Why can't i play internet games on iburst

[Vaughan]

Why can't i play games with iburst

I got iburst a while ago and it is fast at downloading but when i play internet games i get realy inconsistant speeds which often causes servers to drop me and i have 100% signal at my house but it still happens if anyone knows what is wrong and how to fix it please reply thanks.

 

[Vaughan]

I have iburst on my laptop which downloads fine as i get an 100% signal but am unable to play games on the internet because the ping is inconsistant even when signal remains constant which often causes me to get dropped from servers please can someone help me fix this thanks.

 

[Gatecrasher]

I doubt if it can be fixed, other than getting unshaped ADSL. Your experience is just a consequence of wireless, ie higher and more inconsistent latency than a fixed line.

Gaming is not one of Iburst's strong points.

Although my daughter plays Runescape without any problems, it is neither data heavy nor are responses split-second critical.

 

[slimothy]

vaughn even Kyocera the creators of iBurst technology admit this is iBursts achiles heal. Gaming will never be ideal on iBurst and whilst some types will work, latency sensitive ones like your FPS' will not.

What can you do to fix? Nothing. Wireless pings will always be inconsistent, its one of its drawbacks. Additionally you wouldnt need the 9GB account to play effectivly because of port and packet shaping on the network. So basically game with another connection, get the 9GB package or play games like MMORPG's. Don't play intl servers if you can help it. If you post more data like your ping times using ping -t www.iburst.co.za we can see what we're working with but you won't get much faster than 60ms pings to the gateway. So if your pings to the gateway are say 120ms then you can improve it by fine tuning your modem spot to lower frame error rate or even get an external antenna to decrease ping time (its not worth it if your speed is fine though) but if your pings are 60ms now... thats as good as it gets

(BTW, the 9GB package will just speed up transfer time for games that require a steady pipe but the best you will get your pings at is 60 - 80ms for a local server)

 

[ic]

I got iburst a while ago and it is fast at downloading but when i play internet games i get realy inconsistant speeds which often causes servers to drop me and i have 100% signal at my house but it still happens if anyone knows what is wrong and how to fix it please reply thanks.

Latency...post some pings - preferably at least 100 to each the servers you use for online gaming...please enclose the actual ping results inside a code block - makes it much easier to scroll through.

Vaughan, do you know which iBurst base-station(s) your iBurst UTC is using? - perhaps there is major contention on your base-station that will also affect/increase latency [IMO], but WBS' shaping etc will likely have an similar effect on latency.

PS: Vaughan, welcome to MyADSL .

PPS: I have moved my reply and your post which I replied to from Ravilj's disconnections thread to this thread of yours .

 

[Vaughan]

Thanks

I have tried pinging game servers but they all timed out i think that they block pings because i cannot ping them even when i am in their game. When i pinged iburst i get the odd got ping between 40-100 but most range around 300 with a couple going up to 4000. I do have the connection firewalled for obvious reasons and i wanted to know if any of you know how much difference in speed it will make (is XPs firewall) and what i must do to improve ping times thanks for all the help.

 

[ic]

Ok, I suggest you follow Slimothy's advice, but if you're in Gauteng, I suggest a slight mod, open a Command Prompt in XP and run the following:

ping -n 100 196.30.31.100

unless WBS have changed the IP address of the 1st visible/pingable iBurst hop for Gauteng in the last 2 weeks, it should still be 196.30.31.100, then copy & paste the results of the ping into a code block here, then forumites can makes suggestions .

 

[bb_matt]

If that fails you, I've heard (on good experience) that the following may help :-

Two chicken feet
One eye of newt
Three tiger fish scales
A crocodile tooth (ground)
Some chicken stock
A pint of salt

Boil all of the above for about 3 days inside a leather boot
stolen at midnight from an iBurst employee.

Allow to cool for 6 hours.
Stir in some toe jam and a piece of dairy milk chocolate.
Dip iBurst modem into mixture and soak well.

Remove iBurst modem and reconnect.

It won't do much for your connection, but it'll give you something to take your mind of gaming for a while !

 

[ic]

LOL, an injection of humour , I think I can source nearly all of those ingredients, but I don't have an iBurst modem - how will this affect the taste?

Seriously though, Vaughan post that ping already .

 

[Vaughan]

Pings

Here are those pings to that address thanks for helping and hope you find a solution that recipe did not work too well still cannot enter the room i tried it in. I have watched the monitor for iburst and seen that my error rate goes quite high sometimes above 10%thanks

C:\>ping -n 100 196.30.31.100

Pinging 196.30.31.100 with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=379ms TTL=254
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=100ms TTL=254
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=152ms TTL=254
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=394ms TTL=254
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=586ms TTL=254
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=297ms TTL=254
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=504ms TTL=254
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=1021ms TTL=254
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=39ms TTL=254
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=137ms TTL=254
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=69ms TTL=254
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=91ms TTL=254
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=142ms TTL=254
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=364ms TTL=254
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=476ms TTL=254
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=67ms TTL=254
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=158ms TTL=254
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=541ms TTL=254
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=212ms TTL=254
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=88ms TTL=254
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=400ms TTL=254
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=1914ms TTL=254
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=179ms TTL=254
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=115ms TTL=254
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=587ms TTL=254
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=268ms TTL=254
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=59ms TTL=254
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=682ms TTL=254
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=1344ms TTL=254
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=39ms TTL=254
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=553ms TTL=254
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=144ms TTL=254
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=126ms TTL=254
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=488ms TTL=254
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=38ms TTL=254
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=50ms TTL=254
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=202ms TTL=254
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=434ms TTL=254
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=85ms TTL=254
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=47ms TTL=254
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=259ms TTL=254
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=80ms TTL=254
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=382ms TTL=254
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=294ms TTL=254
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=355ms TTL=254
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=2179ms TTL=254
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=42ms TTL=254
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=131ms TTL=254
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=283ms TTL=254
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=85ms TTL=254
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=247ms TTL=254
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=679ms TTL=254
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=70ms TTL=254
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=182ms TTL=254
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=283ms TTL=254
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=44ms TTL=254
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=116ms TTL=254
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=258ms TTL=254
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=109ms TTL=254
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=366ms TTL=254
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=568ms TTL=254
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=359ms TTL=254
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=119ms TTL=254
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=94ms TTL=254
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=222ms TTL=254
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=74ms TTL=254
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=3070ms TTL=254
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=49ms TTL=254
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=176ms TTL=254
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=428ms TTL=254
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=99ms TTL=254
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=331ms TTL=254
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=212ms TTL=254
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=1085ms TTL=254
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=39ms TTL=254
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=384ms TTL=254
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=494ms TTL=254
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=145ms TTL=254
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=1071ms TTL=254
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=39ms TTL=254
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=342ms TTL=254
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=129ms TTL=254
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=135ms TTL=254
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=548ms TTL=254
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=189ms TTL=254
Request timed out.
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=332ms TTL=254
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=193ms TTL=254
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=175ms TTL=254
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=1929ms TTL=254
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=59ms TTL=254
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=163ms TTL=254
Request timed out.
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=910ms TTL=254
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=86ms TTL=254
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=138ms TTL=254
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=339ms TTL=254
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=236ms TTL=254
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=258ms TTL=254
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=279ms TTL=254

Ping statistics for 196.30.31.100:
    Packets: Sent = 100, Received = 98, Lost = 2 (2% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 38ms, Maximum = 3070ms, Average = 362ms

 

[lewstherin]

Those are some horrible pings for a local address !

Here is the same ping run off my DSL192 line - bear in mind these are pings from outside the WBS network:

Pinging 196.30.31.100 with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=73ms TTL=248
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=69ms TTL=248
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=70ms TTL=248
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=68ms TTL=248
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=68ms TTL=248
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=70ms TTL=248
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=71ms TTL=248
Reply from 196.30.31.100: bytes=32 time=69ms TTL=248

Ping statistics for 196.30.31.100:
Packets: Sent = 8, Received = 8, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 68ms, Maximum = 73ms, Average = 69ms

Wireless stuff is very dependant on signal strength for decent latency. Methinks you should try boosting your signal strength first. It could also be that your tower is overloaded and thus all the traffic is being backlogged.

 

[GRES]

Some tech data:

signals without and with antenna:
18.080 rfScanGpp 1 Bscc 2 Cost -95 Distance 15 Load 2
18.080 rfScanGpp 1 Bscc 9 Cost -104 Distance 34 Load 2
28.330 rfScanGpp 1 Bscc 2 Cost -94 Distance 14 Load 2
28.330 rfScanGpp 1 Bscc 9 Cost -103 Distance 33 Load 2
38.580 rfScanGpp 1 Bscc 2 Cost -94 Distance 14 Load 2
38.580 rfScanGpp 1 Bscc 9 Cost -100 Distance 33 Load 2
antenna connected:
110.320 rfScanGpp 1 Bscc 9 Cost -71 Distance 33 Load 2
110.320 rfScanGpp 1 Bscc 2 Cost -83 Distance 14 Load 2
120.570 rfScanGpp 1 Bscc 9 Cost -72 Distance 33 Load 2
120.570 rfScanGpp 1 Bscc 2 Cost -80 Distance 14 Load 2
130.820 rfScanGpp 1 Bscc 9 Cost -71 Distance 33 Load 2
130.820 rfScanGpp 1 Bscc 2 Cost -83 Distance 14 Load 2

pings:
Reply from 196.30.31.120: bytes=32 time=55ms TTL=125
Reply from 196.30.31.120: bytes=32 time=57ms TTL=125
Reply from 196.30.31.120: bytes=32 time=59ms TTL=125
Reply from 196.30.31.120: bytes=32 time=89ms TTL=125
Reply from 196.30.31.120: bytes=32 time=58ms TTL=125
Reply from 196.30.31.120: bytes=32 time=63ms TTL=125
Reply from 196.30.31.120: bytes=32 time=38ms TTL=125
Reply from 196.30.31.120: bytes=32 time=63ms TTL=125
Reply from 196.30.31.120: bytes=32 time=60ms TTL=125

international pings 200-300ms. can enjoy SOF-II MP with no problems

 

[ic]

Vaughan, please confirm if you are in the Guateng region - preferably which iBurst base-station(s) are in your area...if you aren't in Gauteng then there's likely a different 1st hop IP that you need to ping...

@GRES, what are the pings like without the antenna? - this is your antenna though & not the patchy thing that WBS were flogging before they cottoned onto yours?

 

[GRES]

This is my standart antenna from factory.

Local pings without antenna 60 - 4000. 350 average. In this case connection is to the Northcliff

 

[ic]

This is my standart antenna from factory.

Local pings without antenna 60 - 4000. 350 average. In this case connection is to the Northcliff

IOW a propper external antenna [like yours] does help to stabilise/decrease latency?

 

[Crash]

I've found that most games can handle some latency, say up to about 250 / 300 ms. I can play UT2k4 and warcraft online fine.

BUT packetloss is the absolute killer of any game. If you get any packetloss, your game will lag like mad.
Looking at the pings, i see quite a bit of packet loss. I think thats your main problem.

Oh and don't even waste your time with online games and the Northcliff Tower!!!!

 

[Vaughan]

Reply

I live in the same area i am on the border of northcliff and berario in gauteng and do not have antennae. It seems the antennea have made a huge difference for gres but i wanted to know how much difference they will make to frame error rate which is quite high and how much antennea are thanks for all the help.

 

[GRES]

UTC antenna is only 10% signal against standard dipole. It designed to work only in the high signal area. Your pings are bad - forget games! UTC and antenna work well. This is only one complication - standrd cable length is 1.3m.

 

[Gatecrasher]

GRES, I have housed my modem on a sheltered outside wall via a 30m ethernet cable. I get roughly -71db signal from Randburg, 6km away. I still get some inconsistent pings. Most are sub 100ms, but about 15% are >100ms, often as high as 300/400ms.

If I got an external antenna, I would only need a short cable (less degradation). The question I have is whether I could experience a stonger signal and more consistent latency with one of your antennas, even though my current connection is quite acceptable.

Do you get to a point where no further gain is possible by adding an antenna, or will there always be some improvement?

 

[GRES]

Your signal FROM tower is very good. Another issue is how tower see you. My signal is also -71dB and pings are slightly better. So it is difficult to tell about signal quality improvement (quality and signal level is different things!!!). Maybe you will be able to connect to other tower. Bryanston tower is good as i know.