IDNet no longer the highest rated ISP on DSL Zone

Thar · Sep 09, 2006, 14:50:47

I notice ratings from a few non-IDNet IP's and a few mentions of migrations to Zen...funny Zen are now the top

New IDNetters, it's time to vote!

equk · Sep 09, 2006, 18:05:53

Not being funny but maybe people on idnet rated them according to how they felt on the ping problems. Have seen a few people on adslguide bbs say they have migrated etc.

I was firstly a bit annoyed by the ping problems, mainly because of the extent of my problems, like getting 200ms ping to the gateway for hours. (I got the idnet due to looking at adslguide ratings and also dsl zone ratings and felt mis-lead as the ping times were already an on-going problem when I joined)
I would guess maybe some other people felt the same and voted rather than waiting (fair enough really, freedom of speach and all that).

I'm a lot more happy now things are starting to be sorted and the support of idnet seems very good.

This is just my opinion but all these "new members vote for idnet on X site" are a bit lame.
If you wanted to vote you'd probably have voted already.
'new' people may have a different opinion on an isp, especially if they're in the 10day bt testing period and have 10+ re-sync's per day (some people may blame the isp).
At the same time 'new' customers might not know how good or bad idnet are yet.
Probably proves that you can't always trust these vote sites

What's wrong with zen also?

is it a competition for us to say "our isp is better than yours nah nah nah nah nah!" ?

surely it's up to ISPs to compete against eachother not customers/users/fanboys etc???

I hope no-one takes this as being bad or whatever I just believe in being honest

Thar · Sep 09, 2006, 22:05:06

equk · Sep 09, 2006, 22:08:02

Quote from: Thar on Sep 09, 2006, 22:05:06

soz

was in a funny mood

Thar · Sep 09, 2006, 23:15:33

No worries...you're entitled to your opinion.

Jeff · Sep 11, 2006, 23:25:28

I have to agree with equk 100%, votes are meant to come from real experience, not just because we vote for the particular ISP we are with at the time

Having said that, I don`t share in the current conflict that some are apparently having with IDNet. My internet connection works just fine for what I do with it ... if we stare at a fit woman (or bloke, depending on your gender, or the same species, depending on your sexual orientation ) long enough, at least one person in the crowd will spot a defect, then the whole crowd will notice and before you know it ... :\ Shame really, did it really stop the whole crowd enjoying the painting?

Hehe, maybe I should start a topic. "What do folk use thier connection for other than 24/7 ping, tracroute and latency tests for" ... ah well

equk · Sep 11, 2006, 23:57:54

I am happy with idnet atm.

I was just saying when I first joined and there were problems with ping times and also re-syncs so I wasn't so happy. After a bit of time and thanks to the efforts of idnet my connection and some other people's seem to be ok. Also the change to a fixed service has stopped the re-syncing totally.

I still have a small problem of pinging to the gateway at 100+ms at times and there are a few routing problems but hopefully we will sort those small problems out.

It sometimes takes time to see how good (or bad) a isp is, also the fact they have had problems but have sorted them out is a credit to them and shows how good their support is.

maxping · Sep 12, 2006, 00:49:51

Quote

Hehe, maybe I should start a topic. "What do folk use thier connection for other than 24/7 ping, tracroute and latency tests for" ... ah well

To the non gamers here all the tests and talk of pings e.t.c. probably seemed trivial.
I got broadband because of the low pings then migrated to IDNet because of its reputation , suddenly all gamers were reporting a problem.

My pings were fine when i first joined and they are not now , CS are trying to sort it but as yet nothing has happened.

I think its good that the problem was posted as it would warn off anyone wanting to join mainly for gaming and they could keep an eye on the situation to see if it got sorted.

I know it put the first black mark against IDNet here in the forums but i think its better posted than kept quiet.

AvengerUK · Sep 12, 2006, 09:07:27

Quote from: maxping on Sep 12, 2006, 00:49:51
Quote

Hehe, maybe I should start a topic. "What do folk use thier connection for other than 24/7 ping, tracroute and latency tests for" ... ah well

To the non gamers here all the tests and talk of pings e.t.c. probably seemed trivial.
I got broadband because of the low pings then migrated to IDNet because of its reputation , suddenly all gamers were reporting a problem.

My pings were fine when i first joined and they are not now , CS are trying to sort it but as yet nothing has happened.

I think its good that the problem was posted as it would warn off anyone wanting to join mainly for gaming and they could keep an eye on the situation to see if it got sorted.

I know it put the first black mark against IDNet here in the forums but i think its better posted than kept quiet.

In my opinion the ping problem should have had a positive effect on DSL Zone ratings...the way support handled it (ie never gave in) - and eventually fixed it. Cant be bad eh?!

Scott · Sep 12, 2006, 10:36:01

Quote from: AvengerUK on Sep 12, 2006, 09:07:27
In my opinion the ping problem should have had a positive effect on DSL Zone ratings...the way support handled it (ie never gave in) - and eventually fixed it. Cant be bad eh?!

Couldn't agree more AvUK. I very much appreciated the low-key approach taken by the IDNet team...it wasn't 'all over the forums' smarming and making like you were the only thing on their plates...just solid, steady "we're looking into it, we kinda know what's up" with a bit of feedback where news was forthcoming....then once they'd got it operating to their liking a "please report further issues for further investigation"

I liked it... :0) Confirms my views for coming here in the first place.

Jeff · Sep 15, 2006, 22:50:05

I just think that it`s funny that pings don`t actually affect gaming ... did no one actually read Simons initial post concerning pings? We spoke about it, quite funny really

I`m thinking bandwagons at this stage ... anyone else care to jump off and join me in happy land?

And to those that disagree, see the big fella. He had the ability to set his own ISP up so knows marginally more about the subject than you or I. My pings have always been poor (to some peoples standards though not mine as I can game flawlessly, anytime, anywhere). I tend to post from experience, not hearsay

maxping · Sep 16, 2006, 14:12:25

Quote from: Jeff on Sep 15, 2006, 22:50:05
I just think that it`s funny that pings don`t actually affect gaming ... did no one actually read Simons initial post concerning pings? We spoke about it, quite funny really

If you have a 150 ping and you are playing a FPS against 10 others with pings of 25 you may as well forget it.

What Is Lag?

This info is a slightly edited copy taken from SSZ.Net with the Admin's (SlowBob) Consent. I'd like to thank him very much since this saved me a bunch of time to do other things! Lag info is found in this section, Video info is found lower on this page.
Ever wonder how your computer talks to other computers? No? Well, I'm gonna tell you anyway. Computers communicate through "packet transfer." Packets are like little "packages" of data that computers send to each other. The packets have all kinds of neat information in them like where the packet came from, where it's supposed to go, the size of the packet, the data that is being transmitted (the whole purpose of packets), and, most importantly from a lag point of view, a Time-to-Live(ttl). A Time-to-Live is kinda like a timer set by the sending computer. The sending computer keeps track of the ttl of each packet it sends and waits for a reply from the recieving computer that the packet has arrived safely. If the TTL timer expires, and there is still no word from the recieving computer, the sending computer has to resend that packet. You can see how this might be time consuming. Why woudn't packets arrive on time? It's either because the connection was really slow and the packets took too long to arrive (high ping times) or the packet was lost somewhere on it's way to the recieving computer (high packetloss). SubSpace uses a special type of packet transfer called UDP, which doesn't care if packets are late or lost as much as most other protocols. It just ignores most lost packets instead of resending them. Ever wonder why your ship is jumping around when it's lagged? It's because a number of packets never arrived and the SubSpace server is missing data from that point in time, which causes you to jump about.
The Internet works by passing these packets from one computer to the next. Often times the path that a packet takes to arrive at it's destination is somewhat random. Computers that pass packets along are called "routers". So each packet your computer sends on it's way to VIE's SubSpace server may hit many routers along the way. Often, the path that the packets take will change from time to time as router's go up, go down, and learn Internet traffic patterns better. These different paths explain why some people expereince lag one day and not the next.
A router will recieve a packet and look at that packet's destination address. It then asks itself which way it should forward that packet. It asks itself, "Is this packet on my local network? Should I pass it to the next router down the line? How is traffic down the line? Can I pass this packet on in a direction that is quicker?" It has a lot of things to think about. As the Internet grows and more packets are sent, these routers have more and more to deal with. When a router's CPU can't handle the volume of packets it has to forward, it begins storing packets in RAM. When it's RAM gets full with these backed-up packets, the router discards all incoming packets until it can handle new ones, expecting that the sending computer will just resend. This is packetloss. Packetloss like this occurs at Internet bottlenecks like the MAE-EAST router which handles a lot of East Coast traffic. Packetloss can also occur at your ISP, or even at GlobalCenter, where the SubSpace servers are. (And sometimes the guys at GlobalCenter just don't have stuff set up right so the routers never even see the packets......hey, we all make mistakes)
High ping is one form of lag. Ping is the time in milliseconds that it takes for your packet to reach the server. Check your ping in SubSpace by typing ?ping while playing the game. You will see high, low, average and current ping values. A good ping value (current or average) should be around 200. If you are 400 or above your not looking so good. Ping spikes can occasionly occur which will send you into spec. To determine if you've had a ping spike, look at your High ping value and compare it to your average. If you have a average of 320 and a high of 1100, and you just got put into spec, you had a ping spike. I believe that SubSpace servers are set to put you in spec at 450 ping (don't quote me on that). High ping is most often caused by a slow modem or sucky ISP. If you experience a lot of high ping, you may want to upgrade your modem or call your ISP and have them diagnose it with you. High ping can, however, be caused by slow routers along the packet path. Use Sub-O-Tronic to see if that is the problem (see below).
Packetloss is the other lag-causing condition. I've already explained ploss in the preceding sections. To check your ploss from within SubSpace, type ?packetloss and you will recieve two values: Server-to-You and You-to-Server. Reasonable values are less than 10%. Preferably less than 3%. Anything over 15% and your pretty lagged. Anything over 25% and you get booted into spec. Packetloss has nothing to do with your modem or computer (well, there are things you can do to your computer to make it's packets more resistant to loss and increase ping values like adjusting MTU values, see MTU Speed Pro). Anyway, buying a new modem won't help, to fix packetloss, you may be powerless, but check out the section below on Sub-O-Tronic. It could help you.

AvengerUK · Sep 16, 2006, 14:21:15

Pings are the only thing that effects gaming internet wise!

^^ Nice find max btw, even i learnt something

maxping · Sep 16, 2006, 14:46:14

Quote from: AvengerUK on Sep 16, 2006, 14:21:15

^^ Nice find max btw, even i learnt something

Good old Google

Simon_idnet · Sep 16, 2006, 16:45:27

There is a point or two that I'd like to clarify in the quote from SubSpace that Maxping found:

TTL shouldn't be confused with timeout. TTL has no concenpt of time as in minutes and seconds. Each packet that your PC sends out has a nominal TTL assinged to it which determins the number of hops (routers) that the packet is allowed to traverse before it is sent back to the origin as "unreachable". Every OS uses a different TTL and a different timeout value. Windows assigns a default TTL of 250 - I've never seen a traceroute that long!

Each router in the path reads the TTL, decerements that figure by one and sends the packet along. The router that decrements the TTL to zero does not forward the packet along, it returns the packet to sender.

That is how traceroute works; your PC first sends out an ICMP (Internet Control Message Protocol) 'echo' packet with a TTL of one, the first router in the path decrements the TTL to zero and issues an 'echo-reply' to the origin = ping! Your PC then sends out another ICMP 'echo' packet with a TTL of two etc etc until the end of the line is reached. Programs such as Visual Ping work by first establishing how many hops there are to the destination (say there are 12 hops in the path to your web server, game server or whatever) then, every second or so it sends out 12 ICMP 'echo' packets with one having a TTL value of 1, another with a TTL value of 2, another with a TTL value of 3 etc etc (remember though that by definition each of the pings are being sent to routers who routinely hold them in low-esteem).

TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) is highly resilient. The 'three-way hanshake' between your PC and web server (for example) first establishes a connection. Thereafter the server is continually sending control data to your PC advising it of how many packets and the sequence numbers of the packets that your PC should expect to receive from it. If your PC does not receive one or more packets it will ask the server to resend. This is why web pages mostly render correctly in your browser even if the connection is poor.

This level of quality assurance is a bit of overkill in the scenario of game play where the pace of action is the most important factor. So, games are written to use UDP (User Datagram Protocol) which is a 'connectionless' protocol i.e. neither your PC nor the server make any attempt to track that they are receiving the correct packets or in the correct order. The data is just pumped out. Routers treat UDP as normal priority traffic as opposed to ICMP which is treated as low-priority.

Cheers
Simon

Bill · Sep 16, 2006, 17:16:28

Adding a bit to what Simon wrote:

QuotePing is the time in milliseconds that it takes for your packet to reach the server.

Not really- it's the time a ping (ICMP) packet takes, nothing to do with how long a data packet takes.

maxping · Sep 16, 2006, 18:36:17

Thanks for the post Simon i wish i understood it

I posted the subspace article in answer to Jeffs comment "I just think that it`s funny that pings don`t actually affect gaming"

Now i will openly admit i know nothing more than the basics when it comes to pings and gaming but i do know that the higher your ping the worse your gaming experience is, you go on a server early in the morning (a server you play on regularly and is always lag free) and get a few on with 100 - 200+ pings and the server starts to get laggy, is this a coincidence?

I also know with my recent ping problems that you do not play the same with a 30ms ping than you do with a 80+ ping , i was getting my butt kicked regularly when i usually come near the top , again is this coincidence?

My pings are now always 40ms or below and my gaming experience has returned to normal

jimc · Sep 19, 2006, 11:04:45

Pings may not effect gaming per say
they are however a widley recognised way of finding a potential problem / bottleneck between you and the gaming server

AvengerUK · Sep 19, 2006, 11:10:41

Quote from: jimc on Sep 19, 2006, 11:04:45
Pings may not effect gaming per say
they are however a widley recognised way of finding a potential problem / bottleneck between you and the gaming server

It really depends on the game - however most games are badly effected by higher ping times as the "Hitboxes" arnt where you see them basically - you can play, but you sure wont enjoy playing!

equk · Sep 19, 2006, 13:46:46

Can't believe someone would say "pings don't effect gaming" they completely effect online gaming. Try playing on modem vs adsl. Or adsl on 200ms vs adsl on 30ms. There is a huge difference.

Even 10-20ms over the norm can be the difference between being able to hit the hitboxes when they are in the crosshair or not.
Thinking back to quake2 when we were on modems and isdn, we could achieve 40-50ms but had to aim in front of the target in order to hit them.

The more I think of that statement, the more things I find wrong with it. Complete rubbish to say pings dont effect gaming.

AvengerUK · Sep 19, 2006, 14:07:20

Nicely put!

jimc · Sep 19, 2006, 14:13:03

mmm
you are not reading what I said,
read it again and have a think

equk · Sep 19, 2006, 14:25:52

Quote from: jimc on Sep 19, 2006, 14:13:03
mmm
you are not reading what I said,
read it again and have a think

bah soz :p says MAY not

but still I'm sure someone above said it does not effect gaming

*goes to make a mocha to wake-up more*

karvala · Sep 19, 2006, 14:32:06

[referee]
I think what jimc was probably getting at, is that game data is obviously tranferred as UDP packets (for pretty much all games these days), and that therefore whether or not a ping (ICMP) packet gets through doesn't actually change what data gets through, which is strictly correct. Of course, ICMP packet transfer times show a very strong correlation with the times for data packets (both UDP and TCP) at almost all times on all networks, which is why they continue to be used as a latency measure. In other words, they don't count because they're not actually used in the game (although in practice many games DO use ping information to configure the performance), but they do count because they're strongly indicative of the data packet performance that IS used in the game.

And we all lived happily ever after.

[/referee]

jimc · Sep 19, 2006, 14:45:36

Thank you Karvala

I stand by by statement, It was meant to come across as supporting the use of ping for games,
agreed my response was probably to short and could have been taken another way.
what I was trying to say is its not the PING thats effecting the game the ping is only highlighting a potential network bottleneck/congestion/ fill in the gap/possible faulty card.
by finding the most responsive route through a network it will enable you to have a better game to the chosen server.

hope that makes slightly more sense?