Considering Migrating/Gaming Pings

Im currently using Nildram, who have been a very decent ISP for the past 5 years. But due to Tiscali's proposed takeover, I'm getting the feeling i dont want to hang around for much longer.

I feel that Zen would be the most reliable and customer friendly service to go with. But how are they with games? Being on Nildram im used to very stable pings. I mostly play on jolt.co.uk and fps.net hosted servers and my ping with Nildram is always 30.

How would this compare to Zen? I think Zen are based in Manchester. While Nildram are based in London, along with most gaming servers. Would this make much difference? Seeing as im from Edinburgh, Scotland.

Im just curious because id like to know what to expect if i do jump ship over to Zen. Speed, reliability and customer servers all look great. The one thing that does look negative is that a number of people seem to be complaining about their connections to gaming servers.

Hi there,

GIven you're in Edinburgh I would say there's not going to be any significant difference to your pings to the South, plus you'll get the advantage that servers that *are* in the North won't be reached via London.

As far as the issues raised, from what I've seen they seem to relate to a specific host, with the issues being beyond Zen's network.

regards,
Phil.

Thats sort of what I had assumed. Thanks for the quick reply, much appreciated.

I just dont want to switch from having a very constant ping, to something around 10-20ms higher.

Another question I have is.. I currently have interleaving turned off with Nildram. If im to migrate to Zen, would I need to request it to be turned off again? And if so is there any way to do this when signing up?

Edited by Fr4ser (Thu 19-Jul-07 20:50:24)

Also came from nilly, had a few ping problems but seem to be ok now.

Tracing route to www.jolt.co.uk [82.133.85.65]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms my.router [192.168.1.1]
2 32 ms 31 ms 31 ms gay-dsl1.wh.zen.net.uk [62.3.83.20]
3 32 ms 35 ms 31 ms gay-dsl1.wh.zen.net.uk [62.3.80.201]
4 38 ms 39 ms 38 ms gay-dsl1.wh.zen.net.uk [62.3.80.45]
5 38 ms 39 ms 37 ms te1-3.cr05.tn5.bb.pipex.net [195.66.224.29]
6 38 ms 38 ms 37 ms gay-dsl1.wh.zen.net.uk [62.72.140.142]
7 38 ms 39 ms 39 ms ge-0-0-0-3801.jolt-gw.cust.pipex.net [212.241.24
1.14]
8 39 ms 38 ms 40 ms www.jolt.co.uk [82.133.85.65]

Trace complete.

From N. Ireland, paid for interleave to be turned off by nilly and it is still off. No more disconnections in the middle of matches and a solid connection.

Hmm,

I was with Nilly, and my hops in their network were around 12ms

Going to Zen they are around 17ms

Both with Fast mode enabled

My traceroute to www.jolt.co.uk is slightly different to yours (I'm on the edge of London)

traceroute to www.jolt.co.uk (82.133.85.65), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets
1 My router ---- 1.618 ms 1.521 ms 1.752 ms
2 gauthier-dsl1.hq.zen.net.uk (62.3.82.17) 20.072 ms 16.939 ms 20.360 ms
3 lotze-ge-0-0-1-136.hq.zen.net.uk (62.3.80.137) 19.825 ms 18.925 ms 20.123 ms
4 deleuze-ge-0-2-0-8.hq.zen.net.uk (62.3.80.94) 19.293 ms 18.942 ms 19.482 ms
5 suarez-so-0-0-0-0.te.zen.net.uk (62.3.80.62) 27.221 ms 23.183 ms 24.948 ms
6 lorenz-ge-0-0-1-9.te.zen.net.uk (62.3.80.38) 26.304 ms 23.929 ms 24.383 ms
7 g2-2-501.cr01.hx2.bb.pipex.net (193.203.5.14) 25.331 ms 28.012 ms 25.218 ms
8 v3953.cr05.tn5.bb.pipex.net (62.72.137.29) 56.805 ms 27.429 ms 27.907 ms
9 g2-48-5.ar01.tn5.bb.pipex.net (62.72.140.14) 26.682 ms 26.663 ms 24.235 ms
10 ge-0-0-0-3801.jolt-gw.cust.pipex.net (212.241.241.14) 25.271 ms 24.320 ms 25.963 ms
11 secure.jolt.co.uk (82.133.85.65) 23.820 ms 23.737 ms 26.258 ms