Changing ISP - advice needed

Dunnel009

Hi All
I am changing my service provider from UPC to Imagine (Wimax).
Has anyone been using this to play online and if so would you recommend it or should i look elsewhere??
Thanks

iMuse

UPC are the best ISP you can get, id kill to be able to get them in my area, Why are you getting rid of them? Dont know much about Wiimax but it will be much worse for gaming that UPC as its wireless and depends on your line of sight to a mast

Dunnel009

The reason i am changing is because of their poor customer support, i needed a new router and it would take 14 days to get it couriered out, thats longer than it should take to get a brand new connection, i rang them twice and got fobbed off, on the 3rd call the agent said that my request was on the system but they hadnt activasted it by mistake... I am changing TV too because all in all the UPC TV package is very poor, decoder keeps going off a couple of times a day for so-called software upgrades,, (a few a day is a bit much) so i expect that to just be a line they throw out there, so all in all i was annoyed with them

siblers

I'd avoid wimax, ping would be much, much higher than UPC and you're connection would be a lot less stable. Stick with the fibre powered broadband (you lucky git ) as you don't have to worry about contention ratios and you're latency will always be really low. It's the ideal set up for gaming. You can always go with Eircom but if it's only a router problem I'd just hold out till you get it, as long as the actual service is good (as in you're getting the speeds you should be getting) then stick with them. I've heard their TV and phone service is rubbish but their broadband is meant to be really good. My brother has it in Cork and he says it is savage. You can always go with SKY for TV and UPC for broadband. Don't go with Wimax whatever you do.

murpho999

I know what you're saying about UPC customer service, especially when you ring them as it is awful.

However, if I were you I would stick with their broadband service as it is a good service with the fastest speeds available in Ireland.

Was thinking of switching to Wimax, but I have heard very bad stories about them.

If you don't believe me have a browse through this boards thread.

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055709982

calex71

I must be one of the lucky ones, never had issue with UPC i get 25mb bb for the around same price others pay for 8mb :eek:

Dunnel009

Hi all
thanks for the feedback, only concern i have is that i currently have 15mb and the games are sometimes lagging worse than my friend with 8mb eircom..
So i'll rule out wifi but might still look around
thanks again

siblers

Should go on Speedtest.net and check your speeds throughout the day, I'd find it weird that you'd get lag as a 1meg line is good enough for online gaming.

Dunnel009

speedtest normally gives between 11 and 14.5ish and a ping of 32 to 45.
I know a 1mg line is enough to play online gaming but it will be very laggy compared to stronger lines. and faster pings

TheMooseInNam

siblers wrote: »

Should go on Speedtest.net and check your speeds throughout the day, I'd find it weird that you'd get lag as a 1meg line is good enough for online gaming.

I recently posted about this in the IRL Clan thread, hope it helps a little:

"To be honest, you need very little download and upload speed to run xbox live, aprox .07 meg up and down is kinda normal speeds used, unless you're downloading movies or demo etc. Seriously, it really uses that little! Unless you are hosting a match, then you'll need a substanial amount more. However, it seems that most games are getting dedicated servers these days, to try and combat cheating.

What's far more important is your latency (ping) and the QoS (quality of service) provided by your internet service provider. Latency is how quickly the data goes from your end to the server and back. QoS is how solid the connection is, basically. I've done a lot of research on this over the last few weeks and here's my conclusion:

Although XBL does use TCP data transfers at some stages, all online play traffic is routed by the UDP data transfer technology. UDP doesn't use DNS servers or require confirmation that the information sent was actually received, therefore, it's a faster way to transfer data over the net. It won't hurt picking a faster DNS server to use but there's no proof that it'll actually speed up your XBL connection. I recently upgraded my DNS to Google's public (free) one 8.8.8.8 & 8.8.4.4 and I genuinely felt like it improved my XBL connection but I can't back that up or figure out why.

So, all I can recommend is that you make sure that you have all the correct ports open on your router, make sure your router is refreshed regularly.

Test your service out at both of these sites: www.irishisptest.com & www.pingtest.net If it's not up to scratch, then change your provider.

Upgrading your speeds would be a waste of your money, if it's only for XBL that you intend upgrading it for.

Spend some money on a decent, programmable router. I highly recommend the Linksys WRT54GL. Bought mine on ebay last year. It's been around a long time but it operates a linux firmware which can be easily replaced. I replaced mine with Tomato firmware (it's free) because it allows me to shape the traffic through the router and give my xbox higher priority over any other devices connected to my network. Very useful if the gf insists on using her laptop when I'm playing.

Finally, for the best possible connection, make sure nothing else is connected to your network when on XBL ie. turn off bittorrent/P2P, skype, messengers, itunes, limewire... in other words, anything that can potentially use bandwidth or delay the sending or retrival of your data over XBL.

So, there you have it. If anyone happens to know how to speed up UDP data transfers, please let me know because, as far as I can figure out, there's nothing that can be done to improve it."

siblers

Dunnel009 wrote: »

speedtest normally gives between 11 and 14.5ish and a ping of 32 to 45.
I know a 1mg line is enough to play online gaming but it will be very laggy compared to stronger lines. and faster pings

I had a 2mb eircom line and never had any trouble with lag. Like TheMooseInNam stated, you'll have to make sure any programmes using up your bandwith are closed when playing. Might just be a router problem and you'd probably be better off investig in the one TheMooseInNam suggested. It can be a right headmelt trying to configure online gaming and routers, remember when I 1st got Eircom it was a right pain trying to sort out my various connections.

Lab_Mouse

nothing wrong with those pings OP.It could just be your router has crapped itself.

Is it possible for you to hardwire the xbox to the router as opposed to wireless connection and see if the lag follows?

Also turn off torrents if you use them as they are a fecker for sucking up your bandwidth

TAPlank

Not sure if this is the right place for this.
Over recent weeks my wife has received phone calls purporting to be from EIR, these offered siignificant benefits if I chamged from Vodafone to them. To-daay i took one of these calls, the v ery foreign sounding caller sttarted of by saying I should cahnge to them and this was the last day to avail of the big discount. I told him I had a contract with Vodavone that had a year to run. he said this didn't matter as I could still pay Vodafone but wold be an EIR client. Sounds like a load of BS to me.
Can anyone throw some light on this.

CatInABox

TAPlank wrote: »

Not sure if this is the right place for this.
Over recent weeks my wife has received phone calls purporting to be from EIR, these offered siignificant benefits if I chamged from Vodafone to them. To-daay i took one of these calls, the v ery foreign sounding caller sttarted of by saying I should cahnge to them and this was the last day to avail of the big discount. I told him I had a contract with Vodavone that had a year to run. he said this didn't matter as I could still pay Vodafone but wold be an EIR client. Sounds like a load of BS to me.
Can anyone throw some light on this.

Yeah, this is definitely not the place! This is the Xbox forum, what you're looking for is either:

The eir forum
The Vodafone forum
The Consumer Issues forum

Rather than post in a really old thread, you should really start a new thread with your issues as well, you'll get better answers and a lot less people complaining about dragging up 8 year old threads.

CatInABox

CatInABox wrote: »

Yeah, this is definitely not the place! This is the Xbox forum, what you're looking for is either:

The eir forum
The Vodafone forum
The Consumer Issues forum

Rather than post in a really old thread, you should really start a new thread with your issues as well, you'll get better answers and a lot less people complaining about dragging up 8 year old threads.

Glad I read through to the end, was about to give the OP advise to stick with UPC (thought it strange he called it upc and people talking about 1mb and 5 mb lines!!)

Fuzzy Logic

If it's a case you needed to post in the Xbox Forum about changing ISP's anyway don't fall for the unlimited cap from Eir and get stung by the 1TB fair usage policy. It's pointless in this day and age with games requiring huge downloads and then massive patches like GOW4

TAPlank

Apologies and thanks for pointing out the error of my ways. I must have had a brain fart. I have now placed the query on the EIR forum, as kindly and rightly suggested.
I would have liked to delete the erronious entry but don't know how. Some of you forum familiar persons may feel free to do it for me and help to reduce clutter.

CatInABox

TAPlank wrote: »

Apologies and thanks for pointing out the error of my ways. I must have had a brain fart. I have now placed the query on the EIR forum, as kindly and rightly suggested.
I would have liked to delete the erronious entry but don't know how. Some of you forum familiar persons may feel free to do it for me and help to reduce clutter.

No worries, happens to the best of us! I'll lock this thread now, no point in keeping it around.

Good luck.