[rdcrosse]

Afraid I am not very savvy when it comes to broadband and network related areas so I was hoping someone could shed some light on the following:

I have been using dsl for the past couple of years and have been very happy with it - good speed and negligible downtime. The local cable company just offered a promotion of $24/month for the first four months with no obligation. I have heard good things about cable so I decided to give it a try.

I use several speed test sites fairly regularly and know that I average from 1.1 mb/s to 1.3mb/s down and about 300kb up with my dsl. Naturally, one of the first sites I tried once my cable modem was installed was a speed test. Imagine my pleasant surprise when I tested 3 mb/s down and 256kb up. Tried downloading a few large files and I got an amazing 20mb/minute download rate. Very exciting.

So I was naturally quite disappointed when I tried out a few of my favorite Wolfenstein servers and discovered that the cable ping times were nearly double the pings that I had with my dsl. I don't quite understand how this could be if the download rate for the cable is over double what it is for my dsl and the upload rates are comparable. Do you think the 50kb/s upload difference would have an effect?

Was hoping someone could offer any possible fixes or solutions. Grazie in advance.

[eyadams]

Ping time isn't a function of the upstream and downstream speeds. It is actually more a function of the length of the wire between your computer and the server.

If your favorite servers were using the same Internet backbone as your DSL provider, your ping times would be low. However, if the servers and your cable provider were using different backbones, your pings times would be longer, even if you were both using T1 lines.

Or something like that.

[redJag]

Ping: the time it takes for information to go from you to the server and back to you.

Your cable provider seems to have high latency (which is displayed in your high ping). This means it takes awhile for the packets to start coming to you.

You experience a faster download speed because when you download something, latency is negligible. When playing a game, however, you are constantly opening new connections, sending new information.

Sorry if that was not clear. I can elaborate if necessary.. :-D

[Footy]

Try checking the ping to you cable provider throughout the day. If pings are noticeably higher in the evening then maybe your cable provider is a bit over loaded.

We had a huge issue with this in the Chicago area for over a month when Comcast took over till they got the system back up to par with the number of users.

Just open up the Network Utility in the Utilities Folder and in the ping tab type in your cable providers address. ie-www.comcast.net

Give them a call if you haven't and ask them to check into it for you too. Maybe there's and issue with the cable companies router you connect through.

[videian28]

hmm, I don't know what the mac equivilant to traceroute is, but in windows, you can type tracert www.whatever.com to check the route your traveling over to see how many "hops" it is taking to get to the game server (providing you know the name or ip of it)

the less hops the better of course as every hop adds time as it is rerouted to a different destination

[redJag]

Originally posted by videian28:
hmm, I don't know what the mac equivilant to traceroute is

Network Utility has a traceroute function as well.

[Gul Banana]

Originally posted by videian28:
hmm, I don't know what the mac equivilant to traceroute is

It's called "traceroute".

Code:
[vash:~] banana% traceroute arach.net.au
traceroute to arach.net.au (203.30.44.28), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets
 1  192.168.0.1 (192.168.0.1)  2.345 ms  1.324 ms  1.235 ms
 2  172.31.30.52 (172.31.30.52)  12.29 ms  12.836 ms  11.892 ms
 3  172.31.25.180 (172.31.25.180)  16.688 ms 172.31.24.180 (172.31.24.180)  13.826 ms  14.488 ms
 4  tarantula-adsl-data2.arach.net.au (203.30.44.234)  14.147 ms  12.932 ms tarantula-adsl-data1.arach.net.au (203.30.44.226)  13.962 ms
 5  s-o-labyrinth2-adsl-trunk2-network.arach.net.au (203.30.44.206)  39.132 ms  15.545 ms  14.42 ms
 6  labyrinth1-adsl-trunk1a.arach.net.au (203.30.44.214)  16.069 ms  37.796 ms  13.378 ms
 7  microlink1-bola1.arach.net.au (203.30.44.241)  17.181 ms  16.071 ms  15.648 ms
 8  web.arach.net.au (203.30.44.28)  16.461 ms  17.215 ms  16.286 ms

[Scooterboy]

Does it also help to have a fast upload speed as well as download speed? That's why I use Buisness Class Cable and SDSL. They both offer upload speed equal to download speed, i.e. 768Kbps down/768Kbps up.

This certainly helps when uploading any large files.

[Scotttheking]

Originally posted by Scooterboy:
Does it also help to have a fast upload speed as well as download speed? That's why I use Buisness Class Cable and SDSL. They both offer upload speed equal to download speed, i.e. 768Kbps down/768Kbps up.

This certainly helps when uploading any large files.

Speed and latency are not related.
It has to do more with wire distance and circuit load.

Take something close for example.
Latency is very low.
--- 192.168.0.1 ping statistics ---
10 packets transmitted, 10 packets received, 0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max = 0.468/0.653/2.158 ms

Take something a little further away, and how about introduce a half duplex connection.
--- 67.40.64.49 ping statistics ---
10 packets transmitted, 10 packets received, 0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max = 1.324/1.378/1.477 ms

Take something on the other side of the country...
--- www.macnn.com ping statistics ---
10 packets transmitted, 10 packets received, 0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max = 117.381/121.777/134.055 ms

Two main points.
Cable usually has higher pings then DSL.
The game servers you used may be closer network wise to the DSL line then the cable line.
Personally, I use DSL. I'm switching providers soon, and the new one advertises low latency. If I remember this thread, I'll post back.