Canadian (Ontario) ISPs good for MMORPGs?

Chaotic Descent

I've tried Rogers cable modem, Bell Sympatico DSL, and currently an independant guy for DSL.

with both my experiences with a DSL provider, I'm wondering if it's standard for the service to have to be reset approximately every 24 hours. While I don't intend to play more than 24 hours straight (never again), I'm not sure I get to chose WHEN it gets reset. Definately not with my current provider. With Bell I'm fairly sure it was exact. Every 24 hours (or possibly 12). but with this new one it just goes out randomly, sometimes for a few minutes and refuses to reconnect... and what's worse is if you're in a situation like I am with a roommate, even normal daily website browsing for one person takes up half the monthly bandwidth for a cheaper account. a more expensive account is no cheaper with these guys than the big ISPs, so there's no advantage unless you get the cheapo package.

unfortunately the apartment I'm in has no cable TV service. well, the Rogers website is completely useless. As usual, an impersonal information source is unable to give me the information I need. I can't tell if they let you have internet service without TV service. They didn't used to. I'll call them when I'm not just about to go to bed.

also, I'm not currently on an MMORPG. I realize they're evil and stupid. I was just thinking ahead to trying out Phantasy Star Universe, since I love the franchise and have played PSO. need a PROPER gamepad and a stable ISP before I consider it though.

Meiz

I've had rogers for a while now and I live in Ottawa.

Never had a problem.

I don't trust the DSL tech because there's so much shit in between you and the Internet. With cable it's a clean connection.

vonPoonBurGer

Meiz wrote:

I don't trust the DSL tech because there's so much shit in between you and the Internet. With cable it's a clean connection.

I don't know how you figure that. It's not like they're running a cable from your house to teh Intarweb, with either service. What about DSL makes it "unclean", exactly? I've had both in Ontario (though this was quite a while ago now), and I preferred the DSL service.

stigweard

I preferred dsl when it wasn't pppoe. I switched to cable when it went that way, both for the higher bandwidth, and lack of an extra redundant communication layer. Where I live, cable has better throughput, but dsl has superior pings regarding both latency and consistency. If you want to game here, dsl is the way to go. If you want to do everything else and don't care that your ping is sometimes 80-200ms instead of a consitent 40ms, then cable is the way to go. Every major area is different though. With dsl, the closer you are to the co, the better. With cable, the fewer people on your node, the better.

Morturus

It really varies by location I think. I've talked to a lot of people who have had 0 problems with Rogers. My own experience in Ottawa was really bad and I know my friend in Brantford seems to have problems on a monthly basis.

I've had Sympatico DSL since it was available here and maybe once or twice per year I have difficulties. It's always up and rock solid for me.

Like Stig mentioned, I may not have the best speeds but for ping and stability it's been amazing.

vonPoonBurGer

Morturus wrote:

It really varies by location I think.

Yeah, definitely. In the case of ADSL, you can be too far from the DSLAM (2km or more is bad, I think), in which case you'll get a poor signal. In the case of cable, it depends less on distance and more on how much internet load their is on the coax in your immediate neighbourhood. Sadly, I don't know of any resources to check and see what sort of experiences people in your exact neighbourhood have had with the various options. You could try asking the ADSL / cable people "How far am I from the DSLAM" / "How many other users are on the segment in my neighbourhood," but I don't know how accurate they'd be.

Chaotic Descent

yeah, I know most of the basics. although I've actually found my DSL gave me 20-40 ping when I was playing this MMORPG.
I actually used to think my download speed was good with Rogers, and that my neighborhood just wasn't using that much bandwidth, but when I switched to DSL I've been finding 200kbps downloads aren't that uncommon. I used to think it was just that most websites had crappy bandwidth, but now I wonder. strange thing is I was using Bell DSL in Toronto and our speeds were crap, but now that I've moved back home and used this independant DSL, speeds are up.

meh... sounds like this independant ISP just won't cut it for reliable internet though. I can't believe I have to switch to Bell just so I can decide when I have to reset my connection.

also... NO ONE has heard of DSL requiring this reconnecting regularly??

vonPoonBurGer

Chaotic Descent wrote:

NO ONE has heard of DSL requiring this reconnecting regularly??

Do you have line filters installed on all the jacks that have phones or other old-school telephone line devices plugged into them? If you're missing a filter somewhere, it could be that interference from an answering machine, fax machine, fax modem or plain old telephone is throwing your ADSL modem for a loop. Have you talked to your ISP support line at all, maybe asked if you could try a replacement modem, to see if that helped?