Trinidad Internet

[Nice time]

Hey all,


First of all, I'm new here and I hope you guys can help me. I recently moved to Trinidad for studies thus I live in the St. Augustine area. Right now I have the FLOW 5mb connection from my landlord which is spotty at best and unusable at worst. I'm wondering if I should stick with flow n get a 15/25mb connection n not rely on the landlord or go to another network.

Right now I only play LoL but I may get a ps3 n xbox 360 soon to utilize BF, CoD, halo, GTAV. Playing lol I get serious lag spikes and dcs especially from abt 5pm to 10pm. What are your thoughts? I appreciate advice given. As of now, I will most likely get the flow 15/25 unless I am told otherwise.

Thanks in advance.

[rassmatic]

Well as far as high speed internet goes, you only have 2 choices. Either Flow or Blink (TSTT).

Personally I'd stick with Flow and get the 15mb package. That's what I have and I don't experience any issues when gaming online. People also claim to have less latency when using Turbo 15 as opposed to 25. Not sure of the reasons why so maybe someone more knowledgeable can give better insight.

I guess it would depend on where you're located, but I for one have hardly ever heard anyone complain about the overall performance of their Flow connection. On the other hand, I'm always hearing of constant problems from Blink users (slow connection speeds, very high pings when gaming, etc).

[Spazosaurus]

With Flow, users in different parts of the country experience varying levels of latency. Where I live in Port of Spain, latency has remained unacceptably high for FPS gaming purposes, despite my many pleas to the company, many of which have made its way high up the ladder but to this day falls upon deaf ears.

As can be seen, GATT has a good relationship with Flow and vice versa. Both organizations do good work in promoting online gaming in Trinidad but sadly, Flow is TERRIBLE for gaming in some areas, St Agustine I understand is even worse than what I have personally experienced. I've switched back to TSTT 2Mbit connection about 3 years now and experience vastly better latency than I got while with Flow.

Of course, your issue may not be related to the service itself. As such, I urge you to do some testing on www.pingtest.net at different times of the day. Observe results, ensuring that no one else is using the connection while testing. This will tell you all you need to know about its gaming capabilities.

Luckily, TSTT's DSL is available to pick up the slack in cases where Flow's service is unacceptable.

[Arcmanov]

As a renter myself...the first thing ypu need to find out is IF your landlord will allow you to get your own Flow account...which means another modem with its own cabling.
Not every landlord likes tenants doing their own thing, especially when it involves hole-drilling and cable-running. 

If he/she says yes, then I fully recommend the Flow 'Turbo 15' package.  It's better optimised for online gaming and actually has much better overall latency to foreign servers.  The other packages are superb for pure downloaing though.





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[VirtueTT]

Spaz basically covered it. While at UWI, gaming was almost impossible. I could have been the only person in my building at the time using the internet, it wouldn't make a difference. Flow in that area is just bad for gaming. Everything else is fine, but if you intend on playing games, especially on the consoles, I don't advise using Flow. I'm not sure how Blink is in that area so it's worth asking around.

[Arcmanov]

VirtueTT...you need to clarify which package you were using at the time.

Spazosaurus too.





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[Spazosaurus]

At the time I had the 10Mbit connection.

[Arcmanov]

I  feel allyuh do Flow a wickedness in a past life.
That was then...I'm pretty sure the Turbo 15 came after to address all those issues.

Good luck getting Blink to address your application on a timely basis.  You will also have to get an actual landline...Oh the Blink advocates didn't tell you that one eh? 
Only them and Jesus, Jah, Jehovah and Odin could tell you how soon you getting said landline.





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[TriniXaeno]

I too strongly recommend the Flow Turbo 15 package.

It was created specifically with gamers in mind and through consultation with GATT.

We beta tested the service ourselves and can heartily steer you in that direction.

An extreme word of caution....INSIST on the the plain vanilla modem. DO NOT under any circumstance accept the modem that comes with an integrated wireless router.

During our testing, this particular wireless device proved very unstable and was the cause for frequent disconnections.

Also, I'd suggest investing in a decent wireless router like the ASUS RT 16.

It has killer features that will help explain any strange internet behaviour. For example, I can see how much bandwidth any device on my network is using at any given  time. Upload and download.

To illustrate how useful this is, last night, while playing Battlefield 4, the latency on my connection went crazy. From a typical ping of 70 - 90 all the way to 400 - 500.

Checked the Asus RT 16 and immediately saw that an Iphone on the home network was uploading a massive amount of data. Blocked it and pings returned to normal.

Features like that are gaming gold.

[Spazosaurus]

I  feel allyuh do Flow a wickedness in a past life.
That was then...I'm pretty sure the Turbo 15 came after to address all those issues.

Good luck getting Blink to address your application on a timely basis.  You will also have to get an actual landline...Oh the Blink advocates didn't tell you that one eh? 
Only them and Jesus, Jah, Jehovah and Odin could tell you how soon you getting said landline.





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lol. Flow does set you up faster than tstt, no question. Honestly, I really doh want to be on tstt but I simply had no choice. Flow just keep ignoring me and my problems. One would think that being a GATT member would help my cause but no...same crappy service, no help...

Nice time, I hope you get your Flow service up and running properly...though I doubt you will, sorry to be pessimistic. Hopefully your luck is better than mine, though, the bar wasn't really set that high to begin with

[TriniXaeno]

lol, Spaz (wtf is up with this new name???) went on a smear campaign online that would make Perez Hilton blush.

Despite pleadings on his behalf, I don't think Flow would want to rectify his particular situation unless he wrote an apologetic poem superior to Homer's "The Odyssey" and delivered it personally.

Rest assured, the vast majority of gamers locally are on Flow.

I say this for one massively important reason...if you wish to game with locals, being on the same ISP is a HUGE advantage.

If you are all playing Call of Duty for example and the host is on Flow, your latency is going to be negligible. Sub 20ms.

[Spazosaurus]

Well it isn't exactly a smear campaign if what you're saying is true is it.  It would be immensely silly of me to imply that flow on the whole is rubbish. Im simply regaling the goodly gentleman with tales of my personal experience.

To imply that I (a paying customer) have to apologize for complaining about sub par service is irresponsible at best, even if said in just, it is a joke I find neither funny nor entertaining. Flow, if you're watching, seeing an apology from me is less likely than hell freezing over...

Of course given that 95% of game servers are no longer on our shores. it matters not which of the local isp's you're using as both yield similar results. In sure that the majority of gamers are now on flow but it is for that reason primarily the service is degrading latency wise.

Op, good luck with your testing. Please report back and let us know of your experience. I wait with baited breath.

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[Rebirthoftheundead]

they are both horrible, but flow is the better of the two evils

[Fkacn_tt]

Don't know what flow did you guys but for the past 3-4 years that I have flow my total down time would not even fill the time slot of a week.

Sent from my HTC One using Tapatalk now Free

[VirtueTT]

VirtueTT...you need to clarify which package you were using at the time.

Spazosaurus too.





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25 mb package =/

[TriniXaeno]

Don't know what flow did you guys but for the past 3-4 years that I have flow my total down time would not even fill the time slot of a week.

Sent from my HTC One using Tapatalk now Free

Hahhaha. True talk slamming. They have about 99.9% uptime with me as well.

It is the old IT curse of being over worked and under appreciated. People only pah attention and make noise when service goes down.

You do not see any posts saying...wow...thanks Flow for another day of excellent internet.

As an ISP they have done a fantastic job in supporting gamers. Going above and beyond.

You will see more on that in the coming months. If you are a gamer. ..Flow is the isp for you. Hands down.

[Spazosaurus]

Wyatt, seeing as you have such confidence in flow and have all the right links, I extend a challenge to you...

Get FLow to fix the service in my area so that I can actually game. THEN and only then i'll join in the praise in the Church of the Holy Flow.

[TriniXaeno]

Challenge Accepted.

You also have to stop and buy a coconut from Tony for me on every savannah run for the rest of your life as tribute if I am succesful.

That should work out to three nuts a week if Endomondo can be trusted.

[Spazosaurus]

I will buy several coconuts for you hahahah for life? You feel I is NP or wa?

[Arcmanov]

Don't know what flow did you guys but for the past 3-4 years that I have flow my total down time would not even fill the time slot of a week.

Sent from my HTC One using Tapatalk now Free

Ent...mine only went down when I moved house.   Had a few seconds downtime here and there, but it's been pretty stable for the last few years.

Other than that, I had a weird DNS issue a few weeks ago, but it seems to have fixed itself.





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