Warping at ok latency & unrelated and ok 'unreliable packets'
DC_Darkling
Join Date: 2003-07-10 Member: 18068Members, Constellation, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver
Join Date: 2003-07-10 Member: 18068Members, Constellation, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver
Hey all,
I decided to make a new topic just for me, instead of the stickied connection topic so if that was wrong im sure mods will start screaming at me.
For a while now I have experienced warping. It is highly likely I had this for a prolonged time, as it seems to get a bit worse now and then. I likely did not notice before.
Warping in this regard is my player character suddenly moving/jumping forward to a spot somewhere else without the smooth movement in between. This is usually caused by network issues.
When players tell me, finally, I warp I usually dont notice anything on my end.
When I notice warping myself, others definitely saw me warp.
I almost never have a network icon on my screen during warps.
Latency is just fine pushing around 30-60, usually 30.
Logging with net_log 3 shows nothing wrong, initially. net_stats 1 shows no problems, latency or choke.
Very very very very very rarely I have 6% choke for like a second.
like stated, logs show nothing while loading up menus & connecting to a server. Any communication to the server goes well without a single unreliable packet.
When it is done loading and I am placed in the ready room, logs get swarmed with unreliable packets. (and in game also)
Example:
94.237.80.131 Client: Started receiving a new packet of 521 bytes
94.237.80.131 Client: Sending unreliable 44871
94.237.80.131 Client: Processing unreliable 42966
94.237.80.131 Client: Started receiving a new packet of 480 bytes
94.237.80.131 Client: Sending unreliable 44872
What has been checked?
* ISP has checked the line itself on error values, signal strenth etc. No problems. They also checked various error logs of the modem itself.
* All equipment has been powered off.
* all equipment has been excluded, plugging the pc on the modem itself.
* different utp has been used, no wireless is used.
* a different network card has been used.
* pc has been in DMZ.
* connection tests have been performed without any signal degradation or loss. All speeds are within limits. This includes but not limited to: pathpings, ping tests longterm to various locations, and many other games.
* Only uwe official servers were used in these tests, but other servers also gave similar results in the previous days.
* NS2 has been loaded without mods. They have not yet been removed & reinstalled.
At this point it leaves me wondering if something in the ns2 client is causing the connection to go haywire. This idea is strengthened by the connection to the game servers not having any problem UNTILL the readyroom or playerworld has loaded.
Whats left to do?
* completely scrap all mods, settings, etc. I did this a while back so I am uncertain of any positive result, but will retry if results remain dry.
* any (new) debug commands to further shed lights on the situation.
* Any useful stuff someone can suggest.
Final note.
* While very visible eventually by players, nothing on the hud clearly shows this problem & communicates it to the player. If warping exists with good latency & the player is not informed without the use of net_log 3, then it may be unknown how many people suffer from the negative effects from this, regardless if its related to something in the game client.
Perhaps include a check which communicates the problem to the player.
>edit for partial conclusion
Ok so the unreliable packets are just UDP and can be safely ignored.
The warping wasnt truly tested but during the 'testing' I changed the following:
* reinstalled lan drivers.
* moved NS2 to ssd. (I will move this back later as a test)
* updated my firewall program.
I have not experienced warping yet. When I did experience warp I had some choke, so that was actually related)
I decided to make a new topic just for me, instead of the stickied connection topic so if that was wrong im sure mods will start screaming at me.
For a while now I have experienced warping. It is highly likely I had this for a prolonged time, as it seems to get a bit worse now and then. I likely did not notice before.
Warping in this regard is my player character suddenly moving/jumping forward to a spot somewhere else without the smooth movement in between. This is usually caused by network issues.
When players tell me, finally, I warp I usually dont notice anything on my end.
When I notice warping myself, others definitely saw me warp.
I almost never have a network icon on my screen during warps.
Latency is just fine pushing around 30-60, usually 30.
Logging with net_log 3 shows nothing wrong, initially. net_stats 1 shows no problems, latency or choke.
Very very very very very rarely I have 6% choke for like a second.
like stated, logs show nothing while loading up menus & connecting to a server. Any communication to the server goes well without a single unreliable packet.
When it is done loading and I am placed in the ready room, logs get swarmed with unreliable packets. (and in game also)
Example:
94.237.80.131 Client: Started receiving a new packet of 521 bytes
94.237.80.131 Client: Sending unreliable 44871
94.237.80.131 Client: Processing unreliable 42966
94.237.80.131 Client: Started receiving a new packet of 480 bytes
94.237.80.131 Client: Sending unreliable 44872
What has been checked?
* ISP has checked the line itself on error values, signal strenth etc. No problems. They also checked various error logs of the modem itself.
* All equipment has been powered off.
* all equipment has been excluded, plugging the pc on the modem itself.
* different utp has been used, no wireless is used.
* a different network card has been used.
* pc has been in DMZ.
* connection tests have been performed without any signal degradation or loss. All speeds are within limits. This includes but not limited to: pathpings, ping tests longterm to various locations, and many other games.
* Only uwe official servers were used in these tests, but other servers also gave similar results in the previous days.
* NS2 has been loaded without mods. They have not yet been removed & reinstalled.
At this point it leaves me wondering if something in the ns2 client is causing the connection to go haywire. This idea is strengthened by the connection to the game servers not having any problem UNTILL the readyroom or playerworld has loaded.
Whats left to do?
* completely scrap all mods, settings, etc. I did this a while back so I am uncertain of any positive result, but will retry if results remain dry.
* any (new) debug commands to further shed lights on the situation.
* Any useful stuff someone can suggest.
Final note.
* While very visible eventually by players, nothing on the hud clearly shows this problem & communicates it to the player. If warping exists with good latency & the player is not informed without the use of net_log 3, then it may be unknown how many people suffer from the negative effects from this, regardless if its related to something in the game client.
Perhaps include a check which communicates the problem to the player.
>edit for partial conclusion
Ok so the unreliable packets are just UDP and can be safely ignored.
The warping wasnt truly tested but during the 'testing' I changed the following:
* reinstalled lan drivers.
* moved NS2 to ssd. (I will move this back later as a test)
* updated my firewall program.
I have not experienced warping yet. When I did experience warp I had some choke, so that was actually related)
Comments
What are the servers you play normally?
Warping could happen due low tickrates under 15.
Also:
Check your backround processes, maybe some programm is downloading stuff.
client was 30 or 60, cant remember for sure.
I play any server with long ping, 18 slots or less and not full or empty.
background programs are fairly excluded due to some other testing.
Try this:
http://forums.unknownworlds.com/discussion/131428/obby-s-full-nuke-ns2-guide-only-way-to-be-sure#latest
Or you can try to use an traffic shaper (some routers have this onboard or cfosspeed)
Do you play on Win 8.1?
Some people reporting issues with beta drivers. An upgrade of your network-device driver may help.
yes, im aware of the nuke ns2 one.. Im hoping for a way to not need to, but Im afraid I probably got no choice.
I have no way to analyze traffic this deep and its win 7.
because the problem only exists, not just in ns2, but specificly in the playerworld, not any other communication to any server, its highly unlikely its anything but game related. (another point for weird mods I guess)
I dont run any weird software and me pc is well maintained. I know, many say so. Hope me voice has a tiny bit more weight, spending time in this same tech forum. haha
Just hope to find what specificly in the playerworld causes the problem, regardless if it is a mod or not. I do not believe for a second that im the only one suffering from this.
Goto device-manager and delete the networkcard (dont deinstall the drivers)
Let windows detect the card again.
If this doesnt help try a new networkcard driver.
Also the TCP Optimizer might help: http://www.speedguide.net/downloads.php
Or this one: http://www.cfos.de/en/cfosspeed/cfosspeed.htm
Also while I doubt the use of the optimizer I ran it a while back for lols, to see what it was. Needed change nothing
Well, there is no magic button called "disable warping".
You have to verify and exclude possible error sources.
Saying "my networkcard is running fine" is a supposition.
And as you have network issues, you should try to fix/check everything around your network first before reinstalling the game.
Ok, you have tested another networkcard, maybe this card uses the same drivers like the other one?
I have tested on 2 different network cards.
I was in fact very thorough in testing anything in the network.
Ill lookup some older drivers upcoming days as im using latest.
Im well aware there is no 'disable warping' button. And its not what I asked.
Whats left to do?
* completely scrap all mods, settings, etc. I did this a while back so I am uncertain of any positive result, but will retry if results remain dry.
- On the todo list as stated earlier.
* any (new) debug commands to further shed lights on the situation.
- noone so far.
* Any useful stuff someone can suggest.
- nothing left in my entire network to replace & test except software on the computer itself.. which is easier said then done as nothing is weird so to test 1 by 1 is a long and tedious process I have not finished yet.
At the moment i have also experienced the problem on a local listenserver and tried a gazilion settings on the modem, just incase.
I manually took out all mods, caching etc one by one. It does not seem to be the issue.
Next on the todo list, probably somewhere in the weekend, is checking anything driver and process related. It will be a horrendous pain.
I could just throw back a backup and be done with it, but as stated before.. I want to diagnose the problem in detail for anyone else who has this issue. SO slow steps.
The reported 6% choke could also be the source of your problem. If the problem is reasonably consistent you can try to isolate the router in question via trace route
You should probably make a backup of your current system and perform a fresh windows install. That way you can exclude any software related problems much faster.
I checked all in and outgoing connections on both live servers and my listenserver. There is 0 talk with the outside world when I run a listenserver.
Yes it has to be a process locally somehow playing bad with ns2, or some weird bug in ns2 itself. Slow road to test all that..
@confused
Worth a shot, have to start somewhere on the process hunt.
/to bad its technicly threads.
@bicsum
id probably restore a backup then, but the goal is to actually find the thing incase anyone (in the future) has the same issue.
If I wanted to 'fix' it id have restored a backup and not posted.
>Edit, update
AV: no
firewall: no
steam cloud, pings: no
non ms services & processes unload: no
drivers: update only. No unload due to the nature of the system. VERY select unload. (as in I could not stop using most drivers)
emet: no, but it warrented special testing.
de installed ns2 from the mirror 1 mechanic drives onto the sata 6GB connected sata 6GB SSD.. (Yes, im serious, I did not find a need to shove it on my ssd sooner): no
installed another version of lan drivers: no
ran just installed coupled diagnostics: no problems so far
At this point its looking less shiny as most stuff which is not directly tied into windows is already excluded. Means a lot more work.
Also still possible its ns2 itself, who knows. (not me heeh)
going to brainstorm more.
You should check if its software related by installing a fresh windows (because it would suddenly work) and if it is you would restore that backup.
I know I know.. Still trying to find the specific cause. Reinstall would be swatting a fly with a big hammer, and hitting. It would probably work, but it not bring me any closer to a solution as to what happened.
I keep it as a backup plan ofc.
>Edit
ya know something I have JUST realised. And if its true im gona feel stupid for the next hour orso.
Ive been asuming on earlier posts made by some PTs, including a certain horse fellow
But isnt it just UDP since that is considered unreliable? It certainly goes at the same speed as the reliable connections, when I connect to a server.
I mean, from earlier posts I understood that it cant reach the server or whatever with unreliable, that means I should have insane problems.. I dont.
So I think im kicking the wrong wall here. Anyone who knows care to verify?
IF the unreliable thingy means nothing, that means that the last 2 days of testing stuff was useless. As I have not been ingame long enought to actually experience the warping. Heh, would need a whole new world of testing.
If that post of his regarding unreliable packets was wrong, im gona make fun of our horse pt for a while.
Also, did you record your system resorce usage (memory, cpu, i/o) during play, do you see any spikes? Unix has useful tools like vmstat or iostat that can tell you when processes wait for memory, i/o or cpu.
The problem is probably caused by your system hitting some kind of bottleneck that causes delay of network packet assembly/sending, and due to the nature of the UDP traffic, when a buffer overruns, the packets get lost, your game goes out of sync for a moment, and when it's synced back with the server, you experience the "warping" (connection timeout long enough for the in-game prediction to fail).
The fact that you run a local server may not matter, because they still talk through the loopback network interface - packets are still assembled, sent, and read as in case of a normal network traffic.
Moreover, you may have an aggressive, high priority malware/rootkit running in the background, stealing the resources. Be aware that even in Windows itself, there are processes invisible to the standard task manager (you need apps like Process Explorer to view them), and even that, if you have a rootkit that takes control during the time of the boot, it could still hide stuff from you (processes, files, anything). To be sure, you would need to boot from a clean system and scan your disk with a tool that is capable of detecting infected/tampered system files that are used during the boot process.
thankfully I know all that.
No when I had the listenserver up & was ingame, I put up the firewall to deny full network to ns2. No change, so its definately in the pc.
But like I said.. I never checked before, wonder if the unreliable arent just udp packets.
resources are well within limits. not even close.
Even ns2 has problems bottlenecking my system, thankfully.
Yes I did loads of tests and am fairly sure my system is atleast still clean.
http://wiki.wireshark.org/CaptureSetup/Loopback
There are many kinds of bottlenecks, packet buffers, caches of all kinds, etc. Again, check those logs.
Also, did you run your test by booting from a clean system first? It's important.
logs are fine.
I know, I mentioned the firewall only as a indication that it is somewhere in the loopback.
No bottleneck as far ive found yet, i probably will reinstall wireshark sometime soon.
Atm checking something noone awnsered or knew, but is rather a big part of it all.
>EDIT
Ok I let one of my friends on steam test.. He also has a gazilion unreliables when in Readyroom.
Folk, would you all spend 5 minutes to loadup a readyroom, type net_log 3, and see if you all have unreliables? Im fairly sure that its standard & simply udp, now.
If so, I will need to completely restart with me warping testing as its a rare occurance.
So yes, I have no warping issues, and all packets are described as "unreliable". They are also reported to be sent via the localhost (127.0.0.1), so if you hooked a packet filter like Wireshark there, you could capture the whole stream for later analysis. Your system must have a problem you are missing, though, concentrating too much on your "unreliable packet" hypothesis.
Ok topic done.
I read in earlier posts that the unreliable packet was bad, so I assumed I had a bad problem because I had loads of it. I could not make head or tails of it, hence this topic.
I do warp sometimes, rarely. But during that I have choke. I have no problem, i think, finding the cause of that if I run some programs while it happen for it.
Like you said, I, and most here, have been focussing on the unreliable to much.
I did update some stuff so its possible I wont warp anymore, time shall tell.
Thanks all.
AFAIK application level firewalls never touch the loopback traffic, beacause under normal circumstances, there is no sense blocking it. For that, you would need an IP-based firewall like OpenBSD PF (which I use on servers), or any other like ipfw or ipf, and introduce rules like:
And you the traffic would be blocked and the packed would appear in the pflog where you could read them later. If you want to listen only, use an app like Wireshark, and set it up for loopback listening (which I understand is not so trivial on Windows):
http://wiki.wireshark.org/CaptureSetup/Loopback
You can use from console to first check the ports the ns2 process listens on.
Regarding bottlenecks, there are many kinds, like network packet buffers, or caches of all kinds, etc. Did you check those Event Logs?
Also, when you run your tests, did you boot from your computer, or did you examine your system booting from a different, clean OS?
AFAIK application level firewalls never touch the loopback traffic, beacause under normal circumstances, there is no sense blocking it. For that, you would need an IP-based firewall like OpenBSD PF (which I use on servers), or any other like ipfw or ipf, and introduce rules like:
And you the traffic would be blocked and the packed would appear in the pflog where you could read them later. If you want to listen only, use an app like Wireshark, and set it up for loopback listening (which I understand is not so trivial on Windows):
http://wiki.wireshark.org/CaptureSetup/Loopback
You can use from console to first check the ports the ns2 process listens on.
Regarding bottlenecks, there are many kinds, like network packet buffers, or caches of all kinds, etc. Did you check those Event Logs?
Also, when you run your tests, did you boot from your computer, or did you examine your system booting from a different, clean OS?
you misunderstood me on the firewal thing anyway.
I only blocked connection with the firewall to confirm it was the loopback as I know it didnt touch it.
I consider this topic solved.
* reinstall of lan drivers. which aparently did update something.
* move NS2 to a very fast ssd.
* update a small control program for the firewall. (unlikely I tested without this one)
Logs finally showed that my modem is probably tripping a bit as I got incoming (and firewall denied) connections. So I disabled most functionality in my modem, and so far so good.
I expect someone is spamming netbios or something. My computer points & laughs at that, but apparently the modem has it standard 'on'.
Time will tell. If it was indeed the modem, ill report back in as its a very common modem over here.