously, everyone has different needs, and when evaluating the best internet connection for yourself, there are many other factors that need to be taken into account including costs, band-width, caps, etc. In my world, latency is the deal-breaker, and that's what I evaluated above. For a more comprehensive evaluation of local broadband offerings, please consult MyADSL's broadband ratings . The tests above are also not intended to deter anyone from taking up any of the UUnet offerings currently advertised on the forum. The two companies who advertise here, that I have dealt with,both offered excellent service, and for your purposes the uncapped component of the offer may be the deal-breaker
.
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) I used to game 4 or 5 hours per evening, often more, every night and most week-ends, and never reached my cap (/shrug). I played WoW while on holiday in Dec / Jan for sometime 8-10 hours a day, and never got capped.
. That said price difference is quite substantial 