NTL Gaming Northampton

[happymeal]

Hello,

I'm new to this forum. I've had the NTL 600k service now for about 6 months and have primarily been using it for playing online games such as counterstrike / ut2004 on PC. The quality of the connection has been reasonable but not anywhere near as good as some of the other ISPs I have used in the past. For some reason unknown to me my latency does not stay very constant and fluctuates between 20-70. This, you may think is nothing to complain about but the results it has on gameplay are sometimes frustrating causing jerkiness and warping. I decided not to make a fuss about this over the six months as I knew I would be moving in the near future.

I have now moved to my new location (still in Northampton) and NTL have recently come to install the new (same) service. This time it is even worst and I am experiencing lots of loss and choke when playing games. As such I have felt the need to state this on this forum and to NTL. Is this something that all gamers in the Northampton area experience or am I just really unlucky with the quality of my cable where ever I move to? I'd really not like to have to change ISPs as the TV and phone package have been fine all along.

If anyone can help, I would much appreciate it.

Many thanks

[Jon M]

A ping of between 20 - 70 will not give you any problems in fact you won't notice performance degredation until you reach about 120.
Packet loss however is a different story.
It's not unknown for there to be a suspect link in the NTL chain, can you post a traceroute output for us.

And :welcome: to cableforum ;)

[Nemesis]

Sorry to hear about the problems you're having .... but just like to let you know we have a PC clan on the site too :D

http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/forumdisplay.php?f=41

[happymeal]

Thanks for the welcome. :)

can't post a traceroute just now as i'm at work..

See i didn't expect a ping fluctuating between 20-70 to give me any problems either but people often say that I'm warping and I notice it as well while playing. The reason why I mentioned the ping was that generally most people on ADSL or cable have pings that are around 30-40 but they generally stay in that region. Mine seems to consistently go low then high, low then high. Isn't that a bit abnormal?

When I get home, where shall I post a tracert to? There is a chance the trace may not show anything as I don't consistently get loss - again it just goes up to 4-5 intermittently. And choke (of between 10-20) is the same, comes and goes. It's not the server as everyone else including those on NTL in other regions do not experience it. And it's generally a very good server! Besides, it happens across all uk servers I've tried.

[happymeal]

thanks for the offer, but I'm in a clan ;)

are you in any leagues, ladders?

[Nemesis]

thanks for the offer, but I'm in a clan ;)

are you in any leagues, ladders?
No not at the mo, playing friendlies etc ... :D MOHAA Spearhead

[Jon M]

currently enemydown for CS.. we've only just started out really

[Chris W]

Hello,

I'm new to this forum. I've had the NTL 600k service now for about 6 months and have primarily been using it for playing online games such as counterstrike / ut2004 on PC. The quality of the connection has been reasonable but not anywhere near as good as some of the other ISPs I have used in the past. For some reason unknown to me my latency does not stay very constant and fluctuates between 20-70. This, you may think is nothing to complain about but the results it has on gameplay are sometimes frustrating causing jerkiness and warping. I decided not to make a fuss about this over the six months as I knew I would be moving in the near future.

I have now moved to my new location (still in Northampton) and NTL have recently come to install the new (same) service. This time it is even worst and I am experiencing lots of loss and choke when playing games. As such I have felt the need to state this on this forum and to NTL. Is this something that all gamers in the Northampton area experience or am I just really unlucky with the quality of my cable where ever I move to? I'd really not like to have to change ISPs as the TV and phone package have been fine all along.

If anyone can help, I would much appreciate it.

Many thanks

PM me the mac address of your cable modem or postcode if you are using a set to box, and i will have a look at this tonight for you.

MB

[nufcfan123]

i am also having the same problem as you are, and i live bout 30mins down the road in luton, its really getting on my tit's now

[happymeal]

Thanks to monkeybreath for checking this out.. This is what he's said

"The problems are due to oversubscription on the upstream channel that you are using, this may be resolved by the end of the week when it is rebalanced on the weekly maintenance. "

Let's hope he's right!

Cheers MB

[happymeal]

currently enemydown for CS.. we've only just started out really

I'll give your server a go when my connection is sorted out.. Can't bear to play how it is now!

Ours is 217.64.127.3:27055

[Fubs]

*Sigh* I get the same problems - it seems to fix itself for a week and then it will happen again. i just played some UT2004, ,y ping was acutally registering as 34, but there was a 2sec delay between me firing and the game registering.

This happens on all servers - including the ones which usually ping pretty good. I know the problem is UBR related, I used to have a surfboard modem and wqas able to switch upstream channel, but i moved and now I have a NTL own brand modem and cant do it (to my knowledge).

CS always used to tell me it was a problem with my PC, even when it wasn't, so i just dont bother with the 45 mins on hold to be told its my fault any more.

Northampton area as well

[happymeal]

great... is the northampton area destined for poor gaming on ntl? :(

[happymeal]

just downloaded a program mentioned in one of the other threads called "Dan Elwells Broadband Speed Test".

Here are the results that came back.. I'm not downloading or uploading anything and I did the tests several times but they were all roughly the same. boo

Ping times to UK servers

bbc.co.uk: 99.5 ms

mirror.ac.uk: 74.5 ms

london.gov.uk: 96.8 ms

Ping times to European servers

gmd.de: 95 ms

uni-kl.de: 138.8 ms

sunsite.cnlab-switch.ch: 131.8 ms

Ping times to east-coast USA servers

helios.dii.utk.edu: 228 ms

ibiblio.org: 148 ms

ftp-linux.cc.gatech.edu: 183.8 ms

Ping times to west-coast USA servers

mirrors.tds.net: 198.3 ms

mirror.ats.ucla.edu: 220.5 ms

math.utah.edu: 197 ms

Packet loss en route to a UK server

gold.ac.uk: 2 %

webcache.blueyonder.co.uk: 2 %

[SteJ]

I have exactly the same problem up until 2 weeks ago I was fine, and happily playing some online call of duty with a nice 30-35 ping as It has been for 6 months or so, but all of a sudden I started warping in the game and thought the server died but what happened was my whole connection died, zonealarm then told me It had detected a new network, fair enough I thought a new IP address no big deal so I reconnnnected to the server only for my ping to fluctuate from 70-500 which is far from acceptable, I ran docsdiag and seen that I had been moved from upstream channel 4 (which has about 170 users) to upstream channel 2 which was fine for me, I'm also In the Northants area and can only conclude It's UBR related.
I had this problem last year as well for 3 months until my UBR was changed due to some "planned maintenance" in my area, and I was fine until 2 weeks ago.
Browsing and d/loads are fine only my ping is affected, which Is a shame since I only have BB for gaming. Ntl's CM tech support were no help since none of them seem to be able to grasp the concept of gaming pings no matter how much you spell It out to them.
So rather than complain and waste my time I've decided that ADSL is the way to go, get a BT line put in and theres a BIG list of ADSL service providers, so If one's no good u can simply try another which Is a luxury we can't have with NTL BB.

[Ignition]

If any of you gentlemen want to give me an IP address in PM I'll have a looksie and see if anything can be done.

[happymeal]

Just to keep those in the northants area up to date...

Well JustAnotherNoob has looked into this (thanks mate), and apparently upstream bandwidth is being heavily utilised on all upstreams.. Whats worse is that apparently there are not even that many people on the service in the area so basically someone's using it all up! so there isn't much that can be done until a resegmentation occurs. When this is likely to happen, I have no idea.

Anyone else know how long this usually takes or if it's likely to even happen?

Cheers

[happymeal]

aaaaargh! please help someone, just been trying to play now - it's unbearable! Anyone in this area having similar problems?

[Paul]

Anyone else know how long this usually takes or if it's likely to even happen?

I believe they are done weekly - but I think the only way you could see if your area is planned is to keep an eye on the status page.

[happymeal]

hi pem,

are you referring to the ntlworld.co.uk service page? if so, northampton doesn't seem to be on there.. :(

i've just done a trace to the server :

Tracing route to server108-12.4u-servers.co.uk [195.20.108.12]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 22 ms 37 ms 72 ms 172.22.71.254
2 7 ms 15 ms 23 ms nrth-t2cam1-a-ge-wan34-102.inet.ntl.com [213.104.142.9]
3 7 ms 290 ms 142 ms nrth-t2core-a-ge-wan61.inet.ntl.com [213.106.255.37]
4 9 ms 7 ms 29 ms nth-bb-a-so-230-0.inet.ntl.com [62.253.185.109]
5 12 ms 23 ms 22 ms gfd-bb-b-so-400-0.inet.ntl.com [62.253.185.98]
6 15 ms * 11 ms tele-ic-2-so-100-0.inet.ntl.com [62.253.185.74]
7 70 ms 87 ms 207 ms 212.250.14.18
8 67 ms 16 ms 14 ms server108-12.4u-servers.co.uk [195.20.108.12]

Trace complete.

arghhh whats causing this??

[Nikko]

Its so annoying when it plays up - here is my routing for a comparison:
tracert 195.20.108.12

Tracing route to server108-12.4u-servers.co.uk [195.20.108.12]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 1 ms 2 ms 1 ms 192.168.2.1
2 10 ms 8 ms 13 ms 10.145.x.x
3 14 ms 75 ms 60 ms nott-t2cam1-b-v137.inet.ntl.com [80.4.46.193]
4 10 ms 26 ms 9 ms nott-t2core-b-ge-wan72.inet.ntl.com [80.1.79.189]
5 10 ms 29 ms 12 ms nth-bb-b-so-300-0.inet.ntl.com [62.253.188.37]
6 16 ms 13 ms 15 ms pop-bb-a-so-100-0.inet.ntl.com [213.105.172.14]
7 23 ms 17 ms 25 ms tele-ic-2-so-000-0.inet.ntl.com [62.253.185.86]

8 13 ms 29 ms 13 ms 212.250.14.18
9 15 ms 13 ms 18 ms server108-12.4u-servers.co.uk [195.20.108.12]

Trace complete.

Bear in mind your hop 1 = my hop 2 as I have a router.

Edited to try & make it line up - failed lol

[happymeal]

i wish it was just "playing up" as you say... but this has been like this since it's been installed last week! I want your pings.. :p

[Nikko]

i wish it was just "playing up" as you say... but this has been like this since it's been installed last week! I want your pings.. :p


Sorry you are having probs is what I meant - I suspect the learned ones above are right when they say its down to a reseg. to sort it. Look out on the status page about tea-time on Monday and hope your area/UBR is on the list for this week!

[happymeal]

heh, no need to be sorry.. fingers crossed its up on the list on monday then