Posted: 02nd Oct, 2009 By: MarkJ
Customers of the Virgin Media National (Virgin.net ADSL) broadband service, in some areas, are reporting that they've been having problems with high latency (bad pings) while playing certain multiplayer PC games during peak times. It wouldn't be the first time Virgin.net has fallen victim to performance woes, although the operator informs us that they are "
proactively looking into the issue."
We're pleased to find that there is already an open support forum topic on the subject within the bowls of Virgin Media's new community section -
HERE. This reports that the issue appears related to the operators use of traffic management, which is apparently failing to priorities some PC games.
Virgin Media Statement - 22nd September
Usually, all gaming traffic is prioritised to make sure you have good gaming experience. What should happen is that traffic should be prioritised as follows:
1) Gaming and VOIP
2) Streaming (Youtube, iPlayer, internet radio etc)
3) Web
4) Email
5) P2P
For example as Xbox, Wii and PlayStation traffic is always identifiable it's easy to prioritise. But PC games each need an individual signature so they're recognised and this isn't working properly for a few PC games. We're working on a fix at the moment but it would be helpful if you could tell us the games that you're having problems with.
Unfortunately more than a week has now passed without an update and customers continue to report problems, which is also affecting popular titles such as World of Warcraft (WoW) and the newly released AION; Both highly popular online games.