high pings for gaming

[thetitletrack]

I'm playing BF2 on a UK server and I have a ping between 80-100 - I spoke to a few people they say it happens same time every night? Other guys in the server in the same clan have similar results...a quick poll of "Who is your ISP?" showed all the higher pingers were on....YEP, VIRGIN MEDIA.

So what VM are messing with my ping now as well?

If ever there was a reason to cancel my contract them this is it. It was bad enough being STM'd after downloading for 20 minutes (which means I'm scared to even watch videos before VM send my connection back to 1995) and now I can't play games at peak times as well?

What next?

[ruddock08]

yer, i have problems with my ps3 at peak times now, downloads never go over 800 KBps, internet drops out, might be down to my stylish but crap belkin N router :P

[JamesW]

Weird, I play a lot of TF2 during peak hours and mine pings are fine, touch wood.

[cybernetic_tiger]

Pings are the lowest priority packet, as such would be dropped or delayed at the first hint of congestion in the network.

[Nemeth]

Pings are the lowest priority packet, as such would be dropped or delayed at the first hint of congestion in the network.
I'm no game developer, but ping values shown in games aren't necessarily calculated using ICMP, they're more likely to be based on the games TCP or UDP traffic.

Anyway poor pings in game, especially if they occur at peak times, are probably a result of congestion and oversubscription in your area.

[dev]

I'm no game developer, but ping values shown in games aren't necessarily calculated using ICMP, they're more likely to be based on the games TCP or UDP traffic.

Anyway poor pings in game, especially if they occur at peak times, are probably a result of congestion and oversubscription in your area.

most likely UDP traffic and not an indication of network "speed" either, they usually show the time between you seeing something and the server recognising it so if your PC gets all laggy (low fps etc) then the ping goes up

[Graham M]

most likely UDP traffic and not an indication of network "speed" either, they usually show the time between you seeing something and the server recognising it so if your PC gets all laggy (low fps etc) then the ping goes up

Correct, and the same can happen if the server isn't generating enough FPS

[blade85]

havnt got BF2, so cant compare....on UT2004 though I usually get a ping of 24 on Uk servers and a max of 36 on EU servers. So works perfectly fine. On CoD4 iv hit pings of 12.

The only BF games iv got are BF2142 and Bad company on the ps3. Havnt got ping issues on bad company...or atleast i cant tell cause it doesnt show you the pings. Will check 2142 and let you know how thats looking.

[i-Set]

im with virgin media on 20mb and have no problem whatsoever in cod4 and fifa...even when i was on 2mb connection, everything was all good, maybe im lucky or my area isnt oversubscribed...even though i have made around 15-18 people join :D

[Nemeth]

most likely UDP traffic and not an indication of network "speed" either, they usually show the time between you seeing something and the server recognising it so if your PC gets all laggy (low fps etc) then the ping goes up

Correct, and the same can happen if the server isn't generating enough FPS

Exactly, it's why ping values shown in game are often higher than the values you'd see if you were to ping the server from a command prompt.

[thetitletrack]

Yes, I see all these points,

But considering I normally ping 19 to my server, and around 25-30 to others in the UK - and suddenly I'm up to 100 on any UK server on BF2 and then COD4, I'm pretty certain that there was some change on the network.

Something definitely happened to suddenly send my ping sky high, and then of course for it to suddenly come back down about 3 hours later.

[middlefinger]

i've noticed that my ping times have gone from around the 25 marks on a 2mb connection to 80-90 on a 10mb connection

I didn't realise that upgrading my bandwidth with VM would make my pings rise :confused:

[icestar2]

Couple months after being on 20mb I started to get terrible pings on COD4 and its now unplayable during the hours of 4pm - 12am. I get majour lag spikes every 1-2 minutes. Make the game basically unplayable now. Shame because I was a big FPS fan.

[Berealwith]

ok without getting technical. and why should i, a good ISP should provide you with a connection, and if you have a problem sort it without having to play a tennis match with, emails, telephone calls, newsgroup posts, and on here as a last resort.

I was a clan leader of a good clan i ran uber servers(admin level) and at one point we were ladder leaders in europe. I made the mistake from leaving Zen to go to VM, things were ok for a while.........

Then i went into VM Hell.......totally rubbish help. I had to stop my match play because of the terrible speeds. It went worse but i wont bore you

All i can say now is i left VM and have started gaming again and boy the pings are good and my kills are nearly back to where i was before VM started messing with thier networks.

I hope to be back fighting in the ladders as soon as i feel i am back on form. But it wont be with VM ever....ever....ever...ever

They totally ruined my gaming for over a year.......Why i stopped with them so long to try to sort it, i will never know. Never again

[Super_LEEDS]

I concur.

Seems ever since the "upgrade" went in, my pings have gone from 40 (to 100)!

Would rather be back on 4Mbit

[spidiweb7]

in the past week my pings in the evening have gone up big style !! i normally get 25-30 pings during the day but now im at 110-120 in the afternoons !!1 its carzy and its cod4 :(

[r5gtt]

Hi, I'm so glad that other people are experiencing this. It's only happened in the last 2 weeks or so. I initially put it down to router/modem getting hot with the weather but I was wrong and I'm so fed up with it that I searched google for answers till I found this forum! ;)

I'm on "the now" 10mb connection (used to be 4mb)


Its definately virgin doing something. Today I cam home from work (after 4pm) and played a little bit of Counter Strike source on my usual server (based in germany) and had my usual ping of 30-40. Now it's evening and suddenly the ping is forced to 100.

Exactly 100 or at the lowest 95. Other people are getting this same ping which means virgin are doing it but why??????

This happens every night and UK servers still show 30 ping unyet all german servers not just my usual one show 100.




Can you please try soemthing for me


Open command promt and type "ping www.bbc.co.uk" without the quotes

for that I get average time of 18ms...which is all very normal

But then type ping www.bfcclan.com and I get 100!



It's always at a certain time but I havnt narrowed it down enough to find the exact time..seems like 5 or 6pm? on wards till at least midnight.




What are we going to do? :erm:


Have a look at this screenshot to see what I mean. top 2 servers are obviously german and bottom 2 are Uk..and bear in mind the german ones are Usually only 10ms higher!

cs source ping screeny (http://img386.imageshack.us/img386/9765/pingsjh7.jpg)

[spidiweb7]

^^ i get exactly the same pings as that mate :( again happened within the last week or so !! damn annoying :(

[r5gtt]

yep its crazy, and definately not congestion as some people on here have suggested as it never gets any better or any worse its for a set period of time and they are 100 +/- 10% constantly

I was going to ring them but they obviosuly wont tell me what they are upto and it will just cost me a fortune on the phone :(


I can now confirm aswell that french servers are also coming up at 100ms

[dev]

i get pings of 100 to that bfcclan.com, however the ping is only ~30-40ms inside germany then hits 100 when it goes on to the lambdanet network, thus, pretty much out of VMs control:


6 44 ms 42 ms 13 ms nth-bb-b-so-300-0.network.virginmedia.net [212.43.162.214]
7 15 ms 24 ms 18 ms tele-ic-1-as0-0.network.virginmedia.net [62.253.184.2]
8 15 ms 23 ms 16 ms 193.159.225.237
9 36 ms 37 ms 46 ms d-ec1.D.DE.net.DTAG.DE [62.154.43.130]
10 101 ms 116 ms 99 ms dtag-gw-dus2.de.lambdanet.net [193.159.225.74]
11 99 ms 113 ms 112 ms FRA-3-eth200.de.lambdanet.net [217.71.96.114]
12 131 ms 135 ms 103 ms NUE-2-eth100.de.lambdanet.net [217.71.96.74]
13 101 ms 121 ms 118 ms NUE-1-pos200.de.lambdanet.net [217.71.96.42]
14 109 ms 112 ms 105 ms MUC-5-pos300.de.lambdanet.net [217.71.96.37]
15 105 ms 105 ms 106 ms InternetWire-MUC.de.lambdanet.net [217.71.104.78]
16 129 ms 124 ms 107 ms ge-6-1-vl61-r05-muc.internetwire.de [213.155.64.66]
17 104 ms 105 ms 107 ms redirect.partnergate.de [213.155.64.209]


for the ones in the cs:s image, the top left is <40ms until 2 hops from the server and that has left VM's network completely and arrived in france via cogent then it jumps to 90/100ms

similar story on the top right image, gets to germany <40ms, once in germany it spikes up to 100

[spidiweb7]

^^ yeah anything i get a 100 or more ping for goes through lambdanet :S

[r5gtt]

very strange then, just weird that its happened all of a sudden and only seems to be affecting virgin media customers? Some of which are playing COD4 on what are presumably UK servers?

[spidiweb7]

i think the lambdanet network is something to do with cogent so they are probs upgrading there network plus i swear it all used to go through level 3 so i dont know if virgin have switch from level3 to cogent or something ??

[dev]

there are usually multiple networks that you can go through to get to servers and VM customers are going in a different way obviously

[Super_LEEDS]

Its definately virgin doing something. Today I cam home from work (after 4pm) and played a little bit of Counter Strike source on my usual server (based in germany) and had my usual ping of 30-40. Now it's evening and suddenly the ping is forced to 100.

Exactly 100 or at the lowest 95. Other people are getting this same ping which means virgin are doing it but why??????

This happens every night and UK servers still show 30 ping unyet all german servers not just my usual one show 100.


Exact same for me! Its all the german servers that have these problems - somehow the ping is mostly always 100 yet a server in the UK has a ping of like 17. As above, maybe can't be VM's fault and is a coincidence this happened at the same time as my "upgrade".

Pinging bfcclan.com [213.155.64.209] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 213.155.64.209: bytes=32 time=105ms TTL=51
Reply from 213.155.64.209: bytes=32 time=104ms TTL=51
Reply from 213.155.64.209: bytes=32 time=107ms TTL=51
Reply from 213.155.64.209: bytes=32 time=113ms TTL=51

Here's a tracert to a typical server:

6 11 ms 11 ms 12 ms nth-bb-b-as2-0.network.virginmedia.net [62.253.185.101]
7 10 ms 11 ms 15 ms nth-bb-a-ae0-0.network.virginmedia.net [62.253.185.117]
8 32 ms 30 ms 29 ms fran-ic-1-so-710-0.network.virginmedia.net [212.43.162.230]
9 94 ms 93 ms 93 ms decix.upstream.de [80.81.192.166]
10 94 ms 95 ms 95 ms ki-services.de [62.111.124.46]
11 93 ms 93 ms 93 ms 195.66.83.20

[AmAtoL]

Same here, I've now got UK Online LLU for gaming as well as my VM 20 meg for the rest of the house.
Pings are now stable at 18 to my regular BF 2142 servers, which are about 200 miles away at a guess. The fastpath can drop a few but generally it is good.
If VM ever sort out/want to sort out their network I would switch back, but for now no chance.

Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600]

(C) Copyright 1985-2001 Microsoft Corp.
C:\Documents and Settings\Paul>ping 213.155.64.209
Pinging 213.155.64.209 with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 213.155.64.209: bytes=32 time=39ms TTL=54
Reply from 213.155.64.209: bytes=32 time=39ms TTL=54
Reply from 213.155.64.209: bytes=32 time=39ms TTL=54
Reply from 213.155.64.209: bytes=32 time=39ms TTL=54
Ping statistics for 213.155.64.209:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 39ms, Maximum = 39ms, Average = 39ms

C:\Documents and Settings\Paul>ping 213.155.64.209
Pinging 213.155.64.209 with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 213.155.64.209: bytes=32 time=38ms TTL=54
Reply from 213.155.64.209: bytes=32 time=38ms TTL=54
Reply from 213.155.64.209: bytes=32 time=38ms TTL=54
Reply from 213.155.64.209: bytes=32 time=38ms TTL=54
Ping statistics for 213.155.64.209:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 38ms, Maximum = 38ms, Average = 38ms
C:\Documents and Settings\Paul>

That's to your bfcclan server by way of a comparison.

[r5gtt]

Now that it's passed 11pm I'm able to get sensible pings again too. I guess tommorrow it will be fine in the day again aswell...just until it gets to about 5/6pm :(

[Super_LEEDS]

Same here. Back to normal now.

[psyfur]

Pings are the lowest priority packet, as such would be dropped or delayed at the first hint of congestion in the network.

Love it, gamers finish last! :D

[r5gtt]

Been playing today all was fine until around 4/4:30pm and now its 100 again.......... :/

[dev]

my advice: if its your server tell the hosts you're getting bad latency from one of their peers and get them to fix it, if its not your server, find another to play on

[r5gtt]

Out of interest, if it was say the lambda network (or another peer) where the problems arrise.

could it be that they are oversubscribed or they have some limits in place that are limiting traffic at those times from virgin or something along those lines? Could someone theerfore have had a falling out with virgin or something seeing as other ISP's dont seem to be suffering from the same problem?


I'm just trying to understand it a bit better :)

your right that I could find another server to play on but its funny that its also happening to people playing other games and other servers.


I suppose its the sort of problem that If it is another network at fault or limiting for whatever reason. It could just suddenly start working ok again aswell?

I guess I would be wasting my time even talking to virgin about it?

[dev]

lambda net could be oversubscribed / general congestion, limiting traffic from other ISPs is highly unlikely.

waste of time using the phone support definately, the people you'll get through to won't be able to help

may not be a waste of time asking on the newsgroups though, VM *may* be able to route the traffic via a different route but seeing as it goes onto another network before that lambda one it may not be possible or they may be unwilling to do so

[thetitletrack]

glad to see i'm not the own one experiencing this problem - i am unfortunately ex-eriencing these very high pings on UK servers. my clan has a german server and I get it there too, right enough.

don't really know what info i can show, if anyone wants anything to help corroborate this then lt me know how and i'll show you my stats/figures.

[Jamsta]

Playing TF2 yesterday I got 4-5ms ping to a UK hosted server.

I've hosted servers before (using Create Game) and got people connecting from as far away as the Czech Republic - they were getting 40-50ms pings.

VM is great for gaming.

It's entirely dependent on:

- The other server's speed/load
- The Link between VM and the server
- Your local router
- Your local network (is anything running, like torrents, iPlayer, etc)
- Your PC (is the CPU maxed out?)

This reply is in response to no-one in particular, just a casual observation.

[middlefinger]

did a ping test lastnight and mine is now back down to 20 :confused: this was done at 8pm and 9pm

[uk_jim]

in the past week my pings in the evening have gone up big style !! i normally get 25-30 pings during the day but now im at 110-120 in the afternoons !!1 its carzy and its cod4 :(

Hi Guys,
I have same ping problem on BF2. At EXACTLY 5.15pm my ping goes from 38ish up to 250 to 500.
I am with AOL. Been with em 10+ years no probs. Got 8mb braodband. All this started in March this year and I have phoned AOL a couple of times every week since then trying to sort it. Lost count how many times have changed router settings according to AOL techy guys/gals. They give me same old speil everytime even telling me I need to format my pc or buy a new one. WTF this pc was only 5 weeks old when problem started. Ive changed all I can, adsl filters cables leads etc. Now I aint a clue what to do?
I play on warfearclan server and guys there have helped but even they stumped with this problem.
Any help would be great.
Thank all
Jim :confused: