Whirlpool

Anyone got any ideas as to what I could try to get to the bottom of the following problem?

Virgin broadband connection is between low (-91dbm) and good (-87dbm), 2 to 3 bars, but the latency is cose to 400ms average.

Wirless is diabled, I am plugged in using a cat5 cable. No spyware etc...
The speed tests on speedtest.net show about an 800ms latency but up and download speeds are pretty good at 700kbps and 160kbps.

Thanks for any response.

jetoblaster writes...

Virgin broadband connection is between low (-91dbm) and good (-87dbm), 2 to 3 bars, but the latency is cose to 400ms average.

That is similar to what I get when it is working well. It is often more and not very often less.

Is your latency similar? I am pretty sure it is the high latency that is causing the web browsing to feel so slow, downloads go resonable quick, just the actualy browsing is killing me.

jetoblaster writes...

Is your latency similar?

Yes. I often see 800 - 1000ms but then I probably mainly check it when it feels slow.

I think the latency has to do with the switching overheads of the ping or traffic start up when you are NOT in HSDPA mode.

If you have 2 machines running on the net and one is loading the connection enough to keep the connection in HSDPA mode, then the pings from the other machine to the net will be relatively low (between 80mS and 130mS)

This is why you can not always rely on things like game server ping times displayed in a game or even individual pings themselves.

Once a game is running and you have a HSDPA connection then your latency in the connection is fairly low.

EDIT: have you tried to use different DNS servers to see if the connection feels faster, or even cache the DNS entries on a machine to speed repetitive look up delays.

If you really want to make the connection feel fast, then put another machine between the modem and your internal network.
Install something like IPCOP , ClarkConnect , SMOOTHWALL, etc on it.
Then use the data and the DNS lookup caching services from this, and watch now you connection feels so much faster.
You will not only have DNS look up caching, but also data caching as well so when you press the back arrow key on the browser, you will have an instantanious response from the cached data and will save on average between about 15% to 30% of internet traffic depending upon your browsing ways.

sydbod writes...

EDIT: have you tried to use different DNS servers to see if the connection feels faster, or even cache the DNS entries on a machine to speed repetitive look up delays.

Haven't tried that but I think I should considering the DNS servers that virgin assigns were timing out half the time, I am also going to get hook up an external antenna and see if that helps.

I've been told by customer support from a number of ISP's that latency is a problem that is inherent in all current wireless internet services. You simply can't do anything about it, which makes VoIP, Video Conferencing and Gaming painful to impossible. An external antenna will not help latency at all. The high latency is the only reason I left Virgin when they first came out with Virgin BB@H.

I wish I knew what was being done about this, research, new tech etc., as I can't get ADSL either. Wireless is fast, but only if you don't want or need the full benefits of a decent ADSL BB connection.

Chrome_0001 writes...

I've been told by customer support from a number of ISP's that latency is a problem that is inherent in all current wireless internet services.

That is incorrect.

You will find that a wireless connection will give you between 80mS to 130 mS pings to the tower (the first hop), where as ADSL or cable will give you around 30 mS ping to the first hop.

All the other hops should add the basic similar increases, no matter what connection type you are using.

I typically play BF2 games with pings of under 200mS to the major Australian servers. When I had my cable connections, I used to get around 120 mS pings to these same servers.

Thanks for explaining it Sybod, it makes sense. But while on VBB@H I was constantly kicked from BF2 for a high ping. My ping would hover very high then spike for a long enough period to be auto-kicked. I never reach the same high ping on ISDN, and it's seems to be much more stable. Maybe the first hop from my area is a longer jump to the tower than normal. Glad it worked out for you though.

Chrome_0001 writes...

My ping would hover very high then spike for a long enough period to be auto-kicked.

That can happen if your tower is overloaded and it causes dropouts in your signal.(ectended periods of no traffic.

Have also experienced it until very lately when my connection has cleared up.

By the way, the distance from you to the tower has virtually no effect on the pings.....the speed of radio waves is the same as light so you would have to be a huge distance to get any measurable difference in pings.

Basically the higher ping on wireless is because there are time slots where data from a person can only be sent and received, so there are dead times for a person when others are sending traffic.

If you have a good signal strength, and your tower is not overloaded, then you should only see around 80mS pings to you tower on the first hop. (i should have been more specific and specified the conditions that apply when making my statements)

Will the Tower Upgrade from 16 Channels to 48 Channels effect latency ?

David Vincent Smith  writes...

Will the Tower Upgrade from 16 Channels to 48 Channels effect latency

My understanding is that the data rate will increase at the same rate as the number of channels used.
Now assuming the worst case that all users are using the same transmission frequency (using time division multiplexing ) Then there will be no worst case increase in latency when all the channels are full, but there could be a lower latency when not all channels are being used.(it could actually be good rather than bad...I know, life normally does not work that way, but sometimes one can be lucky).