Broadband Q's

[Dangermouse]

Virgin are 2 streets away with fast broadband but they do not appear to have made it on to my estate yet. As it is a private estate, I don't think they will get their own cable in, so rely on the old school telephone lines.

I assume that my speed will vary depending on time of day etc, I find I am more successful playing on line in the morning than afternoon, come the evening I throw my controller down with disgust as I get shot by people who are not even visible to me,

DM

[Alpha1]

How much are you paying for your broad band I think I would be having a word with them.

[kennyc]

first up I know nothing about console gaming, however I have PC gamed for a decade or so :) so a couple of things that will effect your gaming fun, latency, its not just the time it takes for you to see the other player, its the time it takes for your input to be seen by their machine, if you take a poor "ping" and add into that the wifi delay then you are on a hiding to nothing, can you see "ping" in game with a console? if so then try to join games with as low a ping as possible (this may be where my ignorance shows :) ) in fact do you play on dedicated servers or is the game hosted by one of the players? for a couple of years I managed to play the original COD game on a 300 Kb line with no problems, using mainly a US server with a ping of 120! so line speed is not everything.
is anyone else in the house running a PC or console while you are gaming? as even if it is not actively being used it can still be eating bandwidth with "housekeeping" activity.
try using an ethernet connection, its the best way to ensure you are getting the most out of your connection speed, I know no one who has really got on with gaming over wifi on FPS games (again this may be PC only )
lastly and maybe most importantly, some people just hack or spend 22 hrs a day playing ! you aren't going to beat them BF3 is a game that you get better at the longer you play it, knowing the maps is everything, thats why on some maps you will see people with very high KD ratios, they know where to camp for max kills, try altering your game style to play assault or resupply, join a squad and get points for support, play as a team player and let someone else be first around the corner sometimes its not that other people are faster they are just more used to the game.

[Dangermouse]

Just ran a speed test again,

Upload 2mb
Download .4

According to U Switch BT are the best providers, offering
9.6 upload
1.8 download

Currently I have unlimited usage but I see that BT offers 10GB or 40GB packages - I don't like the idea of being ring fenced.

DM

[Ovenpaa]

I would always expect the download to be considerably faster than upload speeds so something is very wrong here, take all of the machines off the network (Turn them off) Restart your router/ADSL and then connect one machine only to it, connect to the internet as normal but do nothing else, now browse to http://speedtest.net/ and run a speed test, what speeds does it show?

[Dangermouse]

In the style of Captain Manwairing,

"I was wondering when you would spot that deliberate mistake"

Download 2mb
Upload .4mb this morning

DM

[Ovenpaa]

Time to speak to your service provider, ring up tech support and tell them the speeds you are getting. Do you have may extension leads from where the cable comes in to the ADSL router?

[spud]

I have started a little on line gaming with my PS3 (Battlefield 3) - at the moment I am consistently losing to other players who can move and shoot faster than I can due to my Internet connection speed. So I wish to get a faster connection..

Can you have 2 different providers on the same phone line ie Sky for my everyday needs and Virgin plugged straight into the PS3?

I doubt you can, so can you have two "outs" from your provider in the same house?
The computer is plugged straight into the modem/wireless router up stairs and I use the wireless feature for gaming down stairs.
There is a phone jack next to the PS3, is it possible to have that connected to the PS3 direct and thus get the best out of what I already have. Possibly by buying a second Sky router and placing it "in line" or would the two routers be incompatible?

My PC does not have a wireless receiver, and due to the slow speeds it already sludges along at I would prefer not to slow things up any further by having my Internet wireless,

DM

change your isp to www.fast.co.uk they are desigened for us gamers

[Dangermouse]

The bt cable enters the house on the ground floor. I use the bedroom jack and then a wind up extension lead to get it to the router, can not remember how long the extension lead is, possibly 10 meters - Certainly long enough to run from downstairs to the bedroom before I wired the phone socket in the bedroom.

DM

[Dangermouse]

Download Upload Latency Server Distance Share
2.05 Mb/s 0.67 Mb/s 104 ms Newbury < 50 mi

Results from speedtest.net