Would you know a bottom if you saw one? - Kevin Delaney, WSJ
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Demon Internet launches a prioritised gaming service
OLD SCHOOL UK Internet service provider (ISP) Demon Internet has announced a service targeting gamers.
The firm, which was best known for its 'tenner a month' dialup access in the 1990s, said that its Demon Game Pro package will offer gamers "traffic prioritisation" to help lower ping times.
The service is being priced at £22 per month for a 12-month contract or £24 per month on a 3-month contract though the price will increase if purchased after October. Both contracts have a £30 setup charge.
Punters signing up get the usual promise of "up to" 20Mbps downstream and 1Mbps upstream. Demon will supply a wireless router and a static IP address, saying that it can be used to host game servers. Sadly for customers, merely 1Mbps upstream will make high traffic servers out of the question.
With the debate on net neutrality fresh in the public consciousness, it seems interesting that Demon chose to launch a service that categorically states that it will favour 'gaming traffic'. Speaking to The INQUIRER, Demon's proposition manager Carl Warner said that the service was born out of gamers' need for low latency.
When asked whether current Demon broadband customers will be affected by those on higher priority Game Pro accounts, Warner said that Demon's network was not topping out, and has more than enough capacity for everyone. Warner explained that due to the majority of the firm's customers being businesses, after 6pm there is a significant drop in network utilisation and said that this product will simply make use of excess network capacity with "no suffering for customers".
Warner also suggested that such a service would not be a good idea if Demon's customer base primarily consisted of consumers. He also alluded to Demon prioritising "business traffic" over that of home customers, saying that with the growth of cloud computing, businesses are more reliant on receiving a dependable level of service than ever before.
Gamers are unlikely to complain about the fact that their Internet service will be tiered like this. The reliance on low ping times and packet loss is so great that many gamers sign up to ISPs solely based on their ping times to game servers.
Demon's service does raise the question of other ISPs offering niche products and whether it will lead to an increase in prices, as feared by net neutrality advocates. Being fair to Demon, the firm clearly states that it will be prioritising gaming traffic through its Game Pro service, though it is charging an extra £3 a month over its standard "up to 20Mb/sec" bandwidth blandishment for the privilege.
We would like to hear from any interested Demon customers about their thoughts on this new service. Are you concerned that the new service will mean being forced to pay £3 extra a month to keep competitive in frag fests? If you are on a different ISP, is it something that you would like to see being offered? Or are you against any form of tiered networking service?
Should you have a view, please let us know in the comments below or by email. µ
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I would avoid Demon like a pox ridden whore if you download a lot. They now have a strict download limit and as soon as you go over it they will throttle your connection to 128kb - not an ideal bandwidth for Gamers!!
..That cablemodems provide much lower pings.. Typically around 6ms to the first hop if the cable company are doing their job properly.
ADSL is only an option for gamers if they're not in a cabled area, and even then it will only provide good pings if the phone line is clean enough to switch off the additional error correction usually required on ADSL lines. Which, given the state of BT's wires, almost certainly won't be the case on your phone line. When that's not the case it means you're stuck with 70ms pings on ADSL 2.. Or, put another way, it's bloody useless for gaming..
Have they guaranteed people on the normal service won't suffer degradation?
Or do they get a discount?
The problem with any of these services is that they only help if you and your destination are on the same ISP's network. Then you are guaranteed to get a certain treatment of the packets, no drops and low ping.
This is very unlikey though so mostly your traffic will have to go across the normal public internet which has no guarantees.
This is the same issue for any ISP or customer that wants a tiered service. Until ISP get together so support each other's prioritisations then a tiered internet is useless.....
If someone wants to prioritise access to themselves, or prioritise a type of content(rars, avis, html, etc.) that isn't a big deal. The problem comes when you a company tries to dominate a competitor's web traffic so that they affect the user experience of the other company. That's the stuff that needs to be fought against.
love the service being touted, being touted for "gamers" which as you pointed out is a way for demon to soak up the unused bandwidth but it doesn't really equate. On the one side you think Demon is making an effort, on the other you think its a ploy to soak some of the unised bandwdth but the real trick here as usual is in the small print.
As a gamer of numerous years and a former gaming cafe owner yes gamers are all about the ping, however the equipment of the player if they are "hosting" is all important. To whit, hosting a gaming server via "Wi-fi"? in gaming terms WTF Pwned!
Seriously, to host any game server you must have a stable connection, the router is the heart of this, yes wireless is handy for your mobile phone and to browse the web while watching telly on the laptop but to host a game server of any kind requires hard wiring, otherwise you miss out on the whole point of the service in the first place.
As a dedicated gamer, I'd applaud any company that gave gamers preference however please let me know the make and model of the router your offering (Viglen would be good) and sure as hell dont make it look like we are an afterthought.. "we have spare capacity at night who can we target?"
So good try from Demon but when will ISP's stop limiting the upload speed's?
This is the bane of ADSL or Cable, great download speed appalling upload, please for gods sake lift the caps and let us send @ or near 4mpbs without charging us through the nose..
Former demon customer here. They missed the boat a long time ago. Quality went out the window when they outsourced everything. I see they are making some attempt to relaunch the brand though.
I don't think that "non-gaming" Internet users will be affected or "deprioritized" in any way. It sounds more like a guarantee for quality of service. A lot of ISPs tend to ignore complaints for high pings or package loss since "the Internet is working fine", although it can seriously affect Internet experience for gamers.
I'm currently paying more with aquiss, and will look at demons package in detail.
lower pings means more than download speed, to us gamers