Messages

1

PC Gaming / Re: Online purchasing and international shipping

« on: July 19, 2009, 06:47:48 AM »

Thank you for the reply. I have considered those options. However, I haven't found a US service that will pre-build exactly the components I specify, including what's out of their stock. I'd quite like to build it myself, and I've had enough of laptops.

You would only have the volume of the system unit box to pay for (all components assembled inside) and certainly escape vat and duty.

Similarly, and sorry to be stubborn here, but should I be able to have each component contained in a single load and apply these charges as a whole? Is this understood as one shipment or will each item box within need seperate clearance?

2

PC Gaming / Online purchasing and international shipping

« on: July 19, 2009, 02:08:05 AM »

For those of us building our own systems in Trinidad, I would ask has anyone had success in somewhat overcoming volume/weight/handling/clearance inbound per-shipment costs of couriers by arranging all/some components to be shipped together in a single container/crate/whatnot?

3

PC Gaming / The official boring WoW latency informational thread

« on: May 02, 2009, 02:51:48 AM »

I figured I would reach out to users of this forum to gather a better impression of the latencies obtainable in WoW for T&T players who are interested in choosing realms with lower latencies. To contribute please post your realm name, in-game latency, your location and ISP.

To start off, all US realms are hosted in four datacenters across the country. Their locations are:

• Boston, Massachusetts
• Dallas, Texas
• Los Angeles, California
• Seattle, Washington

These servers will not respond to ICMP echoes but traceroutes can illustrate expected latencies. To contribute please post your traceroutes to these datacenters.

BOSTON 
Distance from Trinidad: ~2,260 miles

12.130.0.174
12.130.0.170

DALLAS
Distance from Trinidad: ~2,720 miles

63.241.192.58 63.241.192.62 63.241.192.114 63.241.192.118 63.241.192.122

63.241.192.126 63.241.192.154 63.241.192.158 63.241.193.10 63.241.193.14

LOS ANGELES 
Distance from Trinidad: ~3,900 miles

12.129.193.242
12.129.193.246

Many hops and high latency. We will eliminate these servers. T&T users should not expect comfortable latencies with realms hosted at this datacenter.

SEATTLE 
Distance from Trinidad: ~4,320 miles

63.251.160.18
63.251.160.19
63.251.160.82
63.251.160.83

Many hops and high latency. We will eliminate these servers. T&T users should not expect comfortable latencies with realms hosted at this datacenter.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

Did a bit of testing on Flow's cable broadband in south Trinidad. On this connection the Dallas datacenter shows lowest hops (14-15) and best ping times (~65ms).
The following are reports from all PvE realms belonging to the Dallas datacenter starting with those which share Trinidad's eastern time zone and prioritizing those with lower hop counts (determining that more hops are likely to introduce more latency). Note, the numbers that follow realm IP addresses are hop count and average ping times, respectively.

EASTERN (8 servers)

Medivh    Zul'jin    Durotan Lothar    Trollbane Bloodhoo Stormrage Elune

206.16.23.5 206.16.23.32 206.16.23.87 206.16.23.80 206.16.23.3 206.16.23.73 206.16.23.74 206.16.23.92

16, 65 18, 64 18, 64 18, 65 18, 65 19, 65 19, 66 19, 66

CENTRAL (one hour behind Trinidad (GMT - 5), 9 servers)

Garona    Kael'thas    Alexstrasza Alleria       Whisperwind Madoran    Ravencrest Blackhand Hellscream

63.241.255.12 63.241.255.113 63.241.255.82 63.241.255.77 63.241.255.87 206.16.23.77    63.241.255.46 63.241.255.115 63.241.255.55

16, 64 16, 68 18, 65 18, 67 18, 67 19, 64 19, 65 19, 65 19, 67

PACIFIC (three hours behind Trinidad (GMT-7), 2 servers)

Moonrunner Baelgun

63.241.255.9 63.241.255.5

16, 65 19, 64

Obviously these results are highly variable and only serve to give a general impression of expected latencies. Overall, Garona, Medivh, Kael'thas and Moonrunner show the least hops. We will consider these four realms most attractive to players with connections similar to tested. A quick look at their realm data:

Server* Garona Medivh Moonrunner Kael'thas

Alliance 23,361 (72%) 20,226 (66%) 23,943 (77%) 5,225 (46%)

Horde 9,141 (28%) 10,579 (34%) 7,121 (23%) 6,014 (54%)

Ratio 2.1:1 1.6:1 1.9:1 1.6:1

Population 32,502 30,805 31,064 11,239

^{*source: warcraftrealms.com}

It would appear that Medivh is the more preferable realm here in terms of population and faction balance. A level 1 Alliance char there maintains under 95ms in major cities. Would hope to weigh these results with those submitted by members here.