I’m following the thread for quite a while now and it would be interesting to see a video of the OP when he has “latency” in his games or when the game feels slow. Maybe he has a capture card and can record some gameplay or even use a built in console recording function like xbox hast where you can record and save the last x minutes of your gameplay.
I think what we almost certainly can say is that there is probably no network or bufferbloat issue here and it seems like the connection to the game servers are also pretty stable. I wouldn’t trust a console browser speedtest. The haven’t been reliable for me in the past.
So a few things/ideas I think nobody really came up with:
Don’t take this personal and I don’t want to be mean or anything but it could be that the OP is simply not that good at the game or that others in his skill bracket are simply better. Most games right now have some sort of skillbased matchmaking where it puts you in a game with players of the same skill level or above. So, if these opponents also have a better ping (aka live closer) to the server you are not only facing a better player they also have a lower ping and in terms of latency maybe you “feel behind”. But I think there is nothing you can do about it other than moving to a place closer to the server or maybe trick skillbased matchmaking.
The scenario where you went to your friend’s house and did not have issues could be explained that if your friend plays in a lower skill bracket than you and you both have a similar connection to the server you just played against worse players aka had a better experience because you totally destroyed some noobs.
Crossplay: This only regards to Cod because as far as I know Fifa has no crossplay. If you are playing on console you always will have a slight disadvantage to a PC gamer not only because of the peripherals you use (controller vs mouse + keyboard) but mainly because of the higher framerate = lower frame time and also lower input lag and probably better visibility (FOV + higher Texture Details)
Other players bad internet connection: In Cod it’s very hard to hit somebody who is rubberbanding and teleporting because he has packet loss or a high amount of jitter. But I guess there is also nothing you can do about other than renting an own server and just let people play with you that have a decent connection or are from a specific area.
Cheaters -> at least Cod is full of cheaters – can’t say anything about Fifa because I haven’t played it online in a while.
Online gaming has never been fair. 10 Years ago there were no dedicated servers (at least in COD and Fifa) only p2p gaming and if you were the host in a game you always had an advantage but if not you often had a bad experience. I don’t want to start a discussion about the pros and cons of p2p and dedicated servers but I think both of them have their advantages.
Now (with dedicated servers) the region where you live always determines whether you have an advantage or not. Back in the days it was your internet connection.
For Example, in Europe, if you play cod and live in/near Frankfurt, Amsterdam, London, Paris or Rome you always have a dedicated server close to you but If you live further away you are always depended on matchmaking. If the matchmaking puts only players of your area in your lobby the base connections would probably be pretty even and skill would determine a win or loss, but if you live in Switzerland (as far as I know) where there is no dedicated server around you and probably half of the lobby has a better ping than you, you would have to compensate that with either more skill or smarter decisions.
Sorry for the long post but I know the struggle and the feelings fighting a war against lag and unfair conditions in online gaming.
yes that's exactly it, my home network experienced during all my tests before coming here, several hardware developments. Benq screen, LG Oled screen, Sony screen for PlaySation. 1 ps4 console, 2 ps4 pro console, 1 ps5, 2 Xbox.. replace the ISP router with a router, fritzbox, ubiquiti, also a netgear DM200 just for the bridge function. behind I tested several netgear gaming routers such as the XR500 (Armv7), the microtik R1, and the R2 which have their own NetdumaOs interface with geofilter function.. category 5.6 and 7 rj45 cables.. also several switches like the S8000 which has its own QOS, a trunk function and an option to control Rj45 cables…I have several controllers with and without Bluetooth. purchase of game with digital version and also in CD. At the electrical level, I took the trouble to plug the routers into a wall outlet and I avoid multiple electrical outlets for fear that the voltage and the m.amps will disturb... Know with certainty that all my equipment within my home network is absolutely to be excluded for this latency problem.. my problem is outside my walls, I have changed house since 2014 and the problem persists. the only common point is my ISP, always the same. I came here because for me OpenWrt is the ultimate tool to diagnose, optimize, create particular networks .. etc .. this community is potentially very rich because each of you brings their experiences sometimes academic sometimes pragmatic, but together we find always a way out and an explanation. I assure you that the problem is not within my home network.
dear friend, here the question is not the skill.. but an action / reaction problem.. the best cod or fifa player if he comes to my house to test.. he will immediately understand that something is not working correctly. a professional can anticipate and compensate for a lot of things while playing, but never with such a high delay.
I repeat once again, I play in the past.. so whatever the reflexes or the experience when you are late you are late... imagine that you are driving in a car and that you are preparing to turn and that there the wheels don't tilt what's going on? you go straight ? correct ?
so imagine that the first 180 degrees are lost it is from the 181 th degree that your car will finally turn .. this is what happens to me online .. I do an action with my controller and I have to wait and pray that the execution is done.. you call that game? it's a permanent anxiety to play like this..
With your apparent background knowledge, can you recommend a game with more and one with less known issues? To easily test the idea that the problem might be a problematic game (not necessarily generally problematic, but for players like the OP who might sit at an unfortunate place in the network topology)?
The one and only thing I would ditch immediately. I am not even gona say any of their names. But any of those commercial ISPs in Switzerland are completely and totally useless idiots. Just go for one of them real independent ISPs and you won't ever miss any of them...
Yea and therefore I asked you if it is possible to record gameplay. You could also do a simultaneously handcam recording. If we sync them right, we could get a better understanding how it feels to you or measure the delay you are seeing on screen.
Yes, I understood you, you play in the past, but everybody does in online gaming to a degree:
For example:
The Image you’re seeing on your screen firing a weapon is actually a representation of the past where you pressed the button on your controller. If you push a button the signal of the controller goes through the cable/Bluetooth/wireless to your pc/console where it has to be processed first (which also takes time) and then is sent to your Monitor.
This is only the delay between your controller and your monitor.
Another example:
Let’s make it easy and say you are playing p2p. If you are in Switzerland and you play against somebody in the UK (Host) and HE presses a button. The signal will take between 1 and 16 ms (if he has a decent gaming monitor/PC) to be rendered on his Monitor (input lag).
If the ping to the player in the uk is let’s say 32 ms it would take another 32 ms before you even saw the he pressed a button. In the meantime, he could have done anther action. So you are actually playing in the past.
Only thing I know my oldest daughter playing F22 all the time, and trust me, she would tell me within milliseconds if there would be only the slightest of lags. Since I ditched any of those commercial shitheads and went to Green any and all issues stopped. Haven't had even the slightest of issues ever since. Init7 is also my favourite but being on the countryside having fiber is almost impossible resp. last I checked this would cost me several thousand bucks and I could not get any independent installation thereof (e.g. vendor locked forever with the next commercial shitheads).
my operator has just detected an anomaly by measuring the NSN line.. this level 1 technician has detected the problem in less than 30 seconds, unfortunately he does not know the meaning of this abbreviation.. but there is really a problem on the ISP network .. he compared my nsn with another nsn…. mine is: ICAAC-NOK 100%… while the normal nsn is: ICA…. who knows its abbreviations?
You realize that there is a conceptually simple solution, measure the one way delays and jitter between each player and the server (whether centralized or P2P), and then implement per player delay-adjustment and de-jitter buffers, so that the server sees actions of all players from the same point in game time, and all clients will be able to react with the same dynamics (the per-client one-way-delays can be completely handled on the server side, so clients could not even cheat easily)... As far as I can tell none of the real-time games actually do this (while rounds based games do this sort of naturally), so there likely is a big disadvantage to this method (probably additional work for servers that reduce the number of players a server instance can handle and hence increase the cost, and the fact that now everybody will have the game experience of the worst connection).
This is a chart of a youtuber called battlenonsense. He makes really good network analysis videos. Here you can see the end to end delays between 2 players in different games.
I think Overwatch has a pretty decent netcode and less known issues but I don’t know if it’s available on console. Also CS:GO and Valorant and Rainbox Six Siege would be a good choice.
Yea this concept in theory would be pretty awesome but it could lead to stuttering on the client, I guess. Here is the netcode of modern warfare explained. Seems like they are doing something like you suggested.
According to Swisscom's documentation ICAAC-NOK 100% might decode to:
ICA: abnormal crosstalk (AC) - NotOK - certainty of fault 100%.
But that is open to interpretation.
thank you so much for his valuable information.. research will begin in this direction, I hope they will find a remedy for this.. indeed the error code of the ICA is AC.. what does this mean in terms of network a crosstalk, we do not know for the moment
No "cross-talk/diaphonie" is a term that is relevant for the actual DSL link, so at best the modem would know something (so in your case the Swisscom modem-router), but I believe the diagnostic system gets its data fro the DSLAM at the other end of your link. ATM it is not even clear whether that is cross-talk interference on your end (less likely) or on the DSLAM side (more likely), typically vectoring is used to reduce DSLAM-side cross-talk/interference between the downstream signal send to the different modems, but it is not clear whether vectoring is used on your link at all.
BUT, if your problem would be on the DSL link it should affect pretty much all traffic, while the interference is on-going and not just packets of your game. And I think @dlakelan and you already recorded packet captures during sluggish game behavior that show really no issue what so ever on the network side?
The only thing that might make sense is if the crosstalk somehow causes a single fixed delay with no jitter. We couldn't diagnose that from packet captures. It seems unlikely but let's see what the DSL tech comes up with. Because this is on the DSL line there is no way for Openwrt to see or know about this kind of issue.
Another battlenonsense viewer here.
In one of his videos he mentions that some shooter games have a sort of latency compensation like you describe. Apparently the problem with this is they sometimes grossly overcompensate to a point where you can lower your resulting ping by deliberately adding some delay to your sent packets.
(For fast twitch shooter type games it seems to be more important that hits are validated server side instead of client side and that the server tick rate is at least 60Hz preferably higher.)
I guess we need captures from a remote server location. Not sure whether that works with FiFa22, but I think with COD self hosted servers are an option.
Crosstalk will decrease SNR margin and might lead to increasing stability parameters on a link, like higher interleaving but these are statically set. Alternatively with G.INP retransmissions, instead of a constant delay increase we would get an increase in jitter and burstiness, if that only affects the upstream, we would not see that in local packet captures, but RTT measurements like the mtr traces should show it.... Now, retransmissions will only happen when there is sufficient cross talk that transmissions to the DSLAM get corrupted.
But I think we already ran the obvious test here:
before 10 minutes before playing with the PS5 in its default mode (if you typically shut it down, do so) mtr -ezb4w -c 600 213.163.73.235
followed by the same but while playing FiFa22 for 10 minutes mtr -ezb4w -c 600 213.163.73.235
if the game stays reactive, repeat step two until it gets suggish
Then post the pre-game mtr, if they exist one mtr while the game is reactive, and one mtr with the game being sluggish.
If the mtrs are all "the same" then I am out of immediate ideas.
So, if I would be Sony or Microsoft, I would incorporate GPS receivers into the consoles and have them set their clock via GPS and then I would simply timestamp all packets.... and keep the OWD assessment running all the time (network paths change, so any delay adjustment can not be single-shot fire-and-forget)... but I am not Sony or Microsoft so all of you are safe (Also, I would not care about actual GPS location data, but I am sure media companies like the two above would be tempted to use such location data to enforce their peculiar ideas about geo-restricted licensing)...
Yes, I agree that it makes total sense to have one authoritative version of in-game events, and just replicate that out to the clients (taking input from the clients into account, but not trusting them more than absolutely necessary).
(Also, I would not care about actual GPS location data, but I am sure media companies like the two above would be tempted to use such location data to enforce their peculiar ideas about geo-restricted licensing)...