The horrible state of Irish ISPs

bugler

Hello.

I have no idea really if this is where this post belongs. It could just as easily gone to net/comms i suppose, but more likely to CS, seen as it relates most vitally to isp performance in games, but the rest of you will get the idea of what I'm asking/whining about anyway. If your mods think its out of place, throw it elsewhere

Basically, I have ISDN, a good TA (Asus wan), and an Indigo 1891 a/c. I initially got ISDN installed because rental wise it wasn't much dearer than having two analogue lines, and there was of course the added bonus of 'faster' downloads and a nice low ping in games. Unfortunately, the state of Ireland's ISPs has rendered my decision at times null.

Today, I started up a game of CS, it felt a little bit choppy, so I slapped on net_graph 3, which basically tells you what loss/choke your conn is getting. I was getting spontaneous choke of around 6-12, with no loss. My ping was around 60-90, which is fairly typical to the UK and fine by me. Anyway, I probably had a bad game or something, because I decided to switch ISPs, and to test out which was best. The results of my little experiment shocked and/or disturbed me

To break it down, and bear in mind that these results were all to jolt CS servers, with the exact same config, and I looked at the results for around 5 minutes each time, so no snap judgements.

Indigo: Ping 60-90 Loss: 0 Choke 0-12

Oceanfree: Ping 130-170 Loss: 0-12 Choke: 15-25

Buy and Sell: Ping 100-120 Loss: 0 Choke: 5-25

UTV: Ping 100-130 Loss: 0 Choke: 10-35

Eircom: Ping 80-110 Loss: 0-5 Choke: 0-25

The funny thing is, about a year ago I got ISDN. I was away from my pc for basically november 2001-June 2002. When I left, Oceanfree used to give a good ping, but was quite prone to loss. It was Eircom who gave me the 56kers ping, now held by Oceanfree. Buy and Sell used to give the best connects to the UK servers, now its a waste of time. What causes this inconsistency? Is it a lack of proper equipment in the relevant ISPs premises? I dial into indigo through limerick, to which I'm quite close. The rest are universal numbers, but does that mean results should be the same? It appears not, because no-one else seems to get the same performance from the different ISPs.

When I was on 56k, the ISPs didn't give me much choke or loss. I then got booted from no limits, which is what led to me getting ISDN ultimately. It's annoying as a consumer being booted from a semi-flat rate service, only to give in to Eircons 'demands' and buy ISDN, only to find that it can hardly perform as a gaming connection.

My download speeds are fine, with at least oceanfree and eircom, and you wouldn't notice anything in browsing, but as any online gamer can tell you, there is a noticeable feel when you get a "clean" connection, as opposed to the chokey filth I'm being served up by the ISPs these days.

Anyway, I suppose I better give this some more relevance to the forum, but has anything been said of poor ISP performance in Ireland as opposed to lack of broadband/flatrate by the relevant bodies? Having a limited selection was bad enough, but having no options is worse. On bad days, my ISP's behaviour makes my upgrading to ISDN worthless from a gaming perspective. Is the fact that gamers may be a minority of customers a factor that allows the ISPs to take shortcuts?

After all the above testing, needless to say I ran back to indigo, which is cheaper anyway, and the choke had subsided somewhat. Needless to say, it felt like playing on a LAN after what I'd been through Now I'll just have to hope that Indigo's performance doesn't crash, because if it does so to the level of the others, then my online gaming will cease. Here's hoping my connection is semi-decent for my clan match on tuesday...

astrofool

that's cos jolt servers are sh*te, I ping 50-60 on esat isdn to bw, jolt's are underpowered boxes of poop

Tazzle

im the same, at home i get 80-100 on irish servers atm, although i did go back to windows ME and i had a ping of 40, mebe it's os related.

astrofool

btw, choke means that the isdn doesn't have the bandwidth to take the info in (around 7.2-8k/sec), try setting your rate or cl_cmdrate lower.

richindub2

I ping 30-60 on irish servers, 50-90 on english and have 0 loss 0-20 choke on jolt on either eircom or ocean. (Asus TA)

bugler

Well, I have to say, I've done my fair share I messing with the config, but I've never set my cmd rate that high, never heard of anyone else doing it either. Still worth a shot

It's not just jolt servers astro, though I haven't done anything like the experiment on other servers, the results are similar for at least some of those ISPs I mentioned. I might mess about more later tonight on diferent servers. Not that bothered with Irish servers and how I ping to them at the minute, as everyone seems to play elsewhere :-/

Koopa

"choke" is dependant on your rate setting and cl_updaterate, has nothing really to do with how good your isp is.. if you set rate 2500 on a lan, you will still get choke in fights

irish connects to uk are usually pretty good around early morning (3am - 8am) , your problems in-game are probably caused by overloading of the uk-ireland link during 'normal' times - its probably just due to lack of bandwidth, or else some underpowered router along that route, because eircom pings to eircom servers are usually good even during 'peak' evening hours,
i doubt the isp is overloaded (in eircoms case anyway)

for 64k isdn, try these settings (my cs v1.3 settings from a year ago, dunno if v1.5 has changed anything, the commands will probably be the same anyway)

rate 6000
cl_rate 6000
cl_cmdrate 80
cl_updaterate 51
fps_max 100
fps_modem 100

astrofool:
btw, choke means that the isdn doesn't have the bandwidth to take the info in (around 7.2-8k/sec), try setting your rate or cl_cmdrate lower.

nope, choke represents the updates the server didnt send you because of your (low) rate setting, the only way to lower your choke is by raising your rate

problem is, if you raise your rate too high (to lower the number of packets 'choked' by the server), the server will flood your connection during fights, one of the symptoms of this is "freezing up" in heavy fights
on the other hand if your rate is too low, youll just find it harder to hit enemies because theyll move more jerkily (usually only noticable in fights)


[edit] bleh.. i deleted my post above by mistake, so i repeated it here.. looks kindof weird that you replied to my post "before" mine is posted, hehe

Dr.Seagull

well i think your just going to have to face the fact that games netcodes are being developed for broadband
isdn just wont cut it anymore

Koopa

half-life's netcode is 4 years old though
broadband is a big advantage obviously, but the game should still be "playable" on isdn

as for the high cmdrate, if you have 100 fps solid, then cl_cmdrate 80 is the same as cl_cmdrate 51 , the only reason i use(d) 80 is because i dont actually get 100fps in cs(usually around 50 actually, which sucks), and i know the actual isdn connect can take around 90 packets/sec easily (qw/q3 send similar amounts of outgoing data from the client per frame as halflife, and i tested in both)

Dr.Seagull

4 years old? are u sure it hasnt been updated in some of the patchs

BKtje

Ive really only used 3 isps in the last 2 and a half years.

Clubi (1891 number)
Eircom
Buy and Sell (when it was still about)

I never really noticed a big difference to the UK.
Some had better routing to different countries other than Uk and that was only thing that made them stand out a bit.

However,
i know people in Laois who find Jolt on eircom, laggy as **** with a high ping while i in Dublin find it as sweet as can be. Hardly any lag and a pretty respectable ping. ( dodgy routers in laois? )
Guess it depends on the quality of the routers after it leaves your isp more than the isp itself.
(Unless of course its Eircom who own most (??) of the routers in Ireland any way so can be held to blame till it leaves their network)

aidan_dunne

Originally posted by B-K-DzR
However,
i know people in Laois who find Jolt on eircom, laggy as **** with a high ping while i in Dublin find it as sweet as can be. Hardly any lag and a pretty respectable ping. ( dodgy routers in laois? )
Guess it depends on the quality of the routers after it leaves your isp more than the isp itself.
(Unless of course its Eircom who own most (??) of the routers in Ireland any way so can be held to blame till it leaves their network)

I'm from Laois but I can't tell you what it's like here for myself because I don't do any online gaming. However, I have heard from friends who do game that it is fairly crap around here all right.

As for "dodgy routers in laois" I wouldnt be surprised. Everything around here seems to be fairly crap and dodgy anyway.

TacT

I don't know about the isdn but I get pings of 20 from work to jolt with no loss/choke at all. Servers are fine bar one or two exceptions but then again that applies to most gamers networks dunnit (this is on 2M/bit leased provided by cable & wireless)

I get a ping of 70-90 from the cafe on coyote's line and get 1 loss and 1-3 choke quite rarely on jolt.

Has anyone that has adsl managed to get their connection rock solid, with no choke / loss to any server?

If so pls post your cfg net settings here.

I find that no matter what I do with the net settings there is still 1 choke or 1 loss from time to time

Lemming

Originally posted by Dr.Seagull
4 years old? are u sure it hasnt been updated in some of the patchs

HL's netcode was radically updated about 2 and a half years ago iirc