MWEB ADSL latency problems
ADSL users with accounts from various Internet service providers (ISPs) reported sudden increases in latency and other connectivity issues related to gaming towards the end of September.
MWEB started a thread on the MyBroadband forums in order to solicit feedback from users, presumably to help them isolate any particular problem areas.
Many players of Blizzard’s popular World of Warcraft (WoW) Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG) have reported very high latencies to the game’s servers from MWEB’s uncapped accounts.
Latency is a measure of time, typically given in milliseconds, of how long it takes for a packet to travel from your computer to another. In this case the other computers would be Blizzard’s WoW game servers.
According to those complaining, the latencies have become so high that the game is rendered virtually unplayable.
This problem has been ongoing since the inception of the thread and as yet hasn’t been fully resolved.
A representative from MWEB identifying himself as an operations technical manager at the ISP explained that they have considered a number of possible causes and are now waiting on the suppliers of their traffic management solution to try and isolate the cause of the problem.
The CEO of MWEB ISP, Derek Hershaw, explained that they use Cisco equipment for their traffic management needs and are aware of other international ISPs that are experiencing the same problem.
In the meantime, a MyBroadband forum user has suggested a solution to the problem which involves making a specific exception in the traffic management configuration for all the IPs registered to Blizzard.
“This is very much where our thinking is as well and ultimately management should be preferable to bypassing,” replied MWEB’s operations technical manager.
“The [traffic management] devices we use work on a signature basis and as far as we can see the current signature pack is correctly flagging 100% of WoW traffic as gaming, which then puts it into the appropriate assurance category. This is why we are at the point now where the vendor needs to come back with an explanation and I sincerely hope a proposed solution as to why this is not behaving as expected.”
With the highly anticipated Cataclysm expansion pack for World of Warcraft set to launch on 7 December, fans of the game that are currently with MWEB may consider moving to another ISP.
“Right now there is no reliable workaround, but we are working closely with the vendor who is working around the clock to resolve this problem,” said Hershaw.
“We hope to have this resolved very soon.”
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