Any good for gaming? Especially in US

Thinking of moving over since Be has gone bad.

Anyone rate Zen for gaming? No fibre here and looks like Zen is no LLU on my exchange. Worth paying the premium over the likes of PlusNet?

And if anyone could do be a favour and ping the following two game servers I'd really appreciate it:
199.108.194.41
195.33.132.169

Latency to US should be very hard to beat on Zen given their top quality transatlantic link.

2 9 ms 9 ms 9 ms losubs.subs.dsl1.wh-man.zen.net.uk [62.3.87.145]
3 9 ms 9 ms 10 ms no-dns-yet-62-3-80-197.zen.co.uk [62.3.80.197]
4 16 ms 15 ms 21 ms ge-3-0-0-0.cr2.th-lon.zen.net.uk [62.3.80.45]
5 16 ms 16 ms 16 ms ge-2-0-0-0.cr1.th-lon.zen.net.uk [62.3.80.41]
6 24 ms 16 ms 21 ms 82.71.254.150
7 97 ms 85 ms 95 ms tge11-1.fr4.lga.llnw.net [69.28.172.149]
8 85 ms 95 ms 85 ms ve5.fr3.lga.llnw.net [69.28.171.201]
9 96 ms 95 ms 96 ms tge2-4.fr3.iad.llnw.net [69.28.171.157]
10 101 ms 101 ms 101 ms sony.ge4-12.fr3.iad.llnw.net [68.142.111.254]
11 91 ms 95 ms 102 ms abepsn-liv-gw04.planetside2.com [199.108.194.41]

Second IP seems to suffer the wrath of level3

2 9 ms 9 ms 10 ms losubs.subs.dsl1.wh-man.zen.net.uk [62.3.87.145]
3 9 ms 9 ms 9 ms ge-2-1-0-160.cr1.wh-man.zen.co.uk [62.3.87.161]
4 9 ms 9 ms 10 ms ge-2-0-0-0.cr2.wh-man.zen.net.uk [62.3.80.50]
5 9 ms 9 ms 9 ms ae2-117.man11.ip4.tinet.net [77.67.66.101]
6 17 ms 19 ms 17 ms xe-8-3-0.lon11.ip4.tinet.net [141.136.110.210]
7 18 ms 16 ms 17 ms 4.68.110.113
8 37 ms 38 ms 38 ms 4.69.166.14
9 31 ms 39 ms 32 ms ae-59-114.ebr1.london1.level3.net [4.69.153.125]
10 50 ms 40 ms 57 ms ae-47-47.ebr1.paris1.level3.net [4.69.143.110]
11 32 ms 32 ms 31 ms ae-91-91.csw4.paris1.level3.net [4.69.161.90]
12 38 ms 38 ms 37 ms ae-92-92.ebr2.paris1.level3.net [4.69.161.105]
13 37 ms 37 ms 50 ms ae-46-46.ebr1.frankfurt1.level3.net [4.69.143.137]
14 40 ms 40 ms 39 ms ae-71-71.csw2.frankfurt1.level3.net [4.69.140.6]
15 32 ms 31 ms 31 ms ae-73-73.ebr3.frankfurt1.level3.net [4.69.163.5]
16 37 ms 36 ms 36 ms ae-45-45.ebr1.dusseldorf1.level3.net [4.69.143.165]
17 32 ms 32 ms 31 ms ae-22-22.ebr2.dusseldorf1.level3.net [4.69.143.186]
18 33 ms 31 ms 33 ms ae-48-48.ebr1.amsterdam1.level3.net [4.69.143.209]
19 40 ms 40 ms 40 ms ae-59-114.csw1.amsterdam1.level3.net [4.69.153.198]
20 46 ms 32 ms 31 ms 4.69.162.189
21 39 ms 40 ms 39 ms sony-online.edge4.amsterdam1.level3.net [212.72.42.182]
22 37 ms 32 ms 31 ms amspsn-liv-gw05.planetside2.com [195.33.132.169]

Thanks! That's a fine ping and very good number of hops for the US server, but nasty for the EU one!

In reply to a post by davegod:

very good number of hops for the US server, but nasty for the EU one!

Much the same on a BTw line, as you already know.

EDIT: The # of hops to EU site is out of hands of any UK ISP; It is down to the routing in EU from landfall to Amsterdam.

Edited by XRaySpeX (Mon 08-Jul-13 20:10:01)

In reply to a post by davegod:

....very good number of hops for the US server, but nasty for the EU one!

There are probably a number of hops you can't see on the traceroute. Number of hops aren't an issue or a problem, the ping at the end is all that matters.

True, but as a very general rule of thumb the more hops, the more likely there will be variations in latency at the end (or jitter as I suppose you could call it).

In reply to a post by XRaySpeX:

EDIT: The # of hops to EU site is out of hands of any UK ISP; It is down to the routing in EU from landfall to Amsterdam.

Not completely true - If Zen use multiple transit providers there are things they could do to send it via another provider (i.e., Verizon). Probably more effort than it is worth, but it is potentially do-able. Don't know about this particular IP address, just speaking generally.