Being a gamer myself I've had so many run-ins with gamers complaining about their ISP. So, the big question I want answered: What DO gamers want from their ISP? Obviously there are limits to what's realistic or possible: You can't have zero lag/ping to a server in Timbuktu at only £2.99 a month! I think a healthy discussion of what is wanted for a decent quality, great value, gaming experience (be it console or PC) will help us here at PlusNet to think about the gamers out there in future plans.

So...let the games begin! 

Hey,

Well first and foremost everybody loves to have a low ping, that's a must, so an easier way of turning interleaving off would be a great help if that's possible. I sometimes see that I double my bandwidth allowance, and seeing that gaming doesn't do as much as surfing the web (on my behalf that is), then possibly a way of giving free bandwidth to "Gaming" because the allowance meter knows when we are on games.

The only other thing I'd really love is that PlusNet (you) can host game servers for us to rent at a reduced price for PlusNet members, yet a regular price for non-PlusNet members of course.

Matt.

Maybe not quite what you're looking for, but you may be interested to know we host several game servers, and being on our network, you may well find them to have better ping than other servers:

http://www.plus.net/suppo...gaming/game_servers.shtml

Would you believe it! We're rolling this live in a few minutes...talk about efficiency 

It can be accessed via Connection Settings in the Member Centre.

That sounds awesome, there's nothing better than a quick response (and a slow one by me...).

Oh and i've noticed that the Unreal Tournament 2004 servers are down.

Matt.

Thanks for bringing that to our attention. I'll inform the relevant people

Ok, relevant people have been informed and the servers are actually maintained by admins outside of the company - customers in fact. We're always willing to accept new people who want to admin servers...so if you fancy it, let us know! That particular server has been down for quite a while. It may be the admin has stopped playing.

If you could get a couple of servers hosted then I'd maintain them for sure, I used to have one that was used on a daily basis, and of course I was the only admin because I hate letting passwords slip out, too much corruption in the ranks 

Matt.

This is a direct quote from the guy who runs these servers:

"Awesome. See what games they want to run and I will fit them into the platform".

So...over to you

Well, clearly I could benefit PlusNet by advertising servers ingame (putting PlusNet in the server name is a start), so the game servers to host I would recommend are Unreal Tournament 2004 (there's many gametypes so 2 or 3 maybe?), Counter Strike: Source (1 or 2 is enough) and the odd growing game, such as Warsow (1 for duelling as it's a duelling game). These are all great competitive games and I can surely admin a few of them as I play them regularly, regularly meaning daily.

Matt.

I'd appreciate OpenTTD (http://www.openttd.org/)....

Also, IIRC (which I might not) there was talk of a specific gamers package not so long ago, did anything ever come of this as a friend is moving in September and is going to need a broadband provider and would be very interested in PN if they did a package specifically designed for gamers...

Out of interest, what do you think they'd want in a gamer package?

Stability 1st ping 2nd
Having a low ping is great but its totaly worthless if your ping is 20ms one minute and 1000ms the next.
Having been a PN punter for 5 years i have to admit PN beat all other ISP's in the begining for ping .. it was awesome and people often asked me which ISP i was with.
I'm talking a clear 20-30ms lower than the rest in TFC for example.
bring back the old days 

Just so I can be clear (it is a morning  )

Is that because the other gamers have got better pings than they had, or because yours are higher now?

Ian

From reading the Force 9 forums there seems to be two types of gamers.

First the type who likes to play on line games, and second the gamer who runs their own game server(s) for others to play on.

For the first gamer a low ping hi-priority network connection would suffice perhaps with a little extra download headroom to allow for patches etc to be downloaded. A low ping version of BBYW option 2 perhaps with a little extra peak time usage.

The second gamer from what I’ve read requires a faster upload speed but not necessarily a big download or super fast speed for the downstream side. They do require a bit bigger peak time allowance because of the upload data streams running in peak time as most gamers would be gaming from say 4 PM to around 1 in the morning (based on my son’s usage for playing Eve On-Line). I have seen figures of around 80 Gig for the peak time allowance for game servers running from a home based set up would be acceptable for a reasonable extra cost. A BBYW option 5?

Just my input, regards, P.

I think its a case of abit of both.
It was the early days of broadband and PN was quite new so there wasn't that many ppl on i guess.
Pretty much everyone was on 512k and nobody had higher so you could compare but now theres much fasters speeds and more ISP's so its alot harder to compare.
During that time i would be garanteed a ping of 30ms where as everyone else had 40-45ms(Nildram was closest everyone else was way higher).
When playing in the states it was 90ms but the stability was amazing only reaching 100ms at times where everyones else were bouncing all over the place from 100 - 150ms and when your playing for your country in a world final the stability makes a huge difference.