Lifetime Smoothping Access for Just $39 (VPN Ping Lowering Service for Online Games)

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smoothping.com

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  notewar on 28/08/2012 - 09:12

  +1

  Can i use this to watch movie in US?

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  jdr on 28/08/2012 - 09:17

  You only have to look at the home page for the answer.

  "Smoothping is looking to add even more value to our service.

  We are currently testing our new VPN service that will allow you to use Smoothping as a regular HTTP proxy server, allowing you to surf and browse the web anonymously and being able to choose any server you like giving you an IP address from that country.

  You will be able to do things like watch TV in the USA or watch the BBC in the UK. Hulu, Netflix and other online portals will all be available to you, no matter where you live.

  This will be available FREE to all LIFETIME account holders (and will be available at a surcharge to our monthly subscribers)."

  • 

    _Bruce_ on 28/08/2012 - 09:21

    -1

    This worries me more than their gaming claims. Particularly where they are outwardly claiming that this will let you watch BBC, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised when this gets blocked in the UK, or even shut down.

    Don't mean to sound too negative, just want to give a heads up for people considering this. Steam probably won't block it because they don't care (unless publishers push them even harder).

    • 

      Jatacid on 28/08/2012 - 11:53

      It's a VPN… To block it is like randomly blocking a whole slew of IP's. Not common at all.

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  peetah on 28/08/2012 - 09:18

  Will this allow us to buy steam games from the US store at US prices?

  For $39 could possibly be worth it especially if there's another censored version of a game like with what happened with L4D2.

  • 

    IJustKnowStuff on 28/08/2012 - 09:40

    As of January, won't matter as we'll have an R rating for games finally.

    • 

      CarbonTwelve on 28/08/2012 - 09:51

      +4

      Except that Australia often gets gouged by having to pay up to 50% more than US.

    • 

      DarKBlooD on 28/08/2012 - 10:09

      You can already buy games from the US Steam store by using the US Steam store web site, the issue is payment as they lock out overseas credit cards.

      • 

        Telios on 28/08/2012 - 22:01

        the issue is payment as they lock out overseas credit cards.

        For you maybe :P

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  _Bruce_ on 28/08/2012 - 09:19

  +1

  Had a look at the site to see what they do and found this:

  How does this work?

  When you launch the Smoothping client, it creates a secure shell connection (SSH tunnel), streamlining the packet handling (the data that is sent) by forcing it out immediately instead of bundling each packet with additional data packets. By not having to wait for additional information, it cuts down the latency (ping) considerably based upon your geographical location to the server.

  … Which is unhelpful and best and closer to misleading.

  From what I can tell they are have tunnels set up between their various servers and are arguing that the time saved to use their path rather than your standard ISP's route is more than the loss go wrap an extra tunnel around everything (and two more servers).

  For bad ISPs and connections maybe that can be true, but if this really does make much of a difference for you I would be more inclined to complain to my ISP.

  • 

    PlasticSpaceman on 28/08/2012 - 09:34

    Agreed…. this could help (I think they're more talking about the game comm packets being small and each packet has header info that has to be handled by the multiple routers between you and the game server, so by hiding that all inside an encrypted tunnel means less router overhead) but it would depend a lot upon a number of variables. For it to make a significant difference your connection would have to suck pretty badly, and this would perhaps make it suck less.

    I think the slightly misleading part is in the original post where it says "Smoothping is a vpn service…". In fact they do not say that on their site - rather they are planning to offer a VPN service in the future.

    • 

      _Bruce_ on 28/08/2012 - 09:55

      Actually their service is an SSH tunnel, which is in practical terms just like a VPN. The difference being that generally VPN software includes some more routing magic to tunnel all of your traffic rather than a single port.

      As far as I can tell there is no reason you couldn't use their service to do general browsing already as long as you can set it up yourself and they don't specifically block it.

      • 

        PlasticSpaceman on 28/08/2012 - 10:05

        True… it is a VPN service (if a restricted one) in that it's providing an encrypted tunnel for specific ports used for games between your pc and their server(s). Like you, I remain sceptical that it would make a significant difference for most people here in Oz.

      • 

        Jatacid on 28/08/2012 - 11:55

        +1

        I used to play Aion (lol), and it dropped my ping from an average of about 500-600 down to about 100. Regardless of how it works, it works & does make a difference.

      • 

        DarKBlooD on 28/08/2012 - 13:45

        That's pretty damn good.

  • 

    scotty on 28/08/2012 - 09:36

    Not to mention SSH tunnel —> SOCK4 wrapped in encrypted TCP packets with sizeable buffer window. If you already have reasonable ping to the servers, this might actually make things worse…

  • 

    CarbonTwelve on 28/08/2012 - 09:54

    It makes a difference for WoW as they have prioritised routing with one of the US providers (Verizon I think? Could be wrong), which means you get a 300-350+ms ping from Australia, but only 200-250ms via VPN service. It makes basically no difference for just about any other game though, so unless you want it for WoW then don't bother.

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  jdr on 28/08/2012 - 09:20

  This offer looks attractive (especially as the access to things like Netflix is coming and included). But I don't understand why a service that charges $7.50 a month would give a lifetime account away for less than 6 months subscription? What sort of business model is that? It's the sort of thing that a business might do if it was planning to close up shop in the near future.

  What am I missing here?

  • 

    ciab on 28/08/2012 - 09:23

    +6

    The Economist and decoy pricing
    http://conversionxl.com/pricing-experiments-you-might-not-kn…

    • 

      G5 on 28/08/2012 - 09:30

      Good read, thanks

    • 

      jdr on 28/08/2012 - 09:49

      Thanks for that.

  • 

    G5 on 28/08/2012 - 09:24

    I agree, it's not a business model. It's a marketing tool. The incremental cost of adding a new customer is probably low enough that they can afford to do this in exchange for getting their name out there. Whether it works or not is another question.

    • 

      ejsteven on 28/08/2012 - 17:06

      I don't know about others but if I ever find out about the company via say a friend who purchased the $39 unlimited lifetime access but I am unable to due to the deal being expired, it would completely turn me off from subscribing solely by knowing that I could of gotten a much better deal.

  • 

    _Bruce_ on 28/08/2012 - 09:25

    I share your concerns. Another thing: 110 000 people have 'tried' (not paid for) this over 4 years. That amounts to revenue of… probably barely enough to sustain the bandwidth/servers.

    This might be a last line of pull in the extra cash and either make it work, or go out with some more $$.

    • 

      jdr on 28/08/2012 - 09:44

      That's what I'm concerned about too. The interesting number would be the current number of paying customers. Trial and past customers excluded.

      • 

        _Bruce_ on 28/08/2012 - 09:53

        Even if 1/10th of the trailers both found and improvement and decided to pay and and still subscribed (I'm skeptical it is that high:

        1: This is $80K/Month. Might sound like a largish number, but there are a number of fixed costs and labour would eat into a lot of this. Bandwidth costs would go through the roof if they reall expect people to use this to stream video.

        2: All of those users are about to stop paying for a (hypothetical) $430000 injection of cash. Enough to roll out these new features perhaps, but then you really have to hope to pull in lots of new customers.

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  PlasticSpaceman on 28/08/2012 - 09:53

  110,000 people may have tried it, but currently less than 190 are using it. Not a high takeup rate. It's 7:45pm in New York at the moment so you'd expect it to be fairly busy now.

  $39 for 'lifetime' VPN access would be a good deal if they do release it and if they stay in business for more than a year. Paying anything more than about $0 for the 'smoothping' service (that might reduce latency but - as scotty noted - might also make it worse) would probably be too much… ;-)

• 

  LiamF on 28/08/2012 - 10:12

  It might actually be worse than Scotty suggests - the improved 'ping' number that people look at in-game is most probably a packet transit time from the game's host to the Smoothping VPN server, not from the game's host to your computer.

  That being said, as a US VPN it's probably not too bad.

  • 

    _Bruce_ on 28/08/2012 - 10:25

    This is unlikely. They would have to deep packet inspect and alter (man in the middle attack) the game protocol. This is quite hard, would have to be done on a per-game basis and is subject to random game updates breaking it. Even if it was done, it is more likely to represent the time from your PC to their server.

  • 

    scotty on 28/08/2012 - 10:37

    Yeah ping time is usually end to end. My main issue with SSH tunnel as general purpose VPN is — it actually performs badly for small real time packets. Not sure what their software does on end-user's computer but I am guessing either SSH's dynamic port proxy, i.e. SOCKS4, or some ethernet driver doing IP over TCP. But still, when all your in-game small packets (UDP or TCP) have to squeeze through large-window SSH tunnel, the latency is going to suffer. This is why something like OpenVPN would be a better choice.

    Maybe better routing on their end would compensate the protocol-level delay. Maybe not.

• 

  Keeegs on 28/08/2012 - 12:33

  +1

  Decided to bite the bullet and went for it.

  • 

    Jatacid on 28/08/2012 - 13:04

    For 39 Bucks it really can't hurt. Even if they go defunct in a year which is highly unlikely you're getting your moneys worth imo. We're all bargain hunters - butit really is only 40 bucks lol

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  konthai on 28/08/2012 - 14:35

  will it helps for diablo? lol