Gaming in Manchster area

Aekeron · 07-02-2005, 17:03

Hi all.

I've been having an ongoing problem with my connection for the last few months. Calls to customer services have been met with "nothing's wrong!" and such useless comments and I'm at an end as to what to do.

(connection: 1.5mbit via cable modem (aquired last july, two weeks later than the rest of my services were installed..sigh)

The problem manifests pretty much only when I'm playing online games (fps, in this case mainly quake 3). Accross multiple servers and using different settings, I keep having terrible intermittent packet loss and an alltogether MUCH higher ping than I did a few months back. To lots of uk servers I'm often pinging as high as 100 and, as if that weren't bad enough, I'm having spikes that make the play terrible for me and cause everyone else to complain about my "warping"

Does anyone else have a similar problem? I've had this for ages now and considering that I got this connection with online gaming in mind... :/

I'm still within contract period, but I'm sorely tempted to write a scathing letter to NTL and close all the services. A cheap adsl connection to last me until I move house would be the same price as this "connection", and infinitely better.

Browsing/file downloading-wise (http & ftp, not p2p), the connection seems 'okay'. Using my friend's 0.5mbit service 'felt' faster in terms of browsing (despite my fresh windows install/etc). Online tests give me about 240kbit upstream and recently 1240kbit downstream. Not perfect, but nothing terrible?

Basically, not very happy...anyone else have any other problems? I can provide more details about my spec/conn at request.

oh yes: I've had ntl approx. 3 times in 3 different houses now. Generally in the past, it's been a brilliant service. It just seems to have gone to **** recently...

**Paul** · 08-02-2005, 15:45

Not sure if this has been missed by people, or no one else is having a problem.

flook · 10-02-2005, 12:43

yep im having similar problems in stockport, playing medal of honour so a similar game.

interruptions, usually for a few seconds,causing major lag, and occasionally dropping me completely. When this happens I have to reboot the router before I can reconnect.

badboybubby · 10-02-2005, 17:32

I never used to get packet loss (been on 1mb for 3 years) and of late its been ****e.

I am currently considering my options, particulary as NTL are beginning capping and want to charge me ÃƒÆ’Ã†â€™ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã…Â¡ÃƒÆ’Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ãƒâ€šÃ‚Â£25 to upgrade to a 3mb line!

Shop around, there has to be better!

badnbusy · 11-02-2005, 10:29

For us poor sods who want a fst connection ( > 2 Mbps), but are too far away from a BT exchange to get that sort of speed, have no option but to stick with ntl

Jip · 11-02-2005, 13:11

Hi i'm in the stockport area, and i'm having the same problems. After phoning up ntl several times, we(me and some guys at ntl) decided my area is on an overloaded upstream(or something).

So one of the senior people told me how the network system works.

When capacity reaches 80% it is flagged up as a problem on their system, once this happens a few times the people on the network side of ntl put a plan together to resolve the issue. He told me theres 2 things they do:

1. Just split the cable in the area so it can cope with capacity.
(takes about 2 weeks)

2. Put a new switch in or something which could affect all of britains network.
(takes about 2 months, if they decide thats a good idea which they would hesitate to do)

But at the end of the day mines been like this for over a month, i'm on spc1-asht1-3-0-cust51.bagu.broadband.ntl.com. I've phoned up 4 times, aparently they did 'maintenance' in my area but i notice a half decent ping for 1 day and it went back up.

Also i've been told mines been flagged up a few times on their system but i think the guy on the phone was lying because he was a cock.

So its just a matter of waiting

Also, the lag is only meant to be at peak times, ie when people are at home but mines just all the time now, its a bit of a joke.

Pinging www.bbc.net.uk [212.58.224.82] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 212.58.224.82: bytes=32 time=109ms TTL=245
Reply from 212.58.224.82: bytes=32 time=72ms TTL=245
Reply from 212.58.224.82: bytes=32 time=32ms TTL=245
Reply from 212.58.224.82: bytes=32 time=106ms TTL=245
Ping statistics for 212.58.224.82:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 32ms, Maximum = 109ms, Average = 79ms

Rone · 11-02-2005, 15:02

I had huge packet loss when speed was upped from 1meg to 1.5 meg, at one time it was horrendous.
Something used to hiccup round about Baguley. A nice chap on this board got the cruddy spikes sorted, but the ping was never what it was ages ago.
Manchester adds one more "hop" to most servers. Clan members down south always have one less hop, that helps pings. They always pinged better than me. Everyone and their dog go online after 5pm, and being vampires imo, they all stay up till daylight, so load wont help much.
Its true even with an 8meg connection, it wont guarantee a good ping either.
I moved to 2meg adsl, which isnt possible for everyone, but the pings a lot better.
And i wont mention that theres no cap.
Ooops.

Jip · 11-02-2005, 16:21

if this doesn't get sorted after the speed increase i'm moving isp

Jip · 12-02-2005, 13:47

According to http://www.ntl-isp.ntl.com/ServiceStatus/they have fixed the issues, gonna restart my stb see if it works ;D

*no lucky still sucking

*

Chrysalis · 12-02-2005, 14:06

Im not NTL, but I think your problem is ubr congestion, high pings caused by saturated upload this can also have an affect on download speeds. Browsing will always feel slower on ntl because of the proxies.
__________________

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jip

Hi i'm in the stockport area, and i'm having the same problems. After phoning up ntl several times, we(me and some guys at ntl) decided my area is on an overloaded upstream(or something).

So one of the senior people told me how the network system works.

When capacity reaches 80% it is flagged up as a problem on their system, once this happens a few times the people on the network side of ntl put a plan together to resolve the issue. He told me theres 2 things they do:

1. Just split the cable in the area so it can cope with capacity.
(takes about 2 weeks)

2. Put a new switch in or something which could affect all of britains network.
(takes about 2 months, if they decide thats a good idea which they would hesitate to do)

But at the end of the day mines been like this for over a month, i'm on spc1-asht1-3-0-cust51.bagu.broadband.ntl.com. I've phoned up 4 times, aparently they did 'maintenance' in my area but i notice a half decent ping for 1 day and it went back up.

Also i've been told mines been flagged up a few times on their system but i think the guy on the phone was lying because he was a cock.

So its just a matter of waiting

Also, the lag is only meant to be at peak times, ie when people are at home but mines just all the time now, its a bit of a joke.

Pinging www.bbc.net.uk [212.58.224.82] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 212.58.224.82: bytes=32 time=109ms TTL=245
Reply from 212.58.224.82: bytes=32 time=72ms TTL=245
Reply from 212.58.224.82: bytes=32 time=32ms TTL=245
Reply from 212.58.224.82: bytes=32 time=106ms TTL=245
Ping statistics for 212.58.224.82:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 32ms, Maximum = 109ms, Average = 79ms

you me in the same boat although your pings look alot worse then mine.

Pinging www.bbc.net.uk [212.58.224.36] with 32 bytes of

Reply from 212.58.224.36: bytes=32 time=17ms TTL=245
Reply from 212.58.224.36: bytes=32 time=63ms TTL=245
Reply from 212.58.224.36: bytes=32 time=72ms TTL=245
Reply from 212.58.224.36: bytes=32 time=28ms TTL=245

Ping statistics for 212.58.224.36:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 17ms, Maximum = 72ms, Average = 45ms

I think we pretty much stuffed now ntl have stopped upgrades.

Jip · 15-02-2005, 18:13

today isa good day

Ignition · 15-02-2005, 20:23

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jip

Hi i'm in the stockport area, and i'm having the same problems. After phoning up ntl several times, we(me and some guys at ntl) decided my area is on an overloaded upstream(or something).

Nothing overloaded on your uBR, just unbalanced, too moany modems on one stream, plenty of capacity there + will arrange full rebalance shortly.

Quote:

When capacity reaches 80% it is flagged up as a problem on their system, once this happens a few times the people on the network side of ntl put a plan together to resolve the issue. He told me theres 2 things they do:

Flagged well before getting to 80%, but still never mind.

Quote:

1. Just split the cable in the area so it can cope with capacity.
(takes about 2 weeks)

2 weeks, if only it were that easy to just split it. You also need to add some new kit for the new segment to connect to, as well as possibly building new node, new fibre pull which will be kilometres long, etc.

Quote:

2. Put a new switch in or something which could affect all of britains network.
(takes about 2 months, if they decide thats a good idea which they would hesitate to do)

Totally unnecessary for local network issues, there is no congestion at all on the core network right now, which is where something that could affect the entire ntl network would have to go, it's all operating at below 40% utilisation on all links.

Quote:

But at the end of the day mines been like this for over a month, i'm on spc1-asht1-3-0-cust51.bagu.broadband.ntl.com. I've phoned up 4 times, aparently they did 'maintenance' in my area but i notice a half decent ping for 1 day and it went back up.

I think you'll find your ping is fine again now sir.

Quote:

Also i've been told mines been flagged up a few times on their system but i think the guy on the phone was lying because he was a cock.

Quote:

So its just a matter of waiting

Wait over, check your latency.

On the subject of upgrades they are not suspended, only upgrades that may be stopped are those that would be done in overtime and aren't part of an upgrade project. Leicester is part of a project to improve its' network.

th'engineer · 15-02-2005, 20:47

Just an observation is there something going on in manc with people having probs

Ignition · 15-02-2005, 20:59

No, there's loads of different nodes in Manchester and see nothing in this lot to suggest a higher order failure. (Nor for that matter do I see anything in the networky status stuff to suggest this either)

Jip · 15-02-2005, 21:55

its went good a few hours ago, i tried to repeat when a senior member of tech support at ntl told me, thx, am i still waiting for the 'balance' btw or has it happened already?