nick4567 wrote:im asking how isps can improve their infrastructure or provide alternative solutions if this problem were presented to say a bigger audience who might not even know what this problem is but descriptions of what it feels like would coincide with what some of them feel im sure most of them would be willing to pay extra to their isp for some gaming package which included packet prioritization which is a much more feasable option than playing the isp lottery
Even if your ISP successfully achieves perfect packet prioritization for you, sometimes it's often beyond the ISP's control too.
Remember the traceroute between you and a good game server may end up being 10 or 12 or 15 hops just to get away from crappy servers. Not every single hop is controlled by you nor the ISP.
ISPs have a tall order:
- The city's infrastructure may be crap beyond ISP's control
- All the backbone providers may be crap beyond ISP's control
- Peak period will always have more users than offpeak. Freeways will always get congested at peak. The Internet will too (whether at the microsecond scale, the millisecond scale, or the seconds scale...the latency behaviour changes throughout the day).
Good metaphor: Even if latency and bandwidth is the same, there will always be more ping jitter at peak -- you can have perfect cruise control for a full hour on an empty freeway at exactly 55.000mph with no speed variance for a full hour. But your speed will always vary a few miles per hour on an intercity journey if there's at least some surrounding cars -- those ahead of you and those impatient behind you. The Internet is the same too -- you will always have more ping jitter during peak than offpeak -- far beyond your ISP control. The gaming networks can be like a Japanese Shinkansen network running nearly perfectly on the clock.
Often, the ISP lottery is mandatory. That's the way the cookie crumbles.
The recommended esports tricks are:
- Switch ISPs
- Get a gaming VPN.
- Get the gaming-optimized service offering (if one exists).
- Upgrade to business-connection.
- Move to a new location.
You can work your way to helping the ISP improve, and that sometimes helps. Get a gaming collective together in your city and lobby/petition your ISP to offer a gaming-optimized service. Money talks. And that provides some improvements that don't fix all weak links.
Are you prepared to expend a community effort to lobby a local ISP to offer a gaming option? That's a great idea. Do it if you have time and enough friends to work together with you on this. Rise the tide to lift all your boats. I know some ISPs decided to offer a game offering, but only after popular demand.
But lobbying your ISP is often very time consuming. Don't do it solo. Banding 10 local gamers together will make lobbying 100 times more effective. But you need to also provide measurement proof to the ISP, essentially like working on a school paper. Now, if that's a lot of work-- consider that the ISP lottery is easier (occasionally, in some areas, upgrading to a business connection automatically gives you a quality upgrade similar to a high end gaming ISP that includes a VPN).