XBox V PS3 V PC

treatyman

Hi all,

I am playing MW2 on Xbox for the last few months and probably 70-80% of the online games I play my connection/lag is pretty bad.. I have 7mb broadband and find if I play late in the evenings I am running away behind other players... The usual thing is putting a full clip into some person and then watch the kill cam and I haven't even started shooting.. I played one Sunday morning and it was a joy to play... Felt as if I was killing people for fun and then later that evening it was back to the same thing..

I don't think there is anything I can do setup wise to improve this but any suggestions are welcome. My broadband while on the internet generally is perfect. Ping and speed tests are ok also..

I watch a lot of Mw2 clips on youtube and people complain about lag on some.. if they think they have lag they should try and play on my xbox.

Would I be right in saying that PS3 and PC online gaming on MW2 is better?

Tallon - you have a video where you notice lag while you are playing.. and I can what you experience is nothing compared to what I get on Xbox..

Also I notice on youtube clips people can look left to right etc. much much faster.. Am I missing something?

sierra117x

treatyman wrote: »

Hi all,

I am playing MW2 on Xbox for the last few months and probably 70-80% of the online games I play my connection/lag is pretty bad.. I have 7mb broadband and find if I play late in the evenings I am running away behind other players... The usual thing is putting a full clip into some person and then watch the kill cam and I haven't even started shooting.. I played one Sunday morning and it was a joy to play... Felt as if I was killing people for fun and then later that evening it was back to the same thing..

I don't think there is anything I can do setup wise to improve this but any suggestions are welcome. My broadband while on the internet generally is perfect. Ping and speed tests are ok also..

I watch a lot of Mw2 clips on youtube and people complain about lag on some.. if they think they have lag they should try and play on my xbox.

Would I be right in saying that PS3 and PC online gaming on MW2 is better?

Tallon - you have a video where you notice lag while you are playing.. and I can what you experience is nothing compared to what I get on Xbox..

Also I notice on youtube clips people can look left to right etc. much much faster.. Am I missing something?

try speedtest.net and pingtest.net . they'l measure ur DL speed up speed the quality of your line etc and then give u a rating . they'l be able to tell who ur isp is how they compare to other isps around europe and how ur line compares to others too. just because ur paying for 7 megs doesnt mean ur gettings 7 megs . and the reason behind it being cra* in the evening but good in the morning is probably less people sharing ur connection are using it during the mornings

treatyman

Ya I tried speedtest and pingtest.net... getting around 5mb on speedtest.. and Ping seems ok too.. can't remember what the exact figures were..

Tallon

treatyman wrote: »

Tallon - you have a video where you notice lag while you are playing.. and I can what you experience is nothing compared to what I get on Xbox..

Sometimes its unplayable, I have to leave 90% of games if im playing with friends, for whatever reason its so bad when I play with people on my friends list... its the P2P thats the problem, nothing to do with any hardware or ISP sadly

Cuddlesworth

treatyman wrote: »

Ya I tried speedtest and pingtest.net... getting around 5mb on speedtest.. and Ping seems ok too.. can't remember what the exact figures were..

Round trip ping to a dedicated server can be 30-100ms. That's playable. MW2 and other games that use a peer to peer connection can be 200-500ms. Which is unplayable. And then add in host machine lag and latency.

The good game you played was most likely a game where you were the host, meaning you had little or no lag.

I would check your ping tests again. You should be getting under or around 30ms to a Irish server. If your not I would question your broadband provider as to why.

treatyman

I will try Ping test again this evening.. Thanks for the advise..

Tallon - now that you mention it when a few of my friends play in the same party in a TDM for instance it does seem to become worse.. It's a pity cos it no fun !!

minotour

Never hurts to bounce your router before playing. Make sure noone else on your network is doing a big download too. On PS3 the player list in game has a "Bars" graphic showing the connection strenght of each player, i assume this is the same on other platforms, if i notice im below 3 bars then its guaranteed my wife is downloading the latest Desperate Housewives............and then she gets a slap!

But yeah, ping test and speed test are great sites for solving these problems, on 5mb you should be fine.............excluding contention of course!

Azhrei

On the pc, you can't rely on being able to just turn your computer on and join a game. IWNet is the worst online system ever designed. It is total ****.

Shammy

treatyman wrote: »

I will try Ping test again this evening.. Thanks for the advise..

Tallon - now that you mention it when a few of my friends play in the same party in a TDM for instance it does seem to become worse.. It's a pity cos it no fun !!

I'm assuming by your name your from limerick , with a 7 meg d/l and your only getting 5 , i reckon that its a contention problem , when you are doing your speed test see if your download is stable .
I had the same problem , i had to change from dsl altogether.
It doesnt make a difference whether its xbox or ps3.
A lot of the exchanges in limerick havent had there upgrades yet and are due them....when i dont know .
Also is there anyone else gaming or using the pc when you go online ?

minotour

Shammy wrote: »

I'm assuming by your name your from limerick , with a 7 meg d/l and your only getting 5 , i reckon that its a contention problem , when you are doing your speed test see if your download is stable .
I had the same problem , i had to change from dsl altogether.
It doesnt make a difference whether its xbox or ps3.
A lot of the exchanges in limerick havent had there upgrades yet and are due them....when i dont know .
Also is there anyone else gaming or using the pc when you go online ?

Good spot, the force is strong with this one. I moved and got lumbered with dsl for the first half of '09, had to give up playing MW1 cause of it, couldnt cope with the contention issues. If yer man shammy is right and you are on DSL then i implore you get off it asap or you will rarely get a good game again.

treatyman

Thanks to all for replying.. I will reboot the router before playing.. try the ping and speed test.. slap her if she touches the laptop while I'm playing :-)

Shammy - When playing TDM for instance if I look at the teams and stats etc.. the signal bars on the side of my name is never above 3 bars.. then very second the game ends i just back to full bars..

Shammy

Yup that sounds like contention m8 i'm afraid, hopefully its because she is using the labtop , if not you could try ringing your isp but dont go getting your hopes up.
Is there lag in the room as in it jumps sometimes or/and you put a clip into someone and they dont go down.
It goes back up to 4 bars because the game is over and the traffic has stopped.

Cuddlesworth

Shammy wrote: »

I'm assuming by your name your from limerick , with a 7 meg d/l and your only getting 5 , i reckon that its a contention problem , when you are doing your speed test see if your download is stable .
I had the same problem , i had to change from dsl altogether.
It doesnt make a difference whether its xbox or ps3.
A lot of the exchanges in limerick havent had there upgrades yet and are due them....when i dont know .
Also is there anyone else gaming or using the pc when you go online ?

Contention has nothing to do with latency or lag. Contention is a bandwidth problem and one which has no effect for gaming as it uses little or no bandwidth. Unless your the host and then it doesn't matter to you.

Shammy

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

Contention has nothing to do with latency or lag. Contention is a bandwidth problem and one which has no effect for gaming as it uses little or no bandwidth. Unless your the host and then it doesn't matter to you.

Actually it has everything to do with it, Contention (eircom/vodafone) 48/1
which means your sharing your line and bandwith with other users, therefore if your line is overloaded it causes lag and the room to jump a bit . Doing speed tests with a heavyline , can go up to 7meg down to 2 back up to 5 down 3 , its unstable and causes lag.

Dcully

Thank heavens for dedicated servers

In all fairness you shouldnt have that much lag.
Most evenings im gaming away [not MW2 crap btw] , my son is playing his xbox online, usually MW2 or BC2.
The wife could be streaming rte player on the laptop and my pings ingame are 20-30 ms.
Absolutely no lag on the xbox either unless he gets a dodgy host.

If your connection is fine offpeak ie Sunday morning then im afraid its 100% a contention issue.

Also I notice on youtube clips people can look left to right etc. much much faster

Most likely the vid is of the pc version unless joypad sensitivity is maxxed which even still is nowhere near as fast as a mouse.

minotour

Dcully wrote: »

[not MW2 crap btw] /QUOTE]

what then may I ask? Cant be BC2 if the young lad is playing that, so what are you wasting your days away with?

i ask because I might get something new for the easter weekend.

Dcully

Im playing BC2 on pc, the young lad is playing it on 360

sierra117x

minotour wrote: »

Never hurts to bounce your router before playing. Make sure noone else on your network is doing a big download too. On PS3 the player list in game has a "Bars" graphic showing the connection strenght of each player, i assume this is the same on other platforms, if i notice im below 3 bars then its guaranteed my wife is downloading the latest Desperate Housewives............and then she gets a slap!

But yeah, ping test and speed test are great sites for solving these problems, on 5mb you should be fine.............excluding contention of course!

and heres me stressing out because my girl is the type that goes looking for the any key . well she can stuff it if she thinks shes nicking my bandwidth

Cuddlesworth

Shammy wrote: »

Actually it has everything to do with it, Contention (eircom/vodafone) 48/1
which means your sharing your line and bandwith with other users, therefore if your line is overloaded it causes lag and the room to jump a bit . Doing speed tests with a heavyline , can go up to 7meg down to 2 back up to 5 down 3 , its unstable and causes lag.

Its not actually 48/1, that's there as a contingency. And it may jump down from 7 to 2, but your only using about 150k of it. You can happily game on a 128k connection as long as the upload is 128k and the latency is good.

The exchange isn't a household router, it doesn't get "overloaded" in any sense you would be aware of. The cheapest and worst piece of equipment between two players on a xbox is the modem/router at each end.

treatyman

Just did a speedtest

http://www.speedtest.net/result/759731531.png

and pingtest

http://www.pingtest.net/result/13280588.png

Shammy

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

Its not actually 48/1, that's there as a contingency. And it may jump down from 7 to 2, but your only using about 150k of it. You can happily game on a 128k connection as long as the upload is 128k and the latency is good.

The exchange isn't a household router, it doesn't get "overloaded" in any sense you would be aware of. The cheapest and worst piece of equipment between two players on a xbox is the modem/router at each end.

It is actually 48/1 , the exchanges do get overloaded , have a look at the broadband section , see if you can go back a couple weeks/months when most dsl users were suffering with their broadband, eircom were very slow to upgrade the exchanges and some exchanges arent getting the upgrade until april/may or after.

Since most people on dsl lines that had the unstable broadband which ranged from all over the country , how would you explain that those that played online games werent able to ?

Shammy

treatyman wrote: »

Just did a speedtest

http://www.speedtest.net/result/759731531.png

and pingtest

http://www.pingtest.net/result/13280588.png

Your ping is high in the first test , your broadband speed should be higher than 5.19 .
Does it go straight to 5 .19and roughly stay at that or does it vary ?

treatyman

Shammy wrote: »

Your ping is high in the first test , your broadband speed should be higher than 5.19 .
Does it go straight to 5 .19and roughly stay at that or does it vary ?

http://www.speedtest.net/result/760074792.png

goes straight to 5ish and stays there.. just tested there

Liam O

look it's basically that late in the evenings there is much more chance of getting an American host which basically guarantees yellow connection or the odd time a dodgy 3 green bars. The only way to have full connection is to get a British/Irish host which for some reason doesn't happen unless there is absolutely no Americans in the game because they have the strongest internet connections.

sierra117x

Liam O wrote: »

look it's basically that late in the evenings there is much more chance of getting an American host which basically guarantees yellow connection or the odd time a dodgy 3 green bars. The only way to have full connection is to get a British/Irish host which for some reason doesn't happen unless there is absolutely no Americans in the game because they have the strongest internet connections.

eh strongest connections ? what are you basing that on ? last i checked they have deplorable broadband over in the states..... correct me if im wrong though

Jev/N

Liam O wrote: »

The only way to have full connection is to get a British/Irish host which for some reason doesn't happen unless there is absolutely no Americans in the game because they have the strongest internet connections.

I've often been the host at plenty of times of afternoon, evening and night

Jev/N

FFS, this evening there was nothing but lag, host migration and cancelled games :mad:

Cuddlesworth

Shammy wrote: »

It is actually 48/1 , the exchanges do get overloaded , have a look at the broadband section , see if you can go back a couple weeks/months when most dsl users were suffering with their broadband, eircom were very slow to upgrade the exchanges and some exchanges arent getting the upgrade until april/may or after.

Since most people on dsl lines that had the unstable broadband which ranged from all over the country , how would you explain that those that played online games werent able to ?

Out of all the people who I have talked to over the years I can count on one hand the amount who were having a contention issue. Its always interleaving being turned on because eircom can't actually handle the higher speeds on their **** lines, its because the person is miles away from the exchange and the signal quality along the copper is crap and they happily accepted the upgrade offer which caused it, its because of **** wireless signals, **** routers that are shipped with the lines.

The problem is never the exchange, its between the exchange and the pc. This can be blamed on crap infrastructure and un-needed upgrades.

Cuddlesworth

sierra117x wrote: »

eh strongest connections ? what are you basing that on ? last i checked they have deplorable broadband over in the states..... correct me if im wrong though

They do. And the money they pay is stupid as well.

sierra117x

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

They do. And the money they pay is stupid as well.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/No-easy-fix-for-Americas-hmoney-1631355893.html?x=0
thats the most recent article i could find . to me it seems less reliable but the only articles online that had some quality information where pretty dated . anyway this one like the others all point out the same thing . american broadband quality= bad .

opinion guy

Liam O wrote: »

look it's basically that late in the evenings there is much more chance of getting an American host which basically guarantees yellow connection or the odd time a dodgy 3 green bars. The only way to have full connection is to get a British/Irish host which for some reason doesn't happen unless there is absolutely no Americans in the game because they have the strongest internet connections.

Hmm I'm not sure but I think the game has some sort of averging out function built into it to try to compensate for lag. THats why stuff odens't happen on your screen exactly as it does on the kill cam. If it were true unadulterated lag you would just be jumping all over the place as sometimes happens when the lag is really bad (I reckon it tires to compensate up to a certain level of lag and then doesn't). I think anyway. So I don't think its anything to do with the "strength" of US connections its just that they are far away which predisposes them to lag and because there's some sort of lag compensation built in it affects everyone. Again thats just what i think I don't eally have anything to back that up.

treatyman

Are the servers for the game play in the states? If we in Ireland connect to some game where the host is in the states and the servers are in the states.. surely they would be at an advantage? just thinking out loud...

opinion guy

treatyman wrote: »

Are the servers for the game play in the states? If we in Ireland connect to some game where the host is in the states and the servers are in the states.. surely they would be at an advantage? just thinking out loud...

There aren't any servers for xbox at least. The host is one of the people playing the game chosen presumably as person with best connection

Cuddlesworth

sierra117x wrote: »

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/No-easy-fix-for-Americas-hmoney-1631355893.html?x=0
thats the most recent article i could find . to me it seems less reliable but the only articles online that had some quality information where pretty dated . anyway this one like the others all point out the same thing . american broadband quality= bad .

I was agreeing with you.

Shammy

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

Out of all the people who I have talked to over the years I can count on one hand the amount who were having a contention issue. Its always interleaving being turned on because eircom can't actually handle the higher speeds on their **** lines, its because the person is miles away from the exchange and the signal quality along the copper is crap and they happily accepted the upgrade offer which caused it, its because of **** wireless signals, **** routers that are shipped with the lines.

The problem is never the exchange, its between the exchange and the pc. This can be blamed on crap infrastructure and un-needed upgrades.

So you didnt check the broadband section then ?
While i fully agree about setup and copper wire part , how so can you explain why thousands (yes thousands) of peoples broadband had ping od about 30 and the speeds were stable between the hours of 12 midnight to 6 pm.
I was only half a mile from my exchange, no wireless.

Shammy

treatyman wrote: »

Are the servers for the game play in the states? If we in Ireland connect to some game where the host is in the states and the servers are in the states.. surely they would be at an advantage? just thinking out loud...

Your broadband seems stable , your ping is high though maybe thats it and for some reason you end up in yank rooms which would put your ping well over 100.

sierra117x

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

I was agreeing with you.

whoopsey daisy you where and all my bad .

im gettin annoyed with all this server business i mean last night i got chosen as a host and while i pay for 20 megs and get a pretty good connection i just cant seem to manage as a host sometimes theres bound to be some lag for some players . i got nothing but abuse for 3 matches straight about how i need to sort out my internet but its not my fault i was chosen and am i right in thinking that bad as i am i was still the best in this case ?

Cuddlesworth

Shammy wrote: »

So you didnt check the broadband section then ?
While i fully agree about setup and copper wire part , how so can you explain why thousands (yes thousands) of peoples broadband had ping od about 30 and the speeds were stable between the hours of 12 midnight to 6 pm.
I was only half a mile from my exchange, no wireless.

I don't bother reading that section, its full of whiny people who are incapable of actually taking action over their problems. If those thousands of people actually canceled their direct debits and told Eircom to **** off you would bet they would remove their bandwidth throttle in a heartbeat.

Shammy

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

I don't bother reading that section, its full of whiny people who are incapable of actually taking action over their problems. If those thousands of people actually canceled their direct debits and told Eircom to **** off you would bet they would remove their bandwidth throttle in a heartbeat.

Of course because some people need a phone line for work etc , and others may only be able to get dsl in certain areas.

If ifs and ands were pots and pans what would the world be ....comes to mind.

If we were all as knowledgable as you we'll be a great country wouldnt we , oh wait you cant answer my previous question

Cuddlesworth

Shammy wrote: »

Of course because some people need a phone line for work etc , and others may only be able to get dsl in certain areas.

If ifs and ands were pots and pans what would the world be ....comes to mind.

If we were all as knowledgable as you we'll be a great country wouldnt we , oh wait you cant answer my previous question

Ok, lets answer your question. You claim thousands of people are having this problem.

Have you read thousands of posts from different people in the broadband forum all experiencing the same problem? Or is it a small minority who are complaining on boards? Because I can see 270 posts on the issue. Now how many customers would you say their are for eircom? Lets take a rough estimate of 500,000. Now out of those posts how many are individual users? Lets go with 100. So we have .02% of eircom customers with a common issue verified.

After working in the tech field I can tell you, if you have a small scale issue like the above you can rule out 50% of the cases. The reason for this is self-diagnosis. They see similar problems but not exactly the same and pin their issue on somebody else's. So in my mind we now have a potential problem with 0.01% of eircom customers.

So now lets look at the problem. I can't see anybody running continuous ping traces across the eircom network on that thread. So nobody has isolated if its to the closest exchange, or on a exchange somewhere further up the line. But at a guess its fairly obvious that their is a relatively high concentration of large bandwidth users spread over a small bandwidth connection. This is where contention comes into play. BTW gamers don't generally fall into this category as most home routers can't load balance very well.

If Eircom had any balls or a proper tech support they would isolate those users and place them into a contention grouping with each other. Then would issue cap warnings as I would put good money that they all exceed it by miles. But they won't, because they don't have too. And the don't have too because they hold a monopoly. And they hold a monopoly because its next to impossible to get people to switch off of their ****ty service in this country which put's any decent provider out of business.

opinion guy

sierra117x wrote: »

whoopsey daisy you where and all my bad .

im gettin annoyed with all this server business i mean last night i got chosen as a host and while i pay for 20 megs and get a pretty good connection i just cant seem to manage as a host sometimes theres bound to be some lag for some players . i got nothing but abuse for 3 matches straight about how i need to sort out my internet but its not my fault i was chosen and am i right in thinking that bad as i am i was still the best in this case ?

How do you and the other players know that you are host ?

Shammy

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

Ok, lets answer your question. You claim thousands of people are having this problem.

Have you read thousands of posts from different people in the broadband forum all experiencing the same problem? Or is it a small minority who are complaining on boards? Because I can see 270 posts on the issue. Now how many customers would you say their are for eircom? Lets take a rough estimate of 500,000. Now out of those posts how many are individual users? Lets go with 100. So we have .02% of eircom customers with a common issue verified.

After working in the tech field I can tell you, if you have a small scale issue like the above you can rule out 50% of the cases. The reason for this is self-diagnosis. They see similar problems but not exactly the same and pin their issue on somebody else's. So in my mind we now have a potential problem with 0.01% of eircom customers.

So now lets look at the problem. I can't see anybody running continuous ping traces across the eircom network on that thread. So nobody has isolated if its to the closest exchange, or on a exchange somewhere further up the line. But at a guess its fairly obvious that their is a relatively high concentration of large bandwidth users spread over a small bandwidth connection. This is where contention comes into play. BTW gamers don't generally fall into this category as most home routers can't load balance very well.

If Eircom had any balls or a proper tech support they would isolate those users and place them into a contention grouping with each other. Then would issue cap warnings as I would put good money that they all exceed it by miles. But they won't, because they don't have too. And the don't have too because they hold a monopoly. And they hold a monopoly because its next to impossible to get people to switch off of their ****ty service in this country which put's any decent provider out of business.

I agree with you on the infrastructure its crap , Eircom control most of the exchanges ,you mentioned 270 posts
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055711126 there is another 263
and here is another with over a 1,000 http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055738410 .
Obviously there will be double posts etc , also on the figures that you calculated, how many people do you think that had/have problems with there dsl are actually on boards , a lot less than half i'd say.

My problem was when i was with bt on 6 meg it was fine ,when i migrated over to vodafone thats when the problems started from 6pm to midnight, unstable speeds , online gaming impossible as the room was jumping all over the place, the router was the same ,and the only answers i was getting was contention contention contention.

Shammy

sierra117x wrote: »

whoopsey daisy you where and all my bad .

im gettin annoyed with all this server business i mean last night i got chosen as a host and while i pay for 20 megs and get a pretty good connection i just cant seem to manage as a host sometimes theres bound to be some lag for some players . i got nothing but abuse for 3 matches straight about how i need to sort out my internet but its not my fault i was chosen and am i right in thinking that bad as i am i was still the best in this case ?

Hosting can be funny in this game i have a friend on 15 meg d, 1/1.5 up , he can host groundwar but cant host an ordinary 12 man room.....go figure.