Tiggs

my line is 1mb (although last night it dropped it 390kbps!)

anyway- why do i get a ping on BF2 of 100+....is that the norm for 1mb - i have 3mb on the way from madasafish.com but just wondered if the poor ping was a resulted of anything i am doing?

do running the max settings on the game slow it down? it all looks fine on my screen.

stevencotton

One's ping time doesn't have anything to do with the speed of the line, since DSL uses interleaving to get around any loss caused by the main problem which is line noise, the delays are caused by error correction and the processing causes latency. 100ms is quite high, perhaps because you are 'far' from the server you're connected to?

Tiggs

ok.....i understood the "far from server" bit!

i assume i am as virgin say its why they could only give me 1mb prior to tehir adsl max launch.

anything i can do to improve it????

Neanderthal

iTrader: (6)

Have you moved since you originally played CS then Tiggs?

stevencotton

By far I mean number of hops, so a traceroute might show if there are any problems on the path to the server. Not a lot you can do to improve it, unless there is a problem on your line (or you are downloading shedloads all the time), but then it'll be down to your ISP rather than you

Tiggs

yep- moved house since CS days - only a few miles away though.

about to change ISP and phone line - going from line 1 to my house and virgin to line 2 (hone office) and madasafish.com - hope that may help?

Tiggs

!"By far I mean number of hops, so a traceroute might show if there are any problems on the path to the server"

that something i can do?

stevencotton

tracert <server> from a dos prompt - don't do this using an online service, because unless that service runs from your house then it's not going to help at all

Tiggs

is that simple to do for someone who only knows how to turn a pc on?

fitzscoob

you are not alone with your ping misery, I have bt 2 meg wireless broadband that is completely useless, high ping and bad latency.

they claim there is a fault on my line, 2 days on im still waiting for my call back to explain the situation.

i should have gone with ntl, their connection was miles better than this at half the speed.

stevencotton

Yeah, you just need to open up a "DOS prompt" then press those buttons in the order I showed above, then hit the largest button on the right

Of course what it tells you might not mean much to you so have a look here for an explanation.

Tiggs

so i type "tracert virgin.net" ?

stevencotton

virgin.net has an A record, but if you want to see any potential problems on just your connection to your ISP you're better off using the end point you're connected to (that should be visible on your DSL modem's status-or-alike page), and/or their mail/DNS server. You can get the mailserver name from your Outlook settings.

Tiggs

what does that mean i do in idiot terms

stevencotton

Open up a DOS prompt, should be in your start menu? Open up Outlook, Tools->Accounts (I'm guessing here, I don't use Windows), find the address of your mail server - is it inbound.virgin.net.criticalpath.net?

From your DOS prompt:

tracert inbound.virgin.net.criticalpath.net

(or whatever your mail server is)

You'll have to read the link I sent you above to decipher the output, but basically you're looking for a point where the numbers increase greatly (from 10-30 up to your 100ms ping response). Where that happens is the bottleneck.

Then tracert to the BF2/CSS server you're using, compare the results, if the bottlenecks (where the numbers get higher) are outside of virgin.net's network then there's not much you can do about it. If you have a high ping to your mailserver or endpoint then you may just have a line with high latency, and not a lot can do about that either except for checking connections, maybe try a different DSL filter, but worth asking your ISP about.

Tiggs

ok...understand all of that except:

where do i get the mail server address? the one you suggested doesnt work (just times out)
and same question for the BF2 server...can i use the IP address???

stevencotton

Yep IP address will work just as well.

Tiggs

ok - ip for BF2 i have - where do i find virgins?

MattW

Heaven?

stevencotton

It should have been provided with your connection details from Virgin. If you go into the account setup in Outlook, it should tell you your SMTP and POP3 server addresses there.

Tiggs

ahhh....i use mail.virgin.net?


tired that and i just get "request time out"

stevencotton

They may be blocking ICMP, quite normal. The idea is you try traceroute to various different servers to determine where any problem might be, so you can try a few (which will take different routes) to see if the problem is you/your ISP end, or nearer the server you're trying to connect to.

BlkKnight

Tiggs:

RE Pings:

Please can you do the following for me to understand what’s going on.

· Reboot your PC, do not open any applications.
· Click START, RUN – this is a “run box”
· in the Run box type:
tracert server.lanse.co.uk > c:\test1.txt
click OK

· In a run box type:
Ping server.lanse.co.uk > c:\test2.txt
click ok

· In a run box type:
Netstat –a > c:\test3.txt
Click ok

· Post the contents from the 3 new files (Test1.txt, test2.txt & test3.txt) located on the root of your C:\ drive into this thread.

Tiggs

ok...doing now!

Tiggs

ok...all done but no txt files anywhere - even did a file search for them???

Tiggs

ok....firewall scred it up- trying again!

Tiggs

Tracing route to server.lanse.co.uk [82.136.28.78]

over a maximum of 30 hops:



1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.0.1

2 17 ms 17 ms 16 ms mant-bam-1.inet.ntl.com [62.253.189.143]

3 16 ms 16 ms 15 ms manc-t3core-1b-ge-013-0.inet.ntl.com [213.104.242.213]

4 18 ms 17 ms 17 ms man-bb-b-so-400-0.inet.ntl.com [213.105.242.245]

5 24 ms 24 ms 23 ms win-bb-a-so-300-0.inet.ntl.com [62.253.185.138]

6 24 ms 23 ms 23 ms gfd-bb-b-so-500-0.inet.ntl.com [213.105.172.130]

7 25 ms 26 ms 25 ms redb-ic-1-as0-0.inet.ntl.com [213.105.174.138]

8 24 ms 25 ms 24 ms fe-2-1-br1.hex.as9153.net [195.66.226.71]

9 25 ms 27 ms 25 ms ge-1-1-700-cr2.sov.as9153.net [82.136.0.205]

10 26 ms 24 ms 24 ms bf-gw.sentient.net.uk [82.136.1.154]

11 25 ms 25 ms 25 ms lanse.colo.sov.sentient.net.uk [82.136.28.78]



Trace complete.

Tiggs

Tracing route to mail.virgin.net.criticalpath.net [80.5.182.193]

over a maximum of 30 hops:



1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.0.1

2 17 ms 16 ms 15 ms mant-bam-1.inet.ntl.com [62.253.189.143]

3 18 ms 17 ms 16 ms manc-t3core-1a-ge-013-0.inet.ntl.com [213.104.242.85]

4 19 ms 16 ms 17 ms man-bb-a-so-400-0.inet.ntl.com [213.105.175.1]

5 15 ms 17 ms 17 ms man-bb-b-ae0-0.inet.ntl.com [62.253.187.178]

6 22 ms 21 ms 58 ms win-bb-a-so-300-0.inet.ntl.com [62.253.185.138]

7 22 ms 23 ms 23 ms win-dc-a-v903.inet.ntl.com [213.105.174.34]

8 25 ms 24 ms 25 ms virgin-mail-b-ge10.inet.ntl.com [62.253.167.245]

9 24 ms 24 ms 24 ms csr02-v10.lhr.cp.net [65.22.0.179]

10 145 ms 145 ms 146 ms csr01-v110.dia.cp.net [64.97.128.82]

11 151 ms 148 ms 150 ms mail.virgin.net [80.5.182.193]



Trace complete.

so does that mean my path to virgin is ****e?

Tiggs

just done the same for madasafish.net who will be my new ISP and it never goes over 31ms.....does that mean anything good?

BlkKnight

Although mail.virgin.net is based in the UK

your ISP is routing traffic through the USA - 64.97.128.82 and back again!

Your ping to my server in the UK was fine (actually pretty good) - which means you need to be choosy on which game server to play on as your ISP is routing traffic all over the place for different UK locations.

/edit Just done the same here (I'm on BT) I get routed to the US too