Eircom 2Mb ADSL - Lag While Playing CS

Sean^DCT4

Ok here it goes.

I have a broadband package with Eircom 2Mb Download/ 20k Upload.
While playing CS:S (counter strike source) I get an awful lot of lag/choke (reminds me of playing Quake on dialup).

The lag/choke spikes are between 15-50 which is really bad while playing. A lot of warping around etc.

I previously had the 3Mb Eircom BB package and there was no problems with that at all.

CS:S uses on average 15-20K Download and 5-8K Upload speeds during a game. Surely a 2Mb package should cover this without batting an eye-lid???


Steps I have taken to rectify the problem:

I have tried 3 different modems (with latest firmwares):
1x Netopia USB
1x US Robotics USB ADSL Modem
1x Wireless D-Link ADSL Router

I have completed a Virus and Spyware Deep Inspection scan with my AV (ZoneAlarm Security Suite) which took 12 hours and found <5 adware, nothing major.

I installed a Rootkit scanner which also found no hidden trojans in the rootkit.

I performed a Stress test using CS:S which eliminated Hardware problems, I got 93 FPS in the stress test.

I have installed new drivers for my NIC and video card + flashed the firmware on the modems/router.



I have rang Eircom technical support and they were useless.
I just got "yeah we've heard of a few hardcore gamers that aren't happy on the 2mb package and went for the 3mb one..."

I'm pissed off at the moment as <20k Down and <10K Upload during the game should be well covered by Eircom's 2mb package regardless of contention ratio. I live less than 1Km from the exchange!!!



Can anyone please suggest what I can do at this stage, other than changing BB provider? What is my legal standing here? Eircom advertise gaming on their ad's but I cannot play f-all.


Thanks,


Seany

Sean^DCT4

ISP Test

apeking

I have been having the same problems since saturday myself, pings up aroung 110 where last week the ywere 30,

Its a problem with eircom in my aera as two of my mates have the same thing.

Based in swords if ur around this aera too it might explain it

Sean^DCT4

apeking wrote:

I have been having the same problems since saturday myself, pings up aroung 110 where last week the ywere 30,

Its a problem with eircom in my aera as two of my mates have the same thing.

Based in swords if ur around this aera too it might explain it

I've been having this problem for months now.

I am living in Palmerstown less than 1Km from the exchange

rgfuller

2MB has 48-1 contention ratio - you'll probably find it's fine up to about 7pm then deteriorates until about 11pm (when others in the area are 'using' the internet), 3MB has 24-1 so there is less chance of the overall bandwidth being limited.

dylanpp

In peak times, if your exhange is over-subscribed you may experience lag issues. If you know what a net_graph is post a screen shot of it here when u have the problem. im guessing you have the problem after 7pm~~. open the console and type 'net_graph 1', then screenshot it.

btw - dont play source its muck

Sean^DCT4

dylanpp wrote:

In peak times, if your exhange is over-subscribed you may experience lag issues. If you know what a net_graph is post a screen shot of it here when u have the problem. im guessing you have the problem after 7pm~~. open the console and type 'net_graph 1', then screenshot it.

btw - dont play source its muck

Yes I know what net_graph is, hence where I was getting 15-50 choke from.
I have tried every combination of rates within CS:S to fix this.

cl_updaterate 20-100
cl_cmdrate 30-100
rate 15000-20000

Also, the servers I play on are 100 tick and nobody else has problems. Therefore the problem is definitely on my end.

BTW. CS < CS:S but we'll leave that discussion for another time

smokingman

I'm on the 2Meg deal as well and I've had crap service for over a week now.
My download speed has fluctuated from 230kbps to 340kbps with a QOS of roughly 20-odd percent. Was I over my download limit? Was there planned works going on that was due to finish soon?

I rang their "support" line and asked what the story was. I was asked to go to http://home.eircom.net/speedtest and so I did and it told me I had a download speed of nearly my 2Meg deal. I ran two other tests just after that from internetfrog.com and http://www.irishisptest.com/runmyspeed.php as well and those results were telling me I still had crap 230 kbps download speed. What did I learn here?, don't trust eircoms speed test - it tells you what your deal is - not your actual speed!

While talking to them I asked what the reason for that was, telling them that I was a sysadmin for another isp (true actually but not in the isp business as of last year) running my own tests and the guy had to ask his manager - who put me on hold for 3 minutes and hey presto, my line improved by the time he got back on to me. He asked me to run the test again and when I did, I had almost the full 2Meg on all tests. He seemed to take it easy then and say some rubbish about temporary problem but then I told him that while any value QOS below 97% is a joke for an ISP, I was still getting 22%!

He then said that there was work being done in my area and I asked him how long this was going on, was there a part of their site that could inform me of these planned works, when would they likely be finished etc, etc...
Every single question was greeted by an "I'm afraid I cannot guarantee dates or times sir, we cannot answer your question at this time."

No help whatso-bloody-ever!

That was twenty minutes ago and my service is back to the same crap level again....

Anyone know of how to escalate this to someone who gives a sh*t?

Ciarán_R

apeking wrote:

I have been having the same problems since saturday myself, pings up aroung 110 where last week the ywere 30,

Its a problem with eircom in my aera as two of my mates have the same thing.

Based in swords if ur around this aera too it might explain it

i am having the same problem since friday (im in the swords area too ;D). except my ping goes up to 400+ from 7pm til midnight.

i was on to eircom tech support, its just a waste of time. they make you do a "speed test" which is pointless, my upload and download rates are fine. its the latency to the servers thats ****ed. when i do "tracert" in cmd promt i get any where from 300-1500ms to my first hop. example:

C:\Documents and Settings\Ciarán>tracert www.jolt.co.uk

Tracing route to www.jolt.co.uk [82.133.85.65]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.1.254
2 586 ms 897 ms 980 ms b-ras1.srl.dublin.eircom.net [159.134.155.27]
3 10 ms 12 ms 10 ms pos12-3.corea.cra.dublin.eircom.net [83.71.112.161]
4 19 ms 19 ms 19 ms 83.71.112.198
5 29 ms 46 ms 51 ms te1-3.cr05.tn5.bb.pipex.net [195.66.224.29]
6 248 ms 243 ms 239 ms g1-1-6.ar01.tn5.bb.pipex.net [62.72.140.142]
7 21 ms 20 ms 19 ms ge-0-0-0-3801.jolt-gw.cust.pipex.net [212.241.241.14]
8 22 ms 20 ms 21 ms secure.jolt.co.uk [82.133.85.65]


and those are good pings from what i have been getting. anyway they said it could be connected to the outages in the malahide area and should be sorted "soon" this was on monday. either way its a joke it shouldnt be going on this long ><

Snaga

That traceroute looks fine. If the high latency continued and increased after the eircom BAS it worry - but is doesnt - it drops back to normal response times on subsequent hops. (The same goes for hop 6).

That just shows that the eircom BAS is deprioritising its responses to your pings as it has more important things to do (i.e. route your gaming traffic!).

Im not saying theres not a problem - I'm just saying that you are misunderstanding what that traceroute is showing you and that the traceroute shows nothing wrong at the time you performed it.

Try pinging 82.133.85.65 on its own (rather than tracing), if you are getting consistent responses of ~20ms-22ms then all looks well. It will be easier to catch real latency spiking this way too. If you notice it spiking a lot - then do a trace and it should look significantly different than the one you show above.

Ciarán_R

Snaga wrote:

That traceroute looks fine. If the high latency continued and increased after the eircom BAS id worry - but is doesnt - it drops back to normal response times on subsequent hops. (The same goes for hop 6).

That just shows that the eircom BAS is deprioritising its responses to your pings as it has more important things to do (i.e. route your gaming traffic!).

Im not saying theres not a problem - I'm just saying that you are misunderstanding what that traceroute is showing you and that the traceroute shows nothing wrong at the time you performed it.

what do you mean "just" deprioritizing my ping lol thats the whole problem when my first hop is 500+ im not going to get a constant ping to a server. but ye its 11pm now so the pings are getting better, but at 7/8pm all hops are 300+ with the first hop always being the worst. my ping is still 150 in a uk server at the moment tho

Snaga

Its only deprioritising the ping (ICMP request) to itself - not your pings to servers beyond it in the trace - this is normal behaviour for a piece of networking equipment and does not signify congestion or show latency problems to the end server. (If the latency was as high on the next and all subsequent hops - it would then signify a problem).

Try redoing it during peak time and it might give you a more useful trace that you could actually send to eircom support.

Virgil°

Having the exact same problem here.Been happening the past 5 days or so. Between the hours of about 6.30 to 11.30 or so i simply cant game online, same goes for a few people i know in the area.(Drogheda area).Rather frustrating as those are nearly the only hours available to me for games, dl'ing etc......

So i rang the Broadband support line and after much p***ing about was told to take the eircom speedtest which showed my speeds at a regular rate. So they said that they wouldnt escalate the situation. I have since tried many online broadband speed tests......which....surprise surprise shows my net at a dire speed.
http://resources.zdnet.co.uk/speedtest/
Results varying from 250k-768k on a 2meg line.
Ive since sent a stern email to them about this and im expecting a response today.

Sean^DCT4

Sean^DCT4 wrote:

Ok here it goes.

I have a broadband package with Eircom 2Mb Download/ 20k Upload.
While playing CS:S (counter strike source) I get an awful lot of lag/choke (reminds me of playing Quake on dialup).

The lag/choke spikes are between 15-50 which is really bad while playing. A lot of warping around etc.

I previously had the 3Mb Eircom BB package and there was no problems with that at all.

CS:S uses on average 15-20K Download and 5-8K Upload speeds during a game. Surely a 2Mb package should cover this without batting an eye-lid???


Steps I have taken to rectify the problem:

I have tried 3 different modems (with latest firmwares):
1x Netopia USB
1x US Robotics USB ADSL Modem
1x Wireless D-Link ADSL Router

I have completed a Virus and Spyware Deep Inspection scan with my AV (ZoneAlarm Security Suite) which took 12 hours and found <5 adware, nothing major.

I installed a Rootkit scanner which also found no hidden trojans in the rootkit.

I performed a Stress test using CS:S which eliminated Hardware problems, I got 93 FPS in the stress test.

I have installed new drivers for my NIC and video card + flashed the firmware on the modems/router.



I have rang Eircom technical support and they were useless.
I just got "yeah we've heard of a few hardcore gamers that aren't happy on the 2mb package and went for the 3mb one..."

I'm pissed off at the moment as <20k Down and <10K Upload during the game should be well covered by Eircom's 2mb package regardless of contention ratio. I live less than 1Km from the exchange!!!



Can anyone please suggest what I can do at this stage, other than changing BB provider? What is my legal standing here? Eircom advertise gaming on their ad's but I cannot play f-all.


Thanks,


Seany

I suppose I should call Eircom and demand action, or escalate the call.. Can't see this going to far judging from the previous reports from dealings with customer support.

Skittle

Do a tracert to your favour server and see how many hops and the latency between each hop you are going through. Also use a program like WinMTR and get it to ping your favourite server continuously for say a minute. See what the Average and Worst reported values are. Increase the interval from 1 second or else you'll create your own lag

Ciarán_R

my connection is fine now. (in the swords area) xD almost a week without gaming, i don't know how i lasted.

Edit: nevermind, i spoke too soon

Tracing route to www.jolt.co.uk [82.133.85.65]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.1.254
2 593 ms 732 ms 687 ms b-ras1.srl.dublin.eircom.net [159.134.155.27]
3 232 ms 230 ms 230 ms 159.134.127.85
4 22 ms 21 ms 21 ms pos0-0.corea.thn.london.eircom.net [83.71.113.102]
5 203 ms 213 ms 217 ms te1-3.cr05.tn5.bb.pipex.net [195.66.224.29]
6 234 ms 232 ms 232 ms g2-48-5.ar01.tn5.bb.pipex.net [62.72.140.14]
7 23 ms 21 ms 22 ms ge-0-0-0-3801.jolt-gw.cust.pipex.net [212.241.241.14]
8 249 ms 250 ms 254 ms secure.jolt.co.uk [82.133.85.65]

Trace complete.

it started at 8 now, better then 6 i guess

Skittle

Looks like either noise on your line or congestion at the exchange.

apeking

I am still having the same problem too in the swords aera,

Rang eircom and they told me it was a known issue and would be sorted within 48hrs, that was on monday :rolleyes:

Its so annoying paying for a service that i cant use

Sean^DCT4

Since I am on the 2Mb Eircom BB package. With a contention ratio of 48:1 are people here saying that I cannot play a game that requires ~20k Down and ~10k Up without lag?

When I am downloading, no matter what day or time it is I always get the full speed i.e. 215k from the likes of rapidshare, microsoft, etc.



Seán