My idea, your opinions

[shux]

Hi Guys,

I'm a website designer by day, gamer by night, socialiser by weekend.

My days and weekends are great, but it's the gaming side of things that are really getting me naffed off at the moment.

You see, I'm on Virgin Media for my broadband. I'm in nostalgic love with Unreal Tournament, yet because of the rediculous handling of the traffic load on Virgin Media's ISP network, my latency times (pings) are utterly pants.

A simple ping to news.bbc.co.uk results in such erratic results, ranging from 20ms to 140ms in just 4 hops, it's like the national lottery of milliseconds. I've also noticed, that I am *far* from the only person who is suffering with latency.

More and more ISPs are now introducing traffic management and traffic shaping implementations, which add a huge overhead to latency times as they get there dirty mits in to our packets to inspect it for priority, and then cheekily put it in a queue because it's not 'urgent'. Gamers freaking matter, ignoranus'.

I know from visiting ISP review sites, gaming forums and speed test forums, that it's not just Virgin Media either, but many ISPs and many gamers are in this same, sorry boat.

So, using my web design and programming knowledge, and a deep desire to try and get this issue from being swept under the carpet by ignorant providers, I have a plan.

Latency Matters



The idea is to have a website that names and shames ISPs, and collects information submitted by users on ISP networks about ping times to certain, reliable servers and stores the information in a database. Results will be gather together by location, and the main statistics will be calculated using the Average result of 10 counts to a server.

This should give some accurate readings, give or take some anomoly results due to people using peer to peer on their connection or other users on their LAN downloading, though there will be a clear notice to users performing pings on how to achieve the most accurate results.

Hopefully, if all goes to plan, the website in due time will begin to highlight the issue of latency.

I'd like to know what you guys think, and whether or not this is worth my effort in to making it live and functioning, for the good of Gamer' Kind.

Mike.

[Acid.OMG]

cool i do web desig on the side as well what are soem sites you made?

[Myth]

I think it's a really good Idea. I always get pissed of by all those ISP's and their commercials. Damn, I can even hear them in my head... 'Is your internet fast, reliable? We offer seamless connections at the best speeds..... blablabla'
The fact is that half of them provide a much faster connection than mine (i mean dl speed, that's what most ppl look at.), but they suck at latencies, most of them have 6k routers, so that you can't make a server, and half of them are down about once a week for the whole day.

Make sure that you make an international blacklist of poor ISP's

I'm one of the more lucky ones. Don't have any probs whit my net.

[xxfury]

Hope you made it!

[-Feint-]

Its not a bad idea, however it is fundamentally flawed.

The quality of the internet is entirely dependant on the arrangement in which it is received.

If you receive your internet through an Optic Cable then there is usually no delays Teabag is already with VM BB and he has told me that he has had no problems with them yet, Im signing up for the optic too.

However with standard internet (non cable /telephone line based), there are too many variables where it could make one ISP viable for one person but not another.

The mid central Exchange for England is Maidenhead, so the further away from Maidenhead you live the less reliable.
Then you have to account for Line quality, house electrical wiring, local weather, frequency of use, total users on one line and personal computer configuration just to name a few.

Perhaps yes if a provider is consistently a failure but just remember you'll always hear the people who complain, but those who are happy wont say a word of praise.


What you should cover if you do this would be letting people know about the best deals for ISP's really. There are dozens of companies springing up or creating their own "ISP" service for extortionate prices.

3(The Mobile Compny) have had their "mobile" ISP service running and they claim it is "only" £15 a month for internet however they limit your use at 3GB per month then incurring a £1 per MB charge.

Now if you consider the fact that most whole "Websites" (not one page but the whole site) easily over reach the one meg mark, the fact that your computer regularly refreshes itself for data, and that the average user has more than one favored website that limit is easily hit. Then at £1 per MB your bills can easily soar, and its cowboys like these that need sorting out.

[RocketJedi]

http://www.dslreports.com

sorry