Gaming Connections / Leicester
 

Hi, wounderd if anybody can help. I play Quake 3 online and my connection has deteriated of late. My ping jumps up and down and onthe Quake 3 lagometer I get small yellow triangals and Red Spikes all the time no matter which server I play on whether UK or NL. I was on 300K and hoped upgrading to 2MB would get rid of the problem but it hasnt. :(

Any ideas on what I can do to get it back to how it used to be again ?

Regards.

EDIT: I've been doing pings and I'm getting packet loss, which is what the Red Spikes on the Quake 3 game lagometer signifies

Re: Gaming Connections / Leicester
 

Hiya :welcome: I am sure someone will be here to help you.

What spec's are you using, on your pc and have you run check for spyware and viruses?

If you are using a router or anything like that, it would help the more techy minded of us to help you quicker if you posted that.

:)

Re: Gaming Connections / Leicester
 

Hi there :)

Its a AMD64 3000+
DFI NF4 Ultra-D
OCZ 1GB DUal channel mem
BFG 7800GT

I just figured out: I've been doing pings and I'm getting packet loss, which is what the Red Spikes on the Quake 3 game lagometer signifies

Ping statistics for 194.109.69.91:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 3, Lost = 1 (25% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 20ms, Maximum = 37ms, Average = 26ms
C:\Documents and Settings\paLLys>

When I play it has laggy intervals. This is reflected in my tracert as sometimes its 0 packet loss but if I keep doing it It gets packet loss. Its not making any difference If I use UK or Euro game server IP's

No Router just a direct connection to Ethernet. I've already tried the sypware route ran various utils to no avail. I will reinstall XP on another drive 2moro though because Im desparate to fix it :(

Re: Gaming Connections / Leicester
 

Ive also been getting the same problems as you with my internet connection, i am a 300k user who was upgraded to the 1mbit server recently. Getting a decent ping to the servers i play on (30-40, although it sometimes does get bad and goes up to 60), but the packetloss is the main problem, alot of red lines in the q3a lagometer for me also. There are also times when ill have a good ping and no packetloss, an example of this would be i was playing around 3-4pm and had no problems but on the same day playing at 9pm i would encouter these problems.
Did not have these problems until the upgrade was done, infact i noticed these problems on the day of the upgrade so i assume that was/is the problem.
Im in Nottingham.

Re: Gaming Connections / Leicester
 

Yup i think lots of people are experiencing this problem...its not your system or how you are connected....its NTL:rolleyes:

We have a clan consisting of 16 players and there is only two of us using NTL one is in scotland and the other is myself and both of us are experiencing lag/bad pings/packet losses,whilst the other guys are finding no problems at all on all servers

Last night i had a 3.65% packet loss and a rms of 977:Yikes:

about six months ago i had a nice rms of 30 and no packet loss,all speed test were spot on.....now its just pants

In the daytime connection is fine,but come around 5pm and it all goes haywire:mad:

Re: Gaming Connections / Leicester
 

I used to able to VNC to control my pc from work. But now this drops too because of loss of packets.

I've already spent money upgrading from 300K to 2MB to try get rid of this problem because gaming is all I want it for.
Its not even recognised as a problem by NTL because I havent seen it on their server status pages :(

If this dont get better soon I think I will have to switch to ADSL :/

Re: Gaming Connections / Leicester
 

Try calling tech support and explain the problem , It might just be a bit of ingress on your cable causing it easily solved by a new cable.

As for leicester being a problem for gaming we have one of ntls head end techs from leicester in the cf clan and he reports no issues that i'm aware of.

Re: Gaming Connections / Leicester
 

What part of the cable....inside or outside the house?

The problem does seem to be covering a large area as my friend in scotland is also experiencing huge packet loss/pings/lag....this has only been over the last month.

Re: Gaming Connections / Leicester
 

I too have had problems with Halo. Seem a tad better now.

Ping times seem irrelevant since I had as many probs with UK servers (40ms) as US (168ms). Also as someone else has pointed out elsewhere, ping (ICMP) is lower priority than other traffic. I had disconnects and packet loss, jerky play etc.

It's very hard to nail down as everyone blames the other and the symptoms don't affect everything or everyone and tests run by CS seem to show no problems.

Re: Gaming Connections / Leicester
 

Scotland (Glasgow) has been quite bad recently for online gaming, with the likes of CS:S and DOD:S also RTCW. I am not the only person having this issue, a lot of my colleagues at work are having bad ping problems when playing online games and they are with NTL. I just assumed it's NTL upgrading their network nationally with the 10mb on the horizon. I am just putting up with it at the moment, I am sure it will get better soon.:)

Re: Gaming Connections / Leicester
 

I am seeing ping spikes some nights creeping in, this suggests possible congestion and download speeds are going down to around 220 mark in the evenings which also could mean congestion. None of this is conclusive tho and since we can no longer read the ubr stats using robin walker tool its hard to see what's the cause. I would be surprised if it is ubr congestion tho since ignition has mentioned Leics has had a load of upgrades during the past year and I wouldnt expect the network to be congested at this stage prior to a higher speed rollout.

Re: Gaming Connections / Leicester
 

I play a lot of DOD:S (Day Of Defeat Source) and very rarely have ping problems on UK or Euro servers. However when I play RTCW then I see quite a lot of lag. Maybe it's the master servers? :dunce:

Re: Gaming Connections / Leicester
 

Does Quake have a cfg file still? It did years ago but havent played it since CS beta came out.

Try adjusting your rates if it has.

Re: Gaming Connections / Leicester
 

Yes Quake still uses cfg files and I think the rate you're referring to is cg_maxrate/seta cg_maxrate in the cfg file? Not 100% sure about that but the cfg files are exactly the same as the cg files used in RTCW as it uses the Quake3 engine. Could also be worth checking your cg_hunkmegs which ideally should be set to 3/4 of your total ram in your machine, usually though I set it to half the ram in the machine.

Roll on Quake IV released 21st October \o/ :cool:

Re: Gaming Connections / Leicester
 

yes it still uses cfg and no it doesnt make a difference because i haent changed these settings for years...

ive carried out more testing with some packet loss data test to usa servers and it reports I am gtting packetloss.

If NTL thinks nothnigs wrong I wonder if it will ever get fixed ?
I wonder if the load is now too much to handle in the Leicester, Nottingham areas ?

Its getting difficult to sort this. I tried to get through to NTL for 45mins on the phone before I gave up. :(

Re: Gaming Connections / Leicester
 

Please don't ever give up trying to get through to them. Tell them what you have tried and put the ball in their court. NTL have always been good at CS in my opinion and I can appreciate your frustraition as I work as an adviser for another ISP. If your config is fine then it must be net related, provided you have checked for spyware etc (Which you have). Just hang in there and I am sure you will get a result.

(Excuse the cr4p, just got in from a night out of winding the Scots up about the world cup).:erm: No offence to the Scots that frequent this forum...:D

Re: Gaming Connections / Leicester
 

Well the ping spikes I mentioned are very few and nothing like how it was when they rolled out 1.5mbit and they are gone again during the last day or so.

Re: Gaming Connections / Leicester
 

I am pretty sure it's a result of NTL continously upgrading their network due to the fact they are releasing 10mb BB. I really think the pings will settle down soon.

Re: Gaming Connections / Leicester
 

I really hope so

Re: Gaming Connections / Leicester
 

When 10mbit is rolled out the pings will only go one way and that is up.

Re: Gaming Connections / Leicester
 

Fault maybe, however upgrades shouldn't be affecting anything. This is a statement that was often made by Telewest fanboys to be honest. 'My service is complete **** but it's ok it must be the upgrades'. These upgrades should either cut you off or leave you alone completely, there is no middle ground when dealing with the local networks.

Of course it could also be because the students are back and wanting to send the warez out again, Leicester is a bummer to deal with due to high student population and big network nodes that have made upgrades very expensive (needed loads of new fibre).

Also the 10Mbit upgrade doesn't have to affect pings at all, it depends on how things are organised. There is such a thing as traffic shaping to avoid messing up latency ya know.

Re: Gaming Connections / Leicester
 

It may be the high student population affecting it in Leicester....but what about the rest of the country,seems to me a wide spread problem thats getting worse:erm:

Re: Gaming Connections / Leicester
 

I wonder if ntl upgrading the remaining 300kbit users to 1mbit is to do with it?

Re: Gaming Connections / Leicester
 

Just a FYI.
NN10 area here. Its been poor for the last 4 weeks or so and getting worse daily. On the 3meg service I was down to 18kBps ish on downloads from USA today. I rerouted 4 or 5 times to try to improve things but traceroutes always showed 10%, 20% or 30% packet loss occurring on routers inside Ntl's network. Within the network speeds are OK but as soon as you go outside the network the problems start.
This sort of stuff occurs now and then but usually gets fixed pretty quick. Not this time though or so it seems.
If this is a taste of what we can expect from 10meg then the service won't be worth having.
Things got really bad here just before and after the upgrade to 1.5meg. There were some sessions of packet loss and low speeds but the main gripe was countless outages per day, some only for a few minutes, some lasting up to half a day.
I got so fed up I tried ADSL. That was even worse so I never cancelled Ntl but cancelled my DSL instead.
I must say though the present poor performance of the network is making me think of giving DSL another go.
10meg and a 75gig cap sounds an improvement but if, in reality, downloads are gonna be at 4 x dialup coupled with high packet loss then it is going to be just an expensive waste of time.

Re: Gaming Connections / Leicester
 

Give ntl some evidence to work on please. The part in bold makes no sense please give more detail.

Re: Gaming Connections / Leicester
 

I rerouted 4 or 5 times to try to improve things but traceroutes always showed 10%, 20% or 30% packet loss occurring on routers inside Ntl's network. Within the network speeds are OK but as soon as you go outside the network the problems start.

I should have explained that the source I was using has a facility to
1.) Change the backbone in an attempt to overcome network problems.
2.) Perform a reverse trace in order to see where the problems are occurring and/or whether the rerouting efforts are helping.

I hope that now makes sense.

From what I can see it appears to be a network wide problem so I doubt that Ntl does not know about it.
To me it looks like a contention issue but I am certainly no expert on the subject.

Re: Gaming Connections / Leicester
 

Strangely things seem MUCH better today.
Coincidence or what???
Maybe I should post everytime things are not quite perfect if this is the result it has. :-)
Only kidding.. sure is nice to have things progressing at a reasonable rate of knots.

Re: Gaming Connections / Leicester
 

Mick Fisher your comments regarding the problems that oocured during the 1.5mbit upgrade period matches with what I experienced, it is probably expected to have a improved service prior to an upgrade as the isp upgrades their equipment in preperation and then a poor service after when they find they under estimated the affect on their network. I think the difference is prior to 1.5mbit I think they didnt do upgrades if I remember right that was the upgrade that got pulled from leics 2 days after they rolled it out because it all went pear shaped.

Re: Gaming Connections / Leicester
 

NTL atm for me and ma Q3 is a big nonononono
no matter what server country still all very bad full of pl and big
green blocks in net grath had the green blocks for abit now was
mainly Jolt servers was bad on now its any, pings to USA were i like to play
late at night have gone from a nice 100 ping to a 130 - 140 its just been so bad and seems to be getting worse

im in Salford Manchester

Re: Gaming Connections / Leicester
 

same here, quake 3 is real laggy, always getting ping spikes which last for about 1-2 minutes (999 ping) pretty much makes playing a headache, plus theres constant packetloss, it just isnt worth it.
Internet sometimes stops for a few minutes, browsing can get slow.
Im a 300k recently upgraded to 1mb, located in nottingham.

(Some traceroutes from me here: http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/sh...0&postcount=11 )

Re: Gaming Connections / Leicester
 

lots of ping spikes at the moment about 40% of packets are spiking.

Re: Gaming Connections / Leicester
 

hi people i'm in NN17 area and for the last couple of weeks my broadband speed is only been between 1800 kbps and 2000 kbps-i am on the 3mb rate.my upload speed is spot on at 290-310kbps.i have checked for virus and spyware but nothing found-

i keep meaning to give cs a ring but hav't had time hopefully next week i'll get round to it.
any suggestions before i do give them a ring -
thanks
forgot to mention that i have been checking my pings on pcpitstop and trace routes but have been getting between 100-200 pings and no loss on trace routes-even thou this is in the us

Re: Gaming Connections / Leicester
 

Must be something to do with NTL. It used to be great, 0% PL, but now its all gone down hill. I'm on the 3mb at the mo, but I never got this much PL when I was on dialup some years ago! for some reason its got worse the past couple of month. Check my PL on some of the Q2 servers .::here::. pings seem ok tho. and before anyone asks, I have done all the spyware checks and made sure nothing else is running etc etc.. ;)

Re: Gaming Connections / Leicester
 

So what we want to know is if NTL will be doing anything to please us gamers and there are a lot of us, and fix this problem that has recently occured over the last month or are they going to be happy losing a lot of unhappy customers:confused:

Re: Gaming Connections / Leicester
 

Hello not sure if the DN areas are having problems as well now, dont seem to be able to connect to a gaming server for longer than five minutes without having lag spikes and getting disconnected.

Re: Gaming Connections / Leicester
 

Hi there ppl
I'm having the same probs in the wirral area , doesnt matter what game I'm playing or which country the servers are located in . Browsing the net is fine , downloads are fine but gaming is impossible atm and its the gaming that I bought broadband for tbh

Re: Gaming Connections / Leicester
 

Yea same here in nottingham,
packet loss and gaming is nearly impossible
and past 2 days its got worse,now it disconnects once every hour to half hour
not good when ya playin ultima online and it disconnects at champ spawn:Yikes: .
i've spoken to india and tbh i cant go through that again so im gonna wait till 10 meg roll out if it dont fix itself im off, and i dont really wanna leave :erm:

Re: Gaming Connections / Leicester
 

I use to have 1mb in Leicester played games like cod with no problems.
I had to chancel it for 3 months back online with 1mb and its dire.
Really really slow. Allmost 56k slow!!!!

Re: Gaming Connections / Leicester
 

All of leics proxies are tosh, I might make a post about this in the proxy section but before I do I am going to test each one individually that might be why you comparing it to 56k, they cant even stream bbc news broadcasts without skipping and thats only 224kbit.

Re: Gaming Connections / Leicester
 

in the interest of this thread I got this very worrying sign that there could be shaping going on. Shaping is ok but I keep hearing it doesnt exist, and I think ftp port 21 shouldnt be shaped.

Transferred 1 file totaling 11,410,809 bytes in 52.00 seconds (215.7 KB/s)

that was from a uk 100mbit ftp hosted in redbus which is 1:1 contended on bandwidth and under 2% utilised, in other words there is no reason I shouldnt have got 240kB/sec, the traffic was fairly sustained around 220 so it looks like there is congestion or shaping somewhere. Http is full speed.

Re: Gaming Connections / Bournemouth
 

Having the same issues here but last week i got someone on tech support to do a ping to my IP and he was saying that i was getting 70%+ packet loss.

Please NTL hurry up and fix the probs its driving me insane 1 month ago the service was sweet and now well.....

Oh and on the phone yestaday NTL say there are no faults or problems lol

Re: Gaming Connections / Leicester
 

Exactly....NTL saying there isn't any faults,and all the gamers saying they are suffering huge packet losses over the last month or so.....and you hope they are going to hurry up and fix it

They know there are problems,but can't fix them:dozey:

Re: Gaming Connections / Leicester
 

tbh with the attatude NTL has when you phone them up i cant see it being fixed anytime soon as ive also been told NTL tech support that the internet is for browsing web pages only and anything else is not their concern or problem.

Re: Gaming Connections / Leicester
 

Hmmm nice attitude they have got.....so us using NTL for gaming is not their concern...well it is when they collect their £38 pm off me and all the other thousand gamers out there......if thats the case i will cut my contract with them short and find a provider that does care about us gamers:td:

Re: Gaming Connections / Leicester
 

I get told the same thing every time I ring up, I am glad someone else has now mentioned it and I hope it gets taken more seriously now, tech support also refuse to pass onto higher level support or log the problem for further analysis as they claim there is no problem.

I have tried to ask the following to tech support.

Why am I seeing slowdown on all european traffic going through a certian ntl hop in amsterdam.
Why am I seeing latency problems with lag spikes, (why is there no traffic shaping been done to favour small packets)
What is the contention ratio for ntl and will it change when we move to 10mbit.

They wouldnt answer any of those questions or get someone to ring me back with the answers.

Re: Gaming Connections / Leicester
 

I'm in Leicester - LE6 postcode, and for weeks (since around the start of july i think) my response time has become awful. I used to be around a nice 80-90 on BF2 (I have a 2mb conn. btw) but now the lowest average is about 150 - 200 and every few minutes it will stop responding for a few seconds with huge lag spikes (possibly packet loss, I'm not sure?).

I'm on a wireless router, but have been for ages and that hasn't effected my connection. It's not being hacked by anyone :p I just have high latency recently. Can still download at a decent speed though :).

So is this a problem with NTL in Leicester? And is it giong to be sorted?

To be honest, I'd much rather have a slower download speed and faster response time, since most of what I do is gaming / internet / odd small download.

Re: Gaming Connections / Leicester
 

Right I got an update to my original problems.

I had a day off work and proceeded to game online. It seems during the morning/daytime I get no packet loss when gaming, which leads me to believe its because the load is low. However in the evening its awful :(

To me it looks like the NTL network is smoking under the load, but I could be wrong.

Re: Gaming Connections / Leicester
 

Is it worth the expense and effort to change ISPs though, I mean theres a fair chance they would be no better.

Re: Gaming Connections / Leicester
 

Ok I got this news 2 days ago, and wont post it all here, my source isnt publicly accessible so I cant post a link. But I think NTL owe some answers here. Do ntl staff who post here eg. know about this?

XChangePoint, ntl's port showing 4% to 8% packet loss due to saturation loss, various isp's reported to have having to reroute traffic to ntl user's and have emailed ntl with no response.

Details are it occurs at home user peak time (7-10pm) after the NTL XPE router

The no response isn't a good sign but it doesnt mean ntl are not going to upgrade the peering, but all this amongst the other peering issues baffles me how ntl are going to attempt to upgrade speed's. Things are not looking good for anyone who needs good latency like gamer's.

Re: Gaming Connections / Leicester
 

Interesting info, things can only get worse as I think when 10mb is rolled out, the load in evenings will be very high. :(

Re: Gaming Connections / Leicester
 

as i've posted before most customers wont understand a word you just said and will just assume the internet is broken somehow and that it isent ntls fault.
then in the same vain sayingthat the have superb peering and 0% packet loss on international and cross network conections wil not get themmany new customrs wheras we ave 10meg braudband 200x faster than dialup will work with your average non-techy.
asto the gaming aspect ive noticed the same thing in counter strike pings up from 15 to 45 and packet lost up from 0% dont now exact figure.

Re: Gaming Connections / Leicester
 

exactly the point, easy for tech support to blame on general internet issues, pc or the server at other end. Yet at 3am the pc fixes itself :)

Re: Gaming Connections / Leicester
 

Is there any hope of NTL remedying the high latency issues?

Re: Gaming Connections / Leicester
 

Well I havent had much luck getting them to even admit there is a problem, in my own experience if they try to hide there is a problem it is not a good sign they plan to fix it, but with the cogent issue they didn't admit to it but it got fixed so that is a glimmer of hope. Ignition is the only ntl rep I know who was honest about such problems but he doesnt work for them now unfortunatly. My pc seems to have fixed itself again its flying at full speed once more with my ssh responding instantly to keypresses WOW.

Re: Gaming Connections / Leicester
 

Seems to be when the kids home from school. During these time ranges I generally have poor quality broadband.

mon-thurs 3pm to 12am
fri 3pm to 2am
sat 10am to 2am
sun 10am to 12am

obviously roughly since it will vary, it has been a while now since I havent had latency issues, throughput is normally dependant on location I download from, for instance I can download from many us location's faster then eu in the evening because ntl currently has bigger peering problem's on this side of the atlantic.

Re: Gaming Connections / Leicester
 

Something weird of note: in BF2 Autoloader game browser, it might show a ping of 30, yet in-game I'll get a ping of 130 or some stupid number like that. It's depressing because my friend on AOL gets consistently low ping times - up to about 50ms :(.

I think some ISPs are going to be working out whether there are different sectors of demand for high speed connections vs. high bandwidth. At 10mb/s you will rarely download at that rate because the uprate on the other side isn't going to be that fast.

Hope things get sorted though and I can have lightening fast responses to servers all over the world :p

Re: Gaming Connections / Leicester
 

what whould be cool althoug h i understand the lagistics of it are allmost unbeliveable whould be if the connections could be trafic shaped by ntl to priritse real time traffic game's voip, video confrencing. alas that isent going to happen (in the forseable future).
any way your ingame ping will be measured differently from your server browser ping in the server browser it is normally like issuing a ping from the comand line wheras in game your ping is usually some composite figure calcualted by the server and is mroe dependant on bandwidth if there is saturation somewhere betwen your comptuer and the server your ping will skyrocket.
if this seams unlikely open run and
type cmd
in the window that opens type tracert "server ip goes here"
this will show you the ping to each router ect betwen your computer and the server

Re: Gaming Connections / Leicester
 

ntl responsetek have replied to another issue I reported this is regarding contention on all traffic going through amsterdam.

"Thank you for your feedback,

I will pass your comments to our broadband support team to check the problem. Thank you for bringing this to our attention. We will work hastily to resolve this. "

Re: Gaming Connections / Leicester
 

seams very auto responder to me but i may be wrong

Re: Gaming Connections / Leicester
 

probably but who knows.

today is improved, no detoriation seen until almost 6pm so extra 3 hours of good service.

Re: Gaming Connections / Leicester
 

unfortunately that's not much good for me with school, since i play between 4 - 10pm ish. :(

ive recently been playing guild wars which doesn't need so much bandwidth and have found the response time to be good (with the occasional spikes still)

Re: Gaming Connections / Leicester
 

the issue is proberbly exasibated by the fact that most cheep and resonable hosting services for games are in the immediate area of amsterdamn this is definately the case with ut2004 adn i should imagine it is the same with other games

Re: Gaming Connections / Leicester
 

and amsterdam is where the congestion is occuring. :(

Re: Gaming Connections / Leicester
 

you have to wonder if it whould bebenficial to have to proxys/routers reconfigured to direct web and ftp trafic thorough a diferent peering but that whould invoke cost for ntl so it isent going to happen

Re: Gaming Connections / Leicester
 

The solution whatever it is will need money put into it, the question is are ntl prepared to do it. If they shaped the traffic they could probably make things better for gamer's at least but that would just be a workaround and not a solution, because it looks to me we been contended at multiple places. Really it should just be ubr contention but it isn't.

Re: Gaming Connections / Leicester
 

Does anybody know what all the upgrades and loss of service in Leicester have been for this week basically what have they done and will we see any difference ?

Re: Gaming Connections / Leicester
 

they play around with some componants of the network someone may pull your wire out the box and hece you may temporerly use service (far more technical that that im sure but thats the idea)
couldent agree mroe cystalis and lets face it unless there is overwelming comercial resoning for ntl to pay for a solution it isent going to hapen (overwhelming as in every customer leaves).
tbh i whould settle for ntl to offer me a "gaming" conection where gaming trafic takes prioity and the peering is takes as close to server clusters as possible even if it meant going back to 300k and sufferign poor fiel transfers (or alternativly paying more for gaming trafic prority on there network if it was a resonable nominal fee)

Re: Gaming Connections / Leicester
 

Yes that would be a good idea for NTL to offer a gaming connection :tu:

Re: Gaming Connections / Leicester
 

wow im not the only one that thinks like me and in response to your sig the cat still lands on its feet (tested experimentaly)

Re: Gaming Connections / Leicester
 

Ok concerning amsterdam link (this should be a national problem not just leics) I checked out the return path. Packet loss on trace starts from this hop.

7 amst-ic-1.inet.ntl.com (195.69.144.40) 8.774 ms * 8.409 ms

so did 100 pings on hop before it and all rock solid stable without fluctuation but when I did on 195.69.144.40 there is ping spikes galore and some minor packet loss.

PING 195.69.144.40 (195.69.144.40): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=0 ttl=249 time=8.795 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=1 ttl=249 time=8.438 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=2 ttl=249 time=8.492 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=3 ttl=249 time=9.384 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=4 ttl=249 time=9.310 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=5 ttl=249 time=23.270 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=6 ttl=249 time=8.655 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=7 ttl=249 time=8.825 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=8 ttl=249 time=13.601 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=9 ttl=249 time=8.952 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=10 ttl=249 time=8.900 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=11 ttl=249 time=10.005 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=12 ttl=249 time=8.933 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=13 ttl=249 time=24.967 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=14 ttl=249 time=8.770 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=15 ttl=249 time=27.178 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=16 ttl=249 time=18.274 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=17 ttl=249 time=9.093 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=18 ttl=249 time=8.605 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=20 ttl=249 time=8.836 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=21 ttl=249 time=8.623 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=22 ttl=249 time=13.177 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=23 ttl=249 time=8.803 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=24 ttl=249 time=78.593 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=25 ttl=249 time=24.611 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=26 ttl=249 time=8.686 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=27 ttl=249 time=8.763 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=28 ttl=249 time=9.102 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=29 ttl=249 time=9.237 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=30 ttl=249 time=12.738 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=31 ttl=249 time=9.103 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=32 ttl=249 time=9.106 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=33 ttl=249 time=8.629 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=34 ttl=249 time=8.884 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=35 ttl=249 time=11.785 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=36 ttl=249 time=22.417 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=37 ttl=249 time=11.481 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=38 ttl=249 time=8.983 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=39 ttl=249 time=15.101 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=40 ttl=249 time=9.349 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=41 ttl=249 time=8.828 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=42 ttl=249 time=8.508 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=43 ttl=249 time=8.763 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=44 ttl=249 time=15.890 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=45 ttl=249 time=24.797 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=46 ttl=249 time=20.557 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=47 ttl=249 time=13.193 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=48 ttl=249 time=8.887 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=49 ttl=249 time=8.899 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=50 ttl=249 time=9.273 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=51 ttl=249 time=71.320 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=52 ttl=249 time=13.707 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=53 ttl=249 time=8.579 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=54 ttl=249 time=11.224 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=55 ttl=249 time=27.874 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=56 ttl=249 time=16.589 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=57 ttl=249 time=9.020 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=58 ttl=249 time=12.840 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=59 ttl=249 time=8.670 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=60 ttl=249 time=15.640 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=61 ttl=249 time=9.150 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=62 ttl=249 time=9.336 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=63 ttl=249 time=8.574 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=64 ttl=249 time=8.674 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=65 ttl=249 time=8.495 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=66 ttl=249 time=9.205 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=67 ttl=249 time=20.830 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=68 ttl=249 time=16.040 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=69 ttl=249 time=9.283 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=70 ttl=249 time=8.963 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=71 ttl=249 time=8.981 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=72 ttl=249 time=8.711 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=73 ttl=249 time=9.359 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=75 ttl=249 time=22.621 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=76 ttl=249 time=8.809 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=77 ttl=249 time=9.175 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=78 ttl=249 time=29.474 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=79 ttl=249 time=9.018 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=80 ttl=249 time=21.601 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=82 ttl=249 time=8.945 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=83 ttl=249 time=9.128 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=84 ttl=249 time=8.725 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=85 ttl=249 time=9.254 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=86 ttl=249 time=12.985 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=87 ttl=249 time=9.437 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=88 ttl=249 time=20.718 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=89 ttl=249 time=11.870 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=90 ttl=249 time=12.411 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=91 ttl=249 time=18.043 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=92 ttl=249 time=10.648 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=93 ttl=249 time=8.745 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=94 ttl=249 time=9.072 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=95 ttl=249 time=9.238 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=96 ttl=249 time=24.228 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=97 ttl=249 time=8.731 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=98 ttl=249 time=8.788 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=99 ttl=249 time=8.932 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=100 ttl=249 time=9.214 ms
--- 195.69.144.40 ping statistics ---
101 packets transmitted, 98 packets received, 2% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 8.438/13.438/78.593/10.398 ms

note this is from a dedicated 100mbit server so isnt subject to the normal fluctuations you would get on a cable connection. If I am awake I can do another 100 pings at a quiet time of day and show the difference.
__________________

Concerning the Leics upgrades, I am seeing congestion on my ubr for the first time in about 6 month's so whatever they did it looks like they shoved some heavy user's onto my segment.

1 16 ms 10 ms 45 ms UBR [10.8.143.254]
2 65 ms 52 ms 44 ms leic-t2cam1-b-ge914.inet.ntl.com [82.3.35.213]
3 14 ms 31 ms 8 ms leic-t2core-b-ge-210-0.inet.ntl.com [82.3.33.134
]
4 16 ms 15 ms 11 ms nth-bb-b-so-230-0.inet.ntl.com [62.253.188.114]

5 58 ms 43 ms 15 ms pop-bb-a-so-100-0.inet.ntl.com [213.105.172.14]

6 59 ms 83 ms 29 ms pop-bb-b-ae0-0.inet.ntl.com [213.105.172.77]
7 22 ms 26 ms 29 ms amst-ic-1-so-000-0.inet.ntl.com [62.253.188.94]

look at all the ping spikes, the first few hops 2 days ago were all single figures which were not spiking very often, in this trace taken at 10pm only hop 4 didnt spike. So to me I am guessing they have just been moving users around to rebalance the network rather then doing actual upgrades.

2nd trace ubr spiked to 3 figures

1 118 ms 9 ms 8 ms UBR [10.8.143.254]
2 10 ms 41 ms 20 ms leic-t2cam1-b-ge914.inet.ntl.com [82.3.35.213]
3 16 ms 11 ms 9 ms leic-t2core-b-ge-210-0.inet.ntl.com [82.3.33.134
]
4 11 ms 10 ms 17 ms nth-bb-b-so-230-0.inet.ntl.com [62.253.188.114]

5 12 ms 11 ms 11 ms pop-bb-a-so-100-0.inet.ntl.com [213.105.172.14]

6 33 ms 72 ms 47 ms pop-bb-b-ae0-0.inet.ntl.com [213.105.172.77]
7 25 ms 36 ms 82 ms amst-ic-1-so-000-0.inet.ntl.com [62.253.188.94]

and a 3rd ubr looked normal but still rest of leics hops poor

1 9 ms 7 ms 9 ms UBR [10.8.143.254]
2 8 ms 55 ms 61 ms leic-t2cam1-b-ge914.inet.ntl.com [82.3.35.213]
3 68 ms 16 ms 9 ms leic-t2core-b-ge-210-0.inet.ntl.com [82.3.33.134
]
4 35 ms 68 ms 43 ms nth-bb-b-so-230-0.inet.ntl.com [62.253.188.114]

5 12 ms 22 ms 19 ms pop-bb-a-so-100-0.inet.ntl.com [213.105.172.14]

6 17 ms 14 ms 43 ms pop-bb-b-ae0-0.inet.ntl.com [213.105.172.77]
7 66 ms 23 ms 59 ms amst-ic-1-so-000-0.inet.ntl.com [62.253.188.94]

Re: Gaming Connections / Leicester
 

could you not script it crystalis or setup a one off cron job for some obscure hour

Re: Gaming Connections / Leicester
 

now here is a trace on my cable to london 100mbit server I have.

1 7 ms 114 ms 14 ms UBR [10.8.143.254]
2 10 ms 10 ms 46 ms leic-t2cam1-a-ge914.inet.ntl.com [82.3.35.149]
3 18 ms 10 ms 13 ms leic-t2core-a-ge-220-0.inet.ntl.com [82.3.33.10]

4 11 ms 96 ms 70 ms lee-bb-a-so-220-0.inet.ntl.com [62.253.188.110]

5 21 ms 20 ms 17 ms pop-bb-b-so-100-0.inet.ntl.com [62.253.185.238]

6 18 ms 23 ms 46 ms gfd-bb-a-so-500-0.inet.ntl.com [213.105.172.137]

7 15 ms 65 ms 69 ms gfd-bb-b-ae0-0.inet.ntl.com [213.105.172.6]
8 21 ms 16 ms 25 ms tele-ic-2-so-110-0.inet.ntl.com [62.253.185.74]

9 60 ms 63 ms 49 ms linx2.teleglobe.net [195.66.226.51]
10 23 ms 39 ms 18 ms ix-9-1-3032.core2.LDN-London.Teleglobe.net [195.
219.67.226]
11 29 ms 31 ms 18 ms x.x.xt [1.1.1.1]

as you can see numbers all over the place so because of the ubr cant diagnose anything from it, but speeds are normal download, and upload is almost normal with tiny blips in graph.

the return path

1 195.242.213.254 (195.242.213.254) 0.176 ms 0.122 ms 0.212 ms
2 84-45-252-145.no-dns-yet.enta.net (84.45.252.145) 0.434 ms 0.621 ms 0.391 ms
3 telehouse-east2.bdr.enta.net (84.45.193.194) 0.458 ms 0.539 ms 0.415 ms
4 195.66.226.23 (195.66.226.23) 203.678 ms * 198.927 ms
5 gfd-bb-b-so-320-0.inet.ntl.com (62.253.185.73) 2.339 ms 2.279 ms 2.507 ms
6 nth-bb-a-so-000-0.inet.ntl.com (62.253.185.97) 5.704 ms 6.167 ms 6.263 ms
7 nth-bb-b-ae0-0.inet.ntl.com (62.253.185.118) 6.564 ms 5.938 ms 5.899 ms
8 leic-t2core-b-so-000-0.inet.ntl.com (62.253.188.113) 13.368 ms 6.470 ms 6.358 ms
9 leic-t2cam1-b-ge-wan31.inet.ntl.com (82.3.33.133) 6.305 ms 6.293 ms 6.204 ms
10 leic-leic-ubr-8-ge02.inet.ntl.com (82.3.35.214) 7.182 ms 7.129 ms 6.891 ms

in this case there is 1 spike on hop 8 but it looks a one off and hops 9 and 10 were not affected, hop 4 looks to be configured to simply have icmp as low priority. This server itself isnt giving me latency issues so there is nothing wrong other then the ubr problem I posted above.

To scopeuk sure I will crontab at 3am and echo it to a file so I have the results ready to post.

Re: Gaming Connections / Leicester
 

that hwould be great crystalis thanks

Re: Gaming Connections / Leicester
 

ok here is the output taken at 3.10am curtousy of my crontab this morning.

PING 195.69.144.40 (195.69.144.40): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=0 ttl=249 time=8.533 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=1 ttl=249 time=9.890 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=2 ttl=249 time=8.594 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=3 ttl=249 time=8.458 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=4 ttl=249 time=8.556 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=5 ttl=249 time=8.450 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=6 ttl=249 time=8.654 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=7 ttl=249 time=8.546 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=8 ttl=249 time=8.434 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=9 ttl=249 time=8.447 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=10 ttl=249 time=9.087 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=11 ttl=249 time=18.485 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=12 ttl=249 time=8.538 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=13 ttl=249 time=8.675 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=14 ttl=249 time=8.472 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=15 ttl=249 time=8.396 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=16 ttl=249 time=8.581 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=17 ttl=249 time=8.401 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=18 ttl=249 time=8.395 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=19 ttl=249 time=14.846 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=20 ttl=249 time=8.740 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=21 ttl=249 time=8.480 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=22 ttl=249 time=8.475 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=23 ttl=249 time=8.589 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=24 ttl=249 time=8.406 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=25 ttl=249 time=8.391 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=26 ttl=249 time=8.461 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=27 ttl=249 time=13.047 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=28 ttl=249 time=8.530 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=29 ttl=249 time=8.489 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=30 ttl=249 time=61.857 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=31 ttl=249 time=8.567 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=32 ttl=249 time=8.705 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=33 ttl=249 time=8.467 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=34 ttl=249 time=8.436 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=33 ttl=249 time=8.467 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=34 ttl=249 time=8.436 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=35 ttl=249 time=8.452 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=36 ttl=249 time=8.370 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=37 ttl=249 time=8.502 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=38 ttl=249 time=13.615 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=39 ttl=249 time=8.605 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=40 ttl=249 time=8.593 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=41 ttl=249 time=8.380 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=42 ttl=249 time=8.434 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=43 ttl=249 time=8.596 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=44 ttl=249 time=8.393 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=45 ttl=249 time=8.536 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=46 ttl=249 time=8.442 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=47 ttl=249 time=8.419 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=48 ttl=249 time=8.393 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=49 ttl=249 time=11.474 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=50 ttl=249 time=8.429 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=51 ttl=249 time=19.944 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=50 ttl=249 time=8.429 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=51 ttl=249 time=19.944 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=52 ttl=249 time=8.819 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=53 ttl=249 time=8.460 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=54 ttl=249 time=8.384 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=55 ttl=249 time=8.619 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=56 ttl=249 time=8.414 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=57 ttl=249 time=8.454 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=58 ttl=249 time=8.481 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=59 ttl=249 time=8.613 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=60 ttl=249 time=8.509 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=61 ttl=249 time=13.713 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=62 ttl=249 time=8.605 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=63 ttl=249 time=62.604 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=64 ttl=249 time=8.510 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=65 ttl=249 time=11.942 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=66 ttl=249 time=8.664 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=67 ttl=249 time=8.398 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=68 ttl=249 time=8.626 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=69 ttl=249 time=10.914 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=70 ttl=249 time=8.546 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=71 ttl=249 time=8.418 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=72 ttl=249 time=8.373 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=73 ttl=249 time=8.416 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=74 ttl=249 time=8.547 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=75 ttl=249 time=8.535 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=76 ttl=249 time=11.992 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=77 ttl=249 time=8.472 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=78 ttl=249 time=8.482 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=79 ttl=249 time=8.450 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=80 ttl=249 time=8.429 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=81 ttl=249 time=8.630 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=82 ttl=249 time=8.494 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=83 ttl=249 time=8.627 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=84 ttl=249 time=8.544 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=85 ttl=249 time=8.512 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=86 ttl=249 time=8.512 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=87 ttl=249 time=8.528 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=88 ttl=249 time=8.616 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=89 ttl=249 time=8.463 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=90 ttl=249 time=8.574 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=91 ttl=249 time=8.559 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=92 ttl=249 time=8.424 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=93 ttl=249 time=8.573 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=94 ttl=249 time=8.669 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=95 ttl=249 time=12.155 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=96 ttl=249 time=63.130 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=97 ttl=249 time=8.420 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=98 ttl=249 time=8.427 ms
64 bytes from 195.69.144.40: icmp_seq=99 ttl=249 time=8.419 ms

--- 195.69.144.40 ping statistics ---
100 packets transmitted, 100 packets received, 0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 8.370/10.733/63.130/9.306 ms

not perfect but a defenite improvement, the fast there is 2 big spikes still at 3am shows how dire it has become. Have to say tho the glitches at that time of day are not normally noticeable on my throughput and ssh usage.

Re: Gaming Connections / Leicester
 

does anybody have any more technical information about the upgrades have been in the Leicester area as my connection has been slower since the work this week.

Re: Gaming Connections / Leicester
 

You beat me to it. Not sure what they did but I am guessing they shifted user's around and my ubr seems to be under higher load now. Last monday I was having good performance during early morning and the day in the week and during early morning at the weekend. Now its having contention issues during the day today, yesterday I aborted a download right after I started as it was barely topping 130kB so speed almost halved by congestion. Last sunday my speeds slowed down to around 200kB instead of 130. Are ntl playing a game where its harder to use traffic up thus making 10mbit more viable or has someone just cocked up. I am also going to email that senior tech again and I dont care if he dont like it but I got routing going over cogent to an isp that only has that line for backup, ntl for some reason with their weird routing table have decided that routing over a backup 100mbit 30ms cogent line is superior to a 1000mbit 15ms enta line, cost cutting getting rather stupid now.

I am also curious why the cableforum team are fine with helping with trivial matters such as billing issues, but when it comes to problems like this where the fix involves throwing money at it there is simply "no comment" has your contact told you not to bother him/her with these type of issues?

Re: Gaming Connections / Leicester
 

:tu:

Sadly you are spot on and this was the case when I worked for them many moons ago and they seem not to care for the gamers too much and this still is the case now.

I have mentioned this on here before and many moons ago on the old site.

While they do a good job of escalating the small matters which can be seen as glory hunting quick fixes and giving NTL some good publicity then the longer term issues like this go straight to the bottom of the pile so to speak.

Although I am guessing by writing this and bumping the thread an offer of passing this on to the senior NTL contacts they have established will be forthcoming and prove me wrong.

I won't hold my breath though.

:D

Re: Gaming Connections / Leicester
 

Does anybody know why the Leicester area is having so much work done on the network this week and what is being done as my broadband and television has all gone off just now. It looks like no internet connection for me this week at all after midnight then.
I know some of work will be the speed increase but why is it that we are getting eveb more work is it the networks in bad state or just improving equipment is all the work been done at the headend or this it involve work at node level as well.

Re: Gaming Connections / Leicester
 

Beleve me it aint just Leicester having probs im in wearside area & im having big probs also high pings & packet loss & i play BF1942 & Tac-ops never had these probs befor time to complain to NTL me thinks ;)

Re: Gaming Connections / Leicester
 

Leics has had the 10mbit upgrade, which might indicate why there is all this optimisation, to me its kind of dissapointing as I thought it was a result of people complaining of poor performance. I expect latency to get worse now.

Upload doesnt seem to be saturated as I can easily send at max throughput stabily, the issue seems to be with downstream and ntl's external peering.

Re: Gaming Connections / Leicester
 

I aint got the upgrade to 10 yet still on 3meg but finding while playing cod 2 the other night i had a few places where the game stopped altogether with lag only for about 10 to 15 seconds then its fine again and thats on a UK based server dont know about the other server in holland. I got the game friday last week all weekend i had no problems monday still ok then thay started the optomisations in leic and its all gone to pot now.:banghead:

Re: Gaming Connections / Leicester
 

noticed ssh taking almost 5 seconds to respond and this seems to be why :(

1 54 ms 1300 ms 206 ms UBR [10.8.143.254]
2 322 ms 352 ms 869 ms leic-t2cam1-a-ge914.inet.ntl.com [82.3.35.149]
3 115 ms 48 ms 452 ms leic-t2core-a-ge-220-0.inet.ntl.com [82.3.33.10]

4 430 ms 57 ms 47 ms lee-bb-a-so-220-0.inet.ntl.com [62.253.188.110]

5 68 ms 16 ms 24 ms pop-bb-b-so-100-0.inet.ntl.com [62.253.185.238]

6 827 ms 1118 ms 952 ms tele-ic-1-so-010-0.inet.ntl.com [62.253.185.82]

7 946 ms 171 ms 245 ms linx-gw0.enta.net [195.66.224.151]
8 322 ms 29 ms 916 ms telehouse-east.core.enta.net [84.45.193.195]

Re: Gaming Connections / Leicester
 

this is probably just me being a little sarcy and nasty but do we think this is due to ntl giving people "up to 10meg" and destroying all avaliable peerings as they go speed tests and download the entire internet

Re: Gaming Connections / Leicester
 

I phoned up Tech support yesterday as i have had enough now of the poor gaming pings and packet losses,Actually managed to speak to someone in this country(RESULT)He was very helpful and friendly checked the line and reported back a noise level of 18...apparently 20 is the lowest it should be:confused: and this will affect pings and packets,so he said it should be fixed by next friday..

Re: Gaming Connections / Leicester
 

things have improved today, the best its been during the last 7 days in fact. Not as good as it was 2 weeks ago tho.

Re: Gaming Connections / Leicester
 

hi am from the grimsby area and play bf2 online just recently
after 6pm my bb which is 2 meg slows down to about 700k
and i get loads of packet loss not sure what this is any help would be good before i contact ntl

Re: Gaming Connections / Leicester
 

Sorry missed this, yeah you could be going over the XPE router. ntl have left it saturated and it affects traffic to some uk isp's.

Re: Gaming Connections / Leicester
 

I think in summer when the decline started ntl suddenly decided to do one of the 3 things to avoid their traffic bills going up when they rolled out 10mbit.

1 - Stop upgrading external pipes with traffic utilisation.
2 - Artifically throttle traffic to keep them below max capacity.
3 - Reroute traffic over cheaper routes which in turn has led to congestion because since summer they have been agressively using cogent.

Re: Gaming Connections / Leicester
 

My NTL connection has been turning itself off tonight!! I don't understand, the cable light will stop flashing and if I restart the modem a couple of times it works. First time I've had problems in about a year, year and a half.

Re: Gaming Connections / Leicester
 

id suggest that is most likely a "phone for a new one" situation
just phone techsupport asap and tell them what its doing they will most likely arange for a newmodem and an engineer visit to replace it

Re: Gaming Connections / Leicester
 

I seee from the status page that Leicester is due to be having work again every night this week, this is getting a bit annoying now as my job requires me to do video conferences to the west coast USA two or three times a week normally in middle of night for the past 3 weeks ever weekday evening i lose my connection all night.
I can only assume that the network in Leicestershire is in a really bad state and must only just be working. I know Diamond Cable were very slap happy when creating the network and probaly cut lots of corners. Does anybody when all this work is finally due to be completed and what is being done in all this work ?
I just hope all this inconvience is going to be worth it.

Re: Gaming Connections / Leicester
 

Actually its' upgrades to individual areas a bit at a time. The whole of Leicester will not be going offline and only individual areas will see disruption, and each area only the once during the entire period.

Sadly again it's probably a residential service you're using so no service level agreement but even the business one has no guarantees :(

Re: Gaming Connections / Leicester
 

the only service level agreement we have is to cancel the ISP if you have had enough of a poor service:(

Re: Gaming Connections / Leicester
 

Thanks for your reply Ignition I am hoping you are correct and the loss of service wont be very night like its was last week bar Thurs.
As i said before there must be alot of work to do in this area judging by the amount of outages we have had recently.

Re: Gaming Connections / Leicester
 

Yes I can confirm there is real slowness right now, thanks to the cableforum team I am back on 10mbit and earlier my adslguide speedtest showed the 4-5 mbit I can expect but now I get this.

Downstream 1588 Kbps (198.5 KB/sec) 1715 Kbps (inc. overheads)
Upstream 485 Kbps (60.6 KB/sec) 523 Kbps (inc. overheads)

Download of most servers around 1mbit including .uk and same with http downloads. But this is during what ntl call the trial period and at least they seem to be working on it, I would be more worried if I wasnt seeing scheduled work. For the first time I am also noticing slow down in normal browsing as well as this has been the slowest its been.

Ignition or anyone else, if my modem is borderline on the SNR and noiselevel stuff would this cause it more problems when the ubr is busy? I think I am having an engineer coming with a new modem soon so I might ask him to have a look for me.

Re: Gaming Connections / Leicester
 

I noticed a routing change now and I am hoping this will mean an end to the amsterdam congestion, outgoing routes from ntl are now going through redbus uk and handing over there.

8 gfd-bb-b-so-400-0.inet.ntl.com (62.253.185.98) 19.445 ms 17.542 ms 17.930 ms
9 redb-ic-1-as0-0.inet.ntl.com (213.105.174.138) 19.471 ms 32.935 ms 20.259 ms
10 ldn-s2-rou-1002.UK.eurorings.net (195.66.224.54) 20.239 ms 23.930 ms 18.639 ms

Unfortenatly the return route still comes back the same way leaving the same throughput issues, but this could be work in progress and I am hoping ntl will change it, they also changed some cogent routes for me after I requested it so their attitude seems to be changing.

This maybe should have been in a new thread since its relevant to all of ntl not just Leics but since gamers are mostly posting here and there is new ones popping up I kept it here.

Re: Gaming Connections / Leicester
 

thats good news on the switch side whould it be possible for me to have that server address so i can run the same tests from here to check that they havent just moved you over following your email(s)

Re: Gaming Connections / Leicester
 

trace 83.223.127.134

Re: Gaming Connections / Leicester
 

7 28 ms 14 ms 16 ms lee-bb-b-atm010-211.inet.ntl.com [62.253.184.6]
8 14 ms 15 ms 15 ms ntl-gw.telecomplete.net [213.160.97.41]
9 14 ms 15 ms 15 ms v100-r1.rbs.telecomplete.net [213.160.96.52]
10 16 ms 16 ms 16 ms fe-0-2-0.cr2.sov.lon.uk.as29017.net [213.160.97.78]

only high jump im registering is 4
4 30 ms 435 ms 23 ms nott-t2core-a-ge-wan73.inet.ntl.com [80.1.79.77]
but even that isent too bad

Re: Gaming Connections / Leicester
 

there is another isp also in germany who have cogent and another provider.

I traced it from 8 or so locations to help a friend see their routing and ntl was one of only 2 who didnt use cogent, so ntl now seem to have this cogent problem resolved.

To give idea how bad cogent is one of the servers i traced from is also in germany but because the way cogent are it went de -> uk -> de wasting 30ms of latency.

Am currently getting packet loss and ping spikes to 4 figures on my server that goes over the amsterdam hop but it is a sunday so hopefully by friday they may have this resolved if not ill send an email to see what they say about the situation.