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View Full Version : Gaming (ADSL), Wednesday's Killer


Draylynn
01-10-2009, 00:54
Having a problem with gaming and many many other people over at EU Forums of Warcraft.

I've been told there's nothing wrong with my connection, several times over by remote assistance chat, just because the download speed is great. Don't care about the download speed for this 6~8MB CLASSED connection, as long as I'm getting roughly 2.5MB which is the AVG.

However, there's rumors that Cisco updated their firmware recently (last wed) thats causing massive problems with games like WoW and Aion, not being recognised as games, as a result, their priority bandwidth appears to be lower, causing massive problems with playing games.

WinMTR reports;
80.239.233.80 - Blizzard Silvermoon Server (Paris)
http://img15.imageshack.us/img15/5769/78785077.jpg
www.bbc.co.uk (England)
http://img34.imageshack.us/img34/9431/56929927.jpg

Fix please.

Graham M
01-10-2009, 08:44
The problem cannot be with Blizzard as your ping starts to get pretty awful as soon as the packets leave your modem, can you post your power levels from http://192.168.100.1 please, username and password are root :)

Draylynn
01-10-2009, 19:02
I don't believe it's Blizzard, I'm looking for other options that may have effected a wide selection of users on multiple ISP's (Adsl only so far) on Wednesday 23 September.

By power levels, I'm assuming this? (BTW, user/pass on VM routers are usually admin/password, virgin/password)

ADSL Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 3776 kbps 448 kbps
Line Attenuation 45.0 db 22.5 db
Noise Margin 16.1 db 19.0 db

BossyBoobs
03-10-2009, 16:31
Hi there, you may want to look at this forum:

http://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Broadband-down-your-phone-line/PC-gaming-problems-on-National-Broadband/td-p/4782

The first post pretty much explains it all for you :)

Ignitionnet
03-10-2009, 17:26
I do wonder what they are using to shape if they need to 'work' on a signature file for WoW. This also does not explain why the guy's pings are so sucky. That he's a Virgin Media ADSL customer however may well explain the issues.

Draylynn - disconnect your connection, then reconnect it, check the pings and see if they are any better. Virgin's DSL network is somewhat overloaded.

In addition, your connection is rather slow and should be faster, you're on a very conservative profile for stability reasons.. Have you had some problems with being disconnected a lot in the past?

BossyBoobs
03-10-2009, 18:12
His pings are sucky because the data is being picked up as P2P. Its not just WOW users that are affected by this, we have had quite a few calls over the past few weeks about evening pings being really high and in over subscribed areas even all day. Reconnecting wouldnt really do a lot as the prioritizing thingymabob would still be in place.

Ignitionnet
03-10-2009, 18:23
His pings are sucky because the data is being picked up as P2P. Its not just WOW users that are affected by this, we have had quite a few calls over the past few weeks about evening pings being really high and in over subscribed areas even all day. Reconnecting wouldnt really do a lot as the prioritizing thingymabob would still be in place.

Are they are also picking up ICMP (As used by WinMTR) and prioritising that as P2P?

Did they actually bother loading any signatures onto the appliances? WoW, amongst others, have come as standard for years.

EDIT: Quick check with a bod on VM DSL informs that there are no issues with 'pings' from DOS prompts, MTR, etc, it's the in-game stuff only that the shaping hardware is harming.

This guy's SNR margin is very high and his service very slow for the attenuation as a result and this line fault should probably be looked into. A disconnect and reconnect might help, as if there was some playing going on with the DSL platform a lot of customers may have collected on pipes after the planned work had been done, and if VM haven't load balanced these customers by booting some off it would leave the pipe quite overloaded.

Maggy
03-10-2009, 18:42
http://www.top10-broadband.co.uk/news/2009/10/virgin_media_reveals_gaming_broadband_problem/

http://www.cable.co.uk/news/virgin-media-plans-gaming-improvements-19390278/

Does this throw any light?

Ignitionnet
03-10-2009, 19:38
Quality websites those. Neither of them mention it's only the ADSL service that is experiencing this issue and one of them uses Virgin screwing up their traffic shaping and attempting to fix it to try and make it a selling point.

I want to see the OP's line issues get worked on - there's clearly some underlying faults there and it looks like it's not the shaping as evidenced by the extremely poor latency shown in the MTRs.

Draylynn
04-10-2009, 16:12
Cheers for the thread referral(s). Explains what happened since Wed 23rd.

@ Broadbandings
On a side note, I've been having issues with my internet since I got it. Only since Wed 23rd has it got absolutely mental. I'd have a technician out, but VM are pointing fingers at BT and BT are telling me to contact my ISP, soo... yeh, my only course of action is to seek CISAS on the matter and see if they can force one or the other to come test my line, I'd test it myself but none of the ADSL ports have a "test socket". I'm afraid rebooting the connection, leaving the mondem to die etc and reconnecting, doesn't help. I proberly get like 1 or 2 modem drops a month, other than that, the connection stays on, just spikes with MS.

The Tracerts/Pings etc before this wed occurance spiked alot and over the last 2 months I've noticed alot of VM nodes dropping my packets. Does this indicate a fault with my line (in which case, I'm back to who's the technician to come sort it out) or does fault lay with the nodes the packets touch, is there anyway to find that out?

I did run shaper probe, that told me my downstream was high, but yet the median was 56kb/s (dial-up?).
Just to add, people are effected by Wednesday's problem, usually are able to play when peak time monitoring comes off. I still have 200ms well into the morning/day. Whilst I can play, I still get the odd disconnection and lag spike to ruin my fun.

Ignitionnet
04-10-2009, 18:40
Yeah I thought you might have issues generally with the connection :(

You seem to have a couple of different issues there, you may be getting affected by the shaping at times but you do have another, separate issue, causing you to have poor speeds and the high pings you showed on your MTR.

It's VM's job to get BT out to work on your line if there are ADSL problems with it. You can't book BT that's what they are for.

Draylynn
05-10-2009, 02:11
I'll keep at it with VM's fault line then. Cheers for your assistance.

Just for curiousity, is the line attenuation/noise suppose to flucuate?

ADSL Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 3424 kbps 448 kbps
Line Attenuation 44.0 db 22.5 db
Noise Margin 15.1 db 19.0 db

Ignitionnet
05-10-2009, 09:44
Yes, however you've obviously lost connection again as it's retrained at a different, lower speed. Your line really does suck and needs sorting asap.

Draylynn
05-10-2009, 18:30
Contacted Virgin Media who have told us to do a Speed Check with BT Speed Checker, which... isn't working for us for some reason, it freezes halfway through and sticks indefinately. Was told unless it's under 400kb/s, they "cannot do anything".

Stabhappy
05-10-2009, 23:11
Complain to BT about noise on the line if it comes to it, easiest way to get the techs out.

Draylynn
08-10-2009, 22:50
Complain to BT about noise on the line if it comes to it, easiest way to get the techs out.

Worked a treat, techy came out, found a fault in the house. Replaced the faceplate in the front room and disconnected the line to the back room, today.
Latency's better, the noise stats haven't really changed, still spiking on latency on game, but that could be due to this Cisco router update thing. Will do some testing over the next 24 hours.

Draylynn
10-10-2009, 22:04
No change, still just as bad. I'm at my wits end.

Called VM again today since BT's validated that there's no problem anymore. My flatmate was talking to him and he tried to fob him off, so I took over and explained everything, suddenly he's off to talk to his boss who doesn't know any problems regarding Tues 22nd (Take it there's a lack of communication within VM) and told us painfully again to resend all the tracerts and pathpings that I've been saving up.

Starting to get really really annoyed. -_-