Ping good, connection quality bad

[Turkey Machine]

I race cars online regularly with Grand Prix Legends and NASCAR Racing 2003's GTP mod. Currently I'm connected via the 2Mbit ntl:250 modem from the previous tenants, I shall be connecting the new modem with my connection tomorrow, so here's hoping. But at the moment, the connection seems fine, and then in NR2003/GTP the quality spikes so badly it's unraceable! Online with 20 other cars, it's a big problem because I'm a hazard to myself and others, teammates included, and it doesn't go away. The only way to cure it is to restart the computer or exit NR2003 safely and wait to go back in, but if I force it to quit, it locks the computer.

Everything else is fine, browsing the internet works normally, but what the hell could be making this happen? My racing's quite important to me, I'd rather not have to cancel my Virgin broadband and go with ADSL, even though it might be better...

[Turkey Machine]

After a VOIP discussion in Ventrilo with a fellow teammate and racer, we've narrowed it down to packet loss. Quality shows how many packets actually get to your connection, ping is just how fast they do. Is packet loss worthy of a call to tech support?

And another thing. We have 2 BT terminals in our flat. I paid for a Virgin phone line, and received a quickstart kit because I'm changing the number and keeping what I have. I'm assuming it should (I received the kit 2 weeks ago) be switched on now, correct? I haven't actually connected a phone up to see whether I get a dialing tone or not because I don't have one! Asda here we come! :D

[Kiryu]

Hi,

Try running the "Line Quality Testing" on http://www.dslreports.com/tools

You may need to register on the website first but its free.

This is my ping plot with packet loss on VM 20MB:

http://www.dslreports.com/linequality/6483a8b7a789/2446500

[Noggo]

Get yourself Ping Plotter from:
http://www.pingplotter.com/download.html
(The Standard version. 30 Trail, but still works afterwards)

Do a traceroute to the actual games server IP address and see where the problem lies. If you save an image and post it here. Attached is a ping plotter image to give you some idea of what a bad connection looks like. Plus you might want to change some of the default settings in the bottom left hand corner, picture attached of settings.

Also if you post your modem signal levels here, some kind person will tell you if there's a problem with your modem or not.
http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/12/26006-cable-modem-signal-levels.html

[Martyn]

ok i just done mine.....

http://www.dslreports.com/linequality/98b363695a45/2446619

[Noggo]

It's all well and good doing the dslreports.com line quality test, but the servers are in the West / East coast of the US. I'm assuming the racing games servers are going to be in UK or as least Europe (can imagine playing a racing game with a 100+ms ping, you'll be in the wall more time that on the race track), so a test to the US shows us nowt apart from the quality or lack of to the US from the UK peak times.

[Turkey Machine]

Correct, the server's in the UK, not far from where I live actually! A tracert to that server is all well and good, but it's a bit of a moot point until I connect up the new modem and activate it (tomorrow morning, with luck). Hopefully, it'll be better. Pinging it for about 15 minutes or more would be worth doing, but I dunno what the server's running at the moment! :D

When the quality goes sky-high, the game slows to a crawl, so I have to park it because I'm a liability to others. The framerate's fine, but if it's not receiving packets, then it's a major issue.

[Kiryu]

if you noticed, it checks for packet loss from the client side all the way up to US East/West coast. Still is useful as you can see the UK side of things which may affect you on the VM network. My results as you can see above are very stable but seeing i have 2% packet loss in my area would explain slightly higher than usual pings times and sub 20Mb speeds recently.

As for Noggo suggestion, to test individual game serves, ping plotter is the better option to isolate whether it may be the game server or your equipment that may have the problem. :)