Ping with Airtel Broadband

Platform - PS3 Hey everyone ! I use Airtel broadband for online gaming and had a Query which i want to be answered by someone PLEASE !First of all can someone tell me on what factors does PING depend upon?2nd - I have heard that ping mostly depends upon DISTANCE . Then why is PING between India And Singapore ( Distance between IND-SIN is approx 4000 km ) less than ping between India and PAK ( Distance is very less ) ? i mean Ping between India and Singapore is 120ms and Ping between INDIA and PAK more than 300 ms .You can check the above by going to Speedtest ( dot ) net and first take server as Singapore then test ping with Server in Pak or Dubai(where distance is less). ALL i want is better online gaming experience ( mostly FPS like COD games which have a game host ) but i am only able to play with The host of the game in India and when an Indian isnt hosting i get more than 200 ms ping everywhere except playing with Singapore and Hong Kong host . So if my friends arent online or i cant get into a game with HOST from SIN or HK i cant play ! And it really pisses my cz when i have studied and want to game a bit i CANT cz of connection !

While distance is usually a significant factor, India has political issues with most of it's neighbours. Additionally, International bandwidth heading west out of India has it's endpoints in various parts of Europe based on the carrier at the other end, whereas most Indian ISPs are not connecting directly to ISPs in Pakistan or other parts of the middle east even if they are all connected to the same cables, so Pakistan and say Kuwait or UAE will give worse pings than say London.Similarly, nobody has really got any direct routes to Australia or NZ, so despite the fact that there are cables going that way, all the traffic goes via San Jose because that is the common peering point where an Indian ISP and an ISP from Australia or NZ would meet (in this case, this is more the fault of the ISPs down under and their bandwidth purchasing policies).Going east, many ISPs have got huge routes going to Singapore, Hong Kong and the US so pings are generally much better there. For you, your best bet for an optimum gaming experience is to play on servers within India, or otherwise Singapore, HK or *maybe* the US depending on the time of day and state (west coast obviously, east coast is out of the question). For best results, move away from a DSL connection (it adds ~30ms on average due to the technology).

Thank you very much for the quick response mgcarley . So this is very hilarious that due to political issues we as neighbours cant play together . But just one more question for you Is there any ISP say reliance or ANY ISP which can get me pings up to ~150 ms to a Europe host say a host in Turkey (lies in east Europe so will be closer to ASIA) ? And increase in Internet speed ( getting increase to 1MBps (8mbps) will lower ping or is it just the line quality and the route the packets take matters ? But the main reason for me getting Increase my Internet speed is to get higher upload (2000 kbps ) so there are better chances of me hosting games and have the lowest ping possible but if increase in the speed can lower ping then i'll be happy . 🙂Also what exactly do you mean by "move away from a DSL connection" ?

Thank you very much for the quick response mgcarley . So this is very hilarious that due to political issues we as neighbours cant play together . But just one more question for you

Is there any ISP say reliance or ANY ISP which can get me pings up to ~150 ms to a Europe host say a host in Turkey (lies in east Europe so will be closer to ASIA) ? And increase in Internet speed ( getting increase to 1MBps (8mbps) will lower ping or is it just the line quality and the route the packets take matters ? But the main reason for me getting Increase my Internet speed is to get higher upload (2000 kbps ) so there are better chances of me hosting games and have the lowest ping possible but if increase in the speed can lower ping then i'll be happy . 🙂

With my ISP I *can* get around 150ms to France and some other nearby countries - sometimes even a bit less, and we're trying to even improve on that by fine-tuning our routing tables, before launch. But as mentioned in my previous post, even though a country might be physically closer, that doesn't necessarily mean that the route distance between you in Delhi and someone in say, Istanbul, is going to be anything like that, as cables pretty much do not go "as the crow flies".

An ISP in India is quite unlikely to have an arrangement with any Turkish ISP that gets them to Turkey directly or easily, there is almost definitely going to be an intermediary for whatever reason. My suspicion would be that traffic from India to Turkey actually goes through Italy, France, Germany or even the UK - in my case, my traffic goes MyISP > Airtel > Telia > TurkTelekom.

So, while it is possible to get 150ms pings to Europe, it's very much a question of picking the right player. And then despite that, your pings to Pakistan or Turkey might still suck because of the above.

There are a combination of factors which can affect your ping time:

[*]Speed of the line (to a certain degree)
[*]Technology in use at ALL levels in the network
[*]Upstream provider of your ISP (and the quality of their bandwidth)
[*]Congestion on your ISP's network
[*]Congestion on your ISP's upstream's network
[*]Congestion on friend's ISP's network
[*]ISP peering (do the two ISPs peer directly or is there one or more third parties between us and them?)
[*]ISP's peering location (does the route to go via somewhere else that's quite out of the way? I've seen my routes to MTNL Mumbai be directed through Paris when things were being stupid).
[*]Distance (not necessarily physical distance, but cable/route distance as described above)
[*]and surely a bunch of others
[/list]Considering that you're playing games, all this applies at the other end, too - let's say you're playing against someone in Turkey: if that person has a shoddy line then you can improve yours all you want, you still won't be able to improve your ping times very much.

As such, your best bet is most likely to play on servers local or local-ish to you.

Also what exactly do you mean by "move away from a DSL connection" ?

ADSL (Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line) is the type of technology your ISP is using to connect you to the big wide world of Broadband. Airtel uses this, as does MTNL, BSNL and a few others to a certain extent.

OMG ! Thank you very much ! That was so informative .. better than what my ISP customer care told me .. lol he didnt know all about this stuff or maybe i wasn't clear enough when i asked him this .. But this HELPED ALOT ! Even though there is nothing i can do about it but i got to know the reason behind my certain queries .. LOL is Hayai broadband coming to Delhi ? ill surely tell all my Friends about it 😛 .if it is and get a connection for myself .. I wish i could get less than ~150ms to France .. haha but nonetheless i am fine as long as more Indians and East Asians keep joining Playstation network 😛 Again thanks 😀

OMG ! Thank you very much ! That was so informative .. better than what my ISP customer care told me .. lol he didnt know all about this stuff or maybe i wasn't clear enough when i asked him this .. But this HELPED ALOT ! Even though there is nothing i can do about it but i got to know the reason behind my certain queries ..

Anytime.

LOL is Hayai broadband coming to Delhi ? ill surely tell all my Friends about it 😛 .if it is and get a connection for myself ..

Ahh, you noticed that part of my profile surreptitiously plastered all over the place, hmm? Awesome 🙂 Yes, we'll be coming to Delhi next year. Like Airtel, Hayai has it's own threads here on IBF which are generally quite active - there's many hundreds of pages with Q & A about various topics including but not limited to our plans for Delhi. I try to keep the first page of the FAQ thread as up to date as I can - check it out if you're interested.

I wish i could get less than ~150ms to France .. haha but nonetheless i am fine as long as more Indians and East Asians keep joining Playstation network 😛

Again thanks 😀

It's even better when the ISP is connected to a CDN (content delivery network) called Limelight, as that network carries PSN traffic (yes, we'll be getting connected).

Anyway, given that this is a thread related to Airtel, I'll stop plugging my service so we can get back on the topic of Airtel & ping times on Airtel 🙂