internet latency & effects on hit registration

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mello
Posts: 251
Joined: 31 Jan 2014, 04:24

Re: internet latency

Post by mello » 05 Jun 2019, 03:59

open wrote:there is also packet loss. essentially leading to spikes in latency. use a command promt and run

ping google.com -n 6000

hit ctrl+c when you are done watching it.

you may get consistent pings most of the time but still randomly get more latency or dropped packets.
Network congestion and internet performance fluctuations in relation to gaming can happen regardless of latency and packet loss issues and WITHOUT ANY serious ping spikes. This is a completely separate issue to what you have described in this thread. I think i have written about that quite extensively here on forums in few different threads, for example here IIRC. The problem manifests itself exactly like nick4567 described, you essentially experience a laggy feeling randomly during different times in a day. Some days it may feel better, other days worse, it can fluctuate a lot etc. It can cause a severe hit registration issues for some people and improper player model positioning, and it sometimes looks like other players are prefiring you.

open
Posts: 223
Joined: 02 Jul 2017, 20:46

Re: internet latency

Post by open » 05 Jun 2019, 09:13

mello wrote:
open wrote:there is also packet loss. essentially leading to spikes in latency. use a command promt and run

ping google.com -n 6000

hit ctrl+c when you are done watching it.

you may get consistent pings most of the time but still randomly get more latency or dropped packets.
Network congestion and internet performance fluctuations in relation to gaming can happen regardless of latency and packet loss issues and WITHOUT ANY serious ping spikes. This is a completely separate issue to what you have described in this thread. I think i have written about that quite extensively here on forums in few different threads, for example here IIRC. The problem manifests itself exactly like nick4567 described, you essentially experience a laggy feeling randomly during different times in a day. Some days it may feel better, other days worse, it can fluctuate a lot etc. It can cause a severe hit registration issues for some people and improper player model positioning, and it sometimes looks like other players are prefiring you.
I personally have never EVER experienced this. EVERY time I experience any form of network lag it directly correlates to ping time fluctuations. You may have to let the pings run for 10 minutes to see the spikes but they should show up.

It is possible that ping packets get priority or are small enough to not hit congestion / drops. You could check with a network monitor tool or if the game has advanced statistics.

I'm not saying it doesn't happen. Especially with the repeal of net neutrality I could see increased situations where pings would get priority. But I just haven't run into it in 20+ years so.

And on a fundamental level if its network related latency it has to be from delay or loss. There are no other options.

MatrixQW
Posts: 278
Joined: 07 Jan 2019, 10:01

Re: internet latency

Post by MatrixQW » 05 Jun 2019, 09:56

nick4567 wrote:more of like a general because theres nothing i can do on my end about this issue but this happens regardless of my ping like my ping doesnt really fluctuate that much like 2-3 ms fluctuation and i generally get good ping but for some reason certain times of the day it feels like 400 ping almost and other times it feels better but still not that good and the issue is caused by network congestion im pretty sure of that because i went to my friends house and it felt like a different game almost i had much better hit reg with around the same ping as my house
mello wrote:The problem manifests itself exactly like nick4567 described, you essentially experience a laggy feeling randomly during different times in a day. Some days it may feel better, other days worse, it can fluctuate a lot etc. It can cause a severe hit registration issues for some people and improper player model positioning, and it sometimes looks like other players are prefiring you.
I play QuakeWorld and experience this alot, sometimes at night it feels better.
Me with 50ms vs someone 150ms it feels like the other way around, like i'm always late and with incorrect timings. Even doing bunny jumping feels like it's crawling, not smooth and fast.
The truth is almost every player has no issues but even by spectating someone I can see how something is wrong.
I always though it was a hardware issue but a complete new PC and living in a new house shows me it's not.

open wrote:And on a fundamental level if its network related latency it has to be from delay or loss. There are no other options.
The game has network statistics with 0,1ms updates and my connection is perfect. There is no deviation or packets lost but the game feels unresponsive.
If it's not network and hardware related, then what causes it?

edit:
In fact, I can run a server on my PC and connect as localhost. There is a command cl_delaypacket I set to 52 with same internet ping and it feels alot better. So even if ping is the same, internet connection is doing something to the game.

open
Posts: 223
Joined: 02 Jul 2017, 20:46

Re: internet latency

Post by open » 05 Jun 2019, 10:06

it could be other players connection lagging or it could be the server hardware lagging.

MatrixQW
Posts: 278
Joined: 07 Jan 2019, 10:01

Re: internet latency

Post by MatrixQW » 05 Jun 2019, 10:15

If it's the server hardware lagging it would affect both players and if it's the other player, he should be the one having issues, not me. Don't you think?

nick4567
Posts: 118
Joined: 10 Mar 2019, 19:55

Re: internet latency

Post by nick4567 » 05 Jun 2019, 11:28

it is the area u live in mate u just got unlucky with the new house having same issue because at my friends house it felt like a different game almost near perfect hit reg i was dominating in almost every game i played at a higher skill level than my home on a computer with less fps than my own

mello
Posts: 251
Joined: 31 Jan 2014, 04:24

Re: internet latency

Post by mello » 05 Jun 2019, 15:18

open wrote: I personally have never EVER experienced this. EVERY time I experience any form of network lag it directly correlates to ping time fluctuations. You may have to let the pings run for 10 minutes to see the spikes but they should show up.

It is possible that ping packets get priority or are small enough to not hit congestion / drops. You could check with a network monitor tool or if the game has advanced statistics.

I'm not saying it doesn't happen. Especially with the repeal of net neutrality I could see increased situations where pings would get priority. But I just haven't run into it in 20+ years so.

And on a fundamental level if its network related latency it has to be from delay or loss. There are no other options.
Network congestion doesn't affect everyone, it solely depends on your ISP's network and how it operates. People have been reporting hit registration issues all over internet in the past 18 years at least. It has nothing to do with ping time and packet loss, these things don't change when the problem appears. People who never have been affected by this have no idea that this problem exists, even a guy like Chris "Battle(non)sense" has never talked about this, simply because he is not aware of this issue because he has never been exposed to it personally. Most people that have been affected by this are the people who had ADSL/DSL/VDSL. This is not even something constant that you can get used to, because it is all caused by network performance fluctuations and these can vary to different degrees. And that happens when your ISP's network is overloaded (network congestion) and your ISP's network infrastructure (cables/devices/software etc.) can't handle the traffic. Basically when too many people use the internet at the same in your area in relation to your ISP's network capabilities. To balance things out, and to avoid disconnections and complains from customers ISP's have introduced things like DLM that monitor clients line, and use error correction algorithms like interleaving depth, introduction of artificial delays etc. All of that interferes with UDP packets in a major way and these packets are time sensitive, and the ISP's care more about network stability then something like gaming. That problem feels similar to game being laggy /dropping packets but this is much more complicated then that, because there are no ping spikes or additional and sudden packet loss reported. Here are some of my quotes from different threads regarding this issue:
When you have higher packet priority (and/or lower error correction algorithms) in your ISP's network in relation to other people in your area, the problem is either vastly reduced or is becoming a non-issue. Basically as soon as you can avoid network congestion you are fine. This is also why in the past people were chasing after FAST PATH mode and/or SNR manipulation techniques in modems/routers in hopes of changing interleaving depth profile on their connection. There was quite a lot of talk about this in the fps gaming world, but you are probably to young to realize this.

Also, the curse for fps gamers became a DLM that is being used in ADSL/VDSL connections, it increases delays and interleaving depth on the connection. It basically increases delays and stability and this negatively impacts games where UDP packets are time sensitive and fast and proper delivery is essential. In the past you could have asked your ISP to reset the DLM and for ~3-7 days you could enjoy perfect hit registration and gaming experience.
As i said before, networking issues do to overloaded lines might make you feel like you are experiencing some kind of a lag, most people quickly jump on "input lag" problem, by quickly dismissing a networking issue because their ping does not change. Same thing with motion blur/tearing, you might convince yourself that this is a problem (it might seem amplified when gaming doesn't feel right), because of issues when peeking corners (people see you faster then you see them, among other things, including hit registration), or you die instantly (like you said) when you do actually see other players. This is still a networking problem, and it happens because UDP packets are delivered out of order or they are already outdated when they reach you or the server. When you have networking problems you can also feel that your reaction time is shortened (in a negative way), in a sense that you have less time to react to what other players are doing/seeing (because they see you first). When the problem disappears or things feel much better, then you can clearly see an immediate improvement when peeking corners and in your reaction time (you feel like you have suddenly better reflexes, but in reality it is because you now have more time to react to things that show up properly on your screen)
So now, how is that fast path gives us a perfect or near perfect hit registration ? How is that lower interleaving depth doesn't alter hit registration to a significant degree ? And why error correction, high interleaver depth, network overload messes with fps gaming and hit registration in a major and negative way ?

In fast path mode, packets are being:

- dropped do to errors (packet loss is being introduced)
- sent and delivered without delay (no artificial delay injection)
- sent and delivered in a perfectly proper order
- retransmitted by an application when neccesary (fast path mode does not mess with that)

This perfectly explains why in fast path mode we have a perfect hit registration. When someone has interleaving on line, he will experience dropped packets in a game when switching to fast path. But it will not be a problem, because the whole gaming experience and hit registration being that much better. Yes, packet loss in not really a problem, as long as everything else is being sent and delivered without delay and in proper order.

In interleaved mode (low interleaver depth), packets are:

- being delayed to avoid packet loss (you can still get some packet loss or no packet loss at all)
- being sent and delivered with an artificial delay (small delay, low variance)
- being sent and delivered in a correct but not perfect order (at least most of the time, do to delay variance)
- being retransmitted by an application when neccesary (but interleaving and artifical delays might mess with it in a slightly negative way)

Here you can see how interleaving starts messing up UDP packets and your gaming experience and hit registration. The changes are small and lower interleaver depths are perfectly acceptable for fps gaming, because it doesn't affect the game performance in a major way. You may notice hit registration problems from time to time, but it doesn't really affect your overall gameplay.

In interleaved mode (higher interleaver depths), packets are:

- being delayed to avoid packet loss completely (if your line is bad, you still might get minimal packet loss)
- being sent and delivered with an artificial delay (big delay, high variance)
- being sent and delivered in an order that is far from perfect or optimal due to big delay variance (high probability)
- being retransmitted by an application when neccesary (but high interleaving and big artifical delays might mess with it in a very negative way)

Here we are. Enter "bad hit registration" problem in fps games among many other things that negatively impact fps gaming. Delaying UDP packets is never optimal, but introducing big delays messes with them in a big time. Packets are being artificially delayed big time, you no longer experience packet loss, but at the same time packets are being sent and delivered out of order too (most likely), so once the packets reach the server they are already late (server calculates you missed) and once the packets reach you, they are already outdated (players position/action may be outdated). Either of these things happens (or all of them to a certain degree), and this is causing hit registration problems among other things. It also perfectly explains why the game feels more random (out of order) when you experience bad hit registration. So higher interleaving / error correction methods/artificial delays clearly interfere with UDP transmission and retransmission algorithms by an application (the game).

How network overload affects fps gaming and hit registration ?

Simple. Your ISP's network work in a such a way that everything is automatic. Devices and software are constantly monitoring your line parameters and are making changes on the fly to make the connection reliable and stable. The term "gaming traffic", there is no such thing for your ISP, the devices in the network and the software that is running all of it. It is completely ignored and disregarded, what matter is the whole network stability and reliability. Most people experience hit registration problems to a different degrees. Problem also randomly goes away and shows up again. It is because of network performance fluctuations, based on the network usage, meaning how many people are using internet in your area/city at the time you play the game. And your ISP's devices and software is monitoring your line at all times, and it changes various parameters based on what is reported, if you have more errors and more packet loss it increases error correction, interleaving and delays on the line, if the network usage is light, meaning no errors (or small amount of errors) it will remove limitations and decrese interleaving. This is why people randomly experience "good hit registration" (no problems at all) and "bad hit registration". I even suspect that overall high network load and overloaded lines play a big role in "hit registration" problem, even if you take out interleaving (!) out of the equation. Why ? Because if there was only 1 person using internet in your area/city (you) then you would have perfect gaming experience and hit registration regardless of the network parameters that are being applied on your line at that time. How that would be possible ? Because there would be zero interferences on the line (cables), and it would perform to the fullest of its capabilities with no errors, and the only limiting factor would be a ping time.
And this is precisely why recommendation such as this improve or solve the problem altogether:

- the closer you live to your ISP's backbone network and central, the better chance that you will avoid any bottlenecks, performance issues and interferences from within the network you are connected to
- get a 1Gb fibre broadband if you can
- if you can't get the above, then always insist on a business package if possible (and especially when your ISP offers packet priorization for business customers), although it might not be always possible to get it for regular customers. It all depeneds on the country and your own ISP's regulations and rules that they have
- if you are stuck on DSL/ADSL/VDSL then being as close as possible to one of your ISP's central networks should almost guarantee proper internet performance when it comes to gaming
- and again, when on DSL/ADSL/VDSL you should always talk to customer services and insist on getting the lowest possible interleave depth and artificial delays (ms) set on your customer line profile

open
Posts: 223
Joined: 02 Jul 2017, 20:46

Re: internet latency

Post by open » 05 Jun 2019, 21:20

mello wrote:
open wrote: I personally have never EVER experienced this. EVERY time I experience any form of network lag it directly correlates to ping time fluctuations. You may have to let the pings run for 10 minutes to see the spikes but they should show up.

It is possible that ping packets get priority or are small enough to not hit congestion / drops. You could check with a network monitor tool or if the game has advanced statistics.

I'm not saying it doesn't happen. Especially with the repeal of net neutrality I could see increased situations where pings would get priority. But I just haven't run into it in 20+ years so.

And on a fundamental level if its network related latency it has to be from delay or loss. There are no other options.
Network congestion doesn't affect everyone, it solely depends on your ISP's network and how it operates. People have been reporting hit registration issues all over internet in the past 18 years at least. It has nothing to do with ping time and packet loss, these things don't change when the problem appears. People who never have been affected by this have no idea that this problem exists, even a guy like Chris "Battle(non)sense" has never talked about this, simply because he is not aware of this issue because he has never been exposed to it personally. Most people that have been affected by this are the people who had ADSL/DSL/VDSL. This is not even something constant that you can get used to, because it is all caused by network performance fluctuations and these can vary to different degrees. And that happens when your ISP's network is overloaded (network congestion) and your ISP's network infrastructure (cables/devices/software etc.) can't handle the traffic. Basically when too many people use the internet at the same in your area in relation to your ISP's network capabilities. To balance things out, and to avoid disconnections and complains from customers ISP's have introduced things like DLM that monitor clients line, and use error correction algorithms like interleaving depth, introduction of artificial delays etc. All of that interferes with UDP packets in a major way and these packets are time sensitive, and the ISP's care more about network stability then something like gaming. That problem feels similar to game being laggy /dropping packets but this is much more complicated then that, because there are no ping spikes or additional and sudden packet loss reported. Here are some of my quotes from different threads regarding this issue:
When you have higher packet priority (and/or lower error correction algorithms) in your ISP's network in relation to other people in your area, the problem is either vastly reduced or is becoming a non-issue. Basically as soon as you can avoid network congestion you are fine. This is also why in the past people were chasing after FAST PATH mode and/or SNR manipulation techniques in modems/routers in hopes of changing interleaving depth profile on their connection. There was quite a lot of talk about this in the fps gaming world, but you are probably to young to realize this.

Also, the curse for fps gamers became a DLM that is being used in ADSL/VDSL connections, it increases delays and interleaving depth on the connection. It basically increases delays and stability and this negatively impacts games where UDP packets are time sensitive and fast and proper delivery is essential. In the past you could have asked your ISP to reset the DLM and for ~3-7 days you could enjoy perfect hit registration and gaming experience.
As i said before, networking issues do to overloaded lines might make you feel like you are experiencing some kind of a lag, most people quickly jump on "input lag" problem, by quickly dismissing a networking issue because their ping does not change. Same thing with motion blur/tearing, you might convince yourself that this is a problem (it might seem amplified when gaming doesn't feel right), because of issues when peeking corners (people see you faster then you see them, among other things, including hit registration), or you die instantly (like you said) when you do actually see other players. This is still a networking problem, and it happens because UDP packets are delivered out of order or they are already outdated when they reach you or the server. When you have networking problems you can also feel that your reaction time is shortened (in a negative way), in a sense that you have less time to react to what other players are doing/seeing (because they see you first). When the problem disappears or things feel much better, then you can clearly see an immediate improvement when peeking corners and in your reaction time (you feel like you have suddenly better reflexes, but in reality it is because you now have more time to react to things that show up properly on your screen)
So now, how is that fast path gives us a perfect or near perfect hit registration ? How is that lower interleaving depth doesn't alter hit registration to a significant degree ? And why error correction, high interleaver depth, network overload messes with fps gaming and hit registration in a major and negative way ?

In fast path mode, packets are being:

- dropped do to errors (packet loss is being introduced)
- sent and delivered without delay (no artificial delay injection)
- sent and delivered in a perfectly proper order
- retransmitted by an application when neccesary (fast path mode does not mess with that)

This perfectly explains why in fast path mode we have a perfect hit registration. When someone has interleaving on line, he will experience dropped packets in a game when switching to fast path. But it will not be a problem, because the whole gaming experience and hit registration being that much better. Yes, packet loss in not really a problem, as long as everything else is being sent and delivered without delay and in proper order.

In interleaved mode (low interleaver depth), packets are:

- being delayed to avoid packet loss (you can still get some packet loss or no packet loss at all)
- being sent and delivered with an artificial delay (small delay, low variance)
- being sent and delivered in a correct but not perfect order (at least most of the time, do to delay variance)
- being retransmitted by an application when neccesary (but interleaving and artifical delays might mess with it in a slightly negative way)

Here you can see how interleaving starts messing up UDP packets and your gaming experience and hit registration. The changes are small and lower interleaver depths are perfectly acceptable for fps gaming, because it doesn't affect the game performance in a major way. You may notice hit registration problems from time to time, but it doesn't really affect your overall gameplay.

In interleaved mode (higher interleaver depths), packets are:

- being delayed to avoid packet loss completely (if your line is bad, you still might get minimal packet loss)
- being sent and delivered with an artificial delay (big delay, high variance)
- being sent and delivered in an order that is far from perfect or optimal due to big delay variance (high probability)
- being retransmitted by an application when neccesary (but high interleaving and big artifical delays might mess with it in a very negative way)

Here we are. Enter "bad hit registration" problem in fps games among many other things that negatively impact fps gaming. Delaying UDP packets is never optimal, but introducing big delays messes with them in a big time. Packets are being artificially delayed big time, you no longer experience packet loss, but at the same time packets are being sent and delivered out of order too (most likely), so once the packets reach the server they are already late (server calculates you missed) and once the packets reach you, they are already outdated (players position/action may be outdated). Either of these things happens (or all of them to a certain degree), and this is causing hit registration problems among other things. It also perfectly explains why the game feels more random (out of order) when you experience bad hit registration. So higher interleaving / error correction methods/artificial delays clearly interfere with UDP transmission and retransmission algorithms by an application (the game).

How network overload affects fps gaming and hit registration ?

Simple. Your ISP's network work in a such a way that everything is automatic. Devices and software are constantly monitoring your line parameters and are making changes on the fly to make the connection reliable and stable. The term "gaming traffic", there is no such thing for your ISP, the devices in the network and the software that is running all of it. It is completely ignored and disregarded, what matter is the whole network stability and reliability. Most people experience hit registration problems to a different degrees. Problem also randomly goes away and shows up again. It is because of network performance fluctuations, based on the network usage, meaning how many people are using internet in your area/city at the time you play the game. And your ISP's devices and software is monitoring your line at all times, and it changes various parameters based on what is reported, if you have more errors and more packet loss it increases error correction, interleaving and delays on the line, if the network usage is light, meaning no errors (or small amount of errors) it will remove limitations and decrese interleaving. This is why people randomly experience "good hit registration" (no problems at all) and "bad hit registration". I even suspect that overall high network load and overloaded lines play a big role in "hit registration" problem, even if you take out interleaving (!) out of the equation. Why ? Because if there was only 1 person using internet in your area/city (you) then you would have perfect gaming experience and hit registration regardless of the network parameters that are being applied on your line at that time. How that would be possible ? Because there would be zero interferences on the line (cables), and it would perform to the fullest of its capabilities with no errors, and the only limiting factor would be a ping time.
And this is precisely why recommendation such as this improve or solve the problem altogether:

- the closer you live to your ISP's backbone network and central, the better chance that you will avoid any bottlenecks, performance issues and interferences from within the network you are connected to
- get a 1Gb fibre broadband if you can
- if you can't get the above, then always insist on a business package if possible (and especially when your ISP offers packet priorization for business customers), although it might not be always possible to get it for regular customers. It all depeneds on the country and your own ISP's regulations and rules that they have
- if you are stuck on DSL/ADSL/VDSL then being as close as possible to one of your ISP's central networks should almost guarantee proper internet performance when it comes to gaming
- and again, when on DSL/ADSL/VDSL you should always talk to customer services and insist on getting the lowest possible interleave depth and artificial delays (ms) set on your customer line profile
If you say it's not ping time or packet loss then you mean only with 3rd party utilities. latency and packet loss are the only 2 options for a packet to be lagged or lost and effect the game.

mello
Posts: 251
Joined: 31 Jan 2014, 04:24

Re: internet latency

Post by mello » 06 Jun 2019, 06:34

open wrote: If you say it's not ping time or packet loss then you mean only with 3rd party utilities. latency and packet loss are the only 2 options for a packet to be lagged or lost and effect the game.
This is way too simplistic way of looking at things, and it clearly does not translate to reality. When it comes to gaming, it is all about UDP packets, what happens to them and how they are being treated, forwarded, retransmitted and prioritized by your ISP. If what you say would be the only way to affect things, then the game would feel exactly the same at all times with the same ping time (1-3ms variance which is normal) and with 0 or very little but costant packet loss (again, no variance), but it doesn't. It is not always about what data is being reported from ping/packet loss measures and what number shows up. People that are being affected by this problem DO NOT have issues with ping spikes or packet loss, and this is precisely why they often start looking at things like input lag, their system and PC components looking for the cause of the issue while completely disregarding the internet aspect as the potential culprit. No one ever was able to fix this issues on their own, because it does not happen on the clients side. And when it comes to hit registration problems, in 99% of cases it is the internet problem due to internet performance fluctuations that happen randomly during the day, all depeneding on how overloaded your ISP's network is in your area where you live in. This is exactly why gaming may feel way off on a different days or hours during the day, while there are no changes to your ping time and packet loss. For example, gaming may feel worse at peek times like an evening, in comparison to playing at night or earlier in the day. When that happens it is a dead giveaway of a network congestion. It is a completely separated issue to what sudden latency increase/difference and packet loss causes.

Things like error detection and correction algorithms (trelis, reed solomon, fec), interleaving, artificial delays, and tools like DLM that monitor clients signal quality and make changes on the fly on the clients line are there for a reason. All of that is fine tuned to avoid having an interrupted connections, packet loss and disconnections. All of that improves network stability, decreases a number of complaints from customers but at the same time quality of service when it comes to gaming is being worsened. Unfortunately, it clearly interferes with proper UDP packets handling and delivery, which mess up with gaming side of things like hit registration and enemy player model positioning that player sees on his screen. It is pretty well known phenomenon, but these days it has been largely forgotten, and often times when someone complains about bad hit registration it is often seen as complaining while being bad at the game and other players being just better etc. Some people like you, seem to be completely unaware of this issue, but it is all because you have never been affected by it.

#1. WORSENING OVER TIME. There have been a lot of reports in the past from people who had internet connection in their house for years (early adopters, back in early ADSl/DSL days), and at some point in time (after few years) the gaming started feel worse and worse year after year. Their ping didn't change, sometimes it even got better, and they even got faster internet speeeds over time, so what really happened to their gaming experience ? It all perfectly coincides with ISP's expansion, connecting more and more customers to their network, increasing internet speeds, while operating on the same old infrastructure.

#2. THE CASE OF INTERLEAVED VS. FAST PATH. Pretty much everyone started with fast path back in the day, but once ISP's started expanding and connecting more and more customers to their networks, increasing internet speeds, they noticed that there are a lot of problems with network stability, people are experiencing disconnecting, lines are getting overloaded etc. The way to mitigate that was by introducing interleaving and artificial delays, because it improves network stability. But at the same time gamers started experiencing weird things happening to their gaming experience, most of the time it was hit registration issues, gaming felt not as smooth, laggy like, sometimes it may feel like an input lag problem, especially in action etc. The solution at the time was to ask the ISP to make switch from an interleaved line to fast path, and all of a sudden all hit reg problems were gone immediately, even if some minimal packet loss was introduced (!). After some time ISP's refused to switch people on fast path and basically forced everyone onto the interleaved line.

#3. INTERLEAVING DEPTH, ARTIFICIAL DELAYS, DLM. Another trick that people tried to use to improve their gaming experience was by trying to buy better modems (broadcom chipsets), because it gave them a more stable line, decreased numbers of errors on the line, and therefore decreasing interleaving depth and artificial delays applied by DLM. Another trick was via SNR margin manipulation, and lowering the sync internet speed to lower number of errors, and therfore get a lower interleaving depth etc. The improvement varied from nothing (still a bad line, still lots of errors)to a clearly perceived improven in gaming due to lower interleaving depth.

#4. DSL AND PACKET PRIORITIZATION. Yeah, that was a thing back in the day and is was glorious. It was available in some countries for both private and business customers, but at a steep price. You basically got usually a slow but good enough internet speed, but the stability and reliability of the service was first class. You also enjoyed a packet prioritization over anyone else in your area and in your ISP's network, gaming was perfect/near perfect. After few years, again ISP's started to care more about overall network stability and packet prioritization was removed from DSL service, although it should be still avaialble in some countries.

#5. DISTANCE. How far are you from your ISP's backbone network and/or ISP's central network matters. The shorter the distance, the better the signal noise with less or no interferences, with less possibilities of experiencing of bottlenecks and network congestion. This is precisely why when you experience problems with your gaming and you visit your friends house that uses the same ISP, you might have a completely different gaming experience, sometimes it may even look like you playing a completely different game. It may feel like you are literaly crippled or handicapped playing at your home. This is what user reports suggests, and this is what is recommended when troubleshooting the problems behind hit registration problems in FPS games. Just take your computer to your friends house, play for a few days or over the weekend and then it will become clear what is really the problem.

#6. AN UNDOCUMENTED SCIENCE EXPERIMENT. No one ever has probably done that (at least not to my knowledge, and at least not in a FPS gaming world). The closest i ever came to a scientific study with the limited resources i had is this: I was gaming during an important national football match (my country is big on football) when the whole country was watching the game (in home, in bars, on jumbotrons/jumbovision in big cities) etc. In this scenario you can safely assume, without shadow of a doubt, that the internet, not only in my area and my city, but in the whole country could catch a breath and there was no chance that my ISP's network was overloaded. And ? My hit registration was almost perfect, and all other problems that i have been plagued with for years (!) have disappeared, my reaction time was elite (as it should be) and i probably had the best gaming experience from my home in years. Same private server, same people playing, same ping, even with exactly the same interleaving depth and with error correction enabled (according to my router). I have tested it few more times in the next few months, and it has became clear to me, less network usage in your area/city at any given time = the better gaming experience and hit registration you will have. As soon as bottleneck is relieved the issues completely disappear.

The only problem with this approach is that you can't really measure it. At least not by a normal measuring standards and practices via coming out with a number and showing it via score/graph. All you have is just going by your feeling of the game, and you can do that with years of experience in gaming, because you know when things feel right and as they should be (game mechanics, aiming/shooting wise etc.), and you also know when something is off. You also know the difference how it feels to playing on LAN, at your friends house, at internet café and in your own house. 100% not a placebo when you are an actual experienced gamer, that is able to detect the things that affect your gaming performance. You know what happens and what should exactly happen when you do certain plays, moves etc. You know the difference between missing when you actually missed, in comparison to casual players, and you know when bullet didn't register. And you know when you experience worse gaming performance due to hit registration problems among other things like incorrect player positioning on your screen (they see you faster then you see them), etc.

Now i have received some critique in the past, basically it went like this, "if you can measure it and show it somehow, it doesn't exist". And the saddest part was that it came from so called "experts", people who thought that they know and understand networking in relation to gaming. The problem is that you simply have no control over your connection and what is happening on the other side (outside your home), so you can't isolate it and test it the way most people think. There are lots of intermediates on the way, that you simply cannot control for. You can't measure it because it is not software/hardware related, at least not on your end. You can't isolate the internet for yourself. It is not as simple as testing cpu, gpu, ram or monitor/mouse input lag in a isolated and fully controlled environment. And what makes it even worse, it doesn't affect everyone, just a certain % of people. So we end up with some people who are being plagued by this issue for years to various degrees and some people who have never experienced it and are simply not aware of this problems existence.

#7. INTERNET PERFORMANCE VS. THE REALITY. No one ever complains about hit registration issues on LAN. Think about that. It only happens over the internet. This is where things are being vastly misunderstood and underestimated. Internet performance varies all the time, at least af far as gaming packets (UDP) are concerened. As mentioned before, your gaming can be affected negatively by network congestion and network performance fluctuations, even if your ping hasn't changed. When playing via internet, apart from players skill, network performance is the single most important factor when it comes to FPS gaming, it is so important that it basically renders everything else irrelevant. And by everything else i mean EVERYTHING ELSE that you use to play a game, mouse, monitor, having low end pc (low fps), tearing, stutter, motion blur. Even things like playing at 60fps@60Hz. All of it doesn't really matter, as long as player has great skill and great network performance, meaning low ping and perfect or near perfect hit registration. Example:

1) high skilled player will play at the same level, even with 60fps@60hz, low end pc (low fps), random mouse, as long as he has low ping and great hit registration. Your eyes can adjust to 60fps@60Hz (even when you change from 144fps@144hz or 240fps@240hz), and you can get used to random mouse, tearing, motion blur and stutter, in the end it will not affect your performance to a significant degree as long as you have low ping and great hit reg.

2) high skilled player will not be able to play at the same level, when he has really bad network performance (bad hit registration / incorrect enemy model visibility and positioning) even if he has best hardware in the world at his disposal. Bad network performance can skill cap you so bad, that you can sometimes go from being elite/high skilled to seem being average skilled when gaming via internet. Bad network performance may render gaming unplayable, regardless of what your hardware is. It may make your gaming not enjoyable and very frustrating, you may feel like you are handicapped.

In the end, network performance and UDP packet handling is all what matters, but it changes all the time, every case is different and some people are affected by network congestion and network performance fluctuations more than the others, and some people can enjoy perfect or near perfect network performance without any bad effects on their gaming performance. Also, some people may seem to be better players than they actually are, and some people may seem to be less skilled, just because of their inconsistent network performance.

#8. CLOSING WORDS. Now. What gives me the authority to talk about that ? I have been personally affected by this problem and have been interested in this topic for years and have seen it being reported by many players over the years, probably since around 2003. Always tried to fix this issue by buying fast PC, good gaming gear, fastest monitor, tried applying system optimizations (many famous and unfamous tips & tricks) etc. and it never helped or made any difference. No one ever was able to fix this issue to this day. The only things that helped me and others are the things described above. I have been gaming online probably since 1998, starting with internet cafés, and finally getting an ADSLin the early 2000s. I was playing many FPS games at above average/high but not on elite level but the things changed when it comes to CS. I was one of the best CS players in my country back in the day, played with and known personally many famous and legendary players, some of them are still playing CSGO at the highest level (pro) to this day. As i mentioned before when you are at the elite level or you have a lot of experience, you understand the game mechanics perfectly, you know what happens and what should happen when you do certain plays, moves etc. You know the difference between missing when you missed, and you know when you see and feel that something is off. Basically, if you do something long enough for long periods of time you became good at it. You know when something feels perfect and just right, and you can clearly see and feel when you are getting ping spikes/teleports, without a need of checking your ping. Same goes for big packet loss, you can see, feel and even hear it (cause of missing sounds) ! Same goes for cheaters, if you are really good and you have great knowledge and understanding of the game you can clearly see and spot cheaters (even non obvious ones) without actually watching a player for even a second, and only just by having a short interaction and exchange with other player. Experience allows you to see and feel inconsistencies and abnormalities happening in the game.

open
Posts: 223
Joined: 02 Jul 2017, 20:46

Re: internet latency

Post by open » 06 Jun 2019, 12:07

so yeah. everything you listed is a form of delay or loss. congratulations on agreeing with me

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