Ok so for the past several months I've been experiencing LITERALLY_UNPLAYABLE_PINGSPIKES, but I've been tied into an ISP contract and so unable to move from my current provider which is o2. Shortly I will be moving house and I was wondering which ISP to go for. So does anyone have any recommendations?
I've had bad experiences with Virgin before (again, pingspikes), and was actually considering going for o2 again (at the moment I'm living with 6 other people who are sharing the connection with me, 3 of whom use the internet heavily - Whereas soon I'll only be living with 2 others)
from my experience, ping spikes (as opposed to general high - but stable - ping) are always a client side problem. that is, its either your fault or the people you share your connections.
sharing it with 6 people you can be sure one of them is using youtube or some other highbandwith service.
small things, such as leaving news sites open, can cause by metarefresh (automatic page refresh) to big lagspikes every few minutes. leaving several of those open will just make the game unplayable, as ive witnessed (and suffered myself) many times.
so basically, i dont think its the isps fault, lol. dont ever take hammies isp though he has higher ping then me to uk servers
Seems like we have a very similar problem. I currently live with 7 others. With 3 others being bandwith eaters. And I can hardly play games at most times. HoN I have to play in the early morning or late night and NS is really hard.
When my house is busy and people are all on, then the shit really goes down. I get anywhere from 400-1000 ping due to streaming/spotify/browsing/torrents ect. This is kinda unavoidable, but I do get to play tf2 luckily (most days) between 20cet-21.15cet as I ask for some time to play my games and some bandwith.
When a few people are on you I do get spikes though. Even if they are doing lowish-bandwith tasks. The spikes are quite small going from 20ms-80ms-120ms-150ms and back down again and occur ever 20seconds. In NS this makes the game unplayable due to the netcode as everything warps, you get a freezing effect and stuff just teleports. This is because the HL netcode is pretty old though. This is currently what puts me off playing NS, because even during my best peak hours for gaming... I'll still have these small spikes. In tf2 however, because of the netcode, they don't affect me as much. Things will get slightly choppy, but nothing teleports and because it's hitscan and not tracking, you can predict still and get some nice shots. It also can get you out of tricky situations sometimes as you warp around :D.
I'm currently on BT; I get 5-7Mb/s from ~11am-4pm then 1-2Mb/s from ~4pm-9pm. The best time is from like after ~11pm. Where the speed picks up a bit. At peak-speeds (about 2am-8am) I get about 10Mb/s. A pretty solid speed. Generally always have a constant 0.8-1Mb/s upload. The main problem is the router BT supply. Why it is actually one of the best free routers to get (virgins, O2s ect. all are very cheap and shit at supporting more then 2 pcs); it still fails and has no QoS. I'm currently waiting for Fibre Optics as my area is one of the first to get it in the UK, however BT infinity checker keeps on saying "COMING SOON". My ass it's coming soon; it's said that for like 6months now?
You have a few options really. First off, it may be completely resolved as you're only living with 2 others. This should give you enough bandwith providing you ask them to keep torrents/downloads till night. Secondly, if you do find issues you should buy a really good router. I'm not talking a 30quid box, I'm talking £80+. Make sure it has appropriate QoS and some system of measuring bandwith from your different devices. Then you can see who's causing the issues and maybe they'll have a virus. Thirdly, you can see if your area has WiMax, and you can buy youself a seperate connection. Finally, you can (with the permission of your housemates) install bandwith limiting software on their pcs which can limit the outbound traffic during different hours and on different applications - good if you can't dish out for a router.
I never realised how important network shaping was until I looked at my dads own network. He leased a 20/10Mb line and shared that out to the local villages (WiMax like) with a network of about 60 people. Generally there was no lag and this was due to the network shaping he had installed on his various routers. QoS is vital really and especially nukes things like youtube and torrents.
Also, if you're using wireless, try and find another solution. Either get a router and change the firmware on it so it acts a receiver (better signal then using a dongle or wireless card) or do what I did and get some powerline adaptors. Powerline adaptors are pretty cheap; you can get them on amazon as a pair for like 50 quid. They are extremely useful and reliable. They add about 1-2ms and that sometimes spikes to 10ms (depends on your electrical use) but apart from that really decent. Much more reliable and effective then shitty wireless. Wireless loves to spike due to atmospheric noise and there are so many inbuilt issues with WinXP and Vista and wireless spiking.
Lot's of interesting advice, thanks. I think I'll probably go with BT then and see how it goes. Make sure you're still here in a few months so that I can ask more specific details of what you've suggested when everything inevitably goes wrong (I'm gay and God hates me.)
Oh sorry I forgot to actually answer your question.
From my experience:
BT has the best customer services and support and they supply a decent router.
Virgin are just dogshite - bad support - bad connection and a very bad fair usage policy.
O2, Orange and Sky are all extremely cheap if you are with them for other services; however they are only good if your local exchange has them as an LLU. When you move house, find what exchange you are connected to -> go to samknows and find out which ISP has LLU services at that exchange. LLU basically means you get ADSL2+ which is alot better then standard ADSL (8Mb compared to 24Mb).
Also you should look for fibre optics in your exchange search. From what I've read, virgin fibreoptics is good but the usage policy is shite and you still don't get anywhere near the speeds they say. BT infinity is meant to be decent (although recently established).
not so true but the are lots of causes why pings are unstable, i've had my adventures with that ; P battling for like 3 months with my isp provider and trying to tell em there is something from their side ; p
"no sir, it must be you, ITS IMPOSSIBLE FROM OUR SIDE TO CAUSE ANY ERRORS AND MISTAKES" so they said xD
after 5 years of paying a lot of money for their terrible connection i just changed it to 4 times faster one and 4 times cheaper ; p
also as for bit torrents i recommend not to use azerus or anything like that, i suggest using bit tornado and lowering the upload as low as possible(i usually set mine to ~13 kb/s) and your download speed doesnt get slower from my experience ; ) and my connection is 24/1 mb and there is like 2~3 users counting me ; p
i'm going to be sorting out my connection soon so this is a really useful thread.
I was with virgin media for a while and they seemed like the best providers when on 20mb line. bulldog were horrible for 6 months but people told me they changed their ways after that.
I always thought BT were super expensive and I hold a grudge against them for restricting the uk bandwidth limits.
Don't start fucking with BT. It isn't their fault they've fucked everything up, wait for it.......
IT'S THE TORIES
YOU GUESSED IT LADIES AND GENTS THEY FUCKED UP EVERYTHING!
Basically they privatised the whole fucking UK infrastructure at the worst moment imaginable; the 80s. So you have this huge technology becoming important based on telephone lines owned by 1 company. Great right? WRONG.
The fucking morons decide that BT have a virtual monopoly and don't allow them to compete - the upshot being you have a profit crippled company with no incentive to upgrade the infrastructure. What does this mean? No fibre optics for us.
Coupled with ageing spastics in government who don't know what IP address means, uneducated buffoons EVERYWHERE and a doomed-from-the-start draconian anti-piracy stance we have some of the worst connections in the world.
Overall don't get BT because contrary to what gibbz says the homehub is a rebranded piece of shit made by the lowest bidder, move to a place close to the exchange and get an ISP with no fair usage policy (gl hf finding that).
On the left, you'll see BT Wholesale. That's the BT section. You have virgin cable in your area although maybe not at your house. You don't have Bt infinity, although you do have ADSL2+ and quite a few cheap LLUs.
lol, literally gay lives in sheffield, right close to lagga. virgin media are decent in Sheffield, I was with them both around Sharrow and Netheredge for about a year.
When I was in Ireland, I had Magnet and NTL Cable connection. Both were a bit twitchy, magnet more expensive but better. With NTL from outer region of Dublin there were some latency variation (warping) but it was oke. NOTHING compared to my superior Finnish ISP ahem ahem.
I think the problem is with the infrastructure. Not to brag here but atleast housing quality was decades behind Finland, and I think the same issue was in UK (I have heard it from few of my friends who lived there). But no worries I've heard there's no quality control in Finland either anymore and we'll catch up sooner or later.
Housing quality has gone down in Finland partly thanks to 2-dollar contruction workers coming from Baltics. Not having separate cold/hot water taps by default is a standard though, even in older houses. Fuck I burn my hands each time I go to bathroom at my workplace lol
I have UPC NTL in Dublin and it's working great here.
Hahaha what now huh? We've been suffering that EONS ago because of the lazy spantards on construction sites and now that we needed a push on the economy, they hire southamerican midgets ;DDDDD
