Ping AKA Latency

[Adams]

I see you folks have MOHAA servers located in Saint Louis, and in Dallas. For those of you who have been struggling with latency issues, specifically those who reside on the East Coast, perhaps the following may help you reduce your ping\latency.

This, is perhaps the most common solution, widely known, but perhaps some of you are unaware.
1.) Open console in game, and type CL_Maxpackets The default setting is 30. Upon reducing this value to 20 or even 15 in some cases, will reduce your latency 15-20 points on average.

Another solution, often overlooked, is your "Connection" setting. This can be found under your Multi Player Options.
2.) Change this setting to Cable, or even LAN will work. This will improve ping\latency, should you find it set to any other setting.

A much less common solution , and often yielding different results based on location and a number of other technical factors, is using a VPN.
3.) Configure your VPN to tunnel via UDP to Saint Louis when playing on the Saint Louis server, or to Dallas when using the Dallas server.

Without running my VPN, my ping on the Saint Louis server was awful high, as I reside in the socialist nanny state of Connecticut. It makes playing difficult, as most my glory days were spent on servers yielding low latency. My ping on your Saint Louis server ranged from a low point of 75 to anywhere up to 115... or in some cases, higher, depending on players abroad, their pings, or random server latency spikes impacting everyone.

Well, upon testing tunneling on the VPN via UDP, to Saint Louis, my ping was reduced to 45-50 and stable throughout the entire length of game play. Upon executing the command referenced in option #1 above, it was reduced even further, down to 32 at its lowest, and 50 at its highest. On average it hung around 45. Playing on a Saint Louis based server with a ping between 30-50 is unheard of, and rather extraordinary if you ask me, considering Im from CT that is. So Im delighted to share what I have found in my successful testing.

Give these things a shot and see how much your latency improves. Im interested in knowing if you folks see the same improvement I have.

Im sure those of you who know what its like to play with a ping close to or above a hundred, vs a ping of fifty and below will appreciate this. I do hope it helps, and improves your game experience on the Misfits servers.

Im looking forward to seeing your results. Just make sure you note your latency before attempting to improve it, so we can break down the improvement afterward.

Happy head hunting.
Cheers!

[Tro]

Hi Admas,

just a quick response one 1 of your ideas

I see you folks have MOHAA servers located in Saint Louis, and in Dallas. For those of you who have been struggling with latency issues, specifically those who reside on the East Coast, perhaps the following may help you reduce your ping\latency.

This, is perhaps the most common solution, widely known, but perhaps some of you are unaware.
1.) Open console in game, and type CL_Maxpackets The default setting is 30. Upon reducing this value to 20 or even 15 in some cases, will reduce your latency 15-20 points on average.

Cheers!

This often leads to players "lagging around like Pacman" and the game is not smooth - i.e. for others
We have locked in this setting on our servers to stop people doing this as they lag across the screen what looks like 5 frames a second

Your 3rd option is interesting, I have never used a VPN and don't see how this could work for me
Even if it showed a better ping, I suspect my latency or game delays etc .. would be much the same .. i mean the data still have top travel from my PC to the server regardless of the route?
If this gave a lower ping, it would be like a false representation of what is really happening?

Tro

[dckx]

Another thing that may improve connection for some, especially those who suffer from packet loss:

Download the software speedify. It will combine two connections to improve speed or reliability.
The speed mode simply adds up the download and upload speeds. Not very useful for gaming.
But the redundancy mode combines both connections so when one fails, the other serves as back-up.

In my particular case, I used to play with wifi only. That gave me those huge lag spikes cause by massive packet loss, which some here thought were caused purposely by me. Now I use speedify, and combine that wifi connection with my phone internet (thethered mode via USB), and I have waaaay less packet loss. You need to setup the data type redundancy to UDP. And that's it.

Downside, there is a data limit in the free version, but mohaa uses very little bandwidth so you can probably get away with the free version... until you close mohaa and fucking alphamac uploads all the files. I am paying the premium version now, totally worth it.

[Adams]

Hi Admas,

just a quick response one 1 of your ideas

I see you folks have MOHAA servers located in Saint Louis, and in Dallas. For those of you who have been struggling with latency issues, specifically those who reside on the East Coast, perhaps the following may help you reduce your ping\latency.

This, is perhaps the most common solution, widely known, but perhaps some of you are unaware.
1.) Open console in game, and type CL_Maxpackets The default setting is 30. Upon reducing this value to 20 or even 15 in some cases, will reduce your latency 15-20 points on average.

Cheers!

This often leads to players "lagging around like Pacman" and the game is not smooth - i.e. for others
We have locked in this setting on our servers to stop people doing this as they lag across the screen what looks like 5 frames a second

Your 3rd option is interesting, I have never used a VPN and don't see how this could work for me
Even if it showed a better ping, I suspect my latency or game delays etc .. would be much the same .. i mean the data still have top travel from my PC to the server regardless of the route?
If this gave a lower ping, it would be like a false representation of what is really happening?

Tro

You may want to check that the first option I recommended has been rendered useless as a result of disabling it server side, as it absolutely lowered my already improved latency. Only when executing that command does it drop in to the 30's, indicating to me, it has not been disabled.

To answer your question regarding option number three, it absolutely took the jerky play out of my game, the lag was gone, and it improved the quality of game play. I was very skeptical at first, and thinking very much along the same lines as you, as I know how the information must pass back and forth. But a simple test, playing on the VPN, and playing without it, was all I needed to learn firsthand, whether or not there is an impact.

Without the VPN, enduring a ping between 75-100+ I would experience momentary freezes (lag) and often "click" without an immediate response from my rifle. Then there is the classic, when the person your shooting at kinda freezes in place, then suddenly appears slightly off to the left or right of where you were trying to shoot him as he lagged to his new location, I hate it when that happens lol. Typical laggy play relative to high latency.

While using the VPN, pinging from command prompt, showed a great improvement. Testing in game, echoes this improvement, as the lag, and the problems associated with it, have been eliminated. MOHAA reports a good ping. Command prompt reports a good ping, and the game play is without lag. So Id say Im receiving real time results. I can feel the difference, and see it too, beyond what the latency value is reporting. To be sure, I ran the VPN through far away places, expecting lag, and a disgusting ping. The further I get from Saint Louis on the VPN, the higher the ping. The closer to it, the lower. Im confident that Im getting real-time results.

I read about it online before hand, and there is an awful lot of debate about it. Many report good results, many report no change at all, and some report negative results. In my case, Ive gotten good results. There are a number of factors that could impact the outcome. Ive been fortunate enough to be one who has gotten good results.

Should you be interested, I will PM you the criteria you need to use my VPN service. You can do some testing with it. If you find that it helps your latency, as Im sure it will, you can set up a service of your own, and take full advantage like I have, enjoying a lag free game environment that improves the quality of your game experience, and ultimately your KDR.

[Adams]

Another thing that may improve connection for some, especially those who suffer from packet loss:

Download the software speedify. It will combine two connections to improve speed or reliability.
The speed mode simply adds up the download and upload speeds. Not very useful for gaming.
But the redundancy mode combines both connections so when one fails, the other serves as back-up.

In my particular case, I used to play with wifi only. That gave me those huge lag spikes cause by massive packet loss, which some here thought were caused purposely by me. Now I use speedify, and combine that wifi connection with my phone internet (thethered mode via USB), and I have waaaay less packet loss. You need to setup the data type redundancy to UDP. And that's it.

Downside, there is a data limit in the free version, but mohaa uses very little bandwidth so you can probably get away with the free version... until you close mohaa and fucking alphamac uploads all the files. I am paying the premium version now, totally worth it.

Im on a wireless connection also, forgot to mention that. I think the improvement I experienced is incredible. I can only imagine how much better it will be hard lined. Looks like Ill be doing some additional tests. Ill take a look in to this here software too, and see what sort of variable if any it creates, and get back to this thread with my findings.

[circa]

Hi Admas,

just a quick response one 1 of your ideas

I see you folks have MOHAA servers located in Saint Louis, and in Dallas. For those of you who have been struggling with latency issues, specifically those who reside on the East Coast, perhaps the following may help you reduce your ping\latency.

This, is perhaps the most common solution, widely known, but perhaps some of you are unaware.
1.) Open console in game, and type CL_Maxpackets The default setting is 30. Upon reducing this value to 20 or even 15 in some cases, will reduce your latency 15-20 points on average.

Cheers!

This often leads to players "lagging around like Pacman" and the game is not smooth - i.e. for others
We have locked in this setting on our servers to stop people doing this as they lag across the screen what looks like 5 frames a second

Your 3rd option is interesting, I have never used a VPN and don't see how this could work for me
Even if it showed a better ping, I suspect my latency or game delays etc .. would be much the same .. i mean the data still have top travel from my PC to the server regardless of the route?
If this gave a lower ping, it would be like a false representation of what is really happening?

Tro

From what I understand..

A VPN will generally increase your ping due to the added latency of the VPN service itself.

The only way a VPN could improve your ping/latency is if the VPN provider has a better network infrastructure than your current ISP. Doubtful this would be cost effective for many VPNs.

Tro perhaps your ISP has some seriously random hops to get from your house to the MisFits servers. It is in theory possible that a different route would improve your ping.. but it would have to be a drastic improvement on route to also absorb the added ping you would receive by running a VPN in the background.

https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads ... n.2216885/

[AriFeannor]

I could see the VPN thing working under weird circumstances, but it would not, like Tro suggested only report good ping but not be real, what ever ping it showed would be your ping. It's a vpn but your still playing the game on your pc, if you were using remote desktop somehow to play the game on another pc then the ping wouldn't really be your ping.

As for the going to multiplayer settings and changing connection to LAN or Cable that is the command rate in console, rate 25000 or 30000 is cable to lan.

For the packets, yes it is forced to 30, you can change it but it will only stay changed for a few seconds before the server sends out the command to force it to 30 again. Try it again, set it to 15 then type the command in there again without a variable to see what it is set to. cl_maxpackets
It will tell you what it is set to and what the default is.

I don't get what the point of this stuff was, maybe the vpn stuff but the rest is no brainer stuff people should have known about since 2003. And you should never play on wifi.

[dckx]

I could see the VPN thing working under weird circumstances, but it would not, like Tro suggested only report good ping but not be real, what ever ping it showed would be your ping. It's a vpn but your still playing the game on your pc, if you were using remote desktop somehow to play the game on another pc then the ping wouldn't really be your ping.

As for the going to multiplayer settings and changing connection to LAN or Cable that is the command rate in console, rate 25000 or 30000 is cable to lan.

For the packets, yes it is forced to 30, you can change it but it will only stay changed for a few seconds before the server sends out the command to force it to 30 again. Try it again, set it to 15 then type the command in there again without a variable to see what it is set to. cl_maxpackets
It will tell you what it is set to and what the default is.

I don't get what the point of this stuff was, maybe the vpn stuff but the rest is no brainer stuff people should have known about since 2003. And you should never play on wifi.

In some case, wifi is the only option available. I live in university housing and have these Cisco routers on the apartment ceiling, which were not installed by me and that I cannot really mess with. There is no ehternet port I can connect to in them anyway, nor anywhere else in the apartment. So I'm pretty much stuck to wifi. For someone in a case like mine, combining connections works. I have tested it and the improvement is noteworthy. I could also see combining connections as a solution for someone who has a connection with lots of PL due to unreliable routing, but that's just speculation.

[RAPT(+)R]

Fuck you Ari, I play over Wi-Fi lol.

[High on Death]

I'm hard-wired most of the time, but I've played on other computers in my house over wifi plenty with no problems at all.