It’s been a long time ago I read an irritating letter that actually provoke a response. Here’s it, regardless if the Stooge Times publish it or not.
| Stooge Times Forum, 11th April 2006:
MaxOnline well-suited to online gaming THE article, ‘Gamers upset about StarHub’s sluggish broadband speeds’ (ST, April 7), does not give a fair representation of online gaming over StarHub’s MaxOnline service. Gaming lag is an issue that all Internet Service Providers (ISPs) around the world face, from time to time. This is because the Internet is a large and ungoverned global network, with none of its end-to-end connectivity being operated by any single ISP or its upstream providers. ISPs are typically connected to a small subset of upstream providers as it would not be possible to connect to all upstream providers around the world. Consequently, the end-user’s access experience with one ISP may differ from another as the network of upstream providers for every ISP may be different. Hence, if there are congested links between upstream providers that are affecting the end-user’s access speed, there is little that his ISP can do directly, except to have more than one upstream provider. In the case of gaming services hosted by third parties, gaming lag is also often the result of a large number of users from around the world concurrently connected to a given server/site. Especially in the case of a popular game, there could be excessive traffic load at the server/site that can degrade the end-user experience. The gaming experience could also be affected by many other reasons, including the condition of the modem connecting to the broadband network, and the final data path taken to/from the hosted site of the game. Despite such challenges, we have and will continue to strive to provide a quality broadband service to our MaxOnline customers by constantly optimising the network that we operate, and balancing the traffic load across multiple upstream providers. In addition, we will continue to monitor our network equipment closely and invest to upgrade proactively, before bottlenecks occur. We believe that our MaxOnline service provides a good overall platform that is well-suited to online gaming. Hence, we are very concerned about the comments made by our customers in the article and are in the midst of getting in touch with them, to help them minimise the lag experienced in their games. As an indication of our seriousness in dealing with this issue of lag, we encourage online gamers who have experienced ‘lagtime’ to write to us directly at helpdesk@starhub.com, explaining their experience, and indicating clearly on the subject header, Gaming Lag. Thomas Ee |
And this is a combined reply, from me and a friend who is now languishing under SuxHub’s LagOnline services.
We are subscribers of StarHub’s MaxOnline service (2000 and 6500) and refer to the letter ‘MaxOnline well-suited to online gaming’ by Thomas Ee (ST, April 11).
Mr Ee explained that ‘the end-user’s access experience with one ISP may differ from another as the network of upstream providers for every ISP may be different’. Then, did StarHub as an ISP, feedback to their upstream providers to do something about it when it is clear these providers are the cause of user unhappiness? While we agree that ‘Gaming lag is an issue that all ISPs around the world face, from time to time’, it is mind bogging when a 56K Pacific Internet Dial-up to a MMORPG game server in Taiwan achieved a ping time of 110ms, while the ping time on StarHub MOL 2000 is about double of that.
Above which, if gaming experience is ‘affected by many other reasons, including the condition of the modem connecting to the broadband network, and the final data path taken to/from the hosted site of the game’, how does StarHub explain that the lag on StarHub’s services is affecting not just one MMORPG game, but several different games? In fact, even when we looked at just the dozen of game servers for only one MMORPG – which are in different parts of the world – the ping time is between 200ms to 400ms. Needless to say, the game is now agonising to play no matter which server is chosen. This is made worse with the packet dropping issue. Sadly, we had better ping time in the sub-100ms range for some servers and better network stability until about a year ago. StarHub certainly have seen better days.
As to giving feedback direcly to StarHub, let us share our experiences:
Upon receiving a feedback, StarHub’s requires the user to run some commands to obtain some results and then sent them via email. In one case, a friend helped us pinged one of the servers for the same MMORPG using his SingNet ADSL connection and got a ping time of 60ms and 0% packet loss. We contrasted that with MOL 6500, where there was a 50% packet loss and a ping time of 130ms. We noted the packet loss was caused by a router within Starhub’s network but StarHub’s reply was that nothing was wrong despite the logs we sent. Differences in technology between the ISPs aside, this is clearly not just a given server/site issue!
Are the logs we submitted taken seriously and analysed thoroughly to help StarHub identify the problem? Or are these user feedback written off as isolated cases after a standard reply, because StarHub is utterly convinced in the superiority of its network?
Many users would not pursue the matter further after the standard replies because it is time consuming. However, if these issues persist, the good news is we will soon cease to be StarHub’s problem, once our current liabilities with StarHub have expired.
Standard PR reply. It says nothing except platitudes.
I’m on Starhub cable. I still can’t play Battlefield 2 on American servers and Taiwanese servers.
The only servers I can play? Singapore, Thai and Japanese.