Interleave vs Fastpath Pings: Sky broadband

[garreh]

Recently got my connection changed from Interleave to Fastpath on Sky Broadband. Here are the results:

Inverleave






Fastpath




Results speak for themself, but I shall explain them in simple terms: my ping has over halved -- Very nice!

Pings are much better but getting a lot of choke in game now. My line is extremely stable however, and SNR margins up and down are both good. Line attenution shows I'm not far from the exchange either.




But thats Sky broadband for you. Historically bad for gamers.

The best ISPs I've had has been Telewest Broadband / Cable 8Mb and BeThere 24Mb (up to - I got 8Megish). Pings were excellent on both. I'd recommend BeThere to anyone. They also have a public set of forums for their customers to contact each other, share line tweaks and its monitored regulary by staff that chip in and help out.

Though 8 Meg for £5 a month (with a Sky TV package) who can complain?

Now its onto working out how to stablise my choke!

[TheMadDutchDude]

Please let us know how to get switched! I got Sky broadband and currently have been upgraded from 2.5MB/s to 7.6MB/s! I am well impressed as I was downloading at 1.4MB/s last night!!

Secondly, please let me know as high pings get on my nerves on CSS!

Cheers matey!

[Mr. Orange]

by BeThere you mean O2?

[Jasonkruys]

I think you are confused on a couple of points.

1. Switching from fastpath to interleave (as you have said you have), would double your pings, as interleave is with the added error correction, thus adding more latency. So, I suspect you mean switched from interleave to fastpath to halve your pings.

2. The other point of confusion, is that Sky are not actually able to provide fastpath on their own service (LLU), the closest they can get is to set 'Max Delays' to '8' which is the lowest level of error correction, but not actually fastpath. This will still yield you a reasonable decrease in your ping times.

The only way you might possibly be able to get fastpath on Sky, is if you are actually on the 'Sky Connect' service, rather than 'Base', 'mid' or 'max'. This is not actually on Sky's network, but is run on BT's equipment (hence the difference in features). This service is heavily throttled or 'managed' particularly in the evenings due to limited capacity and contention on BT's network. If you are indeed on the 'Connect' package (which I suspect looking at your statistics from your router), this will most likely be the cause of any choking, or poor gameplay experience

[garreh]

Originally Posted by Jasonkruys

I think you are confused on a couple of points.

1. Switching from fastpath to interleave (as you have said you have), would double your pings, as interleave is with the added error correction, thus adding more latency. So, I suspect you mean switched from interleave to fastpath to halve your pings.

2. The other point of confusion, is that Sky are not actually able to provide fastpath on their own service (LLU), the closest they can get is to set 'Max Delays' to '8' which is the lowest level of error correction, but not actually fastpath. This will still yield you a reasonable decrease in your ping times.

The only way you might possibly be able to get fastpath on Sky, is if you are actually on the 'Sky Connect' service, rather than 'Base', 'mid' or 'max'. This is not actually on Sky's network, but is run on BT's equipment (hence the difference in features). This service is heavily throttled or 'managed' particularly in the evenings due to limited capacity and contention on BT's network. If you are indeed on the 'Connect' package (which I suspect looking at your statistics from your router), this will most likely be the cause of any choking, or poor gameplay experience

You can be on Fastpath on Sky Mid, Max but not on Connect. I originally had my Max Delays lowered to 8 which did indeed help in pings, reduction of around 15-25%. So from switching from Interleave to Interleave: Max delays 8 then to Fastpath, you can clearly see there is a huge difference and that Fastpath is enabled, which has been confirmed by Sky.

Its just a confusion that Sky do not "support" Fastpath because of the problems it can cause and, like you say, there is limited support for it at *some* exchanges.

If you experience problems after switching to Fastpath, the first thing they will do after you contact them for customer support is to immediately switch you back onto Interleave. They will then never switch you back. This was explained by Sky technical support team.

[Jasonkruys]

You are indeed correct on the fastpath issue technically, but Sky Techs are not actually allowed/supposed to put you on fastpath...If someone (other than the person that enabled it) notices it, you will, as you have suggested, be put straight back onto interleave (max delays of 8 ) with no warning whatsoever. It is also likely that the individual (if known) that put you on fastpath will get a bollocking as well. You did, however swap interleave and fastpath in your original post - suggesting interleave was a lower ping.

Are you on Sky Mid then, rather than connect?

Not considered changing to Max? With the stats you posted, not only would you benefit from increased upload to 700 odd sync (likely 660 actual upload, compared to the 360 you probably get now) - which will help the gaming, you will also probably see close to 12 meg on your download speed...

[garreh]

Originally Posted by Jasonkruys

You are indeed correct on the fastpath issue technically, but Sky Techs are not actually allowed/supposed to put you on fastpath...If someone (other than the person that enabled it) notices it, you will, as you have suggested, be put straight back onto interleave (max delays of 8 ) with no warning whatsoever. It is also likely that the individual (if known) that put you on fastpath will get a bollocking as well. You did, however swap interleave and fastpath in your original post - suggesting interleave was a lower ping.

Are you on Sky Mid then, rather than connect?

Not considered changing to Max? With the stats you posted, not only would you benefit from increased upload to 700 odd sync (likely 660 actual upload, compared to the 360 you probably get now) - which will help the gaming, you will also probably see close to 12 meg on your download speed...

I actually have doubts that any old Sky tech admin has the power to switch a customer from interleave to fastpath. Typically you have to get through to Tier 3 to be able to have this kind of thing changed on your line. I also put little credence that Sky techs have not been trained in regards to intearleave and fastpath and whether they have the authority to make these changes on a customers line.

I'm on Mid yes which comes with my Sky Talk, See and Surf package. Its basically £5 a month.

What I do think the guy will be told off for is allowing my line to sync at 999 Kbps upload. My download sync has slightly lowered, but nothing big. I'm not complaining though

Switching to Sky max really wouldn't help. Most games only upload at around a speed of 5Kilobytes so switching from 40Kb to 87Kb won't help much, not unless your maxing out your upload bandwidth, but no game alone should do that. Pings are really the thing that matters here.

I've corrected the "fastpath to interleave" cheers just spotted it!

[LuckyNV]

Your noise margins are actually quite high, default noise margin is 6db on Bethere, other profiles being 3db for speed, and 9db for more reliability on longer lines. (Be can set higher noise margin if you have a particularly bad line)

Otherwise yea, fastpath is awesome for the e-peen factor in games, but there is a noticeable difference (to me anyway) with web browsing, pages definitely load up faster.
Plus the added side effect is slightly faster speed (extra 1.5Mbps downstream and extra 100Kbps upload for me)

[garreh]

Originally Posted by LuckyNV

Your noise margins are actually quite high, default noise margin is 6db on Bethere, other profiles being 3db for speed, and 9db for more reliability on longer lines. (Be can set higher noise margin if you have a particularly bad line)

Otherwise yea, fastpath is awesome for the e-peen factor in games, but there is a noticeable difference (to me anyway) with web browsing, pages definitely load up faster.
Plus the added side effect is slightly faster speed (extra 1.5Mbps downstream and extra 100Kbps upload for me)

Yeah my margins are quite high. I remember being on 5db when I was on BeThere. No problems what so ever. Though I am syncing pretty much at my top speeds, so I'm going to leave it

There did use to be an issue when I had BeThere of high pings in games and slow downs in the evening. But thanks to their community forum people posted these problems and they listened to us. They updated all of the exchanges with more equipment and promised to never overload them. Within a few weeks pings had halfed and no slow downs in the evening at all. Thats what you call service!

No I don't work for BeThere, I was just one very happy customer :agree: