MWEB’s decision to cut its paid transit links to larger operators, in a phased approach, last week caused a big stir in the industry.
The company first severed its paid peering through SAIX to providers like MTN Business and Vodacom, and yesterday cut its peering link to Telkom/SAIX which means that MWEB now only connects to local operators which peer with them directly.
Good news for local Internet users is that Internet Solutions (IS) and MWEB are now peering under a proof-of-concept agreement while MWEB and Vodacom Business have switched on their local peering link this week.
Traffic between MWEB’s network and that of MTN Business and Telkom is however routed internationally. International routing means higher latency and hence worsened service levels when browsing the web, but the community who will feel the effects of these changes the hardest is likely to be online gamers.
In online gaming the difference between 30ms and 300ms ping times is particularly significant, and online gamers are likely to change either their gaming servers or their ISP to ensure that they have low latency when gaming online.
It is therefore of value for consumers to take note which traffic is routed locally and which traffic is routed internationally.
The following table provides an overview how traffic between MWEB and other providers (and vice versa) is currently routed.
To assist you in deciding which gaming server to use on your broadband account, the following table provides an overview of where the most prominent gaming servers in SA are hosted:
| Game service provider | Hosting location | Traffic route to MWEB |
| SAIX Gaming Servers (SGS) | Telkom/SAIX | International |
| iGame | MTN Business and Vodacom Business | Jinx (local and international mix) |
| IS Gaming | Internet Solutions | Local |
| Web Africa Gaming Experiencing (WAGE) | Web Africa | CPT local / JHB International |
| Vox Gaming | Vox Telecom | Local |
| Vodacom Gaming | Vodacom Business |
Jinx (local and international mix) |
Unfortunately, it is a complicated setup, and an iGame representative explained that their link to MWEB, which goes via Jinx, swaps between local and international routing, sometimes changing routing patterns twice daily.
All Call of Duty: Black Ops servers will be hosted in the MWEB data centers. At the moment, it seems that the best best bandwidth option for those servers will be MWEB or IS bandwidth.
Discuss MWEB and gaming in the forums
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