thinking ofmoving

Happy Surfer · Aug 12, 2010, 12:49:54

hello peeps well ive absolutely loved the idnet service and performance since ive got it, no complaints which is what you want from a product but im thinking of moving to plusnet for their pro service since im a regular gamer and require a better ping, idnet's is always solid but a ping prioritised connection is ideal for me really.

just asking would idnet have any issues with me moving and asking for mac code etc? am on the monthly option.

feel a bit sad asking

but i want those good pings to give me that edge in games

Rik · Aug 12, 2010, 12:55:00

IDNet will give you a MAC by phone or email. If you ever want to return, they will be happy to see you back. You do know they offer the same prioritised traffic service with Home SuperMax or Home SuperPro, depending whether you're on ADSL or ADSL2+?

Happy Surfer · Aug 12, 2010, 13:17:47

they look good but they are £10 dearer and plusnet pro is couple of quid cheaper and they got an offer on currently for the first 3 months free.

if in the future though i didnt get on with plusnet i wouldnt hesitate to come back to idnet.

klipp · Aug 12, 2010, 13:28:06

One word of warning. Plusnet employ traffic management on their service (probably why they can afford cheaper prices). Hopefully that won't affect gaming protocols, but you could run into trouble if you like to use P2P software.

Happy Surfer · Aug 12, 2010, 13:31:05

but the pro service IS a gaming traffic prioritised service? im all good on the p2p front as i dont use that kind of thing on internet

dujas · Aug 12, 2010, 15:29:36

You are falling for a sales gimmick IMO. It just means you're less likely to notice the effects of any congestion on their network, but then you'd hope they'd have the capacity for that to be a rare event. There's also no mention of whether you get priority on the BT Wholesale side of the infrastructure as well. Good peering to the providers of the game servers you play on is probably a more important factor, IE your data takes a more optimized, shorter route.

pctech · Aug 12, 2010, 15:50:26

Trust me, don't go with them, they are BT under a different name.

I went with them because they were cheap and at peak times it became immediately apparent why, so called Gold traffic such as browsing packets were regularly dropped and even basic functions which you'd think were exempt from TM such as DNS lookups were slow.

I spoke with support and complained the TM was too strict and the devices couldn't cope and was told I was talking nonsense,

Just before I left I did go onto Pro as a test and things did improve somewhat but I did not want to do business with a company like that so ended up buying myself out of a 12 month contract.

Gaming traffic is supposed to have priority on all packages but when a new game comes out you have to wait for them to load the traffic signatures onto their TM platform.

The only thing going for them at the time I was with them was they had a transit connection to TeliaSonera which a lot of gaming servers are connected to such as WoW.

Technical Ben · Aug 12, 2010, 21:37:28

If you have needs IDNet cannot provide, I hope you find what you need.

On the other hand, are you sure you will get faster pings else where? How is your connection? Have you asked here if we can help? I've successfully* had interleaving** turned off on my connection, and that's helped for gaming. All the rest is not even down to the ISP half the time, but your geographical location and the congestion at the exchange.

[Edit]
Seen your previous posts. If you have drop outs or errors on the line, then you may not be able to have interleaving turned off. What distance are you to the exchange?

*IDNet can turn it off but the BT exchange can turn it back at any point. I just hope I don't get any rare events like lightning mess it up. Interleaving is only needed for a bad line, so why should I have it turned on for one incident.

Been fine so far though!

**Interleaving sends an error correction code. It doesn't quite double up your bandwidth. However by the time your pc and the exchange hardware has done it's checks and maths, the ping/latency is almost double.

Happy Surfer · Aug 12, 2010, 23:19:03

appreciate all the replies i will be doing some intense internet searching on google etc to find out peoples experiences with the pro package (any of their other packages i would reject in an instant cos idnet is awesome and im only doing it for the pings) i get exactly the same speedtest.net result as technical ben but the ping is always around 10-15 more than his result, i know it not much but it makes such a difference in gaming when every split second reaction and delay is life or death in a virtual sense.

the good thing is that plusnet also do a monthly contract option so if the grass aint greener then i will come back with my tail between my legs

DorsetBoy · Aug 13, 2010, 06:09:27

Quote from: Happy Surfer on Aug 12, 2010, 23:19:03
appreciate all the replies i will be doing some intense internet searching on google etc to find out peoples experiences with the pro package (any of their other packages i would reject in an instant cos idnet is awesome and im only doing it for the pings) i get exactly the same speedtest.net result as technical ben but the ping is always around 10-15 more than his result, i know it not much but it makes such a difference in gaming when every split second reaction and delay is life or death in a virtual sense.

the good thing is that plusnet also do a monthly contract option so if the grass aint greener then i will come back with my tail between my legs

1) Pings are affected by your choice of browser and security software......... take a look at ping via CMD prompt or from safemode with networking to see the difference.

2) The ping test at Speedtest.net is definitely NOT to be trusted as accurate.

3) a few ms. extra will make no discernable difference to a game anyway.

Technical Ben · Aug 13, 2010, 08:18:05

If your ping to a server is plus 50ms then it might help to have a better route. What games do you play? I use a variety of steam games.
When in Grid out cars can bounce all over if someone lags, so a few ms (when mixed with a dropped packet or a loss of sync from the clients can cause trouble).
But only really noticed in FPS. But even then, you can find servers closer by geographical location. I'm in the middle of nowhere though, so not much chance here. I get between 5on empty servers and 50ms ping on full servers. I would have expected a constant result. So I think my MTU is wrong, or my actual PC is not up to scratch. But I don't have the time to check it. I know IDNet are a lot better than O2 aceess's 200ms ping.

Bill · Aug 13, 2010, 10:06:26

Quote from: Happy Surfer on Aug 12, 2010, 23:19:03i will be doing some intense internet searching on google etc to find out peoples experiences with the pro package

Couple of places to start:

http://forums.thinkbroadband.com/plusnet.html

http://community.plus.net/forum/

Happy Surfer · Aug 13, 2010, 11:52:01

Quote from: DorsetBoy on Aug 13, 2010, 06:09:27

3) a few ms. extra will make no discernable difference to a game anyway.

10 more ms in your ping is a huge difference in fps like i mentioned in earlier post, in an fps its the difference between living and dying, i know other factors like the persons own physical response to seeing a person and pressing fire on the control pad factors in but if you have a 50ms ping and the opponent has 35ms and you both open fire at the same time, his bullets are gonna reach you first so even if he doesnt headshot you he has already got the edge on you.

im gaming on the xbox 360 so its not pc related.

i play a variety of fps so its not to do with specific game servers, dont get me wrong the idnet connection is always solid, cod 4 cod5 halo 3 and battlefield bad company 2 are always strong connections but i want that absolute best ping possible to give me all the help in deathmatches

pctech · Aug 13, 2010, 12:59:32

As I understand it from talking to others once you are matched by the xbox game servers a direct connection is established between the systems so its going to be very difficult to guarantee a certain ping every time as it all depends on how the packets are routed between ISPs.

If you have regular opponents it maybe an idea to find out what ISPs they are on and do some ringing round to ask about routing policy to those ISPs.

Ideally you need a peering relationship between them over the London Internet Exchange (LINX) or LoNAP and the ISPs connection into it needs to be quite high capacity.

Technical Ben · Aug 13, 2010, 13:47:58

Quote from: Happy Surfer on Aug 13, 2010, 11:52:01
10 more ms in your ping is a huge difference in fps like i mentioned in earlier post, in an fps its the difference between living and dying, i know other factors like the persons own physical response to seeing a person and pressing fire on the control pad factors in but if you have a 50ms ping and the opponent has 35ms and you both open fire at the same time, his bullets are gonna reach you first so even if he doesnt headshot you he has already got the edge on you.

im gaming on the xbox 360 so its not pc related.

i play a variety of fps so its not to do with specific game servers, dont get me wrong the idnet connection is always solid, cod 4 cod5 halo 3 and battlefield bad company 2 are always strong connections but i want that absolute best ping possible to give me all the help in deathmatches

I may be wrong, but I don't think there is much you can do about the 360 and ping times. It's harder to problem solve than a pc as you have less tools to use.
[Edit] Basically what pctech said. The Xbox360 mainly uses peer to peer hosting. So it is not down to your individual ping or line, but that of everyone else. You could be playing against someone with a bad line, and they make it look like you are lagging. With PC hosting, there is one server, so you can do your best to improve your connection to it. The Host always has an advantage, as they ARE the server, and so have a zero ping time. I can understand if you are having drop outs or lag spikes. But on the Xbox, it is designed for average connections. PCs mind you, work quite different, and the error bars on the pc based FPS can be a lot more delicate.

Happy Surfer · Aug 13, 2010, 21:39:18

i get what you are saying but the ping factor still has an effect on xbox 360 games too, does the idnet home supermax package give you lower pings and gaming traffic prioritisation or is it just more bandwitdth at peaktimes?

pctech · Aug 14, 2010, 10:05:28

At the present time at least ISPs can only give you 'priority' on their network and cannot influence how the traffic is handled on the BT side or by a third-party peer or your opponent's ISP.

It does help to a certain extent if your and your opponent's ISP have large capacity connections but this will NOT give you a guaranteed ping.

The only way you will know if an ISP is right for you is to try them for a month and if you don't like the result move on.

tKe · Aug 14, 2010, 11:45:19

Quote from: pctech on Aug 14, 2010, 10:05:28
At the present time at least ISPs can only give you 'priority' on their network and cannot influence how the traffic is handled on the BT side

To my knowledge the "Priority" applied on the ADSL+ (SuperMax) connection is priority at the local exchange which is where the BT hardware is. I was on O2's Home Access before they disconnected me for using an "excessive" 40GB in a month on their "unlimited" connection and moved to IDNet's SuperMax package which has more than halved my pings in the few moments I get a chance to play online.

I'm very happy with the gaming performance from my PC but couldn't how it would be on XB360.

pctech · Aug 14, 2010, 11:53:21

Did not know that supermax gave priority (at the moment at least), just increased upload capacity but as has been said the XB uses peer-to-peer rather than a client-server topology so mire factors come into play.

Rik · Aug 14, 2010, 11:57:30

The Pro packages are given priority at the exchange, Mitch. In the days of quoted contention, they were 20:1 rather than 50:1. My own results saw pings drop from 24ms to 15ms when I switched. Not that I cared much, not being a gamer. As you say, other factors are probably more important here, especially peering arrangements.

pctech · Aug 14, 2010, 12:02:38

My connection thus far has not been fast enough to play games that I'd like to on XBL but since moving back to Zen and switching to ADSL2+ I've gaind about 400k on downstream and about 250 on up so going to give it a go.

They do have 10G connections to LINX and LoNAP too so might help.

Cant comment on IDNet's network as there's no topology diagram (that I've found anyway)

Zennon · Aug 14, 2010, 19:49:46

Both me and my son game on xbox live at the same time using two xbox 360's with no problem on home supe max, we both can get into the lowest ping matches on modern warfare 2 at the same time or playing two separate matches with the same ease, thats why i moved to idnet.

Zennon · Aug 14, 2010, 19:57:12

I meant to add that MW2 uses a anti-lag system that i have tested to see how it works if you have a four bar connection the game puts you in the past and puts people with three bars before you resulting in three bar players having the upper hand.
Sure enough in a 50ms or 65ms match where i have four bars the enemy's sponge bullets or i don't see them and i am dead, if i back out of the 50 and 60 lobby's until i get an 80ms match at three bars i have the upper hand and go 35 - 8 usually try it it really works most games use this system on xboxlive to overcome the nature of p2p.

Technical Ben · Aug 14, 2010, 20:08:27

Quote from: Zennon on Aug 14, 2010, 19:57:12
I meant to add that MW2 uses a anti-lag system that i have tested to see how it works if you have a four bar connection the game puts you in the past and puts people with three bars before you resulting in three bar players having the upper hand.
Sure enough in a 50ms or 65ms match where i have four bars the enemy's sponge bullets or i don't see them and i am dead, if i back out of the 50 and 60 lobby's until i get an 80ms match at three bars i have the upper hand and go 35 - 8 usually try it it really works most games use this system on xboxlive to overcome the nature of p2p.

I agree with you, but it's not just the anti lag. It is the entire way the game works. Think of it this way. It takes a second for the signal to reach your opponent. So your both playing tennis, but each having to hit a second before or after the ball reaches you. Can get quite annoying when, as you mentioned, it gets out of sync. In extreme circumstances, it produces paradoxes. As you hit the ball (or killed the opponent) but by the time they received the signal, they already returned it (or dodged your bullet).

Happy Surfer · Aug 14, 2010, 20:12:44

well i emailed idnet for my mac code, got it in the space of an hour or 2! kudos to them for that, you just cant fault them.

put my order in for the plusnet pro package so fingers crossed it goes smoothly, like i said though if things dont work out ill be straight back to idnet.

appreciate all the input and replies and ill still log in here and post if idnet allow me