View Full Version : Stupid lag on ntl's top tier broadband
I am in Rochdale and on 10mb with a ntl:200 SACM, tonight I cannot even run Halo in MP mode, let alone BF2142, the ping is stupid well into the 899ms range, I've joined servers within the UK and in Florida to no avail it is just un****ing playable and stupid, I don't mind paying £35 a month and only getting 4mb down and 400k up even, I totally understand I will not get 10mb down and 512k up 24/7 365.
I do however draw the line when I cannot even use half the bandwith because the upload is so ****ing tightly limited it is unreal!!! I can understand a bit of limiting the download but the upload is sodding stupid for a top tier?? my hairy behind this is top tier more like top joke.
I have defended NTL alot recently when others have left or slated them but my patience is wearing thin, either ntl sort this ****ty upload speed, and sudden drops in speed out or I am off to a ISP like BT whom people I know are more happy.
I am in Rochdale and on 10mb with a ntl:200 SACM, tonight I cannot even run Halo in MP mode, let alone BF2142, the ping is stupid well into the 899ms range, I've joined servers within the UK and in Florida to no avail it is just un****ing playable and stupid, I don't mind paying £35 a month and only getting 4mb down and 400k up even, I totally understand I will not get 10mb down and 512k up 24/7 365.
I do however draw the line when I cannot even use half the bandwith because the upload is so ****ing tightly limited it is unreal!!! I can understand a bit of limiting the download but the upload is sodding stupid for a top tier?? my hairy behind this is top tier more like top joke.
I have defended NTL alot recently when others have left or slated them but my patience is wearing thin, either ntl sort this ****ty upload speed, and sudden drops in speed out or I am off to a ISP like BT whom people I know are more happy.
Just a question, you say the upload is limited, but on what evidence do you base this on and the ping to your game servers is high how do you know this is NTL's fault? What makes you think BT will be any better with there service. I say this because i'm on ADSL 8Mb,( i don't think so) and believe me my connection along with alot of people using this service is poor.
Well on one server which is run from a friends in Manchester three of us are on NTL 10mb one on 4mb and the other lad who was in the commander role was on BT.
Everyone on NTL was having ping issues and lagging about, that was evidence I needed.
I apologise for the ranting in my post above but I was seriously cheesed off about it.
BT are not the paradise of broadband I know, but with NTL putting speed and profit it seems above network stability, they barely have 10mb settled and reliable, and they are testing higher speeds.
My download seems fine about 6-7mb but my upload seems to be down to about 15-18kbs...I do not know why?
I am also in Rochdale and am experiencing the same problem tonight... the speed is nothing short of shocking for browsing (http), downloading (ftp) and then online gaming (Q3).
I get small bursts of speed where it appears OK, but then drops back to no faster than 32kb/s. It did this a few times last week too when other people were complaining about a similar issue.
edit: By the way, I'm only on 4Mb and use an NTL:250 modem.
Nice to know I am not alone, was installing Half Life 2 about 40minutes ago and the speed on the update went from 1300kbs to 400kbs to 780kbs then to 0kbs then sat about 50-90kbs for rest of the update?
tomcooper
19-11-2006, 22:03
I was playing Rainbox Six Vegas against my m8 who was hosting a game 8 miles away and I had about 1 second of latency, pings were fine on the pc and I tried several times.
Played on another server and it was fine
Something was very slow
Just been on Halo multiplayer, my ping normally even with my gf using the network only on msn and lycos chat is about 125 maximum, tonight I was seeing pings in excess of 900!!! it's just a joke and made any game I entered unplayable, therefore I've had to use offline single player to get some kicks.
Seriously I would pay NTL £40 a month if they offered me 8mb down 1mb up, I would be very suited and at those speeds I am damn sure if they made that a offered speed for all the network would cope better.
the upstream isnt everything also take into consideration the server might be ****e ? + 512k upload is enough for any game ANY are u downloading and/or uploading wilst gameing ?
the upstream isnt everything also take into consideration the server might be ****e ? + 512k upload is enough for any game ANY are u downloading and/or uploading wilst gameing ?
The internet was pretty woeful in Rochdale at the time of his posts, and it has been for over a week now.
The bizarre thing behind all this is that the speed tests all come back showing ~4Mb, but the real-time usage is nowhere near :(
liam_mcf
22-11-2006, 10:31
The last week i have also been having ping problems when im playing battlefield 2, my ping is bouncing about like mad! Keep getting kicked from servers, even uk servers :( sucks big time.
Im the same with the speed test also, everything showing 4MB when im on a 10MB connection.
And yeah the real time usage is nowhere near.
Im in the Glasgow area.
Uncle Peter
23-11-2006, 00:05
Hello there. On reading this post I felt compelled to join the forum and share my XBox Live lag woes. First of all, I am in the Warrington area on the 10Mb service.
One particular game is suffering most from lag problems: Test Drive Unlimited.
Each online gaming session supports a maximum of 8 players. Having monitored upstream bandwidth usage via my router stats, this increases proportionally as more players join the session: 15-17 k/sec with 8 players and random amounts of voice chat (yes that seems a bit excessive for a game and I have ensured that there is no other active internet use).
At this point there are usually shouts of "oi, look at him bringing lag to the session" etc. If I pop onto the PC while this is happening and send some pings to well known hosts there's an absolute shedload of packetloss - try to traceroute something and get a screenfull of ****s
Something is happening in my area with non http proxied traffic because I am seeing approx 9,000 down and 500 up from speedtest.net on a consistent basis even during peak hours. I don't see why running 17k/sec upstream to a host on another network should break my connection so badly.
Fistynuts
23-11-2006, 00:17
Not sure if it is relevant but I've just replied to a thread here http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/showthread.php?t=33603901 which shows similar, but worse, issues with Live!.
Test Drive has always been pretty laggy for me, too.
Uncle Peter
23-11-2006, 13:07
Traffic shaping is the only reason I can think of for this sort of thing happening. A lot of these newer Xbox Live games use a Peer to Peer udp communication topology to work so when packets start getting queued then discarded as your upstream rate exceeds the shaping cap it's going to cause undesirable lag effects.
This suggests that the 10Mb NTL service (or any where upstream shaping is employed) is generally unsuitable for XBox live gamers. I'm not paying 35 quid a month for a 10Mb proxy browsing service so I will be off as soon as I've surveyed my options, even if it means paying more.
moondog24
23-11-2006, 13:23
hey guys i made a thread in the xbox live section but i got no reply this is what i wrote
hello guys im having alot of problems with lag on xbox live first off on testdrive if there is more than 4 people on the same server as me everyone keeps tellin me im laggin all over the screen and the same goes for ghost recon if i host a match with anymore than 6 people in it ti lags like hell and most people drop out of my room i was on the 10 meg but i downgraded to the 4 meg because of this problem and its the same on 4 meg when i ring ntl all they say to me is WE DO NOT SUPPORT XBOX LIVE? anyways anyone having the same problem as me?
any help would be great thanx
Uncle Peter
23-11-2006, 13:36
Yes, the problem I have described explains why you might be having problems. Every time a player joins your session your Xbox will be opening a peer-to-peer communication thread to them. Each player session in your game will therefore have it's own upstream bandwidth overhead.
If your upstream connection doesn't support the required bandwidth overhead (because of traffic shaping, problems with network congestion or a fault) then some of the data may eventually be discarded from the network.
moondog24
23-11-2006, 13:41
is there anything i can do about this?? because its really getting me down now and its been like this for aslong as i can remember
Uncle Peter
23-11-2006, 13:56
Well you can complain and log faults until you're blue in the face in the vain hope that some sort of admission is made or something is done about it or you could jump ship to an unshaped adsl product.
moondog24
23-11-2006, 14:07
all this time i was thinkin they was cappin port 3074 (the port xbox live connects to) well i think ur rite on this one anyways looks like im gonna go for adsl2 from be 24 meg because my bt exchange is just across the road from me so i should get a good connection and a 1.3 meg upload speed hears the link https://www.bethere.co.uk/homebroadband.do cheers for the info uncle peter
Uncle Peter
23-11-2006, 14:18
Well I don't know exactly what's going on really other than what I see at my end. It looks like a cap on the upstream rate at all times of day for this particular type of network traffic . Something is badly implemented and broken because the connection to the UBR shouldn't get hobbled like it does in my case.
Seems to me like alot of assumption and presumption without any real evidence as to where, what or who is at fault. That is why is originally asked in this thread as to how NTL,(which might turn out to be the culprit or a percentage of the blame) is the main factor in these issues. There might be all sorts of problems but as normal without any real evidence, and as these threads progress it's like a rollercoaster of blame based on mounting assumption, and i think and i heard, my friend on the other side of the country playing the same game has exactly the same issues ect.....
Uncle Peter
23-11-2006, 22:13
Seems to me like alot of assumption and presumption without any real evidence as to where, what or who is at fault. That is why is originally asked in this thread as to how NTL,(which might turn out to be the culprit or a percentage of the blame) is the main factor in these issues. There might be all sorts of problems but as normal without any real evidence, and as these threads progress it's like a rollercoaster of blame based on mounting assumption, and i think and i heard, my friend on the other side of the country playing the same game has exactly the same issues ect.....
I think that enough evidence has been gathered to point the finger of blame in the right direction. What we do not have are the hard facts pertaining to what exactly is going on.
Guys - just like to point out a few things about gaming servers in general.
Gaming servers have tick rate; rates that are set to optimum uploaded data bits transferred to the server at any one time by a user. You should attempt to mirror these rates. Find out the tick rate of the server could be solution #1.
Next, Gaming servers are HEAVILY reliant on perfect routing due to the high level of relays players need to hop through in order to connect to a gaming gateway. This can also heavily effect ping (if there is a routing issue).
These 2 are not necessarily NTLs issue.
Next, it could be an NTL fault, check the status page or phone Tech support for an update.
Just a couple of things I would try in order to ascertain where the problem lies. Pick a couple of gaming servers to start with. One in US, one in Netherlands, and 2 in the UK. DNS them (find their IP) and run "tracert <ip>" in a command prompt. Monitor where the bottleneck seems to be. Could provide an answer to any potential routing problem.
If all else fails, ring tech support by all means :)
Hope this helps. (Not wanted to teach soe people how to suck eggs, just imparting my experience on some less experienced users hopefully)
Uncle Peter
24-11-2006, 13:56
Guys - just like to point out a few things about gaming servers in general.
Gaming servers have tick rate; rates that are set to optimum uploaded data bits transferred to the server at any one time by a user. You should attempt to mirror these rates. Find out the tick rate of the server could be solution #1.
Next, Gaming servers are HEAVILY reliant on perfect routing due to the high level of relays players need to hop through in order to connect to a gaming gateway. This can also heavily effect ping (if there is a routing issue).
These 2 are not necessarily NTLs issue.
Next, it could be an NTL fault, check the status page or phone Tech support for an update.
Just a couple of things I would try in order to ascertain where the problem lies. Pick a couple of gaming servers to start with. One in US, one in Netherlands, and 2 in the UK. DNS them (find their IP) and run "tracert <ip>" in a command prompt. Monitor where the bottleneck seems to be. Could provide an answer to any potential routing problem.
If all else fails, ring tech support by all means :)
Hope this helps. (Not wanted to teach soe people how to suck eggs, just imparting my experience on some less experienced users hopefully)
Many XBox Live games do not rely on central servers for hosting games. Many recent PC games also use the peer-to-peer model as a basis for online network play. This of course means that the bandwidth overhead is imposed on the hosts participating in the session. In this case, and depending on the game in question; the bandwidth requirement will be aggregated and data transferred in some even fashion between the hosts participating in the session OR one player in the session with a low ping will be randomly selected to "host" the game. This is something that Microsoft and other Game developers do not openly make users aware of and poses problems for people who have traffic managed services or hard caps and additional usage charges.
Back to the problem at hand - lag experienced during online gaming sessions. I perfomed some tests in my house and two friends houses using Xbox live (they are all on the 10Mb service on the Baguely UBR). Test were repeated with two XBox live logo tested routers and a Linux based router running on a P4 and the same problem was highlighted in each case:
Hosting a 6 player game (no problems) - average sustained upstream/downstream bandwidth overhead = 17KBps/17KBps
ping www.bbc.co.uk avg RTT = 18ms
browsing bbc.co.uk = Page loads within 2 seconds
Hosting an 8 player game (problems) - average sustained upstream/downstream = 25KBps/25KBps
ping www.bbc.co.uk RTT = timeout
browsing bbc.co.uk = DNS timeout
Conclusion:
When you try to maintain one or more upstream udp connections to hosts on another network with an aggregated, sustained transfer rate of 20+KBps the latency and packet loss on your connection becomes unacceptable. Network congestion as a root cause can be generally discounted because during the same time period it was possible to attain 45+Kbps upstream FTP connections to servers outside NTL's network.
So the question is: Why does NTL appear to discard upstream udp traffic on a per host basis when a certain transfer rate is exceeded? Yes I know that someone is going to post a reply saying "Traffic Management" but anyone using NTL thinking of buying an XBox360 with Xbox live for Christmas should be made aware of these problems.
I think that enough evidence has been gathered to point the finger of blame in the right direction. What we do not have are the hard facts pertaining to what exactly is going on.
Well thats exactly what i'm saying, the evidence may be sort of correct, everyone is giving an opinion which then turns into a sort of fact without the real evidence.
Remember a tracert is a very basic test.
Also as has been said on other threads you'll find all sorts of issues with other ISP's doing Traffic management, shaping call it what you like there all doing for one reason or another,(if of course this is what NTL are doing that is the cause of your problem).
Uncle Peter
24-11-2006, 19:30
Well thats exactly what i'm saying, the evidence may be sort of correct, everyone is giving an opinion which then turns into a sort of fact without the real evidence.
Remember a tracert is a very basic test.
Also as has been said on other threads you'll find all sorts of issues with other ISP's doing Traffic management, shaping call it what you like there all doing for one reason or another,(if of course this is what NTL are doing that is the cause of your problem).
I think it's reasonable to assume that the majority of people who engage in online gaming do not have the technical know-how to deduce that their ISP's traffic management policies may be affecting their online gaming experience: Buy Xbox, plug it into modem and expect it to work etc...
I can't see anyone from NTL turning around tomorrow and saying anything to the effect of "look guys, don't bother hosting online games, we're limiting your bandwidth". People would walk and certain technology news sites would have a field day. The sensible thing to do would be to offer a high usage, unshaped service for gamers and other users who have this sort of requirement even if it means paying a premium.
I also believe that Microsoft and game developers in general should state with more clarity exactly what bandwidth overhead a particular game may impose on a player's connection as games move away from the classic client/server hub and spoke topology to P2P. This needs to be printed on the back of the game box as a prerequisite requirement.
I think i used about 37mb in 27mb out for Hosting a 8 player game of GOW on my DSL the other day...
that was in about 1hr - 1hr 30, its a very rough estimate becuase im going from memory
At first there were serious lag issues and people couldnt stay connected very well, however turned out that was my router causing that quick reboot of the router sorted that.
I have 480k upstream, which is less than the people who have 10mbit ntl... so you'd think it should work fine.
I think it's reasonable to assume that the majority of people who engage in online gaming do not have the technical know-how to deduce that their ISP's traffic management policies may be affecting their online gaming experience: Buy Xbox, plug it into modem and expect it to work etc...
I can't see anyone from NTL turning around tomorrow and saying anything to the effect of "look guys, don't bother hosting online games, we're limiting your bandwidth". People would walk and certain technology news sites would have a field day. The sensible thing to do would be to offer a high usage, unshaped service for gamers and other users who have this sort of requirement even if it means paying a premium.
I also believe that Microsoft and game developers in general should state with more clarity exactly what bandwidth overhead a particular game may impose on a player's connection as games move away from the classic client/server hub and spoke topology to P2P. This needs to be printed on the back of the game box as a prerequisite requirement.
Yes i agree,if they were more open it would at least be know as to why these issues occur.
Fistynuts
01-12-2006, 23:26
I have 480k upstream, which is less than the people who have 10mbit ntl... so you'd think it should work fine.
NTL 10mb upstream is 512k, but typically it comes in at 450-500 so your figure is in line with that.
NTL 10mb upstream is 512k, but typically it comes in at 450-500 so your figure is in line with that.
ah but thats my upstream SYNC speed so i supect in relaity the data speed is closer to what ntl 4mbit users should get
i know i sync at 7.6mbit down howver my ip profile is only 6.5mbits
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