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UK ISP To Prioritize Gaming Traffic
nk497 writes "A UK ISP is now offering a broadband package just for gamers, which will prioritize their traffic to give them an edge over rival players. Demon Internet has also set up direct networks with gaming companies to boost speeds, and is promising lower latency and a higher usage cap than standard packages. 'Looking at the usage of gamers, it's actually more akin to a small business,' the company said. While paying to get specific content streamed more quickly may worry net neutrality campaigners, Demon says it has enough capacity for its own customers and that's who it's looking out for."
woot?
This prioritizing of gaming traffic would be illegal if Net Neutrality existed.
You see how seemingly "good" laws can cause unintended and harmful consequences? (Lord save me from do-gooders trying to save my soul, or impose their morals upon me.)
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Prolly more like "Not intentionally slowing down"
Wherever You Go, There You Are
We've been doing this for over a year now on our networks.
We service only Uni students, so it makes sense that there's a huge gaming culture there (when they're not studying).
It's almost a full time job just to keep track of all the new online games coming out and writing layer7 filters for them.
I'd expect most all ISP's would have some form of prioritisation, maybe not just for games.. but QoS is all about ensuring that certain traffic types get the correct priority.
See: http://blog.accessplus.com.au/?p=63 for some basic info about our implementation and levels of service.
Actually I remember there's another ISP doing something similar to this too: http://www.plus.net/support/broadband/speed_guide/traffic_prioritisation.shtml
If I had this package, it would be incredibly easy for me to get a first post. Alas, I am outside their service area.
This appears to be running a poor network, then charging more to compensate for it.
Or perhaps running a poor network at first, planning an improvement to the network, and financing the upgrade wiht a premium package targeted at early-adopting gamers.
Paying £3 to get something extra doesn't sound too bad. What worries me is that ISPs may quietly start crippling their default packages so they can sell "extras". For example, this ISP could artificially raise the latency of normal users' connections, and when anyone complains they might say "it's because we give priority to the more expensive packages -- if you want better latency you must also pay more". You might say "meh, that'll never happen"... But, this is exactly the sort of thing our ISPs are infamous for doing here in the UK.
I was with Demon from 1996, hen I connected to Newsnet and email on my Amiga 1200, until three years ago when I got 75,000 + emails in a morning in a Joe Job attack
Their response is why I am no longer with Demon, I would not now touch them with a barge pole
Is there any evidence that what would actually be enacted is this way, or are you like most Net Neutrality proponents who make up their own rules and decide that must be what NN means?
I've often wondered after hearing about all the dark fiber google is laying why they don't act like a ISP for gamers? Net neutrality only applies if you're intentionally throttling traffic or messing with it, but what happens if that's all the network is used for? Of course this is extremely niche, but game traffic doesn't take up a lot of bandwidth and you'll never truly get really low latencies with all the crap flying around the normal net. However, if Google just offered a 'gamer package' which would only allow for gaming network traffic, it would hardly even register, and they could charge a modest fee for it all the while profiting off of what they already have laid without really having it interrupted plus creating a new untouched market.
I do think what this ISP is doing is BS unless they have spare lines they're using specifically for it though, which I highly doubt.
Especially since games don't use much bandwidth. Even a fast paced shooter probably uses 20-30kbytes/second max which is in the 256kbit range. That's nothing for a modern connection. Unless you are slamming your connection with torrent data (and in that case just put a limit in the software) it isn't going to have a problem getting through in a timely fashion.... Unless the ISP slows it down.
Just observing my own connection and pings, there isn't a lot of room for improvement. The latency I get to servers is pretty much as good as it is going to get given all the hops involved. Also it isn't like a few ms improvement would be noticeable at all.
I think this could be the sort of thing that we see a lot more of in the future. But in a more advanced form.
For most people, the bottleneck is the pipe between their premises and their ISP. Anyone can implement QoS for their outbound traffic, and can use any classification and prioritization technique they want. At my office we prioritize VoIP RTP packets and iChat video conferencing streams over (for example) ftp and http transfers. In fact we have 5 separate queues that outbound packets are filtered in to.
But inbound QoS is by and large outside the control of the individual customer. You can do a few crude things by dropping TCP packets, but that's about it. What is really needed is the ability to classify and prioritize packets at the ISP end, before they enter that slow last-mile pipe to the customer premises. Then I can select the prioritization that is right for me. To do this the customer needs their own router at the ISP, or at least the ability to define their own queues and priorities. I have not found an ISP implements such a feature at this time.
I think if the prioritization policy is under control of the paying customer, then ISP's could have an argument for metered billing - where the highest priority packets cost more than the lowest priority ones (which would be very cheap or even free of charge).
Of course QoS setup is technically too advanced for most home customers, but it doesn't really matter - they could be given the option of a few profiles to choose from or just start with a default which is no prioritization at all.
I am with a significantly cheaper isp (BE) and on UK servers i get a ping generally between 15-30. I though ping was pretty much a non issue (with server based games at least) since the proliferation of broadband. I don't even have a bandwidth limit that i'm aware of (i'm sure there probably is but i download my large geeky share and i've never heard anything) What is it exactly they're offering for the extra money? I'm confused.
Laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaame!
Seriously, people. This is the WORST. IDEA. EVER.
As a current customer of Demon all i can say is...stay the hell away.
As others have said years ago they used to be one of the best, these days they are one of the worst and charging a premium rate for "the privilege"
Forget customer support, 1st line and 2nd line are outsourced to India (and only work standard "office hours" aka when you, the customer, are likely to be at work) and there is no UK tech staff left (at least ones that will talk to customers) and no matter what their response is always "it must be your equipment/pc/router"
Cannot wait until i move at start of next year so i can dump them
Hold one a moment, if Demon are going to offer high speeds for gamers traffic, that means that when they need tech support, it will take even longer to get help? ;)
Take Nobody's Word For It.
This is already done in Israel by Bezeq International, the largest ISP in Israel which is owned by the national phone company. It works exactly like people expected here... You pay more, the use KY so it hurts less.
Prioritization/deprioritization if it's clear what the facts are before, during and after people sign up. the transparency does seem to help.
Also, reading TFA, this is partially about freeing up capacity on the residential network, and making good nighttime/weekend use of their relatively idle business network.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
It definitely makes sense to apply some QOS.
Some years ago I've been living in a living community, where we shared our rather slow internet connection and online gaming would have almost been impossible and teamspeak usage probably also, if I hadn't priorized the traffic. Used a linux router and IPTABLES for that.
It had almost no influence on downloads, where throughput is the main requirement, since game traffic didn't cost much bandwith. But it lowered the latency under heavy load from like 1 or 2 seconds, which makes gaming impossible, to something like 75ms, which was good enough.
Services have different requirements and QOS allows you to suit the needs.
Prioritizing packets only makes any sense in congestion situations, otherwise there is absolutely no effect of it. Today congestion can only happen at the users uplink, and good routers support trafic shaping under user control there for years.
If there is congestion in the backbone, the ISP is not doing it's homework.
If I were with Demon, I'd be looking to change ISPs about now...
Ceterum censeo subscriptionem esse delendam.
great news for encrypted bittorrent, all you have to do is set your client to only use encrypted udp+tcp transfers on a 'standard' game port, for example 27015 that's used by most steam-based games. :p
root@127.0.0.1
Other ISPs have been offering just this for years. The german Alice franchise (hansenet) for one, probably others. Didn't hear any howling then. What gives?
Also, otherwise ISPs simply assume "web browsing" including "optimising" for that, with transparent proxies and so on. Here, they're simply responding to gaming user demand, and raking in a premium for it that is small relative to some of the other things gamers spend their money on. Would you argue against doubleplus diamond gold encrusted gold plated platinum credit cards because you need to be a billionaire to be "elegible"?
Anybody care to explain how "low ping" guarantees for a fee are different from preferential treatment for high spender credit card users, frequent flyer vip lounges, that sort of thing? Can we get some realism back into the net neutrality hatefest please?
Why not prioritise based on ethnicity or sexual preference?
welcomed by applauses by the players/users.
While this may sound like a tempting proposition, this sounds like a trap. If people sign up for this, then what is stopping the ISP from wanting to do this with other packages and then showing this to the government as a reason against net neutrality.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
So now the default ISP package tagline will be: "Most of our users want faster access to mainstream media sites, so as an added value, our default packages emphasize this"
and we'll start hearing more of this: "Our more experienced users really want faster access to niche sites so we have special premium power user packages for that"
Twinstiq, game news
Didn't read TFA, but has this in any way to do with Fastpath for DSL?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asymmetric_Digital_Subscriber_Line#Interleaving_and_fastpath
Basically it means without error correction you get a better latency (but more lost packages). German ISP Deutsche Telekom and others offer(ed?) it for an additional 1 per month I think, and marketed it to Gamers.
Why do you think they're offering it? "Oh look! Net Neutrality would make it worse for people who are paying more money to get service!"
I was with Demon back when they were good. Unfortunately, I was also with them as they became flat-out the worst ISP you could hope for in the UK - if you can get them, use bethere instead. Here are some of the things I was subjected to when I was with Demon:
1) Exclusively foreign call centre tech support and customer services
2) Customer services and tech support representatives say they will call you back, but won't
3) Tech support will claim they are escalating your call, but disconnect you
4) Reps will say they have made a note of your conversation, but if you call back, no records will be found. Also, no person by that name will be known to the company, and they will tell you that you made a mistake.
5) Tech support are utterly clueless, and refuse to support routers in any way, shape or form.
6) You will be billed by the company after you leave as a customer.
7) The company will claim they will phone you back with your MAC code to migrate providers, claiming it takes 24 hours, but they never do. Eventually, if you persist, they will give it to you immediately on the phone.
8) Representatives will say anything to keep you with the company, telling you they have upgraded you to a zero usage cap service (which in actuality has just 10gb more leeway per month).
9) Representatives will lie about your monthly usage. I have no wireless and am the sole provider, but somehow in a month where I was away for two and a half weeks, and counted my own usage at under 10gb, I was supposed to have downloaded over 50gb, leaving me with a 128kbit service from 7am to midnight.
10) The usage cap (that they lie about) is on a rolling 30 day period, so when they claim you have used 40gb in one day, your service will be crippled for the next 30 days until that one day slips off your account.
11) Representatives are unable to change, reset or even give you a breakdown of your usage. Representatives will not even tell you exactly how much you have used.
12) The service is overpriced and the lines are vastly oversubscribed.
So, in conclusion, avoid them at all costs. In my opinion they are liars and cheats, and the company deserves to go bankrupt.
net nutrality is in the eyes of the beholder. Gamers want the advantage that most Slashdotters are fighting against!