Specialised low-latency gaming accounts

[techead]

Do these exist?

Does anyone have one and would mind sharing some pings to EU please?

TH

 

[froot]

Not really.
Latency is a dependant on distance.
I'm assuming you're in Cape Town "by the mountain" ?
Best case, assuming you're close to the exchange, is about 155-160ms to EU (and back).

 

[techead]

Not really.
Latency is a dependant on distance.
I'm assuming you're in Cape Town "by the mountain" ?
Best case, assuming you're close to the exchange, is about 155-160ms to EU (and back).

I understand the concept of latency, but what plays a vital role is the routing and shaping/control thereof.

I was thinking an ISP would be able to offer special routing for gaming accounts. Dont ask me how, Im just thinking out aloud here...

Im current lowest ping to UK is 158ms ping. in-game letency is always higher due to game servers hosted all over europe

 

[froot]

I understand the concept of latency, but what plays a vital role is the routing and shaping/control thereof.

I was thinking an ISP would be able to offer special routing for gaming accounts. Dont ask me how, Im just thinking out aloud here...

The routing is standard and in most cases, as short as you're going to get. Also, round trips across SA are minimal. JHB/DBN goes straight to Cape Town, and out to sea (where we have zero further input on it).
Shaping won't play a role in it either, as your latency is dependant on not on shaping, but on your line speed (or throttled line speed). As an example, even if the shaping on an account is really harsh, you will still get in all likeliness the same ping as if you are on an unshaped account.,

 

[techead]

The routing is standard and in most cases, as short as you're going to get. Also, round trips across SA are minimal. JHB/DBN goes straight to Cape Town, and out to sea (where we have zero further input on it).
Shaping won't play a role in it either, as your latency is dependant on not on shaping, but on your line speed (or throttled line speed). As an example, even if the shaping on an account is really harsh, you will still get in all likeliness the same ping as if you are on an unshaped account.,

im not so sure you are correct there. Latency, by definition, cannot be determined by the speed of the line but by the distance and routing... Surely all lines "speed" are the speed of light. Soooooo... 1MB or 10MB line will have the same latency EU

no?

Would appear Cape Town has the best latency then anyway... Eish... :erm:

 

[froot]

im not so sure you are correct there. Latency, by definition, cannot be determined by the speed... surely all lines "speed" are the speed of light. Soooooo... 1MB or 10MB line will have the same latency

no?

Theoretically, it has little to do with speed (since the packets sent during a ping is so small).
But I've come to notice, having been on every linespeed you get, from 384 -> 10Mb, there's a massive difference, especially in gaming. My League of Legends latency has dropped from 350ms on 384 to 180ms on 2Mb. Same deal with local games too.

 

[techead]

Theoretically, it has little to do with speed (since the packets sent during a ping is so small).
But I've come to notice, having been on every linespeed you get, from 384 -> 10Mb, there's a massive difference, especially in gaming. My League of Legends latency has dropped from 350ms on 384 to 180ms on 2Mb. Same deal with local games too.

are you sure those arent just due to routing changes by your ISP? and new cables to EU/UK

I find it hard to believe that a 2mb line can have that impact on a ping, vs a 384k line.

384k lines were only around quite a while back, and I know that a lot of changes have been made in SA since then.. ?

 

[froot]

are you sure those arent just due to routing changes by your ISP? and new cables to EU/UK

I find it hard to believe that a 2mb line can have that impact on a ping, vs a 384k line.

384k lines were only around quite a while back, and I know that a lot of changes have been made in SA since then.. ?

The upload speed on that makes a massive difference. You can go test it if you like.

/out

 

[wingnut771]

There is more headroom on a higher speed line and less chance of it being saturated which spoils the latency?

 

[Anthro]

Do these exist?

Does anyone have one and would mind sharing some pings to EU please?

TH

The ping replies would be based on routing.

Some games host their servers in EU, others US - how would they route the games ?
This would require quite a bit of work by any ISP to resolve / customize

 

[techead]

There is more headroom on a higher speed line and less chance of it being saturated which spoils the latency?

Yeah that is a different story entirely.

Im talking about 2 idle lines here. I dont see how the speed of light can travel there and back in less time on a 10mb lines vs a 1mb lines. Speed of light = speed of light for a single packet.

Bandwidth has nothing to do with it

 

[wingnut771]

Yeah that is a different story entirely.

Im talking about 2 idle lines here. I dont see how the speed of light can travel there and back in less time on a 10mb lines vs a 1mb lines. Speed of light = speed of light for a single packet.

Bandwidth has nothing to do with it

I agree with your logic, I'm talking about in-game experience comparing a slow line to a fast line, with the amount of data being transferred, there will be a higher load (causing a higher ping) on a slow line compared to a fast line?

 

[techead]

I agree with your logic, I'm talking about in-game experience comparing a slow line to a fast line, with the amount of data being transferred, there will be a higher load (causing a higher ping) on a slow line compared to a fast line?

yeah I get what you saying, but unless you are downloading heavily at the time, one can game and skype EASILY on a 1mb line with probably about 70% capacity spare. Interesting it all is!

 

[wingnut771]

yeah I get what you saying, but unless you are downloading heavily at the time, one can game and skype EASILY on a 1mb line with probably about 70% capacity spare. Interesting it all is!

I'm not much of a gamer, this is just what I've heard. Also, apparently, it depends on the game aswell, as some use more data than others.

Just adding more variables

 

[techead]

I'm not much of a gamer, this is just what I've heard. Also, apparently, it depends on the game aswell, as some use more data than others.

Just adding more variables

I game a lot, mostly Heroes of Newerth and DotA2, but also WoW back in the day. They all use so little data you wouldnt believe it.

 

[dews]

I have an IS account that is what they call a "low contention ratio" account, which I have noticed has 2-4ms lower EU latency during business hours to EU, and 1-4ms lower EU latency during evenings than other accounts I had based on IS. these other accounts i believe had more users on them, thus they were probably more saturated and they could not market them as having lower contention ratios, however the difference is kinda small... From Centurion (Pta) I get a ping of 179ms to www.bbc.co.uk. My war3.co.za ping is 10ms.

 

[wingnut771]

I game a lot, mostly Heroes of Newerth and DotA2, but also WoW back in the day. They all use so little data you wouldnt believe it.

In that case, I agree, line speed won't make a diff to ping, unless, as someone said earlier, the upload speed which is double on a 10mb line than all the others could be the difference.

 

[techead]

4ms less?? sheesh

 

[wingnut771]

4ms less?? sheesh

Isn't that a lot to the OCD crowd

 

[Tinuva]

are you sure those arent just due to routing changes by your ISP? and new cables to EU/UK

I find it hard to believe that a 2mb line can have that impact on a ping, vs a 384k line.

384k lines were only around quite a while back, and I know that a lot of changes have been made in SA since then.. ?

Technically it shouldn't, but practically line speed does have a big impact on latency you experience in game.

Remember, when you do ICMP ping it is a tiny packet, so you won't see a large difference on the different speed lines, maybe slight but almost none.

Now when it come to games, their network traffic sometimes carry more data then older games ect, and this is where a faster line will have a lower latency in-game, because there is more lanes to keep the latency down to minimum, as opposed to a slower line, where the packets might get queued up.