Broadband latency in SA: Best and worst ISPs revealed

Terrible thing to graph, as the fixed line latencies are wholly reliant on Telkom's routing not screwing consumers over, and can thus affect results very heavily.

The amount of variables that come into play for this are so varied that it results in broken results.

nanonyous said:
Tracing route to strike.isgaming.co.za [196.38.180.25]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 25 ms 5 ms 1 ms 192.168.10.2
2 * * * Request timed out.
3 293 ms 291 ms 289 ms cdsl2-rba-vl2663.ip.isnet.net [196.38.73.25]
4 * * * Request timed out.
5 300 ms 298 ms 298 ms 196.26.0.61
6 288 ms 292 ms 293 ms core2a-bry-ge1-1-0.isnet.net [168.209.100.242]
7 307 ms 329 ms 344 ms 168.209.218.22
8 309 ms 299 ms 304 ms strike.isgaming.co.za [196.38.180.25]

Trace complete.

That's to a local IS Gaming server, the first hop, represented by those *'s, is a TelkomADSL one which typically has a ~30ms ping, and the next hop over will usually add another 25ms onto that.

Various international and local sites are inaccessible, and I'm confident this is not an issue with IS/Openweb, as this issue has come up multiple times in the past few months.


For a period of roughly two weeks, recently, I got an extra 120ms added onto the hop from the TelkomADSL hop to the IS network from exactly 7am on weekdays till 5:30pm on weekdays. This behaviour was also seen at some point during 2009, during which time I had to bother MrBEEP with an endless stream of mails in order to try and figure out where the problem was. In all calls made to Telkom, they deny any and all responsibility, claiming their network is running perfectly and that the only maintenance being done anywhere would not affect the connection between my line, the exchange I'm connecting to and the handover onto the other network(s) that I tested.

Telkom are messing around with something and they're not letting anyone know what, and it's starting to !@#$ me off.
Click to expand...

The above is from another thread in which I responded recently.

This issue has come up quite often over the past two years on two different landlines in two completely different towns separated by 200km.
 
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nanonyous said:
Terrible thing to graph, as the fixed line latencies are wholly reliant on Telkom's routing not screwing consumers over, and can thus affect results very heavily.

The amount of variables that come into play for this are so varied that it results in broken results.

The above is from another thread in which I responded recently.

This issue has come up quite often over the past two years on two different landlines in two completely different towns separated by 200km.
Click to expand...

Indeed. Luckily the same problem has been sorted for me:
VIA Vodacom Business
Tracing route to strike.isgaming.co.za [196.38.180.25]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 * * * Request timed out.
2 26 ms 25 ms 30 ms 41.0.9.214
3 29 ms 25 ms 27 ms 41.0.72.1
4 28 ms 25 ms 26 ms 41.0.9.61
5 84 ms 69 ms 70 ms 41.0.0.5
6 29 ms 28 ms 26 ms rrba-ip-hsll-1-wan.telkom-ipnet.co.za [196.25.25
3.109]
7 28 ms 29 ms 29 ms rrba-ip-lir-1-gig-3-0-0.telkom-ipnet.co.za [196.
43.11.134]
8 29 ms 26 ms 29 ms 196.43.25.138
9 52 ms 39 ms 27 ms internet-solutions-gw.telkom-ipnet.co.za [196.25
.127.182]
10 112 ms 28 ms 28 ms 196.26.0.61
11 30 ms 29 ms 27 ms core2a-bry-ge1-1-0.isnet.net [168.209.100.242]
12 27 ms 30 ms 28 ms 168.209.218.22
13 29 ms 28 ms 30 ms strike.isgaming.co.za [196.38.180.25]

Trace complete.

Trace complete.
Click to expand...

VIA Afrihost
Tracing route to strike.isgaming.co.za [196.38.180.25]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 * * * Request timed out.
2 27 ms 26 ms 25 ms cdsl2-rba-vl2663.ip.isnet.net [196.38.73.25]
3 26 ms 25 ms 26 ms cdsl2-rba-vl150.ip.isnet.net [196.38.73.9]
4 27 ms 26 ms 26 ms 168.209.1.140
5 26 ms 26 ms 25 ms core2a-bry-ge1-1-0.isnet.net [168.209.100.242]
6 28 ms 26 ms 25 ms 168.209.217.22
7 29 ms 29 ms 28 ms strike.isgaming.co.za [196.38.180.25]

Trace complete.
Click to expand...
 
45289016.png


45289086.png


Large discrepancy between this and pingtest.net!
 
Guess I must be lucky with my connection then - I'm with Afrihost and get 16ms on ping test.
 
On which products do one get WA static ips ?
 
LoL @ all 3G solutions having better latencies than iburst... :) Guess it depends on signal though.
 
Pr⊕phet said:
aaaw, I want static on 5 gig per month :D

What kind of latency can I expect on 5 gig + platinum? Specifically thinking mmo....
Click to expand...

A bit hard to tell dude :( Where about would the MMO server be based?
If I play online, to SA server I generally get between 10ms and 25ms and my personal WA account is on a Silver priority. Maybe you can ask a couple of the gamers over on our forums, I know that a couple of the guys discuss latency and response times :)
 
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SharkBait said:
LoL @ all 3G solutions having better latencies than iburst... :) Guess it depends on signal though.
Click to expand...

Doubt it. Ping packets are really small so not really affected by our connection speed. It is limited by the technologies ability to code the data, get it over the air connection, decode andthen forward it. You can be right next to the tower or 30 kms away with no notable difference in your latency since the transmission over the air interface is at the speed of light.

As 3G evolved to 3.75G the technology made improvements in latency, not due to the throughput, but due to the way communication is managed between your cellphone, the tower (NodeB) and the controller (RNC).
 
SharkBait said:
LoL @ all 3G solutions having better latencies than iburst... :) Guess it depends on signal though.
Click to expand...

It may be true. But, I consider my place to have bad signal (having 0 to 2 bars out of five all the time) but my latency is scarcely above 130ms.

I am with 8ta and MTN. What could be true however could be that there is still lots of capacity on the 8ta network meaning lower use, which could be the reason for the low latency.

Thanks MyBB for that piece of info. It points me in the direction to go for a broadband contract.
 
Not quite sure what rpm was going for in this article. The fact that his 384k telkom latences were about 6 times higher than the 10mb counterparts should have started ringing bells in his ears.

All this article shows is that on a specific day, packets from one host (unknown location) to another host (unknown location) at some specific time was a certain speed. Not reflective of anything at all really, but uh thanks for misleading 99% of people who will bother looking at your tables.
 
It works as a comparative test. No surprise that Mweb is at or near the bottom.
 
Aion ping to to EU Server: 499 ms
Afrihost ISP (IS) capped unshapped account
Pin is with the use of WTfast
Ho pathetic is that!
 
Vodacom Business in Durban
Telkom to Durban
1432781656.png

Afrihost to Durban
1432777820.png


So seems for us on east coast is that Telkom is better than IS to the nearest server

Cell C Johannesburg
Telkom to Johannesburg
1432783617.png

Afrihost to Johannesburg
1432787039.png


So I guess for gaming Afrihost/IS would give slightly better latency but not much, but depends also where the server is situated.

Not sure how the 4 meg lines did badly on their tables since I make the top 5 with my line to Johannesburg with Telkom and Afrihost.

Were the results average or did they take the top few results?
Click to expand...

What I typed on mygaming.co.za
 
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WAJeff said:
A bit hard to tell dude :( Where about would the MMO server be based?
If I play online, to SA server I generally get between 10ms and 25ms and my personal WA account is on a Silver priority. Maybe you can ask a couple of the gamers over on our forums, I know that a couple of the guys discuss latency and response times :)
Click to expand...

Got 2gig home pro and got 187-234 with 218 average then on prepaid I got 203-234, not worth it to go home + pro imho if it's about same as prepaid. Can't say I like your peak and off peak ideas, would have preferred a solid 2 gig no matter when I use it especially if you go 1 peak and 4 off peak. Anyways still happy with my mweb uncapped and WA prepaid for MMOing when needed.
 
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