The Knights of Cydonia had it's 1337th visitor today. I documented this occasion with the below screen shot.
In a related moment, Halo 3 turns one month old at midnight tonight. It seems like was only a month ago that I was sitting in this chair counting the hours until I would make my way over to Gamestop (which I am investing in) for the midnight release.
A lot has changed in the last month. I have get significantly less sleep every night now that I play Halo, but mostly I have been obsessing over my internet speed. I quadrupled the amount of money I spend on internet so I could have the fastest residential speed possible. Sadly I was mistaken, while I can download soft core at an amazing rate, I still get booted out of games on an all-too-frequent basis.
I have called RCN and Xbox live to try to get it figured out. And every time it leads to nothing. Last night I talked to some Xbox Live Tech Support Girl (girl? that was my first problem... I kid) This is what I imagined she looked like.
Here is how the call went.
LTSG: Thank you for calling Xbox Live Technical Support can I have your first and last name please?
Me: "My Name"
XLTSG: May I call you Mr. Baymont?
Me: Uhhh, yeah I guess.
XLTSG: What is your Xbox Live Gamertag Mr. Baymont?
Me: The Daymonster
XLTSG: The Baymonster?
Me: No... The Daymonster, with a 'D' as in Dog
XLTSG: Yes, the Baymonster?
(You get the idea... this went on for longer than I or she would care to admit. Funny thing is there is a The Baymonster, and he is better than me. That got me think and no, there is no The Gaymonster... yet.)
XLTSG: Okay, Mr. Baymont, what is the problem? (I thought maybe after the above discussion she would pick up on my real name, but no).
Me: Well, I have had a real hard time with lag on Halo 3. I get kicked out in the middle of games sometimes for 5 minutes at a time and sometimes completely. I upgraded my internet speed to 20 mbps and it hasn't helped, are there any settings that could be effecting this?
XLTSG: Oh, Sir, you need to have at least a 256k high speed internet connection to play on Xbox Live.
Me: Yeah, I know its cable. It's 20 megabits. It should be fast enough.
XLTSG: No, it needs to be high speed.
Me: 20 mbps is high speed.
XLTSG: No, Mr. Baymont, high speed is anything faster thant 256k.
(You can see, based on the early back-and-forth, how well this one went).
Basically, she put me on hold 4 or 5 times as she talked to her supervisor and she came back and told me that my cable modem (not my router, or switch) was not compatible. I asked how I could find a cable modem that works and she said on the website, but there was no mention of compatible or incompatible cable modems.
6 comments:
I'll bet the chick in the picture couldn't pronounce your name right because she had a mouth full of......[insert sexual inuendo here, I choose "Gaymonster"].
I probably had to make between 10-15 calls to get my replacement XBox console and power cord sent to the right place. It sucked a lot.
i'd hit it.
The problem isn't your bandwidth, it is the consistency of your connection.
Your cable modem could be the problem or your ISP just blows goats and can't handle all the traffic it is getting from other subscribers.
Call and bitch to your ISP. They might be able to fix it. It might be as simple as replacing the modem.
If they don't fix you'll have to get a new ISP. You could probably find DSL that would work a lot better, you probably would never get host because the bandwidth wouldn't be very high.
The speed of it really isn't the determination of the lag, it is the latency and consistency of the connection.
Yeah, I am sure its latency more than anything. But in theory if there is more bandwidth there should be less latency.
I have thought about DSL but I would need to keep cable TV as I cannot get satellite. Either way its lame.
More bandwidth doesn't lead to a lower latency. What matters is how many junctions and the delay at the junctions that there are between the source and destination location.
If you have a really low bandwidth it may increase the latency because it needs to make two trips just to get all of the data, but even DSL shouldn't have this problem for Halo 3.
But since Halo 3 usually picks a host who has the most bandwidth if you get host you have 0 latency to the server, because you are the server.
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