I think Marwin is talking about a different sky then we have in the UK Rams
.Sky Broadband ?
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Centurio
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}TCP{Ramses
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}TCP{Ramses
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Yes Marwin, a cool off period gives you time to cancel the contract if you don't like it. In the UK we can cancel pretty much any order made online or over the phone (I think) within a few days if the item isn't what you thought it was. In this case, I have 30 days after installation to cancel, otherwise I will be locked into a 12 month contract.
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}TCP{Ramses
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NB skip down to the bottom for tips, and sorry for the long post but I am happy 
Looks like I will be with TalkTalk for the foreseeable. I've tested it the last couple of days and the ping results were initially disappointing enough for me to consider cancelling and trying another ISP.
However, with a bit of persistance through the automatic telephone hurdles and discussions with the tech support people they seem to have come up trumps. My ping on our main servers have dropped to around 32/36 this morning WOOHOO. With the old Virgin account I was getting 44/48 ish and with the initial setup on TalkTalk yesterday this rose to around 52/60 ish.
Strangely, even with the higher ping yesterday, dodges and jumps seemed more responsive, zippy even
Although the Indian Call Centre people yesterday were polite and tried to help, they failed to improve things much (the language barrier/difficulty with accent didn't help) ... However, the Irish Call Centre chap today grasped what I wanted straight away, did a couple of tests, reset several settings and Voila ! (Cheers Steve). I know that Asian call centres are cheaper for the ISP, but until the language difficulties are eliminated then companies really do risk losing business through frustration etc (I really was on the point of cancelling).
Anyway, keep your heads down tonight ... I will be taking pot shots
Most of you probably already know the following with adsl2+ (I have always been on cable), but just in case I will summarise what got me the result ...
Several things that improved ping and things
Keep the modem switched on, or get the ISP to switch off some of it's line monitoring. My new modem gets quite warm when it's running and in the interest of saving electricity (and co-incidentally the planet) I switched it off when not in use. Unfortunately the ISP has line monitoring which interpreted my switching off as a problem on the line. So it automatically downgraded me from 20 to 8 meg in an attempt to resolve this perceived problem 
. Anyway, the Techie tells me he has now disabled this automatic monitoring so now I can switch off as often as I like without incurring an automatic downgrade 
Get the MTU set as high as possible. Mine is set to 1450 now, it used to be 1500 with Virgin and was pre-setmuch lower when I first got the new modem.
TCPoptimizer is a program that I have used for a number of years. It sets various settings on your network card/registry, is easy to use, and makes a backup just in case http://www.speedguide.net/downloads.php
There are a couple of tweaks to the registry that I tried yesterday. Probably best not to try these if you are unsure of what you are doing with the registry ... and always make a backup of course
The first tweak is to set TcpAckFrequency to 1 (default is 2). This basically reduces the time your pc waits before sending a response. When I tried this it reduced my old ISP ping on our servers from the usual 44 to around 36, with a similar reduction to the new ISP ping so it worked
It is particularly useful if you regularly play on distant servers (eg USA for me) because the improvement in ping is greater with higher pings. The downside is that it also reduces your download/upload speed, so if you dowload a lot of files it might be too much hassle to keep switching the setting in the register each time you want to play In my case it reduced the dl from about 5.5 to 3.5 
and tbh I am happy with around 36 ping gaming on my new settings so I will only use it if I join some online RPG based in the USA.
The second registry tweak is to set TCPNoDelay to 1. It basically stops the PC from waiting to batch small packets together into a larger batch. I use XP and I didn't have the MSMQ folder in my registry, but I tried anyway and I'm not sure it worked correctly, the register merge seemed to insert a duplicate set of folders in my registry (which I undid as soon as I saw it). It might have been my error, but I would not recommend this if the MSMQ folder isn't already there.
This is the site that I found these tweaks on (there are other hits in google with the same tweaks) http://www.sk-gaming.com/content/15500- ... ing_by_150
There are probably other things that I have forgotten, tweaks that the Techie probably didn't tell me he'd done, and further tweaks he could do if the ping still wasn't good ... but it is and hopefully will remain so
Looks like I will be with TalkTalk for the foreseeable. I've tested it the last couple of days and the ping results were initially disappointing enough for me to consider cancelling and trying another ISP.
However, with a bit of persistance through the automatic telephone hurdles and discussions with the tech support people they seem to have come up trumps. My ping on our main servers have dropped to around 32/36 this morning WOOHOO. With the old Virgin account I was getting 44/48 ish and with the initial setup on TalkTalk yesterday this rose to around 52/60 ish.
Strangely, even with the higher ping yesterday, dodges and jumps seemed more responsive, zippy even
Although the Indian Call Centre people yesterday were polite and tried to help, they failed to improve things much (the language barrier/difficulty with accent didn't help) ... However, the Irish Call Centre chap today grasped what I wanted straight away, did a couple of tests, reset several settings and Voila ! (Cheers Steve). I know that Asian call centres are cheaper for the ISP, but until the language difficulties are eliminated then companies really do risk losing business through frustration etc (I really was on the point of cancelling).
Anyway, keep your heads down tonight ... I will be taking pot shots
Most of you probably already know the following with adsl2+ (I have always been on cable), but just in case I will summarise what got me the result ...
Several things that improved ping and things
Keep the modem switched on, or get the ISP to switch off some of it's line monitoring. My new modem gets quite warm when it's running and in the interest of saving electricity (and co-incidentally the planet
) I switched it off when not in use. Unfortunately the ISP has line monitoring which interpreted my switching off as a problem on the line. So it automatically downgraded me from 20 to 8 meg in an attempt to resolve this perceived problem . Anyway, the Techie tells me he has now disabled this automatic monitoring so now I can switch off as often as I like without incurring an automatic downgrade Get the MTU set as high as possible. Mine is set to 1450 now, it used to be 1500 with Virgin and was pre-setmuch lower when I first got the new modem.
TCPoptimizer is a program that I have used for a number of years. It sets various settings on your network card/registry, is easy to use, and makes a backup just in case
http://www.speedguide.net/downloads.phpThere are a couple of tweaks to the registry that I tried yesterday. Probably best not to try these if you are unsure of what you are doing with the registry ... and always make a backup of course
The first tweak is to set TcpAckFrequency to 1 (default is 2). This basically reduces the time your pc waits before sending a response. When I tried this it reduced my old ISP ping on our servers from the usual 44 to around 36, with a similar reduction to the new ISP ping so it worked
It is particularly useful if you regularly play on distant servers (eg USA for me) because the improvement in ping is greater with higher pings. The downside is that it also reduces your download/upload speed, so if you dowload a lot of files it might be too much hassle to keep switching the setting in the register each time you want to play
In my case it reduced the dl from about 5.5 to 3.5 and tbh I am happy with around 36 ping gaming on my new settings so I will only use it if I join some online RPG based in the USA.The second registry tweak is to set TCPNoDelay to 1. It basically stops the PC from waiting to batch small packets together into a larger batch. I use XP and I didn't have the MSMQ folder in my registry, but I tried anyway and I'm not sure it worked correctly, the register merge seemed to insert a duplicate set of folders in my registry (which I undid as soon as I saw it). It might have been my error, but I would not recommend this if the MSMQ folder isn't already there.
This is the site that I found these tweaks on (there are other hits in google with the same tweaks) http://www.sk-gaming.com/content/15500- ... ing_by_150
There are probably other things that I have forgotten, tweaks that the Techie probably didn't tell me he'd done, and further tweaks he could do if the ping still wasn't good ... but it is and hopefully will remain so
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}TCP{Viper//
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partydevil
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}TCP{Ramses
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I am no techie but it is basically the maximum amount of data you are allowed to send in a single packet. 1500 MTU is the usual, standard maximum (I think), but your ISP or modem might be set to a lower number.
That TCPOptimizer program has a section (tab) where you can test the maximum allowed with your modem. If this reports it to be much lower than 1500 you could try and ask your ISP if it can be set higher (like I did, and they gave me a password to access and change the modem's settings)
In theory, the closer to 1500 you can get, the fewer the number of packets are needed, which is more efficient because there are fewer overheads for the pc to deal with (ie a lower ping as the data is handled quicker). I think
The TCPOptimizer also has an online help section if you want to check what the various settings are for btw.
but it is basically the maximum amount of data you are allowed to send in a single packet. 1500 MTU is the usual, standard maximum (I think), but your ISP or modem might be set to a lower number. That TCPOptimizer program has a section (tab) where you can test the maximum allowed with your modem. If this reports it to be much lower than 1500 you could try and ask your ISP if it can be set higher (like I did, and they gave me a password to access and change the modem's settings)
In theory, the closer to 1500 you can get, the fewer the number of packets are needed, which is more efficient because there are fewer overheads for the pc to deal with (ie a lower ping as the data is handled quicker). I think
The TCPOptimizer also has an online help section if you want to check what the various settings are for btw.
Arent MTU and all that Internet configuration stuff being set in the Windows Registry ? I thought Windows 7 would auto optimize that as you go along and only older Windows versions (XP) would need manual changing :O
That tcpoptimizer program is also quite old (2003) and didnt help me one bit with my "25 mbit vdsl not getting full upload for whatever reason that cant be explained but still occurs just to annoy the heck out of me on a day, on which I would rather spend time doing something else" problem
That tcpoptimizer program is also quite old (2003) and didnt help me one bit with my "25 mbit vdsl not getting full upload for whatever reason that cant be explained but still occurs just to annoy the heck out of me on a day, on which I would rather spend time doing something else" problem
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}TCP{Ramses
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- Joined: Sun Feb 02, 2003 12:09 am
I prefer XP The Optimizer program improved my connection when I first used it a couple of years back after the ISP upgraded my connection. It might be quite old but it's not as old as me and it definitely knows more than I do about settings
But you might be right, if Windows 7's auto optimisation actually works then the TCPoptimizer probably/possibly won't make any difference because Win7 will probably/possibly just switch the TCPoptimizer's settings back to it's own preferred settings As I have no intention of switching to Windows 7 any time soon, I am not going to research what it actually does, or whether Win7's settings are actually for the best connection or just what MS think you should want to have
And yes, the MTU and internet stuff settings are set in the registry. But also my modem has an MTU setting and if this isn't set to the same value as the Registry setting (and the ISP requirements probably ) then strange things might happen, like a low upload speed maybe ? And the default setting in my modem was set to make the ISP's life easier rather than get the best connection for me which is why I changed it ... with the ISP's blessing
The Optimizer program improved my connection when I first used it a couple of years back after the ISP upgraded my connection. It might be quite old but it's not as old as me and it definitely knows more than I do about settings But you might be right, if Windows 7's auto optimisation actually works then the TCPoptimizer probably/possibly won't make any difference because Win7 will probably/possibly just switch the TCPoptimizer's settings back to it's own preferred settings
As I have no intention of switching to Windows 7 any time soon, I am not going to research what it actually does, or whether Win7's settings are actually for the best connection or just what MS think you should want to have And yes, the MTU and internet stuff settings are set in the registry. But also my modem has an MTU setting and if this isn't set to the same value as the Registry setting (and the ISP requirements probably
) then strange things might happen, like a low upload speed maybe ? And the default setting in my modem was set to make the ISP's life easier rather than get the best connection for me which is why I changed it ... with the ISP's blessing