hi all,

This is my first post on this forum, took me a while to figure out the registration question, ended using Excel to resolve it :-)

I will move to Lebanon for work in a few months' time. I am contemplating building a new PC for online gaming, as my current rig is already more than 5 years old - Xeon E3 V1230v3 + ATi R9 270

However, before I commit to building a new system, I would like to find out more about the online gaming experience in Beirut - Will it be possible to find servers with playable latencies (ping under 100ms) for games like PUBG, BF1, BF V and Overwatch? Will I have to sign up to expensive internet plans (like USD100+ a month) in order to achieve playable latencies?

Your advice will be much appreciated!
purpleradish wrotehi all,

This is my first post on this forum, took me a while to figure out the registration question, ended using Excel to resolve it :-)

I will move to Lebanon for work in a few months' time. I am contemplating building a new PC for online gaming, as my current rig is already more than 5 years old - Xeon E3 V1230v3 + ATi R9 270

However, before I commit to building a new system, I would like to find out more about the online gaming experience in Beirut - Will it be possible to find servers with playable latencies (ping under 100ms) for games like PUBG, BF1, BF V and Overwatch? Will I have to sign up to expensive internet plans (like USD100+ a month) in order to achieve playable latencies?

Your advice will be much appreciated!
Welcome purpleradish! you can introduce your self in Introductions on the index page.

If you can insure that you will stay in Lebanon, then yeah a desktop is a good choice especially for warranty, else getting a laptop from your country would be a better choice, top end EVOC or MSI laptops are around ~200 dollars more than an average high end desktop with screen and other accessories, I'm only saying this due to the fact that my desktop sat in the dust for half year lately, not to mention sustaining two systems when it comes to work (moving files, dropbox/upload services suck in Lebanon for sync). I had a 1080 pascal laptop with 144hz Gsync and 12thread i7 for ~1800 dollars. For the ultimate single player gaming experience no contest here => desktop. I expect you can even go with an RTX 2060 laptop if you're solely gaming multi, running everything at 144hz maintaining a nice budget. Forget about purchasing any gaming laptop in Lebanon, very poor outdated models and insanely overpriced.

As for latency, expect ~50 to 80ms max to most European servers, there are few Middle Eastern servers that are mostly inactive.
Going with Open Speed ADSL2+ (around 18mbit) and 200GB cap is around 40bux a month, its really hard to push past the cap unless you are a heavy downloader, extra GB is pay on the go, which is not very cheap. Make sure to ask Ogero to disable interleaving if your line can handle it to achieve consistent double digits latency.
Elitism Guru wrote
Welcome purpleradish! you can introduce your self in Introductions on the index page.

If you can insure that you will stay in Lebanon, then yeah a desktop is a good choice especially for warranty, else getting a laptop from your country would be a better choice, top end EVOC or MSI laptops are around ~200 dollars more than an average high end desktop with screen and other accessories, I'm only saying this due to the fact that my desktop sat in the dust for half year lately, not to mention sustaining two systems when it comes to work (moving files, dropbox/upload services suck in Lebanon for sync). I had a 1080 pascal laptop with 144hz Gsync and 12thread i7 for ~1800 dollars. For the ultimate single player gaming experience no contest here => desktop. I expect you can even go with an RTX 2060 laptop if you're solely gaming multi, running everything at 144hz maintaining a nice budget. Forget about purchasing any gaming laptop in Lebanon, very poor outdated models and insanely overpriced.

As for latency, expect ~50 to 80ms max to most European servers, there are few Middle Eastern servers that are mostly inactive.
Going with Open Speed ADSL2+ (around 18mbit) and 200GB cap is around 40bux a month, its really hard to push past the cap unless you are a heavy downloader, extra GB is pay on the go, which is not very cheap. Make sure to ask Ogero to disable interleaving if your line can handle it to achieve consistent double digits latency.

Thanks for the useful info, it is good to know that online gaming is possible in Lebanon with playable pings at reasonable ISP costs. In that case I will build a new rig and take it to Lebanon with you. I am more of a desktop person, better value for money and desktops are just that much more stable and customisable than laptops

Any other ISP that have good unlimited download plans with good gaming latencies? I am kinda a heavy downloader :)
purpleradish wrote
Elitism Guru wrote
Welcome purpleradish! you can introduce your self in Introductions on the index page.

If you can insure that you will stay in Lebanon, then yeah a desktop is a good choice especially for warranty, else getting a laptop from your country would be a better choice, top end EVOC or MSI laptops are around ~200 dollars more than an average high end desktop with screen and other accessories, I'm only saying this due to the fact that my desktop sat in the dust for half year lately, not to mention sustaining two systems when it comes to work (moving files, dropbox/upload services suck in Lebanon for sync). I had a 1080 pascal laptop with 144hz Gsync and 12thread i7 for ~1800 dollars. For the ultimate single player gaming experience no contest here => desktop. I expect you can even go with an RTX 2060 laptop if you're solely gaming multi, running everything at 144hz maintaining a nice budget. Forget about purchasing any gaming laptop in Lebanon, very poor outdated models and insanely overpriced.

As for latency, expect ~50 to 80ms max to most European servers, there are few Middle Eastern servers that are mostly inactive.
Going with Open Speed ADSL2+ (around 18mbit) and 200GB cap is around 40bux a month, its really hard to push past the cap unless you are a heavy downloader, extra GB is pay on the go, which is not very cheap. Make sure to ask Ogero to disable interleaving if your line can handle it to achieve consistent double digits latency.

Thanks for the useful info, it is good to know that online gaming is possible in Lebanon with playable pings at reasonable ISP costs. In that case I will build a new rig and take it to Lebanon with you. I am more of a desktop person, better value for money and desktops are just that much more stable and customisable than laptops

Any other ISP that have good unlimited download plans with good gaming latencies? I am kinda a heavy downloader :)
Glad I'm helping a bit.
Yeah I ended up with "OpenBenchTable" rig, disassemble 4 parts into my luggage (gpu, ram, cooler, psu etc), no more customs issue, as some airlines do not accept shipping desktops on board, shipping via third-party is very costly (can go around 300 dollars with DHL one way ticket) screen is an issue though but I'm moving between two countries frequently.

Ogero is the way to go lately, I personally have two phone lines with one line voice disabled, 2mbit unlimited and the other open-speed 200gb, I think the maximum unlimited cap speed is 4mbit for around 60 dollars. I'm mainly doing this for gaming, the open-speed line is going through SQM to prevent bufferbloat so I can game under heavy traffic load even with p2p traffic, 2/4mbit doesn't have large window to implement such feature so I'm keeping it for updates and movie downloads over night, I occasionally go over 350GB, especially when I restored my steam library downloads. If you regularly go over 500GB, getting two open speed lines is cheaper. 1.32 dollars per GB over 200GB!

Other ISPs are never consistent or stable, there is no competition sadly. (Ogero provides them the service anyways)
Thank you, it looks like Ogero is indeed the way to go.

Will probably go with the open speed 200GB package first, it will have my video streaming and gaming needs covered. Will then get the 2mbps unlimited package if the 200GB package can't satisfy my downloading needs.
purpleradish wrotehi all,

This is my first post on this forum, took me a while to figure out the registration question, ended using Excel to resolve it :-)

I will move to Lebanon for work in a few months' time. I am contemplating building a new PC for online gaming, as my current rig is already more than 5 years old - Xeon E3 V1230v3 + ATi R9 270

However, before I commit to building a new system, I would like to find out more about the online gaming experience in Beirut - Will it be possible to find servers with playable latencies (ping under 100ms) for games like PUBG, BF1, BF V and Overwatch? Will I have to sign up to expensive internet plans (like USD100+ a month) in order to achieve playable latencies?

Your advice will be much appreciated!

Hello and welcome to the forums,

Well I am a gamer (old PC gamer and having XboxOne for now...lool) and heavy downloader (movies, series, music, etc...)
So I got IDM Open Speed 100 GB, for 30$ (and 4$ for unlimited night traffic)
I have absolutely no problem with downloading, but the latency...here is the problem !!
not less then 90/100 ms for COD-Black Ops 4 on XboxOne, and it can reach up to 130 ms !
Called their support over millions of times and did tons of tests and blah blah...no hope,
They said that they have a gaming pool, where you can have a real IP each time your modem sync, but all of this is useless, I am still having the same high ping numbers !!
Even though my line results are perfect, the speed can reach 15 MB, and I am around 1.1 Km far from the CO (Ras Enabe3)
but it seems their connection are bad for online gaming,
Anyone here facing problems with IDM too regarding high latency ?! :(


The only reason that prevents me from switching to Ogero is the unlimited night traffic !
I heard that Ogero promised to get it soon to their customers,


Anyway, try to get Ogero HDSL (for business use) it has 2 MB up and down with real IP,
I think you will get even better pings than the usual Ogero ADSL,
Or try the VDSL one if your line can handle,
purpleradish wrote However, before I commit to building a new system, I would like to find out more about the online gaming experience in Beirut - Will it be possible to find servers with playable latencies (ping under 100ms) for games like PUBG, BF1, BF V and Overwatch? Will I have to sign up to expensive internet plans (like USD100+ a month) in order to achieve playable latencies?
Hi,

PC gaming is a good option to pass time in Lebanon.

However I had a PS4 in Europe and I left it there because I did not want to be disappointed with internet connectivity.
The internet connection has gotten better here (but also there have been more instances of mindless censorship).

Yet latency is still underwhelming compared to what you get with a decent connection in Europe.

I used to play Call of Duty multiplayer and pretty much nothing else - in which every millisecond counts. I did not want to take any chances of soiling my experience.

Anyway once you get set up, please update us and let us know how it went for online gaming!
purpleradish wrote However, before I commit to building a new system, I would like to find out more about the online gaming experience in Beirut - Will it be possible to find servers with playable latencies (ping under 100ms) for games like PUBG, BF1, BF V and Overwatch? Will I have to sign up to expensive internet plans (like USD100+ a month) in order to achieve playable latencies?

Tried

ADSL
VDSL
HDSL

At the end they are all based on the copper wire infrastructure which is susceptible to latency , packet loss , interference , and low SNR margin.

Reliable gaming , low pings ~ 5ms , and low latency are now achievable to me when I swapped to FTTH - 1TB Plan using an
ONT linked to a normal modem. The ONT is linked to a FTTC ~ 600m from my home - Krayteem Area.




Still FTTC are not across all Beirut in specific & Lebanon in general.

For Your specific geographical living region in Beirut , drop an email to

thepeople@ogero.gov.lb 

Mention to them where do you live exactly , and they will do for you a feasibility study for the possibility of FO reaching your home.

Or you can directly tweet Ogero CEO Mr. Imad kreidieh , he usually reply in person or directly forward you to the persons /engineers in charge.

@ikreidieh 

Happy Gaming !