unreal

[Asid]

Take it up with them directly

I would Rob if i could get a reply buddy

[Kozmyk]

I have to chip in here and say that when I've emailed PhoenixRC I got a sensible reply.


Oh and btw , who turned the weather up to gale force in last night's session?
Git ... I had to use full -ve just to park on the ground!!!

[raptormark]

To anyone buying phoneix. The sim is brilliant but please be aware that you may or may not get on line with it or be able to see some others in a session that you are in.
This has been a problem that quite a few people have.I believe support at phoneix are aware.So to recap brilliant bit of kit not to clever on line for some.Also there is a good bit of kit that works to make this wireless www.simstick.co.uk. This will not make it better on line if you have any problems getting on line

[Gareth-71]

to anyone buying phoneix. the sim is brilliant but please be aware that you may or may not get on line with it or be able to see some others in a session that you are in.
this has been a problem that quite a few people have.I believe support at phoneix are aware.So to recap brilliant bit of kit not to clever on line for some

Perfectly Put!

[msssltd]

Actually i did pay £79.99 for the product.

Thats about 16 hours at minimum wage. Try writing some software and see how little you produce in 16 hours. Software development is not a magical process. It comes down to talented people, who have invested years into learning their craft, typing thousands of lines of vaguely recognisable gibberish.

Writing software for an inexpert market you can expect exactly zero thanks beyond the pay packet. Worse in fact, you can expect virtually everyone and his brother to constantly tell you how crap you are doing, how it should be done differently....BUT THEY DO NOT KNOW HOW TO DO IT AT ALL. No wonder developers have a reputation for being a bit insular and demanding a decent days pay. Compare to Fast Lad's staff who get praised to high heaven for the oh so difficult task of putting a parcel in the post the same day. Does that seem right to you?

How the supply/distribution chain break down the percentages of profit etc is surely no concern to the customer

Speaking quite personally, it pains me that such a large proportion of the purchase price ends up with the retailer for doing relatively little. When you have a problem with something other than software you take that problem back to the retailer and the resolution is paid for out of the retailers margin. What happens with software is that the retailer shrugs their shoulders and the software house is expected to deal with the complaint for free.

They sell the product as online ready so if it does not work online sufficiently for a large number of users then surely it is an issue.

Read your ISPs Ts&Cs. There will be something in there to inform you that you are not provided with any guaranteed QoS. BT wholesale will not provide a QoS on ADSL, so no one else can. NTL/Virgin have the same terms in their contracts. It is in very small print.

There ain't nothing wrong with Phoenix's online functionality. There is a great deal wrong with the UKs underinvested, woefully overloaded, overpriced, broad band network, on which your online Phoenix experience depends.

True but in this case i purchased a product that has no warnings about online problems. If i purchased the shower and it said it would work with my system then i would expect it to work. Not just work intermittently so the analogy isn't applicable

Who, specifically told you that Phoenix would work online 100% of the time with *your system* specifically? That's who you should be complaining to. Clearly, the internet being what the internet is, no one can make such a claim, which I believe even my mum is aware of. Shocking. Next they will be putting warnings on bags of nuts to tell people the bag contains nuts. Ahhh...They already do.

Ultimately, if you still believe Phoenix is unfit for your purpose and was sold to you on a false claim, your recourse is to take it up with the retailer and ask for a refund. Personally I am very happy with the product. I am not expecting Phoenix to take responsibility for my internet access as that is between me and my ISP.

So everyone that has a similar issue falls into this category? Some of us do have a "clue"

I have similar issues but I understand the issues are caused by factors which Phoenix have little or no control over. I also have issues with youtube, but I am not on the phone to google complaining about it.

My ISP has the control, but they are going to ask for a lot more money to improve my quality of service, which I am unprepared to pay for.

However this connectivity issue is pre-beta and on going.

It is inherently a problem with running realtime UDP streams over broad band networks. It is not going away until there is a step change in broad band technology.

You could have a big technical debate about the merits of UDP Vs TCP. TCP is more reliable than UDP but slower, hence you would have a reliably laggy connection. The problem with UDP being that a router will legitimately drop UDP traffic at the merest hint of congestion along the route.

There is an issue that needs to be addressed. I do not expect it to be fixed over night. However the port forwarding thing is getting old.

The need to port forward is due to having a firewall between your PC and the internet. You need the firewall due to the internet being shared by criminals intent on exploiting any system they can exploit. Operating system and router manufacturers have already developed technology to automate port forwarding - UPnP. UPnP is also a target for the criminals and so it is disabled more often than not, or simply not a feature on older routers. That leaves STUN, which has a different set of issues which are a lot more complicated to try to explain to a layman. Once again these are facts beyond Phoenix control.

Why not say "we acknowledge...we are working.."? instead of "you are imagining or making it up or its YOUR fault?

I don't know what they said, so can not comment. I have taken the time to attempt to explain some of the issues. Beyond that I can only suggest you complain to your local MP about the dire state of UK broadband.

[Dannyyy]

I can guarantee that it is YOUR computer and YOUR internet that is not allowing you to go online.

[challis349]

so how can you guarantee that? when I could go online to loads of sessions, but then couldnt go on any, what changed on my computer, because I changed NOTHING, no firewall, no security at all, but my computer is at fault, I DONT THINK SO

[raptormark]

Our extensive multiplayer facilities offer full internet and LAN multi-pilot flying using our PhoenixNet online session-finding service to easily create, locate and join sessions around the world.( if you live in the uk your broadband is crap so it might not work so lobby your mp)


this is not easy for me

[Asid]

I can guarantee that it is YOUR computer and YOUR internet that is not allowing you to go online.

[Dannyyy]

Thanks funny that Asid, just like all the Llama stuff you post.

[Guest]

so how can you guarantee that? when I could go online to loads of sessions, but then couldnt go on any, what changed on my computer, because I changed NOTHING, no firewall, no security at all, but my computer is at fault, I DONT THINK SO

You may not have changed anything, your ISP may have
Most if not all ISP's quote speeds UP TO your speed limit
A fair few throttle/limit your speed at peak times
Piscali are know to do this anytime they like to

I assume you have checked your download speed, but have you checked your UPLOAD speed?

My line is 8Mbit DOWN and 2Mbit UP 99.9% and extremely rare to drop below

And why do some people think they are smarter than AS*?

There's a saying "BBB"
"Bullshit Baffles Brain"
When it piles up it stinks!

[Asid]

And why do some people think they are smarter than AS*?

Not about thinking they are smart its about some people taking the p**s and saying/implying that people with conectivity issues are:

• Telling lies
• stupid
• S**t stirring
• Causing probs
• Bad mouthing
• imagining things
• etc.....

Some people have real issues. You do not. I am happy for you. However don't tell me i am anything from the above list and expect me to take it u* t** A** without any protests.

[Mark_T]

Guys, no point in getting angry with each other and no point in trying to tell people that all their problems are down to their PC just because you don't have any issues.

I am not going to claim that I know all the answers, but to put it into context, I'm an ex-Director of an ISP and an ex-Director of a games hosting business so I do have at least a little inside knowledge

Once you get past any minor issues like opening ports on your router or sorting out your firewall the variability in the connection after that is mostly down to what hardware is being used to run the session, the quality of their internet connection and the quality of your internet connection, your hardware and that of everyone else joining the session and the path between your ISP, their ISP and everyone else's ISP.

In short there are a heck of a lot of things that can go wrong.

The way the code is written can make a big difference in just how tolerant the system is to all those variables but it cannot be blamed for all the problems and nothing they can do will fix all the problems.

I can talk about this stuff for hours, but there is no golden bullet other than a dedicated server hosted properly at a data centre. Once you get to that stage you are taking out enough of the other variables for the coding quality to become more of a limiting factor and for individuals with local problems to be able to test and detect where the problem is.

There are things you can do to give everyone a better chance of getting it all working, like not trying to host a session on hardware that is only just coping with Phoenix itself and doing it on a standard ADSL line with 256Kb upload speed using an ISP with severe contention issues that is dropping packets left right and centre ...

Let someone with a fast upload speed host the session and you're off to a good start as long as their ISP is actually not dropping too many packets at the time. If they have good fast hardware as well that that helps too.

[Guest]

From your list, I don't think you're telling lies and don't think you're imagining things

People here are giving some reasons why you are having problems
But nothing from you seems to do no wrong
So there are no answers to your question

For the majority it works, so the program works
For the minority there could be improvements

Computers, ISP, internet software are all variations to a problem

UP and THE don't need asterisks and AS* only requires one

[Asid]

UP and THE don't need asterisks and AS* only requires one

Sorry been so busy lately forwarding ports that my grammar/spelling has suffered