Sky Have Listened To The Gamers

[Kajak]

I’ve just had my max delays set to 8 on my connection from using the online form: http://www.sky.com/portal/site/skycom/kana

I filled in the form referring to this thread on the 12th and got a phone call yesterday afternoon (17th). He asked me a few routine questions about is my router connected to the master socket etc.. Then said he would make a ticket for me and my Max delay would be sorted out within 5 days. By last night it was done . Today also I had a voice text message on the phone confirming it had been done. My ping has gone from 90 to 45. Still not as good as my old Zen connection but am happy for 5quid a month!

Thx for the info on this

[empo]

Empo how did you do it? Did you ask to go straight to tier 3? Was it easy to talk to them? What did you ask them? Im going to do this tonight but i dont want to sound like I dont know what im talking about (which i dont). So any adice would be helpful

How did you get on speedloafer?

[reluctant networker]

I’ve just had my max delays set to 8 on my connection from using the online form: http://www.sky.com/portal/site/skycom/kana

I filled in the form referring to this thread on the 12th and got a phone call yesterday afternoon (17th). He asked me a few routine questions about is my router connected to the master socket etc.. Then said he would make a ticket for me and my Max delay would be sorted out within 5 days. By last night it was done . Today also I had a voice text message on the phone confirming it had been done. My ping has gone from 90 to 45. Still not as good as my old Zen connection but am happy for 5quid a month!

Thx for the info on this

Kajak - can I ask if he asked you any other Qs re. your router - the reason I want to know is that I'm using my own router at the moment and I'm not sure whether it would be a good idea to revert back to my sky router whilst try to get my max delays lowered. I have alrady been advised that it doesn't matter (about me using my own router) but just want to make absolutely sure.
Cheers.

[speedloafer]

Success, woo hoo.
My "plan" was to ring bb support "Tier 1". Tell lady from tier 1 that i had an email saying that i had to ask to be forwarded to tier 3 to have my max delays reduced as i was a gamer (This of course was a lie, and i was asked who sent me this mail during one of my calls which i quickly replied customerzone@bskyb.com which seemed to work) . Tier 1 really seem to be clueless so after 4 calls to tier 1 I got a ticket number as I was trying to get in touch with teir 3, So with ticket number I rang at 11.30pm like above poster, got on to tier 1 told them i had a ticket, and i was waiting to be put forward to tier 3, Tier 1 lady again tried to "solve" my problem but I just politely told her that this was tried on previous calls. SO at 11.32pm she tried to put me through, with success.
So I tell Tier 3 man that I'm a gamer and id like my ping reduced and he has it done right there in 5 mins, had a chat with him about online gaming pings etc, he was excellent to deal with and knew exactly what I was talking about, said my goodbyes and thanks, I reset the router manually (pin in back) and i was done. So thats it. All done. On a side note I had a message after one call to tier 1 saying my problem was fixed, with no change at all to my ping so when back on to tier 1 I just denied I ever got it and no change at all was made to my line (which it wasnt).

If I had to do it all again and avoid all the rubbish and time wasting, I would do the following...


Ring 08705515515, and tier 1 will answer.
Tell Tier 1 that you have abnormally high pings and you would like to speak to tier 3. (This is why I lied about the email I was supposed to have recieved, because I knew from previous posts that tier 1 would try to solve the problem themselves, which they did and thats actually amazing as they didnt know what i was talking about)
After all the tier 1 garbage just ask to speak to tier 3 and when they say they are busy, which they always are, ask for a ticket number.
Then with ticket number ring at 11.30pm or maybe first thing in the morning if that works better. Tell teir 1 that you have a ticket number and can they put you through to tier 3.
At that time of night they should be ok, then once onto tier 3 tell them that you are an xbox gamer and would like ping reduced, and thats it.
If possible try not to mention xbox or gaming to Tier 1 or they will roll out the "we dont support gaming" line. Which can be annoying. Anyway any questions just ask and i will try to help.

[Kajak]

Kajak - can I ask if he asked you any other Qs re. your router - the reason I want to know is that I'm using my own router at the moment and I'm not sure whether it would be a good idea to revert back to my sky router whilst try to get my max delays lowered. I have alrady been advised that it doesn't matter (about me using my own router) but just want to make absolutely sure.
Cheers.

Yeah he did ask me what I normally connected at and I told him 6 to 7mg he then said yeah your connected at 7304 at the moment. So if he’s checking what I’m connecting at he probably can see if I’m using their router or not.

I also told him the router drops allot and there are a few neighbours with sky bb.
He said to change the channel because they might be using the same one to either 1,6 or 11 I think he said but then he went on to say I can try any channel. So I have it set to Channel 3 now and I also turned off upnp and now once I’m connected to my router I have no drops and my connection is very stable for games.

I would connect your sky router while doing this to be safe I have done the same and going to leave it on till next wk then Im going to try my trusted Belkin router to see if that improves my ping anymore. But tbh everthing is stable now after changing a few things the only single problem it still gives me is I have to somtimes Disable / Enable my wireless adapter (Im on Vista) just to have full connectivity to the net because Its connecting quite oftern on Local only but once Im in theres no more problems everything is stable so far.

[Ryan1992]

im getting an XB0X 360 for christmas... what will I need to do to use XBOX Live?

[teak]

Has anyone else been told by sky that this tweak could affect your overall download and internet speed?

[reluctant networker]

Yeah he did ask me what I normally connected at and I told him 6 to 7mg he then said yeah your connected at 7304 at the moment. So if he’s checking what I’m connecting at he probably can see if I’m using their router or not.

I also told him the router drops allot and there are a few neighbours with sky bb.
He said to change the channel because they might be using the same one to either 1,6 or 11 I think he said but then he went on to say I can try any channel. So I have it set to Channel 3 now and I also turned off upnp and now once I’m connected to my router I have no drops and my connection is very stable for games.

I would connect your sky router while doing this to be safe I have done the same and going to leave it on till next wk then Im going to try my trusted Belkin router to see if that improves my ping anymore. But tbh everthing is stable now after changing a few things the only single problem it still gives me is I have to somtimes Disable / Enable my wireless adapter (Im on Vista) just to have full connectivity to the net because Its connecting quite oftern on Local only but once Im in theres no more problems everything is stable so far.

Many thanks for the response & advice.

Have u now switched to the belkin? Any further ping improvements and/or any probs arisen?

Is stability still ok?

Cheers.

[Saturday]

Has anyone else been told by sky that this tweak could affect your overall download and internet speed?

On a good quality connection, reducing the interleave depth (and delay) will reduce ping and slightly increase router sync. Download/upload speed will improve marginally, mostly as a result of the higher sync.

On a poor quality connection, reducing the interleave depth (and delay) will reduce ping, slightly increase router sync and increase line errors - possibly considerably. Download/upload speed will decrease in an inverse relationship to the line error level due to data corruption and data retransmission. In severe cases this may lead to an unstable/unreliable connection.

The only way to see the impact on your line is to try it but realistically, if you have connection problems with the default interleave settings, changing them is probably not a good idea.

HTH

[ForToffee]

OK, I'm a little confused by what Sky have done.

Requested max delay reduction via email - was done in about 6 hours (I nearly fell over!). However, the change a) reduced my speed from 4000k to 3296k, b) made my pings higher! (75-80ms to BBC from router). Line Att about 56db, SNR about 11db

Called them up, got a techie to look. My ping is now 30ms (ahhh), but my Line Att DROPED to 15db - how on earth did they manage that? Did they put me on to a new bit of cable or something? However, my speed is still stuck at 3296k where they locked it off and my SNR is still 15db.

In theory my connection can do about 5500k (according to the router stats) but never has, due to errors at such a high Line Att. So what have they done? Should I ask them to put my speed back up?!