Increasing Latency Ping Command

[dlakelan]

At 10 seconds round trip time it means he saw everyone standing still for 10 seconds. Then he shoots them all unopposed... This is what lag switches do. The server should really drop anyone who has more than say 3 x the speed of light lag. That would solve a bunch of these problems. Max speed of light lag is 12000 miles / 186000 miles/s = 65ms so start dropping people at say 250ms ping. So under my rule that guy would be marginal to even get connected.

Thinking it through, do an exponential weighted average with a 500ms weighting time and drop people if that goes over 250ms, and also drop anyone who has any single ping over 500ms. Half a second of other people standing still is a long enough time to dominate quite a bit.

[TheMask]

@dlakelan

t sounds like you could do some experiments by simply running (if eth0 is your internet facing interface on the R7000 (which it might be something like eth0.2 or eth1 instead, not familiar with that device)

tc qdisc replace  dev eth0 root netem delay 20ms

then adjust your delay until you like it, maybe it should be 10 or 40 or 60 ms or something

I already did some reading this morning about netem after you i googled your command that you posted, and used the following command

tc qdisc add dev eth0 root netem delay 60ms

although it wasnt working at first, so after digging I had to install kmod-netem package and it worked now I have control of it will definitely dig more and experiment with it the whole night

EDIT: out of curiosity also, what kind of device is the ISP supplying that gives 1.5Gbps? I guess it has maybe a fiber on one end, and a gigabit switch on the other? Since there's no such thing as 1.5Gig ethernet...

Im using Bell Home Hub 3000, and actually its decent for speed, when doing test the best I can get is about 1.3GB on both ways.

@moeller0

But that means that they can introduce additional latency under load if they cause significant additional traffic during your gaming session. That might be okay for testing (if you can arrange that the other device stay idle/unused during testing) but seems somewhat less than ideal for "production" use.

Im aware that this might backfire since someone else might be streaming netflix or youtube...etc and latency might get insane spikes, but who knows how bad it will go? I guess we will find out tonight and keep you all updated

[TheMask]

@smoothswim

Looks like single player mode in Apex can't come soon enough.
Hopefully you are not too invested in COD. Their Blackout bait and switch was disgusting and they are now backed into a corner where they will have to go F2P for their next game to sell...

I totally agree with what you said, and Im not too invested in COD in terms of money as much as time, since I have been a big fan of their black ops franchise, its almost the only main game I play at night whenever I have the chance

@TheMask Have you tried Apex Legends on your Xbox?
It has a much better online experience and you won't have to "game" the net code.

I did try it, and indeed it has a better feeling and experience in terms of connections, but for some reason the style of the game didnt click for me.

Also, you aren't trying to build a poor man's lag switch are you? That's a sure fire way to get banned from the game if you get caught and it's not worth wasting time on.

Im aware of the lag switch, and remember reading about it early 2010-2011... but nah Im not trying to build a poor man's lag switch as if Im not mistaken that requires your ping to spike really high where it seems like your stopped your connection for a few seconds then connect it back. (dont count me on this info though)

@mindwolf

@TheMask I too noticed that the more delay I experience, the smoother my gameplay on............I also theorize their servers can't handle the udp packet bursts, which would explain why more queueing helps a player perform better by slowing down the flows (which will lead to a larger burst but more packet loss). BTW the in-game ping meter was developed by Ray Charles.

Yup which is why im trying to decrease my packet sizes on the next steps, as it seems it would make sense in the world of lag compensation

[TheMask]

@dlakelan

True enough, and this may .....

.... Pressing a button to get yourself some intentional lag for a couple seconds under your control would be a cheat.

Of course it doesn't matter what I think... only what the admins think.

I have never used a switch before and for some reason I still cant get the reason for using it (just shows how little I know about the benefits of switch).

Just to give an idea how my setup is from top to bottom

• ISP Modem/Router (HH3000): serving all wifi connection at home with mesh wifi's, plus one ethernet connection to R7000

• R7000: connected to pc and xbox (Ethernet only connection, no wifi)

so basically its like im using all my wifi connections through my isp modem/router, and the only two Ethernet connections I have is through my r7000

I hope my post made sense, and sorry for the confusion

[dlakelan]

@TheMask

for some reason I still cant get the reason for using it

I think it basically disconnects your client from the server, and when this happens everyone else in the game freezes, and you can run around an shoot them all for a few seconds... then because of the lag compensation when your packets finally do make it to the server, it will credit you with hits.

[TheMask]

@dlakelan

I think it basically disconnects your client from the server, and when this happens everyone else in the game freezes...

Thats exactly what is lag switch, you described it better than me.... back in the days it involved a switch and you have to damage your ethernet cable in specific way where you put your switch (on/off)... too many hassles that its really sad some people went that far to do it

[smoothswim]

@TheMask

Im not too invested in COD in terms of money as much as time, since I have been a big fan of their black ops franchise, its almost the only main game I play at night whenever I have the chance

You should save up and get a PC and play at 120fps with a mechanical keyboard and optical mouse with a decent dpi. It sounds like you would really enjoy it.

@TheMask

but for some reason the style of the game didnt click for me.

Fair point.

[TheMask]

@smoothswim

You should save up and get a PC and play at 120fps with a mechanical keyboard and optical mouse with a decent dpi. It sounds like you would really enjoy it.

I already have a decent PC, that would be capable of doing all that except for the GPU that I will need to upgrade, but I doubt I would be gaming on it, the reason I play on console is most of my friends play on it.... thanks for your suggestion buddy

[TheMask]

Just to keep this thread updated.... last night I bumped up my ping and tried multiple delays ranging from 50-250ms.

Results:

• no major changes, in regards to lag compensation just very little but nothing huge or game changer.
• Still getting those hits not being registered on my enemies.
• above 200ms I cant find lobbies at all.
• Would drop instantly some times (in some cases even worse than what it was)

Next Step:

• Still gonna keep experimenting more with it and try to stick with a specific ping for the whole night each day and keep a log of it.
• Will try and read about packet sizes management perhaps decreasing the size of it would be helpful (so if you have something for me to read in this regards, please point me to the right direction).

[dlakelan]

@TheMask

Will try and read about packet sizes management perhaps decreasing the size of it would be helpful

There's nothing you're going to do to change the size of the packets from your game (because they are determined by the code of the game not by your router etc). You can set maximum segment size for TCP packets and this can help your game interleave between packets being used by a download running on a different computer for example, but this is not going to be a factor for your gigabit connection. A 1500 byte MTU sized packet takes 0.000012 seconds = .012 ms to send, so changing these to a smaller value doesn't have any value for you. On the other hand, it would be very important for someone with a 20/1 DSL line where at 1Mbps the 1500 byte packet would take 12ms. By reducing the MSS so that you're using say 500 byte packets you can drop that to 4ms and reduce your jitter a bunch.

[TheMask]

@dlakelan
interesting points, as I'm relatively new to this, so I didn't know much about it.

so lets say I reduce MSS, wont benefit me because of I already have enough speed.

but lets say I reduce my speed more through sqm (since the game only needs about 0.5mbits) and reduce MSS, would there be a benefit?

Please excuse my stupidity in this topic, but Im genuinely curios

[moeller0]

@dlakelan

By reducing the MSS so that you're using say 500 byte packets you can drop that to 4ms and reduce your jitter a bunch.

This is certainly an option but please be aware that this will reduce the goodput somewhat:
The following assumes per-packet-overhead for a cable-link, most typical ATM/VDSL overheads are actually larger:
100 * ((1500-20-20)/(1500+18)) = 96.17
100 * ((500-20-20)/(500+18)) = 88.80
So for MTU 1500 you loose ~4% bandwidth for overhead, for MTU 500 you already loose ~11%, also according to RFCs the minimum MTU for IPv4 should be around 576 bytes (not that this matters much in reality)

[moeller0]

@TheMask

but lets say I reduce my speed more through sqm (since the game only needs about 0.5mbits) and reduce MSS, would there be a benefit?

You can try, but reducing the bandwidth to 0.5 Mbps will most likely be unpleasant as you will see massive increase in serialization delay (a 1500 byte packet will block the line for 24ms)....

[TheMask]

@moeller0

You can try, but reducing the bandwidth to 0.5 Mbps will most likely be unpleasant as you will see massive increase in serialization delay (a 1500 byte packet will block the line for 24ms)....

Im learning a lot now
just for the sake of experimenting, I'm gonna reduce my speed (not to 0.5mbps though) perhaps to 10-20mbps

[dlakelan]

@TheMask

but lets say I reduce my speed more through sqm (since the game only needs about 0.5mbits) and reduce MSS, would there be a benefit?

No I don't think so unless the two devices you have behind the SQM device are competing heavily for bandwidth. Why would you run a big internet download on your PC while playing on your XBox? I can see why you might compete with other family members at the actual ISP link, but you have only 2 devices behind your SQM box. Also, at say 80Mbps which you are currently running your SQM at, a 1500 byte packet still only takes 0.15ms to send... so negligible benefit from MSS. There is basically no benefit until you're down to maybe 5Mbps or so where a 1500 byte packet takes 2.4ms

I think your biggest benefit is to get the most stable ping you can and then choose a well made game

Have you monitored the stability of your ping throughout a game? If it's jittery, this will affect you, and to make it consistent will require you to stabilize the connection at the ISP gateway

[TheMask]

@dlakelan

then choose a well made game

Thats the curse of mine, I love this ugly game!!

Have you monitored the stability of your ping throughout a game? If it's jittery, this will affect you, and to make it consistent will require you to stabilize the connection at the ISP gateway

Unfortunately I cant keep track of it while Im in the middle of the game, unless I press pause and go to my options then network.

[dlakelan]

Can you try pinging the server from your PC using the ping command, while you play the game on the xbox?

[TheMask]

I can ping A server, but wont be able to ping the server that my game is using.

But I believe, it still should be sufficient, right?

[dlakelan]

As a first pass, sure. It helps if it's a server located in a similar location to the game server.

[TheMask]

Will give it a shot tongiht and post back