I've found out a few things mainly about UK connections lately.
1) I've been trying at 33.6kbs the last couple of nights with goodish
results although it is still not perfect. It seems possible to me that
the reason that connections over 33.6kbs are so problematic may be
because the send rate is less than the receive rate and that 33.6 kbs
seems to be the highest rate at which both the send and receive are the
same. I may be way off here. Different phone numbers at different ISPs
will serve out different line speeds. For example Demon numbers
0845-3535666 and 0845-2120666 seem to max out at 33.6 but 0845-2120666
gives more if your modem supports more. BT do 0345-288001 for 28.8kbs,
0345-560001 for 56kbs and 0345-640001 for 64kbs among others. It seems
that your can also fiddle with connection strings on your modem but I've
just setup several connection icons which means that I can just select
the connection speed I want by clicking the appropriate icon.
2) According to BT, the large amount of rain in the UK lately has
affected telecommucations. Perhaps copper wires are shorting out.
3) Some of the large telecommunications hardware to the UK (and possibly
Europe as well?) in the US has been down this past week.
4) You can improve the quality of your connection (but not the bandwidth
obviously) by ringing the BT engineers on 151 and asking for the gain on
your line to be upgraded to 4. This does seem to give a cleaner
connection.
5) I'm not sure whether both the host and the clients should have
core.ini but that might be an avenue worth exploring - I often seem to
get disconnected when I am racing close to someone with a large warp.
Would racing be better if all the clients got core.ini?
Cheers,
Paul
Interesting stuff Paul. I haven't personally raced online for almost
four weeks (phone bill - eek) but I didn't regularly get disconnected
when I did race. Maybe about 1 in 5 or 6 races something would happen. I
use Demon's London number, 0171 664 0666, and have little trouble.
However, I make a point of never joining a race unless the host has a
Cable, ADSL or T1/T3 connection. I never join modem or ISDN races. Maybe
that has something to do with it.
Also I don't use BT. I'm a Cable and Wireless user. The offer of a 50p
maximum charge on Saturdays was quite tempting :-)
I just wish C&W would hurry up and get cable modems over here. I need!
Cheers!
Graeme Nash
http://www.karisma1.demon.co.uk
ICQ# 11257824
1998 Xoom GP2 League Champion
Paul,
For comparison, try racing Powerslide with your setup (I bet it works
beautifully). Then you will have found the source of your problems and will
be able to judge another sim/racing games multiplay better.
David G Fisher
I often seem to
Papy is supposed to be bringing out a patch which, amongst other things,
will "improve online gameplay".....
hope its soon....
-Lindsay
On Thu, 21 Jan 1999 23:07:06 -0500, "David G Fisher"
>For comparison, try racing Powerslide with your setup (I bet it works
>beautifully). Then you will have found the source of your problems and will
>be able to judge another sim/racing games multiplay better.
With respect David, I can't imagine your experience of UK telephony is
very extensive. If I have raced GPL without any problems over my 28.8
modem and now do the same with ISDN, any problem cannot be said to lie
solely in one place.
Cheers!
John
% Paul,
% For comparison, try racing Powerslide with your setup (I bet it works
% beautifully). Then you will have found the source of your problems and will
% be able to judge another sim/racing games multiplay better.
I have also heard that Hangman or Tic-Tac-Toe provide better connection
results during multiplayer than Powerslide. Maybe, he should give them
a try instead. <G>
--
**************************** Michael E. Carver *************************
Upside out, or inside down...False alarm the only game in town.
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