How I solved my CSGO "input" lags

[mybad]

The predictable situation, sellers of VPN, "Magic" cables, special filters and other useless things should appear in this place; this was only a time question.

[Chief Blur Buster]

I don't understand how this differs from using standard VPN, which I already tried and had no difference or even worse.

FYI -- It's crapshoot -- it's very person-specific / location-specific. Using a VPN can improve or worsen things. The VPN roulette is worth spinning a few times, but there are no guarantees.

You do want a high performance low latency *paid* VPN, and many paid VPN's are crappy.

---

Or go left field and avoid the heavily loaded providers. A little known is CloudFlare's own WARP+ at https://1.1.1.1 and pay for the plus version, on a commercial account, to allow running over their Argo multiterabit CDN backbone ($$$) -- might already be petabit, dunno because Argo is DDoS-proofed -- that sometimes outperforms NordVPN and ExpressVPN quite a bit, as its goal is not to "VPN" but to improve performance. They don't even call it a VPN.

You never see CloudFlare WARP+ VPN being advertised widely because CloudFlare doesn't offer commissions to VPN resellers. So CloudFlare WARP+ is left out of those "Best VPN" lists because those lists earn money from commissions.

And since CloudFlare doesn't call it a VPN (since it doesn't virtualize/encrypt in the same way, and doesn't geoprotect you) -- it is simply an alternative network routing that bypasses your ISP routing quicker. If improving esports performance is your priority and don't care about encryption and don't care about hiding your location -- then try CloudFlare's WARP+. Even though it does not encrypt (further) like a VPN, CloudFlare /generally/ has better privacy protection than your ISP does anyway which sometimes snoops your traffic worse and injects advertisements / data warnings / etc in your browsing.

Which means CloudFlare WARP+ is little-known, you don't see it in googling, but you do see it if you go directly to https://1.1.1.1 and scrolling down to get the info. But if you're in a city and only two ping hops away from a CloudFlare Argo backbone, you've got a nearby onramp to the Internet Autobahn... The same DDoS-proofed backbone for the CDN network, but you're re-routed your esports gaming over it!

Either way, it might not work for you, but a little known tip of an ultra high performance low-latency network that is relatively little-advertised alternative to VPNs. But you need the + version to get the best, lowest latency version -- routed over CloudFlare Argo backbone.

[MontyTheAverage]

I think this is one way to do it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_TETA3Lh64

[Shade7]

I don't understand how this differs from using standard VPN, which I already tried and had no difference or even worse.

You do want a high performance low latency *paid* VPN, and many paid VPN's are crappy.

[...]

Which means CloudFlare WARP+ is little-known, you don't see it in googling, but you do see it if you go directly to https://1.1.1.1 and scrolling down to get the info. But if you're in a city and only two ping hops away from a CloudFlare Argo backbone, you've got a nearby onramp to the Internet Autobahn... The same DDoS-proofed backbone for the CDN network, but you're re-routed your esports gaming over it!

Either way, it might not work for you, but a little known tip of an ultra high performance low-latency network that is relatively little-advertised alternative to VPNs. But you need the + version to get the best, lowest latency version -- routed over CloudFlare Argo backbone.

Very interesting. First time I am hearing that such a thing exists.

Going to look into this more.

What do you guys think of network options like WTFast? Been seeing more and more advertisements for it recently. Decided to give the free trial a shot. They claim they are different from a "VPN", but I'm still trying to see what exactly it does. Looks like a bunch of buzzwords.

[Chief Blur Buster]

What do you guys think of network options like WTFast? Been seeing more and more advertisements for it recently. Decided to give the free trial a shot. They claim they are different from a "VPN", but I'm still trying to see what exactly it does. Looks like a bunch of buzzwords.

VPN stands for Virtual Private Network, because it is virtualized and private (encrypted) and makes you look like you're coming from a different location. Such as being locally at a corporate headquarters -- at a local console. It helps companies protect their data of their telecommuting workers. It's heavily encrypted, protected, and hides your location from the outside world. Custom corp VPN software means only the company knows where you are, and nobody else can break into your VPN (in theory)

Now, VPN's are often used to geolocate you to bypass country blocking (e.g. Netflix in another country)

But this is not important in esports gaming generally, so you simply use a "VPN" like non-VPN client that prioritizes rerouting over a high performance network, instead of focussing on encrypting/privacy. In fact your privacy is still improved somewhat over your ISP because many ISPs snoop your traffic to prevent you from Bittorrenting / or to inject ads / etc. and CloudFlare WARP+ doesn't snoop you. It's just not as secure as a VPN, but it will improve your esports performance more than most VPNs.

Software such as WARP+ does the bare minimum to force your network route over their backbone instead of the ISP's backbone (beyond the CloudFlare CDN Argo entry point that is probably almost directly connected to your ISP anyway in very few hops) --

So it's not fully virtual (V in VPN) and not fully private (the P in VPN) - but it's a network (the N is VPN is the only thing that generally helps your esports sometimes). It's more virtual and more private than most ISP's networks, so generally you're not losing virtualness or privacyness, neither of which is important in esports performance.

The "N" in VPN is what you need to focus esports on, even if you remove a lot of V (of VPN) and P (of VPN) in order to get a faster N (of VPN).

To get fastest N of a network reroute client of any kind (VPN and non-VPN), you sometimes have to say goodbye full geolocation and encryption capability, even though you're still getting more privacy than most ISP networks anyway with something like WARP+...

Your ISP and your server needs to be close to CloudFlare Argo's multiterabit backbone. The thing about CloudFlare is that POPs are increasing to protect the Internet from DDoS, and the Argo backbone is frequently used to reroute CloudFlare-protected sites around DDoS-overloaded Internet backbones... CloudFlare firewalls stops most DDoS traffic at the edge before DDoS packets hits the Argo backbone...

Every smalltime web operator knows about CloudFlare free, and CloudFlare $20/mo business, and not bother paying extra fees. But we
now pay CloudFlare 3-figures a month for the Argo enhancement now, a Ferrari of CloudFlare speedups. Been quite impressed -- website loads 2x faster in Europe as if it was a local Europe server instead of a USA server. TCP/UDP connects (AJAX/etc) from Europe has up to 50% less latency! Our servers are far faster than 5 years ago worldwide as a result. But you won't need to pay that much for WARP+ feature.

Cheapest WARP+ (a few dollars a month) is data metered, so don't Netflix over it -- use it only for esports / VoIP / video calling your overseas relatives etc. Anything where lag makes a big difference.

Anyway,

Little known best-kept secret, but YMMV.

[Anonymous768119]

In my opinion this is another low tier trolling. From LEM and lvl 6 to gold nova and lvl 1 doesn't sound legit at all, because such a drop is possible only by playing on a steering wheel. Even me and my hardcore desync issues allowed me to stay in LEM/Supreme because you quickly realize that you should maintain preservative (not sure if this is a good word) and careful gamestyle.

Using VPN for gaming looks more like using a plaster on an amputated leg. Why adding another layer of network stack on a crappy internet connection would help anything? What you can try is to ask ISP to:
a) prioritize UDP traffic, because internet users are not spending time only for watching funny cats on YT,
b) reduce UDP datagram's drops (by doing a)),
c) investigate if UDP packets are out of order <- possible cause of why enemy models are moving so erratically and fast
d) do something with network congestion control, it's fully automated that's why your gaming experience changes during the day,
If they refuse any of it, tell them that you're not going to extend internet contract and 2 generations ahead will never install this shit in their house. In my case it worked and they even bothered themselves to call me at 9PM, can you believe it? This is how you should deal with these idiots asking for speedtest results for gaming...

However, this doesn't mean that some ISPs are totally shitty, because I know players from my city using same ISP who did 10 lvl after barely exceeding 100 games. This can be local if infrastructure and/or networking hardware wasn't upgraded for a long time and internet traffic increased over the years.

[mybad]

Using VPN for gaming looks more like using a plaster on an amputated leg. Why adding another layer of network stack on a crappy internet connection would help anything?

It looks like CCNA was passed already. Happy to see someone with a network education background. The next one is CCNP and CCIE waiting for you. Anyway, agree with you.

[triplese]

Surprising that difference is that great in the Europe I presume. Have you done tracert to the server you frequent from your home and work? I mean you are already happy that things are going great, but it could help other unbelievers.

Yeah, of course. Routes confirmed with winmtr traces, so I wrote this thread when info seems not placebo

I don't understand how this differs from using standard VPN, which I already tried and had no difference or even worse.

What do you mean "standard VPN"? In my case I have private VPN with personal 100Mbit or 1Gbit guaranteed channel. If I dont have my 100Mbits in any moment - I can complain, because I paid for it. "Standard VPN" such as free VPNs or like crap what is Fallen advertised (dont remember how its name) - is crap. You cannot complain on its quality, they can oversell traffic, routing is not optimal for your location etc etc.
BTW nobody pushing you to make like I made, so you can continue struggling

The predictable situation, sellers of VPN, "Magic" cables, special filters and other useless things should appear in this place; this was only a time question.

Aha, OK. Any name of VPS company or VPN service in my post, are you completely dumb?

[triplese]

In my opinion this is another low tier trolling. From LEM and lvl 6 to gold nova and lvl 1 doesn't sound legit at all, because such a drop is possible only by playing on a steering wheel. Even me and my hardcore desync issues allowed me to stay in LEM/Supreme because you quickly realize that you should maintain preservative (not sure if this is a good word) and careful gamestyle.

If you thinks so - then you dont have any "hardcore" desync problems. Hardcore desync - is when any peek is like Xantares peeking you, even lvl 1 faceit, and he already shot 6 bullets when you only seen his face. BTW, my reaction is ~185-200ms, so I'm not slowpoke.
Why I need to play careful, when I already played 3k hours in aggressive style and have good hardware to have advantage on another 6-year "ifuckyourmom" child with core2duo laptop?

Using VPN for gaming looks more like using a plaster on an amputated leg. Why adding another layer of network stack on a crappy internet connection would help anything?
What you can try is to ask ISP to:
a) prioritize UDP traffic, because internet users are not spending time only for watching funny cats on YT,
b) reduce UDP datagram's drops (by doing a)),
c) investigate if UDP packets are out of order <- possible cause of why enemy models are moving so erratically and fast
d) do something with network congestion control, it's fully automated that's why your gaming experience changes during the day,
If they refuse any of it, tell them that you're not going to extend internet contract and 2 generations ahead will never install this shit in their house. In my case it worked and they even bothered themselves to call me at 9PM, can you believe it? This is how you should deal with these idiots asking for speedtest results for gaming...

You cannot ask anything from ISP, because you paying few bucks to ISP, not few thousands bucks like some company. You cannot provide them any proofs, that they slowing your traffic.
No one ISP can provide to regular people guaranteed channel, you have shared channel.
ISP bought few 10gbit uplinks from another ISP, and that 20Gbits is shared on 200 clients per 1Gbit. And that is "normal" (in terms of ISP), because nobody utilizing his link 24/7. But in evening you starting your csgo session, and other 199 clients watching netflix, downloading torrents and 20Gbits utilizing quickly. And maybe because of that some people saying that they have "lower input lag" in deep night - because netflix watchers sleeping.
And BTW if you have decent router (not china crap) and turn on shaping on 5% lower than your tariff you dont have anything to do with network congestion. Bottleneck not on your side, not under your control (of course if your mom not downloading torrents on full speed). You dont have "bufferbloat", because you dont reach ISP's shaper. Network congestion on csgo's traffic is not possible at all - even on faceit you have sub-1Mbit bandwidth utilization.

[triplese]

It looks like CCNA was passed already. Happy to see someone with a network education background. The next one is CCNP and CCIE waiting for you. Anyway, agree with you.

Oh, so what where CCIE guys forum is. Why so talented guys dont work at ISP and dont make global internet better?
BTW, I graduated in 2011 as Master of Telecommunications and have CCNP and MTCSE certs