[Connectivity] Online Gaming

[Connectivity] Online Gaming - Boston, MA
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Tarquin @ 27th Oct 03:49AM:
[Connectivity] Online Gaming - Boston, MA

Hello - I have had a great deal of difficulty with my RCN internet. I have tried to change it but was told by the competing company around here, Comcast, that I live in an 'RCN Only' building. I've also tried to get FIOS which is also unavailable in my neighborhood.

During peak hours my pings will shoot up to 200+ on servers that are close by, such as NY. The problem is universal, throughout any server I play in, and in any game (and it gets even worse to far-away servers).

In case you are wondering what it is like to play like this, the ping by itself does not do the experience justice. As an example of how bad it is, imagine shooting another player in an FPS, wondering how the heck you missed him, and then 2-3 seconds later seeing in the upper right corner that you did indeed kill him. Another example that illustrates this horrible lag is rocket jumping in Quake or TF2. I will shoot a rocket at my feet and jump, I hear the rocket get shot, but I'm still walking forward. A second or two later, I am now apparently flying through mid-air. Aggghhh! It's very frustrating!

I enjoy online gaming immensely and would like to resolve this problem, although multiple phone calls to RCN and a lack of alternatives leave me feeling helpless.

The problem only really occurs during peak hours, which makes me think that it is a bottleneck with RCNs network around here.

The most peculiar thing is that if I run a speed-test during peak hours, when my ping is over 200 (A friend that is currently living in China that I sometimes play with on a NY server gets 150-200 ping there), the speed test still shows that I get 0.7 Mb/s d/l and about 0.5 Mb/s upload rate (i'm using RCN's speedtest at ma.speedtest.rcn.net). To the best of my knowledge and experience with online gaming, that type of speed is more than sufficient to play online games.

If anyone might have any ideas as to how I can resolve this, I would be eternally grateful.
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kidd santi @ 27th Oct 06:04PM:
Re: [Connectivity] Online Gaming - Boston, MA

hi tarquin, what service do you have from them......i have the mach 20 service which is great for gaming reason being you get a 2/Mb/s upload and 20Mbps down load when online gaming what count the most is the upload due to that is what reacts to your movement and reaction time online ......im a very serious gamer and have not had a problem with my connection unless the party host has a horrible connection......my ping to boston from allentown pa is 16ms....if you can afford it try and get the mach 20
service you will be very impressed and make sure they check your lines coming in that they are not damaged....hope this helps you
and GAME ON!!!!!!
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srr2 @ 27th Oct 07:10PM:
Re: [Connectivity] Online Gaming - Boston, MA

The speed of your service shouldn't have even a first or second order effect on the network latency you're seeing. FWIW, the D/L speed you're getting appears deficient even for RCN's basic cable Internet, assuming that you actually mean 700kbits/sec down and 500kbits/sec up.

Have you run a traceroute to the server? That would be helpful even though it's not definitive due to ICMP prioritization when loading is high.

If you want help from the RCN guys, you'll need to post your MAC address. See the FAQ for details on that.
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Tarquin @ 28th Oct 12:29AM:
Re: [Connectivity] Online Gaming - Boston, MA

Hi guys thanks for the replies.

I did a few tracerts. First to the TF2 server I like to play on, second to google.com, third to a NY TF2 server.

It says there is ~100-130ms for the first hop, which I assume means it's RCN's network that is making things slow?

Here is an image of the tracerts: »img28.imageshack.us/img28/4853/tracertc.jpg

At the same time, one of the speedtests available on this website seems to suggest that my ping to a chicago server is 56ms: »img28.imageshack.us/img28/594/ds···test.jpg

Does it look like there is any hope for me?

Edit: Kidd Santi, I have the basic $25/month service from them, which is advertised as 1.5mbs down and 380kbs up. Previously I had a $45 service from them, which was supposed to be much faster, but as far as I can tell both services from them perform exactly the same: Unusable during peak usage times, and perfectly fine at 5am in the morning.
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lilhurricane @ 28th Oct 03:31AM:
Re: [Connectivity] Online Gaming - Boston, MA

»RCN Forum FAQ »How to Check your Cable Modem ID -- MAC Address.
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Tarquin @ 28th Oct 03:50AM:
Re: [Connectivity] Online Gaming - Boston, MA

I checked through the ma.speedtest.rcn.net site (cable modem is lodged away in an inconvenient spot):

My MAC address is:
00:16:92:f0:ff:26

edit: It's currently 4am in the morning and the latency of the first hop is down from ~107ms to 7ms.
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lilhurricane @ 28th Oct 12:52PM:
(topic move) [Connectivity] Online Gaming - Boston, MA

Moderator Action
The post that was here, has been [SPLIT] to a new topic .. »[Connectivity] Online Gaming -Bethesda, MD
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