Poor gaming experience (dota 2)

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Denyed

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Hi guys

With the afrihost mifi i have full signal in stellenbosch and game updates will download at 150KB/s most of the time, but if I try to play a game (dota 2) the ping is unreasonably high and it almost appears as if there is no throughput. Is this a problem with the mifi or the mtn network?

Thanks for the assistance!
 
this is the problem with gaming on a wireless/cell signal. when data is downloaded, the rate at which it downloads can be high because the sequence of packets is known on both sides and it's usually a one way communication. this goes through TCP. Your connection says "gimme file" the server goes "okay, here is file from byte 1" your end will go "cool, I got byte 1, send me byte 2 please" and so forth. Now, on the cell tower's side, especially when its congested with lots of other people trying to download or talk to their girlfriends, it queues any requests waiting to go to you for this download.

It's also not very critical for your download to happen in sequence, so if byte 3 comes before byte 2, it doesn't really matter all that much.

With gaming, it's a little bit different because latency starts playing a huge roll and especially the order in which bytes are received. If byte 3 is received before byte 2, it disregards the entire action and has to resend "player A clicked on X, confirm X" to the server. By then, another player who doesn't have a latency issue, would have completed the action before you, and would perhaps kill you.

Stellenbosh is a really ****ty place to do anything through cell usage (or wirelessly) especially because of all the students/cell traffic. I'd recommend a hard-line but I do understand the logistics behind things. Just hope you know what you let yourself in for when doing the whole wireless/cell gaming thing. (This is why a lot of people will go "but I don't have a problem with gaming on my cell signal" and others will go "but I never had a problem before, why suddenly now". You can't predict the growth and usage of a particular tower in your area and it is subject to serious congestion that WILL affect latency sensitive protocols. It's not a question of "if", it's a question of "when")
 
Denyed said:
Hi guys

With the afrihost mifi i have full signal in stellenbosch and game updates will download at 150KB/s most of the time, but if I try to play a game (dota 2) the ping is unreasonably high and it almost appears as if there is no throughput. Is this a problem with the mifi or the mtn network?

Thanks for the assistance!
Click to expand...

A garage fix for this is to constantly stream 5fm or something to keep all the data channels open. If your line uses less than a certain threshold it closes data channels to the tower because they are not in use. I use to stream 5fm while playing dota 1 on 3g cause otherwise it will switch to a higher latency. Its kind of a backyard fix but it helped for me ....
 
Switch network quality in Dota 2 to Low in the settings menu under Network then restart steam, that might help.

Also make sure Steam download is set to SA (any)
 
Denyed said:
Hi guys

With the afrihost mifi i have full signal in stellenbosch and game updates will download at 150KB/s most of the time, but if I try to play a game (dota 2) the ping is unreasonably high and it almost appears as if there is no throughput. Is this a problem with the mifi or the mtn network?

Thanks for the assistance!
Click to expand...
I have been gaming on dota 2 from the start of the mobile afrihost package. During the day I play with 50-60 ping @ 6-8mbps downloads without any problems but seems that something is wrong.Anything in the night from 8 my download speed drops to 0.5mbps and ping spikes to 4000ms but its fine on my other mtn sim
 
Yeah that is what I have been finding. At night it is unplayable - the only time of day I can play! Anyway I am moving in December so will just pause my contract until then and then reactivate it in the new location to test how well it works. Probably shouldn't be playing next month anyway because of some major deadlines :)
 
Rickster said:
Switch network quality in Dota 2 to Low in the settings menu under Network then restart steam, that might help.

Also make sure Steam download is set to SA (any)
Click to expand...

I have already changed those settings thanks
 
GoofySmurf said:
A garage fix for this is to constantly stream 5fm or something to keep all the data channels open. If your line uses less than a certain threshold it closes data channels to the tower because they are not in use. I use to stream 5fm while playing dota 1 on 3g cause otherwise it will switch to a higher latency. Its kind of a backyard fix but it helped for me ....
Click to expand...

I will try that this evening and report back!
 
DTBA said:
how much does 1 game take for you? in data that is
Click to expand...

About 50-60mb. It uses between 5 and 10Kb/s. I also usually use teamspeak that uses 2-3Kb/s. I will just continue using my Telkom mobile because that gives me a ping of 250-280ms to EU. I was hoping that MTN would give me better performance than Telkom because to be honest telkom is already pretty bad in Stellenbosch. MTN/Afrihost do give me much faster download and browsing speeds though
 
Don't play Dota, but Guild Wars 2, and find that from around 19:30 onwards in the evening, lag starts getting progressively worse, at around 21:00, it becomes impossible to play ... , and around 23:30, it starts improving, ...

But prime game time it is totally buggered, there have been a few exceptions ...
 
elf_lord_ZC5 said:
Don't play Dota, but Guild Wars 2, and find that from around 19:30 onwards in the evening, lag starts getting progressively worse, at around 21:00, it becomes impossible to play ... , and around 23:30, it starts improving, ...

But prime game time it is totally buggered, there have been a few exceptions ...
Click to expand...
yea I agree with this seems that mtn network gets hammered
 
Another thing, my Son who also has an Afrihost Data SIM, seems to be less affected than myself. His SIM is in a Huawei B683 router, and mine is in a Vodafone K4605 - cannot afford to buy another router to get a better signal for myself. What we don't do for our children.

And I just missed out on a free Afrihost mi-fi device - win some, loose some :D
 
Would be nice to know if there are more people suffering between 19:00 - 23:00. Its not our tower congestion, we don't have enough people around here to stuff it up :D and this was all fine it just started to happened about 2-3 weeks ago.Might be problem with MTN itself
 
Might be a problem with backhaul somewhere, possible ....

⁉️ ⁉️ ❗️idea .... The Afrihost SIM is also cut to mini SIM is it not?

I think so, and then it should fit in my iPhone 4S, a very expensive, not so fast, mi-fi device - but it just might work ...
 
Denyed said:
Hi guys

With the afrihost mifi i have full signal in stellenbosch and game updates will download at 150KB/s most of the time, but if I try to play a game (dota 2) the ping is unreasonably high and it almost appears as if there is no throughput. Is this a problem with the mifi or the mtn network?

Thanks for the assistance!
Click to expand...

I personally wouldn't rely on a Mobile/ Wireless product for gaming because of it's erratic pings :( While we're always doing our best to keep the latency to an absolute minimum there's so much involved between yourself and the outside world it does get tricky sometimes.

If you guys run some speedtests and pingtests what are the results like? Run a few so we can see if something is erratic or stable.
 
AfriGuy said:
I personally wouldn't rely on a Mobile/ Wireless product for gaming because of it's erratic pings :( While we're always doing our best to keep the latency to an absolute minimum there's so much involved between yourself and the outside world it does get tricky sometimes.

If you guys run some speedtests and pingtests what are the results like? Run a few so we can see if something is erratic or stable.
Click to expand...

The speed does fluctuate quite a bit from between 50KB/s in the evenings to 400KB/s+ after 11pm. Local ping is usually 120ms and international 280-320. If nothing can be done I will get ADSL once I have found a place that I will be staying at permanently and hopefully have someone to share the costs with.
 
Denyed said:
The speed does fluctuate quite a bit from between 50KB/s in the evenings to 400KB/s+ after 11pm. Local ping is usually 120ms and international 280-320. If nothing can be done I will get ADSL once I have found a place that I will be staying at permanently and hopefully have someone to share the costs with.
Click to expand...

Seeing the speeds fluctuate is a bit concerning :( Could you maybe post up some results here, you can also include a ping that's been running for a few mins. The more info we have the better we can diagnose where the issues are coming in.
 
I have also been playing Dota with my Afrihost and MTN data.

I've been getting much better ping with the MiFi device than through a 3G modem. It seems as if the 3G modem just struggles much more for signal than the MiFi...

Too bad the Afrihost MTN sim is only a Mini sim, I got a Galaxy Note 3 and when playing Dota through USB tethering I get like 30-50 ping on LTE. But can't use my Afrihost sim since my phone takes a Micro Sim

Really happy with my MiFi. Too bad I forgot it at my GF's house on the weekend... She lives over an Hour away sigh
 
louispires said:
I have also been playing Dota with my Afrihost and MTN data.

I've been getting much better ping with the MiFi device than through a 3G modem. It seems as if the 3G modem just struggles much more for signal than the MiFi...

Too bad the Afrihost MTN sim is only a Mini sim, I got a Galaxy Note 3 and when playing Dota through USB tethering I get like 30-50 ping on LTE. But can't use my Afrihost sim since my phone takes a Micro Sim

Really happy with my MiFi. Too bad I forgot it at my GF's house on the weekend... She lives over an Hour away sigh
Click to expand...

I don't see a problem here, you can always order another SIM that fits your tablet :D
 
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