Christopher D. AndersonI was listening to a podcast the other day and they got to talking about how the Playstation network may not be as good as I thought it was. I thought it was pretty good. Okay fine it just went down the other day for a few hours for unknown reasons (or are they known?) but honestly I didn't really notice. However, I know a lot of other people did.
Anyways, on the podcast they were talking about how Sony should invest some money into making a more stable network. I always thought it was alright, besides that fiasco in 2014 when the network was down for days (although Sony did try to make up for it ). That kind of sucked. But I haven't had any problems with it personally otherwise. That might have something to do with the fact that I don't play as much as I would like these days. Or that I don't really play online games. I think it's a good service.
But do you think it would pay for Sony to make the network more robust? To invest some money in making the network more secure and more stable? I mean, I think it's fine. It works when I need it to. And I have enough time when I'm not on my the network that I can download games without having to wait on them. Usually. Granted it took forever to download games on the PS3. But they download pretty quick on the PS4 don't they?
Maybe it's one of those ignorance is bliss cases but there are some pretty legitimate reasons to take a look at the situation. The network has been attacked and has gone down numerous times before. And as mentioned before our data was at risk. Also other game services download much faster then even our precious PS4. So it just might behoove Sony to take some resources and take a look at improving things. What do you think?
Yes, Sony needs to buff up their network with a much more robust & continuous security & anti-hacking system.
Also, the old PSN store was much faster & easier to find whatever I wanted than it is nowadays, so they need to figure out how to speed up this present-day "slower than molasses in January" system they're using now.
Hell, I've got an 75+ Mbs average internet speed that's hardwired into all my PlayStation consoles, & it still takes forever just to sign in to the Store with any of my PS3's(not sure about my PS4 though).
IMO, sony also needs to go back to square one to old days when their PSN search button actually worked perfect before their so-called upgrade, cause I can't usually find jacksh*t that I'm trying to find these days.
Last edited by BikerSaint on 2/12/2016 10:54:32 PM
Oh man. The new store on the PS3 is an absolute embarrassment. It's almost comically bad.
I can understand why Sony went with the common storefront for PS3 and PS4. It's a good idea in theory, but in practice they sure screwed the pooch on this one. The store on the PS3 is unforgivably slow. It's not exactly a complicated UI, which just tells me that Sony spent approximately zero time optimizing the store for PS3. They built it for PS4 and the PS3 got a crappy port. I wish we could go back to the old storefront. It wasn't as pretty, but at least it worked. I'll take function over flare any day.
Back when I had my 360 and my PS3. I saw that whilst the 360 said my nat type was open, my PS3 would say it was strict even though both consoles where wired to my router. This was back when I had DSL (13Mbps/756kbps). Now that I have cable internet (24/2Mbps) but no longer have my last gen consoles my PS4 classifies my connection as Nat type 2. So yeah I would say Sony needs to invest in better network connections. Not to mention the fact that whenever I test the connection or download a game it never quite reaches "full" download capacity like Steam does. PS Vita was even worse…
Just so you know, Nat Type 2 is what you want.
It's probably not a realistic possibly but I wish Sony could re-work the entire PSN. I will say this gen it seems a bit stable than last but it still has more stability issues than it should, especially now that people pay for it.
I'm online almost everyday and I think it's fine. I don't have Xbox live to compare it to though. I will say I liked the store a lot better before they changed it. It's impossible to find anything now without already knowing what your looking for and searching for it.
Besides saying it should be more stable and secure, did they mention anything else? Because I'm not sure Xbox is any more secure. They get attacked and taken down too. I have heard people say live is more stable, but it was always from people who prefer Xbox, so I always took it with a grain of salt. I know at the beginning live killed psn, and a lot of people haven't forgotten that and hold an unfair bias towards psn.
Last edited by mk ultra on 2/13/2016 9:02:13 AM
That's pretty much what they covered. I'm aware Xbox is having their issues as well. It's easy to think that psn is just fine when there are actually some improvements that could be made.
I wish they'd fix their awful PSN Store phone app. It's slow and crashes all the time
The only thing I find to be a real nuisance is the slow download times. In an age of 50gig games, 2mbps isn't going to cut it.
Are you guys experiencing slow download speeds even with fast Internet connections?
My ISP just upgraded my 100mbps, which really ran around 120 on average, to 300mbps that really runs around 260 for me. It doesn't help for online, a friend of mine who knows a lot more than I about this stuff told me PSN online tops out at 30, and if you have more than that it doesn't really help any.
But for downloads I've noticed a significant difference. It only took me four minutes to download that 9.5gb BO3 update.
Slow download times is directly related to you ISP. My games download real quick with a 60mbps service. I typically run between 25 and 32 download when doing a test and 2-3.5 upload speeds.
Same as MK (while not as quick), I have no issues downloading full games. Maybe a few hours. No doubt they are done before I get home from work if I start them in the morning. Not to mention if you purchase digital you can pre-download most if not all new releases. Meaning they'll be ready to play as soon as they release.
Bros, when I do a "test", it only tests my connection, and it typically comes out around the 80 mark for download and 10 for upload. I have a good connection.
When you download something from PSN, I normally get 1.5-3 mbps. If I'm really lucky, it might give me 4-5.
Don't go by what the test tells you. Go by the speed your stuff is actually downloading at. It's slow. Super slow.
With my internet speed, a 50 GB download shouldn't take longer than 10-15 minutes. If I were to download a torrent or something large on my PC that isn't dependant on the server I download from, I would get that speed. PSN is where the speed is throttled.
A couple hours or more to download a game is ludicrous in this day and age. I also try to get them to download while I'm at work or sleeping so it's ready when I'm ready. But that shouldn't be necessary.
If there's an update that's like 8-10 GB, I should be able to get that in a couple minutes or less. Not 3 hours, as was the case with the last CoD BO3 update.
If you "don't really play online games" it's no wonder you haven't noticed an eventual instability on the online service, is it? 🙂
I play online mainly and this isn't really an issue. I can't remember the last time I was affected. But I can't ignore the fact that it has been down.
I play online a ton. I rarely see "instability". My only issue is download speeds.
My point exactly lol.
Or, if the networks down, go outside and do something else. Pick up a secondary hobby and don't flip out when the internet is down.
It's been a very long while since I last commented on here, and it feels somewhat weird for my first comment of 2016 to be a negative one. But, in my most humble of opinions, I strongly believe that Sony needs to heavily invest in their network. Especially in regards to network speed and performance.
Even with a 250/20 Internet connection, which is consistent across all other devices, my hardwired PS4 is only ever able to see 75 Mbps down, and 8 Mbps up, at its absolute best. Actual downloading of files is inconsistent, with it between 1 and 8 MB/s, instead of the 30 MB/s that it should be. The fastest peak I've seen was 10 MB/s, or 80 Mbps. So yeah, Sony definitely needs to improve their network, or at least beef up their CDN.
As far as reliability goes, I've noticed more problems with Xbox Live as of late than I have PSN. That isn't to say PSN is perfect, just that I wasn't online when the problems occurred. So, I can't comment in regards to uptime and reliability.
Well, that's it from me. See y'all in a couple months!
Are you getting those numbers from the PlayStation connection test? Because I've found those to be wildly inconsistent.
My connection test from my laptop, which is way more accurate than the PlayStation test, would read 260 or higher when the PS would read around 60. That download the other week was the fastest I've ever experienced, but it's not that fast all the time. I agree it could be more consistent, but I think thats more an inconsistency in the ISP rather than the PSN. Even though the PSN reads slower at times, I've found it to be on par time wise with what my normal download speed is.
The 75/8 is from the connection test, though actual downloads seem to run between 1 and 8 MB/s, with a recorded high of 10 MB/s, and a low of under 500 KB/s.
If I'd have to come up with an average, it'd be 5 MB/s. That's about 40 Mbps, so it's actually under the network test estimate. While at the same time, the max download speed of 10 MB/s is higher, coming in at 80 Mbps. I'll have to do more testing on my end, though as far as I am aware, it has never once gone beyond 15 MB/s.
Downloads on PSN are exceptionally slow, especially when compared directly with Xbox Live and Steam. A 30GB game can be downloaded in full on Steam, in roughly the same time it'd take for PSN (PS4) to download an 8GB file/game.
Xbox Live is also faster than PSN, in my testing. The average Xbox Live game via Xbox One downloads at 20 MB/s, which is 160 Mbps. While it's not my full speed of 250 Mbps, it's still vastly faster than what PSN is capable of providing. (I also did side-by-side downloads of the same game, MGS5:GZ, and Xbox Live finished roughly 15 minutes earlier)
Honestly, my only issue with PSN is with the CDN servers. I don't know what Sony is doing differently, but they definitely need to get this fixed. Perhaps building new server farms, or partnering with a third party, like Amazon. Honestly, I don't right care what they do, so long as they are able to speed up their network so I, and many others, are able to get close to their full speed.
Also, in regards to the PSN speed test? It's not the most accurate thing, yes; but in my testing, it's not horribly inaccurate, if my 10 MB/s peak is any indication. (which puts it at just 5 Mbps above the speed test result)
Though, it does make me question whether or not the speedtest is actually needed.
It's also worth noting that I also ran a web based HTML5 test from the PS4 browser, and the speed was roughly 90-94 Mbps. Is it possible that the PS4 only has a 10/100 NIC? I can eliminate local hardware and equipment as being the culprit, so as far as I can tell, this is either an issue with the PS4's network card, or the PSN servers.
The PSN Plus is now better. But it is still mising a roboust video (TV/Web episodes and Movies) service. At least not as good as Netflix or Amazon Prime. And the Playstation Plus has been worthless for the PS4 console. I remember I have played more than a dozen stellar titles on the PS3 with that service. But this time the best offering is Gaunlet. Really? I wonder if I made the right choice to buy the extended PSN service this year.
A better video service would be better. But it's hard to complain about the games when you get at least 12 games for 60 bucks. Yes they haven't always been very good games but even if one good game comes out for the ps4 on Plus, you've probably already made your money back.