84 replies to this topic

[Splatshot]

Wait, so you are saying that most people do not have the choice of 3 different GB connections?

I have:

AT&T, ComCast"ic", and Google, all offering GB service to my house.


That not normal?

[Bombast]

Splatshot, on 23 December 2016 - 09:00 AM, said:

That not normal?

You know damn well that's not normal.

[Splatshot]

Bombast, on 23 December 2016 - 09:06 AM, said:

You know damn well that's not normal.

Well it is nice since they all have to price compete, you all should move to Kansas.

The Yellow Brick Road does wonders for your internet.

[JediPanther]

At least he wasn't rage-ing on about his gold mech being team killed.

[Sjorpha]

400$ per month? Is that a typo, did you mean 40? It sounds absolutely insane.

I pay 10$ per month for excellent internet.

[StraferX]

YaKillinMeSmalls, on 22 December 2016 - 08:44 PM, said:

Well obviously he's talking about playing chess by telegraph.

Don't laugh, I did this for years before there was internet. It was great fun anticipating what that next move was going to be and the graphics rocked.

[CygnusX7]

Almost $5k a year on internet? I'd tell them to EAD.
I'd dump them and piggy back my cell data or something.

[Dee Eight]

[Chuck Jager]

Best internet I had was in a small college town to big and close to a major city to get any grants for development, but too small for a company to do the groundwork.

They ended up doing a partnership and just installed fiber. The usually higher cost was offset because it was done from scratch and they knew they would not be splitting services amongst other providers. The university population also provided a bit more population than a town that size could handle. Kinda sad you have to be in the exceptions category or live in a big city near a trunk to get a really good connection.

[Lightfoot]

I dropped Comcast years ago. They were basically charging me $20 a month for Fox News (which it is not), so I told them to take their garbage and beat it.

Sure you can't get DSL? That is stable.

I never saw the need for the drop the game penalty though. It happened from time to time, but just as likely to happen to both teams. Not worth trying to remedy though. But you know, players whine about anything from Gauss Rifles to PPCs.

[BearFlag]

Zamiake, on 22 December 2016 - 03:54 PM, said:

Hi Zamiake,

This sounds like technical problems, not throttling. I worked in association with Comcast for a number of years. They abandoned upstream throttling based on application type (usually servers, sharing software, that sort). They were sued, won the suit, but decided (along with other carriers) to use a (very high) monthly cap. Throttling should only be applied to service tier. That is, if you're paying for 25mb, it only throttles to keep you at that rate.

That said, the internet is at virtually every point contentious. If the nearest fiber node is overloaded, all sorts of variation in actual throughput will manifest particularly during peak periods.

A couple of tests you can do at home and show to the tech if they display problems:

Run Comcast's own speedtest repeatedly:
speedtest.comcast.net

Simultaneously send a long stream of Pings. Open a command prompt, enter this command:
ping -n 1000 8.8.8.8

This will ping Google 1000 times. As each test ends, note the results and restart that test. Generally, your upstream/downstream rates should be close to advertised (if the household is idle) and you should not drop more than, say, one ping in a hundred (ping is low priority traffic to routers). Just keep doing this test during game play times when you have trouble to get a feel for the connection. Highly varying rates or high ping loss = not good. If the ping loop jumps during the upstream speed test, don't fret. Actually normal. Your ping loop time should be fairly low even in rural Washington. I live in a small town now in NE California - mine is 90ms to PGI. Yours should certainly be below 150.

Things in house can affect your speeds. If you have two TVs streaming Netflix HD, that's a fair chunk of bandwidth. Also make sure security is enabled on your wifi router so the neighbor kid isn't freeloading.

Unless they've blocked it, you can also examine signal stats through your cable modem. Open a web browser and go to 192.168.100.1. The interface varies with manufacturer. Some continuously update, some don't so you'll refresh the browser screen to get a resample. If it's an older modem, you'll have only one each upstream/downstream. If it's DOCSIS 3 there could be several.

(My numbers for Comcast are a couple of years old. May have changed.)

Downstream signal strength: above -8db. This is/was Comcast's minimum for its technicians. 0db is their target.
Upstream/Transmit power: < 52db
Downstream SNR: Tech's target is >=35db. Will work as low as 28db but this is not a good number.
Pre-errors should not be too high. 10 to negative 3 is too high.
Post-errors should be close to zero: 10 to neg 8 or less.

Hope this helps.

EDIT: Here's an example of accessing the modem:
http://www.voipmecha...board-modem.htm

Edited by BearFlag, 23 December 2016 - 04:11 PM.

[Saint Scarlett Johan]

Bombast, on 23 December 2016 - 09:06 AM, said:

You know damn well that's not normal.

Splatshot, on 23 December 2016 - 09:00 AM, said:

Wait, so you are saying that most people do not have the choice of 3 different GB connections?

I have:

AT&amp;T, ComCast&quot;ic&quot;, and Google, all offering GB service to my house.


That not normal?

For real? I thought it was normal if "Stuck in the '60s", MS has options....

[Zamiake]

Lucian Nostra, on 22 December 2016 - 08:10 PM, said:

..... /just walks away

clearly a typo *facepalm* My keyboard is compact here. 0 is like right next to my enter key. Old habit from my old dell keyboards forgot to check for it

Edited by Zamiake, 25 December 2016 - 02:47 AM.

[Zamiake]

Sorbic, on 22 December 2016 - 09:27 PM, said:

What part of WA are you paying $400 for internet? I live in south puget sound and pay no where near that for internet and cable w/extra channels.

That said Comcast can suck a lot (internet was dead for a bit when I got home today) and I've had to batter them over the head to address random slow downs which turned out to be a failing router.

At anywhere near $400 there is NO reason they should be throttling you unless you are transferring a crap ton of files or someones hijacked your wifi and is using it. First step, add/change your network PW.

We have an old node around here. Its way too old and its extremely over subscribed. Generally my speeds are ok when the node isnt busy. Up to around 100mb/s. Under load after everyone gets home from work around 3-5pm or 11pm my speeds drop into the kbs. Not to mention the random dcing constantly. Even browsing facebook or my bank account, or work schedule is a nightmare some times.

Bregor Edain, on 22 December 2016 - 09:43 PM, said:

I pay around 60 euro for a internet, tv and telephone package. Why would anyone pay 400 dollar for just internet and in a first world country at that?!

monopoly and no competition to force their prices down

[Zamiake]

Sjorpha, on 23 December 2016 - 10:03 AM, said:

400$ per month? Is that a typo, did you mean 40? It sounds absolutely insane.

I pay 10$ per month for excellent internet.

5 person home its 400$ all of us pitch in a bit. I chip 200$ since i eat a fair chunk of the bandwidth.

[The6thMessenger]

Can't you change ISP?

[ice trey]

...Luckily, the Mechwarrior single player title means that getting dragged through the mud by your ISP is now irrelevant.

Also stories and lore.

If it doesn't pan out, then we will still have HBS Battletech.

[Gyrok]

Zamiake, on 22 December 2016 - 03:54 PM, said:

So ive been a long time fan of this game for a while and still this game is having the same fundamental problems and compounded terrible design decisions that solves absolutely nothing!

Sick and tired of it. Im out here in rural parts of Washington state in the usa. We do not have the best internet because Comcast has a monopoly. They over charge for terrible service and they throttle the connection constantly. We literally have the highest package available to non business and im still getting throttled and ever FREAKING time this game has absolutely no safety net to wait for players like me for a few moments and reconnect me in match a few moments later.

Instead when comcast throttles me im COMPLETELY ejected from the game logged out and everything! Do you see how hard it is to play this game with a clan or to even attempt clan and competitive play? Extremely difficult, no make that impossible to do. At one point i could be defending from a CW first wave attack, or half way through im standing there looking like an ******* because i got Dc'ed because this game isnt coded to help along players that get throttled by their internet provider when we have no control over it.

I literally pay 400$ a month to get internet but im the ******* here according to the early disconnect penalty i get when ever i even attempt to play this game anymore. There is nothing i can freaking do about it but here i am holding up clan mates again because your game is designed so bad against people with bad net. Im even connected to my modem with wlan cat6 ethernet cables i cant do any better unless google fiber shows up in my town.

All the while you guys can some how are able to gather enough money to invest and develop a whole other game on the side?! How about this PGI. Fix your net code, remove your stupid penalty trash that solves nothing, and invest in some better servers to host this game! I've played alot of online games in the past 2 decades! Servers of good quality make an extreme difference. And I for one know that the servers you have a trashy and your net code sucks too

Business connections guarantee bandwidth, and you can get one to your home.

Just saying...it costs more, but you get what you pay for.

[Gyrok]

Zamiake, on 25 December 2016 - 03:05 AM, said:

5 person home its 400$ all of us pitch in a bit. I chip 200$ since i eat a fair chunk of the bandwidth.

$400 will buy a good business connection with guaranteed bandwidth.

Additionally...comcast is advertising 200 Mbps internet in your region for $79.99/monthly. Unless you have 5 of those running to your home, you might want to have a discussion with them.

Also, you might consider having a private 200 Mbps connection if others in your home game/stream videos, etc. If you are not using RJ45 ethernet cable to connect I also suggest doing that; because over wifi you will never get what your full connection speed is with any reliability.

[Stonefalcon]

Quote

I literally pay 400$ a month to get internet

I've played alot of online games in the past 20 decades!

You must really love getting bent over the table, you seem to do it every month.