High Pings with 3G

[shadowfox]

So maybe going iBurst isn't such a bad idea? It'll be cheaper than what I'm paying at the moment, tbh - and Vodacom doesn't seem to be showing any inclination to drop their prices

[pcfourie]

So maybe going iBurst isn't such a bad idea? It'll be cheaper than what I'm paying at the moment, tbh - and Vodacom doesn't seem to be showing any inclination to drop their prices

thinking about doing the same here

[Keldarza]

Careful with iburst, it tends to have alot of spikes. It's alot better to have consistant 100 ping on 3G than 80 ping on iBurst abut suffer 300ms "bursts" every now and then.

Telkom 3G is pretty stable (and cheaper than voda/mtn) but iBurst is cheaper though and 3G averages a higher ping rate that is more consistant.

One thing that is noticable with iBurst is that it gets more unstable with more connections. For example, if I play l4d2 alone it's actually rather stable but if another PC connects up to... anything almost, the quality of l4d2 drops alarmingly. I think iBurst starts to scan some of packet destinations if you go over a set number of connections open (for shaping or traffic splitting reasons I'd think).

WoW you can get a ping of 300 (i've even seen a 233) on wow, but it averages at about 400-500 where I am. If 2 people connect to wow it drops to about 600-700ms each. (Baffling considering how small the packets are)

TF2 can run at about 90ping on SGS (on a good day) if you have 90-100% signal strength, and the L4D2 servers sit even less than that at 70ms on iGame, but it spikes to about 140 every now and then. On ave it seems that l4d2 sits at 100ish on iGame (but it's getting better, i actually can play l4d2 on the igame servers, only 2 or 3 times on a map was the lag noticable). TF2 unfortunally just seems to spikes (to 300ms) far to often and it's very annoying.

So, FPS on iburst might be risky. Otherwise, iBurst seems to work fine for online games.

[Neo]

GPRS / 3G / iBurst = Packet Switched data transfer = high transfer rates but with higher latency. It's really that simply. It's how it works. There's no discussion. If you want lower latencies, move to ADSL. End.

[Fearl3$$]

ADSL FTW... 3g Wireless is only almost good for 1 thing, and that is browesing. Even E-mail download is a issue.

[shadowfox]

GPRS / 3G / iBurst = Packet Switched data transfer = high transfer rates but with higher latency. It's really that simply. It's how it works. There's no discussion. If you want lower latencies, move to ADSL. End.

As I'm sure I've noted earlier in this thread, ADSL isn't an option for me - which means I'm forced to look for the best alternative with the wireless providers.

Answering Keldarza's note: I don't really do FPS online - the aforementioned 3G being the cause - having a 200ms ping with others sitting in the 50's range is pure murder. I can usually headshot someone by aiming 50 metres in front of them, but that only works if they keep running in a straight line

As with regards to ping, I've never seen a 100ms ping on 3G. The best I've ever gotten was about 150ms - and that was on a local server. And in my experience it was far from consistent.

So in the meantime, I'm pretty much stuck playing MMO's (not that I'm complaining) - and anything in the range of 300 - 600ms is playable.

So my options remain 3G or iBurst - and at this point iBurst is considerably cheaper - the only thing Vodacom have ever done for us was give us 10% extra bandwidth - and that only lasted 2 months.

At the moment, I'm paying R225/gig - given the current climate in the industry that's obviously ridiculous.

[Venom]

I have dsl and the 3g ,I have tested the 3g and the results arnt too bad If you are able to get 3g reception where you are id say 3g is the way.

[shadowfox]

I have dsl and the 3g ,I have tested the 3g and the results arnt too bad If you are able to get 3g reception where you are id say 3g is the way.

Results are decent I suppose - until you decide to take a look at your bank account. Like I said ... R225/gig is a little hard to swallow.