Has anyone heard back from Shaw on this? I just started experiencing the same thing this week in the Red Deer, AB region.

Fort McMurray
 

Happening to me in Fort McMurray now.. Started 3 days ago. Beyond annoying. Traffic gets queued somewhere for over 3-5 minutes than all gets dumped to me at once. Shaw will never admit to anything you can't prove so have fun with this one. Want a real solution? Switch to TELUS anyone else you can get your hands on and tell them why you left. Maybe Shaw will have it fixed by the time TELUS breaks it and you'll be able to go back.

Just finished with every other thread on here and it looks like it's pretty obvious what the issue is and it's rather funny that it's popping up slowing all over and that after hearing about this over and over they keep creating the same issue. The problem with large ISP's is that the process for installing/updating is written by some guy at a desk that never sees the real world implementation. The Guy who sets it all up doesn't use is or think for himself, just copies what he was given. The people troubleshooting the device don't talk to the customers, and the people you talk to when you call in don't have a clue about any of the hardware.

So here's what happens. You call with a problem.. you get some BS answer since the connection is working fine for everything but vent. Help desk guy goes on with his day and forgets you called. Repeat this bout 100 times a day. One of the analysts will clue in that he's heard about issues with vent a lot lately and ask higher up about it. It might then get to the next level that can look at the hardware. If they actually believe the help desk knows anything about IP traffic, they might look at it. If they do find the issue, they aren't authorized to change it anyway without going to the network planners to find out what kind of impact this will have on the network. Then they have to come up with a plan to make the necessary changes, analyze disruption caused by making the changes, and design a rollback plan if the changes fail or cause issues. Then this will get passed back to the guys who can make the changes and they'll plan to do it when impact is the smallest.

Process is in place for a reason but it sure is a pain when it's something that affects you. And it drives everyone in the chain nuts to since it's quite likely a change that can be made by typing one or two lines into the traffic policies.

I am here in Vancouver, B.C., use Shaw, and yes, ever since the switch to 3.0, I have been getting MASSIVE lag spikes in Vent, and only with Vent >> my gaming seems to be fine, which I am awful thankful for.

Strange though, the problem only occurs when I am wired thru this fancy D-Link router. When I hardwire straight to the modem, the lag spikes stop and everything is fine.

I have even gone into the router set up thingy (by entering an IP into the address bar of my browser), and checked to make sure everything was secure and the wireless function was turned off. Past that, I am too noobish to make any other changes in the router set up.

This problem is very serious for me, because I lead a successful adult orientated gaming family of about 60 people, and they rely on me to get on every night to organize our events and discuss issues. It's a moral dampener too >> it really sucks not being able to talk with them after 6 years of being able to talk with everyone every night.

I feel like an idiot after discovering this thread, because I have been blaming the lag on my roomie's router, and it's caused an assload of tension between us.

I am emailing Shaw right now to report this issue. Hopefully they will take the hint that LOTS of gamers are having the same problem, get off their fat butts and do something about it, not just play the "oh it's not a problem on our end" card.

H8MyBoss*
Lords Of Death
An FPS Gaming Family

not sure if it would make a difference, but ventrilo is not setting its packets as high priority, so if any QOS is being run on the packets (100% of isps run some type) then ventrilo packets are being held up to let other traffic that is marked as high priority go first (any other voip packets etc etc)
:.

ISP's almost always reclassify all customer traffic as normal priority (except peer-to-peer traffic, which gets low) when it comes into the network, unless they're a business customer paying a high rate for priority.

If they didn't, every Torrent user out there would mark all their traffic as high priority.

ping
 

I live in Red Deer, Alberta, and am having the same problems, my latency jumps all over the place and well because of it i might as well not use it, my ping has been as high as 32509

Ok I got a response back from Shaw, and it is indeed the bit torrent programs that are messing with vent. Of course, Shaw insists that it is still something that need to be addressed on your end:

Hope this helps everyone. I myself do not use bit torrent programs, but I have two downloading whores of roomies who are CONSTANTLY DL'ing stuff 24/7. When I showed them the email from Shaw, they finally got why I was always so pissed off at them. But, of course, they don't give two sh!ts and will continue to be online leeches.

Now I have to shell out more money per month to get my own line in, which sucks because I was here before these two clowns, and I was the guy that got Shaw Extreme hooked up in this house.

I hate ignorant people, lol! :rolleyes:

Too bad I didn't see this post initially I could of stated what shaw was going to say. I have experienced this not with Ventrilo but with other programs. A few weeks ago I was even at work and the boss had left his torrent downloader on, the entire day it was so slow even FTP and the Internet were slowed down. I know I basically only download files when I am away from my computer.

Shaw doesn't classify every packet as torrent or non torrent, so if they suspect you of downloading them your entire connection is gonna suck.

Things that will increase your ping are:

- Multiple users sharing same IP
- Being on wireless
- Downloading
- ISP routing issues

Just to expand on ISP routing issues, some times a 3rd party ISP is to blame for lag. Recently one of my websites hosted in phoenix was very laggy. Upon inspection I noticed Shaw had a fine ping, as did the hosting facility. There was a third company in the middle shaw was routing too that was experiencing problems. Took about a month to correct as well.