Questions about gaming lag, virgin & infinity...

[Sephiroth]

Originally Posted by Sarge75

...
I have another question, can you have congestion on one speed tier in your area and not on another or would all speed tiers be affected the same?

If you mean VM speed tiers, all of the 30 meg and over tiers are defo on the same infrstaurcure. On any local node, all such subscribers affect each other.

[Harryn9000]

Originally Posted by Qtx

If a gamer has a choice of openreach fibre (infinity/sky) or VM, they would be a fool to take the VM line. VM's jitter problems which cause problems with games are well known and can persist for a year without virgin fixing it.

Lag, warping and other issues went when I dumped virgin and went to Sky. Gaming is much smoother now with a lower ping which is consistent

i have vm broadband don't have one problem gaming so that theory is a lot of rubbish. ok u had problem and virgin couldn't fix it doesn't mean every person who games on vm get problems i don't get any problem and quite a few ppl on here would says the same. what i don't get is lots of ppl on here always have to say sky service is better no one bothered it does my head in reading quite a lot of threads seeing the same thing.

[colin25]

Originally Posted by Harryn9000

i have vm broadband don't have one problem gaming so that theory is a lot of rubbish. ok u had problem and virgin couldn't fix it doesn't mean every person who games on vm get problems i don't get any problem and quite a few ppl on here would says the same. what i don't get is lots of ppl on here always have to say sky service is better no one bothered it does my head in reading quite a lot of threads seeing the same thing.

I had problems too...it is why I don't miss virgin broadband

[Qtx]

Originally Posted by Harryn9000

what i don't get is lots of ppl on here always have to say sky service is better no one bothered it does my head in reading quite a lot of threads seeing the same thing.

Seems you have a bit of Sky envy

Infinity and Sky are very similar services due to them both using the same FTTC topology and offering pretty much the same quality of connection, especially in relation to gaming.

The fact the OP started this thread to get advice on gaming and Infinity, it is natural for those who have been customers of both to share their opinions, which is what has happened. It is Virgins fault that the gamers answering the OP's question are much happier with the other fibre providers and no matter how much you jump up and down with rage if someone mentions sky, that is your own problem. Anger management may be an option for you.

[Sephiroth]

I have both VM and Infinity (seems the right place to mention this again).

Currently VM provide much better ping that Infinity (PIP has noted that my interleave is high whereas others may have lower interleave).

[MaverickJesus]

Define 'much better'? What latency are we talking, and jitter?

(I'm just curious)

[Sephiroth]

"Much better" is viewed through my son's eyes when playing CoD.

When my VM circuit was on 1 upstream, Infinity had the edge. Infinity minumum TBB ping is c. 32 ms. VM is around 14 ms. Average ping is respectively 32ms & 16 ms.

[Qtx]

Originally Posted by MaverickJesus

Define 'much better'? What latency are we talking, and jitter?

(I'm just curious)

For me, minimum ping in game on Maidenhead based servers was 32ms on VM when it had no problems, although it would jump to 40 and 50ms all the time so a fair amount of jitter.

On the same servers but with sky, my in game ping sat steadily at 12ms mostly, droping to 11 a fair bit, with it hitting 20ms every so often.

Its not just ping and latency that is different between the VM and Sky connection when gaming though, although I can't explain exactly how or why that is. The easiest way I can explain it is if you have every driven with the handbrake slightly on but not realised it because the car appears to be driving fine to you. When you do notice and turn the brake off, you then notice the car drives smoother, without the drag you had before. This is how it felt moving from VM to Sky.

As for why this happens, I could only guess that VM's network is doing more work with packets, maybe splitting/combining tcp streams or traffic managing type hardware. As I said, I don't know why it feels different, it just does.

Being a long time quake player who is happy playing with config files and commands like cl_timenudge 30, knows how different netcode in games affects the feel of game, I do know what im talking about when it comes to the feel of gaming on different connections.

[Chrysalis]

Originally Posted by Harryn9000

i have vm broadband don't have one problem gaming so that theory is a lot of rubbish. ok u had problem and virgin couldn't fix it doesn't mean every person who games on vm get problems i don't get any problem and quite a few ppl on here would says the same. what i don't get is lots of ppl on here always have to say sky service is better no one bothered it does my head in reading quite a lot of threads seeing the same thing.

VM was aweful for me, sorry if that bothers you.

---------- Post added at 16:10 ---------- Previous post was at 16:08 ----------

Originally Posted by Sephiroth

"Much better" is viewed through my son's eyes when playing CoD.

When my VM circuit was on 1 upstream, Infinity had the edge. Infinity minumum TBB ping is c. 32 ms. VM is around 14 ms. Average ping is respectively 32ms & 16 ms.

would your son be happy with min ping of 14 that jumps to 30 then to 100 then back to 14 then to 50 then to 40 then to 70 then back to 14 and so on?

[Kushan]

I don't understand why people are arguing that their own personal experience with an ISP somehow defines that ISP for everyone. Depending on your area and where you live, YMMV between each provider.

[ianch99]

Originally Posted by Kushan

I don't understand why people are arguing that their own personal experience with an ISP somehow defines that ISP for everyone. Depending on your area and where you live, YMMV between each provider.

Couldn't agree more. My son plays PS3 online games and has no complaints. There is no universal right or wrong here ..

I think what Harryn9000 was getting at is the situation where someone posts a question and straight away gets a set of replies along the lines of "VM is rubbish, Sky is brilliant .. by the way, what was the question again?"

[colin25]

Originally Posted by ianch99

Couldn't agree more. My son plays PS3 online games and has no complaints. There is no universal right or wrong here ..

I think what Harryn9000 was getting at is the situation where someone posts a question and straight away gets a set of replies along the lines of "VM is rubbish, Sky is brilliant .. by the way, what was the question again?"

to be precise, the original post was

"Hi, im currently on vm 20mb and seem to get quite a bit of lag when playing black ops online, ive tried every suggestion I could find on the net to improve things but none of it has made a blind bit of difference.

So now my question, is there any chance that changing to 30mb or 60mb may help? Or would the lag most likely be exactly the same?......."

And we responded about lag we have experienced.

[ianch99]

Originally Posted by Sarge75

Hi, im currently on vm 20mb and seem to get quite a bit of lag when playing black ops online, ive tried every suggestion I could find on the net to improve things but none of it has made a blind bit of difference.

So now my question, is there any chance that changing to 30mb or 60mb may help? Or would the lag most likely be exactly the same?

Also on a side note, if things don't improve I may switch to bt infinity when its available here. Does anybody here use infinity, how does it compare for gaming?

If I had infinity installed can I have the line split so that it enters my property in 2 different places, so that I could have the phone and hub in 2 different rooms, like I have now with virgin or would this have to be done internaly with extensions or something?

Thanks guys, any advice will be greatly appreciated.

If you post a tracert to a couple of the Black Ops servers you are using, some of us on the higher tier products could run the same trace so you can see if what you are currently getting can be bettered? It may also show if your current line has problems. Do you have a Thinkbroadband Ping monitor running? If you do, can your share this as this should add more information.

As you are on the 20M product, this may mean you are on the legacy part of VM's network (for the local segment) so this could mean you can get a better quality product line if you upgraded to 30M but this is risky, people have found it can get worse

[Qtx]

Originally Posted by Kushan

I don't understand why people are arguing that their own personal experience with an ISP somehow defines that ISP for everyone.

For VM the individual experience differs vastly between customers but with Infinity/sky Fibre, the experience is consistently good. Literally all the posters on this forum that have switched to another fibre provider have not had lag while gaming. Are these users not allowed to pass on their experience if their other provider is performing much better?

[ianch99]

Originally Posted by Qtx

For VM the individual experience differs vastly between customers but with Infinity/sky Fibre, the experience is consistently good. Literally all the posters on this forum that have switched to another fibre provider have not had lag while gaming. Are these users not allowed to pass on their experience if their other provider is performing much better?

I think the danger is to paint the Infinity option as a perfect paradise. It may well be the case that yours and the others lines are better than the VM one they replaced but this does not make this a universal truth.

I have attached a screen shot I took earlier this month from the first page of the BT Infinity support forum, as you can see they have problems too ..