How much latency warrants a complaint?

runswithascript

I complained to Irish Broadband about being disconnected from gaming servers every few minutes due to latency. Their 'engineers' came and redirected my antenna towards a different highsite. They said my problems were due to a tree blocking the line of sight to the antenna I had been using and they could see my connection varying from excellent to poor regularly. Apparently nobody could have foreseen that a winter tree would eventually leaf

In the last 15 or so minutes since they left I have been disconnected three times from a gaming server with the error message "autokicked after exceeding 120ms latency limit" and when I log back on it is rare that I'm not the only person who has been disconnected although I do see others at different times being autokicked.

Pinging -A the second traceroute hop to google.ie over several minutes returns:

--- my.ibb.ip ping statistics ---
2711 packets transmitted, 2662 received, 1% packet loss, time 543976ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 3.477/43.438/232.030/33.665 ms, pipe 2, ipg/ewma 200.729/31.461 ms

I notice the average there is 43 which is far from 120ms but the maximum 232ms. Maybe I should be testing Irish Broadband's ability to route traffic from my home out to an address which is not on their network rather than just their ability to route traffic from my home to them? I know they cannot be responsible for things outside of their network and other factors must be taken into consideration but if consistently I'm getting poor results surely this implies a problem on their end? Is having more than 120mss (232ms max on last test but I don't know how often) of latency on a regular basis abnormal and unacceptable? Perhaps the server's policy of autokicking users with said latency is too demanding? If the former, what latency is acceptable?

lmimmfn

any substandard service warrents a complaint, but theres no minimum guaranteed service for broadband so generally complaints fall on deaf ears. Ive given up complaining

I can get latencies of 2000ms on my fixed line broadband lmao

MunsterCycling

IBB don't prioritise ping packet on the network so the results can be a little misleading that said the latency you are getting while not good is perfectly acceptable from a service provision point of view. IBB is not a great choice for gaming in general (there will be exceptions) that is the nature of wireless broadband provision in Ireland. ;(

Shiny

120ms sounds about right for IBB. (It is wireless remember)

You only see the likes of 40ms with adsl connections.

zonEEE

No you should be getting normal pings with irish broadband. Im on a fixed wireless as well. i get like 20-40 ping but sometimes it can be really **** and spike to like 200.

Whatsthisabout

In general most isps Service threshold relates to there download speed. Although consistently high pings can cause slow speeds, spikes will usually not affect it.

As a result most isps will tell you tough in so many words unless your download rate is drastically affected.

One test you could run is to do a tracert to the ip address of the server you are gaming on. This will give you every hop on the paths ip address. The Irish Boradband ones will probably be fairly obvious and usually once you have left there network is usually fairly obvious by the names too.

What you can do with this information is to see which hop the pings get really high. If on IBs side you might have cause for complaint if after the IB network it is unlikely they will even entertain a complaint.

PogMoThoin

Did you check you have line of sight to the AP? This is most important and you'll have nothing but trouble if you don't. Might be ok 2day, but on a windy day it'll get a whole lot worse. Trees aren't at full bloom yet either

runswithascript

Due to my difficulties I haven't attempted to use bittorrent while gaming. Will this even affect my ping if I limit the client to 256/384kBps or would I be wrong to presume that wouldn't equate to having a 1mbit and a 2mbit line for my intents and purposes?

lmimmfn wrote: »

theres no minimum guaranteed service for broadband

That is incorrect, I'm just not sure if it encompasses latency or if it is still relevant while not being specifically outlined in the contract.

MunsterCycling wrote: »

IBB don't prioritise ping packet on the network so the results can be a little misleading that said the latency you are getting while not good is perfectly acceptable from a service provision point of view. IBB is not a great choice for gaming in general.

Whatsthisabout wrote: »

In general most isps Service threshold relates to there download speed. Although consistently high pings can cause slow speeds, spikes will usually not affect it.

As a result most isps will tell you tough in so many words unless your download rate is drastically affected.

Unfortunately I had no choice but they do profess their service is perfectly acceptable gaming. From http://www.irishbroadband.ie/products_display.php?id=2:

Breeze 3Mb is the product of choice for Home Users who want more speed to download larger files, gaming, online shopping, booking holidays and all this for only €48.40 (incl. VAT) with Free installation.

strongr wrote: »

No you should be getting normal pings with irish broadband. Im on a fixed wireless as well. i get like 20-40 ping but sometimes it can be really **** and spike to like 200.

I do get 20-40 and less at times but it's the higher pings that prohibit the duration of each gaming session. Can you do a traceroute to an internet address for me and then ping -A it for a few minutes and post the results?

Whatsthisabout wrote: »

One test you could run is to do a tracert to the ip address of the server you are gaming on. This will give you every hop on the paths ip address

It varies so much:

laeg@skyrocket:~$ traceroute 212.187.247.230
traceroute to 212.187.247.230 (212.187.247.230), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets
 1  KE01-fe-0-0-1-177-newbridge.irishbroadband.ie (87.192.85.65)  115.116 ms * *
 2  DN05-ge-1-3-0-11-esb.irishbroadband.ie (87.192.76.5)  115.012 ms  115.011 ms  115.000 ms
 3  DN07-ae0-2-ibis-gw-1.irishbroadband.ie (89.127.197.1)  114.987 ms * *
 4  * * *
 5  * * *
 6  * * ge-10-0.ipcolo2.London1.Level3.net (4.68.116.10)  53.088 ms
 7  * * *
 8  212.187.247.230 (212.187.247.230)  90.522 ms  90.577 ms *

laeg@skyrocket:~$ traceroute 212.187.247.230
traceroute to 212.187.247.230 (212.187.247.230), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets
 1  * * *
 2  DN05-ge-1-3-0-11-esb.irishbroadband.ie (87.192.76.5)  11.854 ms  11.886 ms  11.891 ms
 3  DN07-ae0-2-ibis-gw-1.irishbroadband.ie (89.127.197.1)  11.893 ms  11.894 ms *
 4  * * *
 5  * * *
 6  * * *
 7  212.187.247.230 (212.187.247.230)  85.322 ms  85.334 ms  85.342 ms

If and when I complain I will probably have the bad luck that any traceroute I do at the time or they do for me (if that's possible) will come back with some of the better results.

PogMoThoin wrote: »

Did you check you have line of sight to the AP?

Although the direction is evident from the antenna I'm not exactly sure where to look or which structure is the hotel but the technicians who called by yesterday were moving it because of a tree blocking the LOS on the old high site so one would hope they wouldn't replicate the problem.

RangeR

Get this or [URL="htp://www.pingplotter.com"]this[/URL] or both.

Free 30 day evaluation, I think. I purchased both. I had to when I was with IBB 3 or 4 years ago. They wouldn't believe me when I told them the issues I had. I then purchased these two products. Ping Plotter produces screen shots which I sent to IBB. Soon after that I had latency of 7ms. This lasted 2 or 3 weeks then went to ****e again.

Run these programs constantly for a few days. It will graph your latency over time. Take screen shots and send it to IBB and don't accept any crap off them.

zorch

Your local Mast is CIE Newbridge
Can you see it clearly?

Rattlehead_ie

Hi LA3G,

Are you using any type of router or hardware between the IBB equipment and your client (PCs) if so I would prob recommend that you plug directly into the equipment 1st before you ring their tech support as they will not support your connection via your LAN e.g via a CISCO for example.
If you are using any type of router hardware between your PC clients and the IBB equipment make 100% sure that YOUR equipment is hard set to 100Mbs Full-Duplex or whatever your equipment is capable of pushing.

2711 packets transmitted, 2662 received, 1% packet loss, time 543976ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 3.477/43.438/232.030/33.665 ms, pipe 2, ipg/ewma 200.729/31.461 ms

Going on that and that alone I would say you have a pretty good connection. 2711 pings with only 1% packet loss and an avg of 43.4ms for latency. i dont get that on BT DSL ffs. That being said god only knows where that "latency" or 1% came from. Could be from IBB, but could just as much be coming from ClanServers (which is on level3)

3 DN07-ae0-2-ibis-gw-1.irishbroadband.ie (89.127.197.1) 11.893 ms 11.894 ms *
4 * * *
5 * * *
6 * * *
7 212.187.247.230 (212.187.247.230) 85.322 ms 85.334 ms 85.342 ms

There is another thing that points it away from being an IBB issue the 4,5,6 th hops are all *** now this means either
1) They are not responding (unlikely as you eventually reach the destination)
2) These hops are busy at the moment as most ISPs and carriers have their routers setup NOT to respond to silly ol traceroutes and pings when they are say above 80% CPU usage or say 90% traffic capacity as it is just a wate of badwidth and CPU time.

runswithascript

IrishTLR wrote: »

Get this or [URL="htp://www.pingplotter.com"]this[/URL] or both.

Thanks, I'd be surprised if they won't run under WINE but I may find something better linux native anyway. It would be great to have evidence to present to them when complaining if that is in fact what I do

zorch wrote: »

Your local Mast is CIE Newbridge
Can you see it clearly?

It can't be as I live nowhere near there and the guy told me it was the Burlington Hotel on Leeson Street in Dublin? I'm in a 6 storey building but surely I can't have a LOS to newbridge! Is there some reason a Dublin mast would appear to be using the Newbridge IP?

Rattlehead_ie wrote: »

Are you using any type of router or hardware between the IBB equipment and your client

I'm not and I should have clarified this already, my bad. Cable runs from my NIC to a PSU and then to the alvarion antenna which I think is using 802.11b.

Rattlehead_ie wrote: »

i dont get that on BT DSL ffs.

What is your max ping? If you play games do you run into any similar difficulties? I'll have to do some sort of sustained ping analysis like IrishLTR suggested above.

Rattlehead_ie wrote: »

There is another thing that points it away from being an IBB issue the 4,5,6 th hops are all *** now this means either

How exactly does this point away from Irish Broadband? Give it to me like I'm a 4 year old

Also I don't know how relevant this is or if it will help with identifying the problem but those asterisks jump around position on the hops everytime I traceroute. What I pasted are just two snapshots.

RangeR

I didn't know you were running Linux, my bad. If, as you say, are running nothing between your PC and IBB connection, the first thing I would do is to run anti virus and anti malware to check for infection.

If you aren't running some sort of descent firewall, you are asking for trouble. Even though you are running Linux.

Run Wireshark too, to see if you are send / receiving internet packets, when you "know" your machine is doing nothing. I did this a few weels ago and saw my PC sending millions of SMTP packets. First time I've been a SPAM zombie but cleared it up pretty quickly with great assistance from the relevant forum here on Boards.

Always run a Hard Firewall on your internet connection. They are not that expensive.

runswithascript

IrishTLR wrote: »

If, as you say, are running nothing between your PC and IBB connection, the first thing I would do is to run anti virus and anti malware to check for infection.

That's really not an issue with linux Here's why...

IrishTLR wrote: »

If you aren't running some sort of descent firewall, you are asking for trouble. Even though you are running Linux.

The firewall I'm using is called Firestarter which is basically just a GUI frontend for IP tables and for the inbound policy I have only one port whitelisted for BitTorrent.

IrishTLR wrote: »

Always run a Hard Firewall on your internet connection. They are not that expensive.

I was under the impression that a hard firewall/router was obsolete in my case because I only have one node (my single PC) hooked up to my connection and security would be covered enough by iptables. I'll research it all the same, thanks.

PogMoThoin

IrishTLR wrote: »

I didn't know you were running Linux, my bad. If, as you say, are running nothing between your PC and IBB connection, the first thing I would do is to run anti virus and anti malware to check for infection.

If you aren't running some sort of descent firewall, you are asking for trouble. Even though you are running Linux.

Bullshít, No need for an antivirus or firewall on linux, there are virtually no viruses, not affected by malware either. Your talkin out your árse.

marchanlon

PogMoThoin wrote: »

Bullshít, No need for an antivirus or firewall on linux, there are virtually no viruses, not affected by malware either. Your talkin out your árse.

There are however a number of exploits that can be used to get root and as every Linux user knows... when they've got root, you're ****ed. Set up at least some firewall!

runswithascript

marchanlon wrote: »

Set up at least some firewall!

To clarify you are referring to a necessity for a hard firewall contained in a router or another physical device beside my box as opposed to my current setup of just using iptables which is a soft firewall?

marchanlon

LA3G wrote: »

To clarify you are referring to a necessity for a hard firewall contained in a router or another physical device beside my box as opposed to my current setup of just using iptables which is a soft firewall?

Apologies, didn't see you were already running a firewall on your box, was just irritated by PogMoThoin's advice. Iptables should be fine.

PogMoThoin

marchanlon wrote: »

Apologies, didn't see you were already running a firewall on your box, was just irritated by PogMoThoin's advice. Iptables should be fine.

I knew a little more about the OP than i let on in this thread, from here I knew he/she was running Ubuntu. In Ubuntu all ports are blocked by default. Maybe I should have said Ubuntu instead of linux to be clearer

marchanlon

PogMoThoin wrote: »

I knew a little more about the OP than i let on in this thread, from here I knew he/she was running Ubuntu. In Ubuntu all ports are blocked by default. Maybe I should have said Ubuntu instead of linux to be clearer

Thats fair enough but just concerned someone else would read this thread and say "Oh, I have Linux, I don't need a firewall".

runswithascript

Some of the #cisco kids on freenode actually think I should have a physical firewall purely for security as well but anyway this is kind of getting off the issue...

Rattlehead_ie

LA3G wrote: »

I'm not and I should have clarified this already, my bad. Cable runs from my NIC to a PSU and then to the alvarion antenna which I think is using 802.11b.

What type of NIC are you using, you say ur on a Linux box whats the manufacture of that NIC, Can you set that equipment to be 100Mbs Full Duplex and run traceroutes again? Your gateway address on your NIC is 87.192.85.66

LA3G wrote: »

What is your max ping? If you play games do you run into any similar difficulties? I'll have to do some sort of sustained ping analysis like IrishLTR suggested above.

Ive had ping times to UK servers anywhere from 28ms - 3210ms on DSL usually on a sunday!

LA3G wrote: »

How exactly does this point away from Irish Broadband? Give it to me like I'm a 4 year old

Ive just seen the * * * between a spot on the IBB network. As I explained the only reason you see these * rather than something like 25ms 30 ms 19ms
is because of 2 things the router is dead OR its too busy and not replacing to your requests.thats all

LA3G wrote: »

Also I don't know how relevant this is or if it will help with identifying the problem but those asterisks jump around position on the hops everytime I traceroute. What I pasted are just two snapshots.

As above I didnt realise there were some apearences on the IBB network, but its just something to look out for not a major concern or issue.
When does this latency usually happen?As in does it happen in the evening, day time, night, morning etc?

runswithascript

This post took a long time to compile because I'm learning as I go

Rattlehead_ie wrote: »

What type of NIC are you using, you say ur on a Linux box whats the manufacture of that NIC, Can you set that equipment to be 100Mbs Full Duplex and run traceroutes again? Your gateway address on your NIC is 87.192.85.66

laeg@skyrocket:~$ sudo lshw -class network
*-network
description: Ethernet interface
product: 82562V 10/100 Network Connection
vendor: Intel Corporation
physical id: 19
bus info: pci@0000:00:19.0
logical name: eth0
version: 02
serial: 00:19:d1:72:c7:db
size: 100MB/s
capacity: 100MB/s
width: 32 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: pm msi bus_master cap_list ethernet physical tp 10bt 10bt-fd 100bt 100bt-fd autonegotiation
configuration: autonegotiation=on broadcast=yes driver=e1000 driverversion=7.3.20-k2-NAPI duplex=half firmware=1.1-2 ip=my.ibb.ip latency=0 link=yes module=e1000 multicast=yes port=twisted pair speed=100MB/s

laeg@skyrocket:~$ sudo mii-tool
eth0: no autonegotiation, 100baseTx-HD, link ok

laeg@skyrocket:~$ sudo mii-tool -F 100baseTx-FD
laeg@skyrocket:~$ sudo mii-tool
eth0: 100 Mbit, full duplex, link ok

Notice the connection before I modified it was 100baseTx but now it's just 100Mbit, should I be concerned?

laeg@skyrocket:~$ traceroute 212.187.247.230
traceroute to 212.187.247.230 (212.187.247.230), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets
 1  KE01-fe-0-0-1-177-newbridge.irishbroadband.ie (87.192.85.65)  78.992 ms  79.831 ms  80.859 ms
 2  DN05-ge-1-3-0-11-esb.irishbroadband.ie (87.192.76.5)  81.239 ms  83.973 ms *
 3  * * *
 4  * * *
 5  * * *
 6  * ge-10-1.ipcolo2.London1.Level3.net (4.68.116.74)  106.161 ms ge-10-0.ipcolo2.London1.Level3.net (4.68.116.10)  85.838 ms
 7  212.187.247.230 (212.187.247.230)  48.050 ms * *
laeg@skyrocket:~$ traceroute 212.187.247.230
traceroute to 212.187.247.230 (212.187.247.230), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets
 1  * * *
 2  DN05-ge-1-3-0-11-esb.irishbroadband.ie (87.192.76.5)  121.864 ms  121.860 ms  121.850 ms
 3  * * *
 4  213.242.106.57 (213.242.106.57)  126.694 ms  126.705 ms *
 5  * * *
 6  * * ge-10-1.ipcolo2.London1.Level3.net (4.68.116.74)  119.635 ms
 7  212.187.247.230 (212.187.247.230)  109.928 ms  98.581 ms  106.551 ms
laeg@skyrocket:~$ traceroute 212.187.247.230
traceroute to 212.187.247.230 (212.187.247.230), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets
 1  KE01-fe-0-0-1-177-newbridge.irishbroadband.ie (87.192.85.65)  58.490 ms  58.456 ms *
 2  DN05-ge-1-3-0-11-esb.irishbroadband.ie (87.192.76.5)  49.988 ms  49.987 ms  49.977 ms
 3  * * *
 4  * * *
 5  * * *
 6  * * ge-10-0.ipcolo2.London1.Level3.net (4.68.116.10)  141.404 ms
 7  212.187.247.230 (212.187.247.230)  103.721 ms * *
laeg@skyrocket:~$ traceroute 212.187.247.230
traceroute to 212.187.247.230 (212.187.247.230), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets
 1  * * *
 2  DN05-ge-1-3-0-11-esb.irishbroadband.ie (87.192.76.5)  33.180 ms  33.529 ms  33.523 ms
 3  DN07-ae0-2-ibis-gw-1.irishbroadband.ie (89.127.197.1)  33.529 ms  33.519 ms *
 4  * * *
 5  * * *
 6  * * *
 7  212.187.247.230 (212.187.247.230)  39.715 ms  39.708 ms  39.679 ms

Why is the gateway address you've said is for my NIC different than the one I have set in network settings but the same as the first hop on my traceroutes?

Oh and I lost my connection to the internet completely today for about 10 minutes 3 or 4 times which contributed to the 15 or so times I got disconnected from the gaming server which I attempted to use for no more than 2 hours altogether.

gerryo

LA3G wrote: »

Oh and I lost my connection to the internet completely today for about 10 minutes 3 or 4 times which contributed to the 15 or so times I got disconnected from the gaming server which I attempted to use for no more than 2 hours altogether.

I have a similar setup to you (IBB + Ubuntu).
I was (am) plagued with random disconnects last week, appears not so bad this week, but never can tell when it will happen again.

My pings are also high, never below 70 mS to Google & also quite high to the highsite. Times vary a lot, due (I believe) to a non LOS connection.
Also, others have mentioned ICMP traffic is not prioritised on IBB.

I would not attempt gaming on this connection, it is not good enough, especially if servers are outside the country.

I normally use a hardware router + firewall (Zoom), but took it out this week to use Linux + Wireshark in an attempt to diagnose the random disconnects.

I use IPTables, with many rules, don't think this really matters too much.

One thing i used to do when using the hardware router was to have a single machine in the DMZ, it did make a difference for some connections. This does expose the DMZ machine to the internet = no protection.

This probably won't help with pings, however.

Has your connection LOS to the highsite?
If not, this might be your problem, as I know somepeople who have LOS & get better (lower & with less variability) than I do, to the same highsite.

Rattlehead_ie

Why is the gateway address you've said is for my NIC different than the one I have set in network settings but the same as the first hop on my traceroutes?

Im not sure what you mean here?If you are directly connected to the IBB POE unit, you should have a
IP Address
Subnet Mark
Default Gateway
set on your PC Ubuntu NIC? is the default gateway you have on your NIC (87.192.85.65) the same as the traceroute (87.192.85.65) dont mind the newbrdige thingie?

RangeR

PogMoThoin wrote: »

Bullshít, No need for an antivirus or firewall on linux, there are virtually no viruses, not affected by malware either. Your talkin out your árse.

Well, I guess you got out of the wrong side of bed. Apology accepted.

FruitLover

Any problems with a connection that affects your intended use of said connection is grounds for complaint (what have you got to lose, anyway?)

Shiny wrote: »

120ms sounds about right for IBB. (It is wireless remember)

There's no reason why the fact that it's a wireless connection should imply high latency.

MunsterCycling wrote: »

IBB don't prioritise ping packet on the network so the results can be a little misleading

You've the wrong end of the stick - if an ISP does prioritize ICMP echo requests/replies then you're getting misleading results. Online gaming generally uses UDP for communication. If you're pinging a server and getting an RTT of ~60ms, then that's information isn't much use to you if the UDP equivalent takes ~100ms.

PogMoThoin

I still suspect non line of sight. Get to the reciever and check what its looking at, see if there are trees in the way.

No reason for there to be more latency just cos its wireless.Wireless can often have less latency than dsl.

watty

Nothing to do with Wireless or NLOS/LOS as such. But technology. Some Wireless needs LOS and some not. Depends on Frequency.

latency depends on technology. DOCSIS & Flash-OFDM similar or better than DSL (eircom retail "bitstream" has nearly twice the latency of LLU DSL, I think because of Interleaving, but I could be wrong). CDMA technology like Ripwave (Near LOS) or 3G/HSDPA (no LOS needed) can be 120ms to 2000ms! i.e. CDMA systems are typically poorer and latency increases on CDMA as users are added.

runswithascript

I rang them earlier and they said they were changing a refresh value on my connection from 5000 to 2000 which apparently is what they do for their VOIP customers. He said to ring back if there's no change. I haven't had much to see if it has made any difference yet.

gerryo wrote: »

I would not attempt gaming on this connection, it is not good enough, especially if servers are outside the country.

They do advertise Breeze 3Mb as a gaming package with nothing in small print or parenthesis about limitations. World of Warcraft for instance has a European server as opposed to an Irish one and I wouldn't be surprised if this was the case for most big games. There are of course games like Counter-Strike: Source which allow anybody anywhere to setup a server but again the word they used was 'gaming' which means gaming in general.

gerryo wrote: »

Has your connection LOS to the highsite?

PogMoThoin wrote: »

I still suspect non line of sight. Get to the reciever and check what its looking at, see if there are trees in the way.

I was just up on the roof and although I can see the top half of many buildings in the distance where the antenna is facing and a huge mast dwarfing all the structures below I don't know if this is the Burlington Hotel mast.

Rattlehead_ie wrote: »

Im not sure what you mean here?If you are directly connected to the IBB POE unit, you should have a
IP Address
Subnet Mark
Default Gateway
set on your PC Ubuntu NIC? is the default gateway you have on your NIC (87.192.85.65) the same as the traceroute (87.192.85.65) dont mind the newbrdige thingie?

The gateway I have set in Ubuntu Network Settings now is 87.192.92.129 but even before Irish Broadband changed my IP because of the new highsite it was 87.192.85.66, not 87.192.85.65. Traceroute still shows 87.192.85.65 as the first hop while other operations show my gateway as 87.192.92.128 which is also a digit off. *Edit - it's probably just the different IPs on the in and out interface ports I'm using on the router though I would have thought I would always see the port I connect to

laeg@skyrocket:~$ traceroute www.google.com
 traceroute to www.google.com (66.249.93.104), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets
  1  KE01-fe-0-0-1-177-newbridge.irishbroadband.ie (87.192.85.65)  28.214 ms  28.493 ms  29.240 ms
  2  DN05-ge-1-3-0-11-esb.irishbroadband.ie (87.192.76.5)  31.160 ms  34.811 ms *
  3  * * *
  4  * * *
  5  * * *
  6  * * *
  7  * * *
  8  209.85.255.13 (209.85.255.13)  43.789 ms 72.14.233.77 (72.14.233.77)  43.843 ms 209.85.255.137 (209.85.255.137)  43.845 ms
  9  66.249.94.54 (66.249.94.54)  43.847 ms  43.848 ms *
 10  ug-in-f104.google.com (66.249.93.104)  28.233 ms  28.133 ms  28.070 ms
 laeg@skyrocket:~$ ip route show
 87.192.92.128/26 dev eth0  proto kernel  scope link  src my.ibb.ip
 169.254.0.0/16 dev eth0  scope link  metric 1000
 default via 87.192.92.129 dev eth0  metric 100
 laeg@skyrocket:~$ route -n
 Kernel IP routing table
 Destination     Gateway         Genmask         Flags Metric Ref    Use Iface
 87.192.92.128   0.0.0.0         255.255.255.192 U     0      0        0 eth0
 169.254.0.0     0.0.0.0         255.255.0.0     U     1000   0        0 eth0
 0.0.0.0         87.192.92.129   0.0.0.0         UG    100    0        0 eth0

FruitLover wrote: »

Any problems with a connection that affects your intended use of said connection is grounds for complaint (what have you got to lose, anyway?)

I want to know if I have any grounds to retort if they say something like "that's normal", "it's the same as everybody else", "that's the best we can do unless you want to upgrade", "the server kicking users for having latency higher than 120ms is too demanding", "we have no record of any disconnects on your service" etc.

BostonB

lmimmfn wrote: »

any substandard service warrents a complaint, but theres no minimum guaranteed service for broadband so generally complaints fall on deaf ears. Ive given up complaining

I can get latencies of 2000ms on my fixed line broadband lmao

Not that it helps. But I have problems with latency with my NTL. Mainly at peak times. So I expect its contention issues for me.

zonEEE

LA3G wrote: »

I do get 20-40 and less at times but it's the higher pings that prohibit the duration of each gaming session. Can you do a traceroute to an internet address for me and then ping -A it for a few minutes and post the results?

Tracert to a uk counter stike source server

C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator>tracert 193.93.44.47

Tracing route to 193.93.44.47 over a maximum of 30 hops

1 1 ms 1 ms 1 ms 192.168.1.1
2 2 ms 1 ms 1 ms 88.151.81.1
3 3 ms 3 ms 2 ms c3-v9-so.fastcom.ie [83.245.74.14]
4 4 ms 4 ms 3 ms c4-v8-so.fastcom.ie [83.245.74.34]
5 774 ms 23 ms 7 ms s1-v7-so.fastcom.ie [83.245.74.29]
6 461 ms 242 ms 163 ms r2-v6-so.fastcom.ie [83.245.74.37]
7 166 ms 233 ms 19 ms mm3078.dublin1.eu.level3.net [212.187.194.65]
8 244 ms * 363 ms so-4-1-0.bbr1.London1.Level3.net [4.68.128.113]

9 409 ms 236 ms 151 ms ae-11-53.car1.London1.Level3.net [4.68.116.79]
10 631 ms 417 ms 640 ms unknown.Level3.net [212.113.11.142]
11 504 ms 136 ms 981 ms 193.93.44.47

Trace complete.

I could do a tracert in a few mins and it would be fine. DRIVES ME MAD! Complete crap for competitive gaming.

BostonB

Mine spikes, and if its bad I get kicked by punkster in COD4 for high pings. Its random so if I try again in 5 or 10 mins I might get away with it. Makes it very hard to play though as you lag, and your accuracy goes to pot.

Antamojo

Can anyone tell me why my request times out on every 2nd hop when I do a tracert?

PogMoThoin

Hope this explains it:

An asterisk, "*", followed by the words "request timed out" is not out of the ordinary. If the tracert had stopped here and continued to respond with "request timed out", then it might have been indicative of a problem. In the above example, the first "request timed out" is where the interface between our network and the rest of the Internet lies. The asterisk "*" is a normal consequence of our security implementation on that junction.

From Here

watty

Some (many?) routers put ICMP (ping) at low priority and may even almost ignore a direct ping. This is to protect against DDOS / POD attacks. So tracert and ping are not as definitive a test as they once were. Many mail servers won't respond to a ping ever.