Questions about gaming lag, virgin & infinity... - Page 4

Chrysalis · 21-09-2013, 14:10

Well Seph.

Depending on types of games played, I think the 2 things that affect gaming are jitter and latency. Jitter on a FPS is going to have more importance than latency as although low latency beats higher latency, inconsistent latency is a killer. If jitter is fine then low latency is preffered but on some type of games jitter isnt a problem and then only latency matters. Since your VM connection seems to not have much jitter issues (better than the VM average) then that gives you a better experience. I agree BT isnt the best isp out there for base latency, even if you on fast path (as I am) they have some strange routing going on. People in london eg getting routed to sheffield and back before hitting london sites. I believe I get routed up to birmingham before going down to london. Plus there is some places getting that multiple round robin affect on some routers (as I do) which creates a permanent jitter of around 2ms, not big enough to register but is there. (the blue line seen on my BT tbb graphs) such as the one below.

If you asking how to get your BT line back to fast path then I would first suggest geta unlocked hg12 modem on there so you can see whats going on, such as sync speed, snr margin, error rate, interleave depth etc. Without that you operating blind. Get some graphs made over a period of time using one of the hg612 graphing apps, that will then reveal if you have a steady stream of errors or you getitng bursts at certian points of the day, you can also check if you are on a ECI or HG dslam, which can be relevant, eg. using a ECI modem on a ECI dslam reduces the error rate sigificantly over using a HG modem on a ECI dslam which can then be enough to make DLM drop it back to fast path if interleaved.

Sephiroth · 21-09-2013, 14:39

Chrys

I'm not at home today so can't check. Can you tell me - is HG612 v3B VDSL2?

Cheers

Chrysalis · 21-09-2013, 16:31

yes, its one of the 2 openreach modems, so is a 50% chance you already have it but locked. I unlocked the one BT gave me, its trivial to do.

http://huaweihg612hacking.wordpress.com/

see on the right hand side is links to instructions.

Basically download the unlocked firmware. (same as default firmware except port 80 is opened on the firewall for access to gui and 23 for telnet).
disconnect it from the internet, power off and plug in directly to pc/laptop with lan cable, make sure pc is on static ip.
when you power it on you have to hold one of the buttons down (i think reset button says in the instructions), this puts it in recovery mode, and from there you can flash the unlocked firmware.
Once unlocked connect back to the dsl cable and router as normal, it will come back online. But also connect a 2nd lan cable to the 2nd lan port on the hg612 (the one that comes taped over, remove the tape), and then you can access the gui/telnet on 192.168.1.1.

After that also disable QoS to give a 10% boost to upload speeds.

You can buy these unlocked on ebay if you want also.

Carth · 21-09-2013, 17:10

Thanks for the replies.

Koshin: sorry, small black modem Ambit 256

Seph: High CPU use when playing the game and also on TS.
CPU is (single core) Athlon 64 3700 running at 2.4 ghz. Task manager shows mainly only these two using the CPU, (game 75%, TS3 22% approx) with an occasional 2% used by Windows Desktop Manager.

Been thinking of upgrading to the 30 meg package deal but if it's my PC where the problem lies there's no point until I sort it out.

Sephiroth · 21-09-2013, 17:33

Carth

If you've got a pal with a dual core laptop or i3/i5/i7 and try it you can gauge whether or not it is your CPU.

---------- Post added at 16:33 ---------- Previous post was at 16:29 ----------

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chrysalis

yes, its one of the 2 openreach modems, so is a 50% chance you already have it but locked. I unlocked the one BT gave me, its trivial to do.

http://huaweihg612hacking.wordpress.com/

see on the right hand side is links to instructions.

Basically download the unlocked firmware. (same as default firmware except port 80 is opened on the firewall for access to gui and 23 for telnet).
disconnect it from the internet, power off and plug in directly to pc/laptop with lan cable, make sure pc is on static ip.
when you power it on you have to hold one of the buttons down (i think reset button says in the instructions), this puts it in recovery mode, and from there you can flash the unlocked firmware.

Once unlocked connect back to the dsl cable and router as normal, it will come back online. But also connect a 2nd lan cable to the 2nd lan port on the hg612 (the one that comes taped over, remove the tape), and then you can access the gui/telnet on 192.168.1.1.

After that also disable QoS to give a 10% boost to upload speeds.

You can buy these unlocked on ebay if you want also.

Thanks Chrys. I've bought an unlocked HG612 off eBay v3B. That way I have one that still works if I screw up.

bubblegun · 22-09-2013, 01:27

I spoke to someone recently who had been sold Sky Fibre to improve his online gaming. He clearly had no idea about the connection technicalities.

He called to complain that he was only getting 21ms ping to the game server whereas his son-in-law was getting 70ms on Virgin 60Mb.

Oh, how I chortled.

I explained lower is better on ping and he was happy.

Don't know why he was sold fibre, though, really. He was getting 21Mb on ADSL although the better upload would probably better for gaming.

qasdfdsaq · 22-09-2013, 01:52

You mean better ping.

Kushan · 22-09-2013, 09:16

Yeah, games don't tend to actually use a lot of bandwidth, 1Mbit would probably suffice for most. All about latency.

craigj2k12 · 22-09-2013, 16:12

actually most games dont use any more than 300kbit up or down

DaMac · 23-09-2013, 14:39

Hello I'm currently on 100 meg (had my double speed increase) and my online gaming lags sometimes and glitches, I have the vmng3000 or whatever it is called, would I get better performance going to a shub2, also I've been thinking of going down to the 60mb package, you get a shub2 with that, or will that just make it worse?
Thanks.

Kushan · 23-09-2013, 14:47

Quote:

Originally Posted by DaMac

Hello I'm currently on 100 meg (had my double speed increase) and my online gaming lags sometimes and glitches, I have the vmng3000 or whatever it is called, would I get better performance going to a shub2, also I've been thinking of going down to the 60mb package, you get a shub2 with that, or will that just make it worse?
Thanks.

The short answer is no, it won't make a difference if you use a SHUB over a VMNG300.

The long answer is - maybe, depending on how congested your area is.

What tier you're on shouldn't really affect your pings unless you're using the connection a lot at the same time.

DaMac · 23-09-2013, 15:31

I would imagine the are is pretty congested, because I occasionally get browser freeze, so how would a shub2 help (maybe) and is there anything I can change in my router to help?
Thanks.

Sephiroth · 23-09-2013, 16:55

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kushan

The short answer is no, it won't make a difference if you use a SHUB over a VMNG300.

The long answer is - maybe, depending on how congested your area is.

What tier you're on shouldn't really affect your pings unless you're using the connection a lot at the same time.

Gotta laugh! Kush's long answer is shorter than his short answer!

Whatever tier you're on, you're better off with a SH2 than the VMNG300. This is because the SH2 can bond 8 channels and so your chances of having higher throughput are greater because the VMNG300 can only bond 4 channels. There is a point at which congestion will cause that to make no difference.

Then you'd want to run the SH2 in modem mode but your router would need to be capable of >120 meg WAN-LAN throughput; you may have one of those already but I don't know.

Finally, going down to 60 meg is only worth doing if it's 60 meg you get now instead of 100 meg; and then provided that yur monthly charge goes down too.

I think that covers it.

DaMac · 23-09-2013, 18:02

Long and short of it is since I am well warned not to download anything in the evening, I don't need 100 mb as I now set anything large I need to download whilst I am sleeping, so I'm not paying for 100mb unless it makes difference to my latency etc.
Thanks.

Sephiroth · 23-09-2013, 18:18

No - faster download speed will not improve latency.

Incidentally, gaming lags are usually due to upstream latency caused by congestion. Downstream congestion can also affect gaming latency, but the upstream is more susceptible, IMO.