How is it possible to have incredibly fast broadband, but not be able to play MW3?

I'm on the top Virgin Media cable broadband package. I live in the UK, in the suburbs of a large city.

I just did a speedtest.net and got 123 Mbps download (yep, one hundred and twenty three!)

However, since I had virgin installed approx 2+ years ago I have struggled to play online games like MW3.

When I try to play MW3, I can't connect to any host under 150ms ping. I launch the game, it looks for playable games goes through the 50ms category, etc, all the way up to 150ms category. I never had this problem at my old house in a different area. Even on a 10 Mbps connection I could connect to 50ms hosts 99% of the time.

I don't understand how I can have such fast broadband, but not be able to play MW3? Is there some other factor than pure speed that is screwing things up? Is it the game network? The area I live in (maybe the infrastructure sucks or something), or is my provider doing something to mess things up?

I've asked in MW3 forums - no one seems to know.

I've had the broadband provider send engineers out many times. The engineers visit, they say they can't find a problem, they do a speedtest.net and say 'look the speed is fine, the ping is really low'

But something is ruining my gaming experience. Can anyone tell me what it is, or what it could be, or some software I can use to diagnose it? Or anything at all? Please?!

Additionally, the machine I play on is wired to the router, not wireless. The router itself is one of Virgin Media's new Superhub 2 devices. As an aside, for other reasons I am already considering buying a 'better' router and changing the superhub to modem mode. The reason for this is that I want some more advanced features not offered by the superhub including openDNS. If purchasing a different router would also alleviate this weird issue than I will be even more inclined to get one soon...

I already asked this question on the networking engineers site but they redirected me here. There was a suggestion about enabling UPNP, which I can try, although I'm not at home right at this minute so I can't check what it's currently set to or even if enabled.

danwellman

Posted 2013-09-10T08:43:37.887

Reputation: 153

I would imagine it's not due to speed per se, more about the quality of the line. You can have massive amounts of data loss in VOIP, Phone and general data transfer with little impact, but not for online gaming - the quality must be high. Do a continuous ping and see how many packets are lost. Can you confirm that the computer is the same as your old house but the router is new? You also may need to set up the QoS on your router.

– Dave – 2013-09-10T08:45:58.603

Hi, well some bits of the computer are new...I probably have upgraded significant parts of the machine over time since I moved. Definitely have a newer graphics card, possibly new CPU and motherboard. I can get the exact specs later if it helps. For reference I'm running Windows 8, although I had same issue with Windows 7 – danwellman – 2013-09-10T08:58:25.640

1This is now impossible to answer. You now have a new machine (or substantially changed), new router, new provider and new set up... Too many possible reasons I'm afraid. You will have to trouble shoot. Try a different PC. Try a different router. Try your PC in a different location. Then, when you know where the fault is, ask again with a more 'specific' or 'narrow' question. Sorry, I don't think I can help more than this. – Dave – 2013-09-10T10:50:36.667

@danwellman - I would agree UPNP is a solution although your ping problem isn't releated to anything you can solve. Your ping is determined by the distance between you and the server and the route it takes. If you ISP has bad route agreements your high ping is simply explain by that. – Ramhound – 2013-09-10T11:09:20.690

How is this possible? Throughput and latency are not as related as you seem to expect. As far as I (and the visiting engineers) can tell, there doesn't appear to be an actual problem with your connection, but for the purpose of playing MW3, it is simply not as good as your old one. If there is a problem, it is hard to troubleshoot from the information in the question alone. – Marcks Thomas – 2013-09-10T11:23:12.433

I checked UPNP - it was already enabled – danwellman – 2013-09-11T19:59:55.467

Answers

Bad "ping" times arent necessarilly your ISPs fault - and often arent. Its often something downstream.

If you know the IP of your gaming server, that would be the best test, but you can always do the following tests to other locations.

Type the following in a command prompt and hit Enter

pathping yahoo.com

It will run a traceroute to the location (again, if you know the DNS or IP of the server, that would be best). Then, it will ping each hop along the way. You will then (hopefully) see where the latency shoots up.

Note: This test can take several minutes to run.

Even if you do find a hop along the way that has high latency, there isnt much you can do about it. You can contact your ISP and/or that provider and raise the issue...

Keltari

Posted 2013-09-10T08:43:37.887

Reputation: 57 019

I tried running this in cmd prompt - it gave a 'general error' – danwellman – 2013-09-11T20:02:30.353

really? Thats... odd. – Keltari – 2013-09-11T20:04:02.387

yes, I also had firewall disabled for this if it makes a difference – danwellman – 2013-09-11T21:01:33.080

My guess is that it is some other factor of your internet connection. Such as high latency, bad jitter, or low dependability (dropping packets). try Pingtest.net to get an idea of how you connection stands up.

Another place to check is http://voiptest.8x8.com/ for more detailed information.

PsychoData

Posted 2013-09-10T08:43:37.887

Reputation: 1 331

Neither of these services worked for me. Pingtest said something was stopping the test working, I disabled my firewall but it still didn't work. 8x8 had some kind of Java error which stopped the test working... – danwellman – 2013-09-11T19:58:17.087

Make sure you have the latest version of java. And a firewall has no affect on this. I ran one fine from behind a firewall. – PsychoData – 2013-09-11T20:03:17.830

Also, you have to make sure you hit for the website to Allow the applet to run, or I hit an error as well. – PsychoData – 2013-09-11T20:13:58.237

I downloaded Java specifically for it, so it should be the latest version. I allowed it to run, but I still get the error – danwellman – 2013-09-11T20:59:20.120

Try this. See if you have any blocked ports. Also you can try forwarding the related ports to your (xbox,ps3,computer,wii) to see if your router is dropping them.

– PsychoData – 2013-09-11T21:22:37.060

Well, I tried that and got the green box at the end to say that my equipment did not respond to their probes – danwellman – 2013-09-12T19:20:24.463

hmmm weird I expected blocked ports. It may be that your carrier is actually dropping the traffic – PsychoData – 2013-09-12T19:27:48.250

Networking Equations

· Propagation delay = 
     distance traveled /
     propagation speed

· Transmission delay = 
     # of bytes to transfer / 
     transmission speed (or bandwidth)

Think cars on a bridge. The difference lies in how long it takes for a single car to travel across the bridge versus how many cars can move across the bridge at any one time.

Ярослав Рахматуллин

Posted 2013-09-10T08:43:37.887

Reputation: 9 076

Try local game servers and complain to your ISP if you have above 50ms ping to geographically local hosts. – Ярослав Рахматуллин – 2013-09-10T21:01:37.150