Does ping matter ! or there is someting else to consider in online multiplayer games?

hello,

I see people with 110ms or even more do well and have lag compensation advantage how they acheive this or fix this bufferbloat ? i fixed it ! but still suffering from lag it must by a way to fix this lag like they do, i know it's general question but i'm asking expert gamers who uses openwrt, to
hopefully share a tip or a fix maybe

thank you

Once a packet leaves your router, there is absolutely nothing you can do about the time it takes to reach its destination. If you are "far" from the servers, there is going to be some lag.

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There are three major parts in this.

  1. The time of data travel distance and server answer time.

  2. Data amount moving per time unit.

  3. Data integrity (often called jitter or noise).

Gamers often only talk and chase nr 1.

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Suggestions on improving network for gaming? Maybe a vpn setup?

Yeah, it's interesting. IMO absolute ping time is not as important as low jitter. Packets arriving at either client or server in the wrong order (due to variable travel time) is tricky for the game to sort out. A rock solid 100ms ping should be perfectly playable.

Back in the 90s I used to play Quake over dialup, and a sub-300ms ping was considered very good. I frequently played with a 500ms ping. It only really became unplayable when your ping could be measured in seconds. Anyone with a ping under 100ms was an LPB :grinning:

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Wrong order is one thing.
Does the games run data with udp or tcp?
I would see “jitter” more like no packages arriving at all or scrampled bytes arrives because some bits have changed on the road…
And with tcp it will request a new transmission.

Multiplayer games nearly always use UDP because it's more efficient. The only notable exception I can think of is Minecraft.

Jitter has a very specific meaning in networking - it's basically a measure of how variable your ping is. If your ping is very variable UDP packets can arrive out of order, and the game has to sort out how to handle them in a sensible way.

As you say, with TCP everything will be sorted out for you automatically, so the data will always arrive intact, but there's considerable overhead here. If you've got a dodgy connection and packets are getting lost or delayed, by the time the data has been retransmitted and reconstructed by the TCP layer it's probably not much use anymore - the game state has already moved on. This is why game developers generally use UDP. The same goes for other time-sensitive applications like VOIP.

Fighting jitter is not rocket science, you just use a de-jitter buffer to convert the variable delay component into a larger static delay. In practice the challenge then is how to size that buffer.,..

man with that postion what sould i do beside moving closer to server :slight_smile:

Makes sense. I guess the size of the buffer could adapt to the jitter, but variable jitter (meta-jitter? :rofl:) would still cause problems. I guess packets arriving too late for the buffer would just have to be dropped - hello rubber banding.

But in any case, my point remains - unless you have a really bad ping, excessive jitter is probably a bigger issue.

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You could also try different games, not all netcode is created equal. Since I stopped playing FPS games between Quake II and Quake Arena, I have zero relevant first hand experience, but I have heard that people hold Valorant in high regards due to competent netcode. While I have no idea whether that is an option, but maybe you could figure out whether your problems still occur in a tolerant game? Because if that solves the issue it would demonstrate that not all hope is lost. How to convert that into a better configuration for your prefered game (whether that is possible at all) is a different question.

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Move the server closer to you?

you can actually do this by playing games with your friends that host the server locally. If you have a good ping between your houses this might be a truly viable option. Or hosting a game server on a VPS nearby your town etc.