My Ping Is Killing Me :(
Rion
Join Date: 2002-11-08 Member: 7752Members
Join Date: 2002-11-08 Member: 7752Members
in Tech Support
<div class="IPBDescription">I can't take it any more..</div> Just to start things off. Yes, I have broadband. I run this game at around 50+ FPS. I run defrag/clean disk/adaware/virus scanners weekly. And I run NS off of the CS retail.
I have a 1.3 gig intel celeron processor
256 pc-133 SDRAM
2 hard drives one 20 gigs one 40 gigs (Counter-Strike is installed on the 40 gig one)
7500 Radeon vid card installed.
These seem to be nice enough to run the game fine, which it does very nicely.
Yet still I constantly get super increased pings! I can't take this anymore _Q($H(WPSROMNT][{GH$GU
It always always aalllwaaays happens while I'm in the middle of a medium-large sized game when the action starts up. Like, 4 skulks attacking 4 LMG marines.. my ping will jump through the roof and I won't be of any help at all in the battle other than another target for the enemy. My FPS will stay constant though. And once I get way out of the battle area, my ping will start to settle down and I'll be able to move without twitching constantly and seeing other players teleport all over. 1v1 my ping is dealable 2v2 my ping is dealable.. but if there's more than 4 people battling in my area my ping goes to hell.
Currently my options are either stay in games with eight people or less (not very fun at all) or just stop playing NS <!--emo&:(--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/sad.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='sad.gif'><!--endemo-->
Please help me!
I have a 1.3 gig intel celeron processor
256 pc-133 SDRAM
2 hard drives one 20 gigs one 40 gigs (Counter-Strike is installed on the 40 gig one)
7500 Radeon vid card installed.
These seem to be nice enough to run the game fine, which it does very nicely.
Yet still I constantly get super increased pings! I can't take this anymore _Q($H(WPSROMNT][{GH$GU
It always always aalllwaaays happens while I'm in the middle of a medium-large sized game when the action starts up. Like, 4 skulks attacking 4 LMG marines.. my ping will jump through the roof and I won't be of any help at all in the battle other than another target for the enemy. My FPS will stay constant though. And once I get way out of the battle area, my ping will start to settle down and I'll be able to move without twitching constantly and seeing other players teleport all over. 1v1 my ping is dealable 2v2 my ping is dealable.. but if there's more than 4 people battling in my area my ping goes to hell.
Currently my options are either stay in games with eight people or less (not very fun at all) or just stop playing NS <!--emo&:(--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/sad.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='sad.gif'><!--endemo-->
Please help me!
Comments
How broad is it? I find that I get lag in big fights (upwards of 40 entities in an area, which includes buildings) over my home DSL connection, but I do just fine from work with my 5MB industrial-strength DSL connection. (I tend to play at work more than at home.)
How broad is it? I find that I get lag in big fights (upwards of 40 entities in an area, which includes buildings) over my home DSL connection, but I do just fine from work with my 5MB industrial-strength DSL connection. (I tend to play at work more than at home.) <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
Cable
Text Block Size 1000 KB
Download Time 4968 ms
Receive Buffer Default
Transmission Speed 1610 Kb/s
Good? Bad? I dunno =/
Better than me.
I suggest you call the company that u r with, and tell them that your ping seriously increases with heavy loads. Or something like that. If you tell them its a game, they will just be like ... "pfff, your problem"
Im on 56K and usually play with a ping of around 300 ish, And i have never experienced Higher pings in big firefights.
and another thing to try is useing All Seeing Eye and make sure you connect to servers near you (just poke around)
and another thing to try is useing All Seeing Eye and make sure you connect to servers near you (just poke around) <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
Well it's Road Runner if anyone feels like knowing <!--emo&;)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/wink.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='wink.gif'><!--endemo-->
Which country are you in? You should probably try looking for a new braodband service. If you are UK then i dont suggest Freeserve and whatever country your in, NEVER EVER resrot to <!--emo&::asrifle::--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/asrifle.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='asrifle.gif'><!--endemo--> AOL
BTW, What is satellite like for gaming ?
i have the same problem with my pc :
Athlon 2400+
GeForce4 Ti 4200
552mo DDR
120 Go
but a 56k modem connection ...
Windows XP Professionnal
256 pc-133 SDRAM
2 hard drives one 20 gigs one 40 gigs (Counter-Strike is installed on the 40 gig one)
7500 Radeon vid card installed.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
What is the difference between the Celeron and the Pentium processors? Mathematical computing power. The Pentium line is better equipped to deal with intense mathematical computation. Whether or not this has anything to do with your problem, I do not know.
I have a 1.3 gig intel celeron processor
256 pc-133 SDRAM
2 hard drives one 20 gigs one 40 gigs (Counter-Strike is installed on the 40 gig one)
7500 Radeon vid card installed.
These seem to be nice enough to run the game fine, which it does very nicely.
Yet still I constantly get super increased pings! I can't take this anymore _Q($H(WPSROMNT][{GH$GU
It always always aalllwaaays happens while I'm in the middle of a medium-large sized game when the action starts up. Like, 4 skulks attacking 4 LMG marines.. my ping will jump through the roof and I won't be of any help at all in the battle other than another target for the enemy. My FPS will stay constant though. And once I get way out of the battle area, my ping will start to settle down and I'll be able to move without twitching constantly and seeing other players teleport all over. 1v1 my ping is dealable 2v2 my ping is dealable.. but if there's more than 4 people battling in my area my ping goes to hell.
Currently my options are either stay in games with eight people or less (not very fun at all) or just stop playing NS <!--emo&:(--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/sad.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='sad.gif'><!--endemo-->
Please help me! <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
What OS are you using? We can do better diagnostics here (with perfmon) if you are running NT/2000/XP, and see what the true bottleneck is. We can also use net_graph to see some in game stats. With your rig and your apparently proper preventative maintenance, you should be:
Getting much higher than 50FPS.
Not getting visual slowdowns.
It sounds like when you are saying ping's you are meaning 'the screen gets visually unusable, big action slow-downs? Or am I misunderstanding you. The bottleneck could very well be that Celeron, or some other video peripheral config issue. We can help you out though, just let me know what OS you have. I highly doubt it's your network connection though.
PS: Follow up question - are you running 32-bit color in NS, and what are your NS screen resolution settings? To check for 32-bit, look at the properties of your NS shortcut for the line '-32bpp'.
(and the big diff between a Celeron and other processors is the L2 cache)
oh, and MonsE, is there a good place that details just WTH netgraph is telling me?
As for your net_graph request, here is a shameless rip-off quote from a great guide at <a href='http://www.planetfortress.com/tftech/tfc15faq.shtml' target='_blank'>PlanetFortress.com</a>:
<!--QuoteBegin--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Netgraph information:
Above the white seperating line of your netgraph (in the top section of the graph) is an area that shows the general size of each packet the game is receiving from the server. By default 1 pixel = 5 bytes of data. To change the scale, use the command net_scale. Along the edge of the screen is a set of green hash marks that indicate 50 bytes per mark, smaller marks will show 10 bytes if net_scale is set low enough.
red marks on the graph are player specific data sent only to you
yellow marks are data sent to you about other players
purple marks are data about other entities in the game
light blue marks are event data
dark blue marks are temporary entity data
green marks are sound data
grey marks are user message data
white dots along the top (in net_graph 2 only) indicate full packet size
Below the white line is a series of numbers that indicate your system/network performance
These numbers show your ping (xxx ms, as opposed to latency displayed in the scoreboard, this is closer to your actual ping) and framerate (xx fps), followed by an xx/s number, which is the number of updates/second you are requesting from the server, which can be changed using the cl_updaterate "xx" command.
Below this is a line that says in: followed by the size (in bytes) of the last packet the client received and the average data rate received from the server (in kilobytes/second) and a number and letter 'p' in parentheses indicating the amount of player information included in the last packet (note:will have to check to see if other types of data are displayed there as well).
The third line of text is similar to the above, but reads out: followed by the information on the data being sent to the server by the client.
Below the text/numeric display is the usual netgraph that has been there all along, with it's red/yellow/green/blue lines. The maximum height of the graph is based on a latency of 1000, so the lines will only take up half of the space here at a latency of 500, one quarter of the space at 250, etc.
Below that is another xx/s number, which indicates the maximum number of command packets you will send to the server each second. You can change this by using the cl_cmdrate "xx" command, which defaults at 30. It's recommended that you only increase this if you are getting higher than 30 fps and your connection can handle it. Also, each command sent includes some previous commands in case of packet loss. The number of backup commands sent is set by the cl_cmdbackup "x" variable, and defaults to 2. This increases upload bandwidth, but also makes the game run smoother if you're experiencing packet loss problems.
Next we have a graph that indicates how quickly the client renders frames and whether or not it's getting enough server updates to do so without generating it's own information (using prediction). When it is using prediction the graph will go above the grey line in this area and turn yellow/orange/red depending on how long it's been since you received updates from the server.
Finally, there's a line at the bottom of the netgraph that indicates your framerate and cl_cmdrate setting. A light blue dot is placed here for each command packet actually sent out per frame. If commands are delayed, it'll place a red dot here.
<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Sattelite is the worst connection for online gaming, bcause it has extremely large pings (sattelites are far from Earth and it takes some time for the data to wander there and back), something like 5000ms (5s) minimal.
BTW i have ISDN and when i find good server (mostly in Germany or Italia - thats close to me) i have ping about 60 ms. But more often its something like 100-200ms.
And no problem Thansal. I re-read it from time to time, as it's a lousy tool to have to figure out and keep track of in-game. Be much better if they allowed you to log all that to a file and graph it later in excel or something. Maybe someone knows how?
Download Time 3020 ms
Receive Buffer Not available
Transmission Speed 2649 Kb/s
Just like to brag mostly. The best part is my cable only costs 40 bucks a month Canadian!
Oh, and like others have stated, satellited is not a viable option for gaming, go for DSL, or cable, whatever's in your area.
Bleh! I can't believe it was something as easy as this!!! Atleast I think I fixed it, teh few games I played had very huge firefights in them where I could actually take part in them rather than twitching a bit and then dieing! My ping stays at a good 50-200 now <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif'><!--endemo-->
Just so you guys know I messed around with these four commands
CL_CMDRATE
CL_DLMAX
CL_UPDATERATE
CL_RATE
CL_RATE seemed to do the trick.. it was at 1500.00000 so I messed around with it a bit.. tried lowering it to 1k tried incressing it to 2k.. not really knowing what the numbers really did.. then I just said **** it and put it at 10k to see what it'd be like.. and I believe that fixed it!! I hope everyone else can work off of what I did and make their comp run lovely with this game as well <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
Getting much higher than 50FPS.
Not getting visual slowdowns.
It sounds like when you are saying ping's you are meaning 'the screen gets visually unusable, big action slow-downs? Or am I misunderstanding you. The bottleneck could very well be that Celeron, or some other video peripheral config issue. We can help you out though, just let me know what OS you have. I highly doubt it's your network connection though.
PS: Follow up question - are you running 32-bit color in NS, and what are your NS screen resolution settings? To check for 32-bit, look at the properties of your NS shortcut for the line '-32bpp'.
(and the big diff between a Celeron and other processors is the L2 cache)<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Eh.. that sounds interesting running more than 50 FPS <!--emo&;)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/wink.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='wink.gif'><!--endemo-->
My OS is Windows XP.. so should I go check out perfmon? (no clue what this is)
I do get somewhat of a visual slow down, but nothing at all to complain about.. when I got the Radeon 7500 I was running NS with NO vid card at all.. so looking at a single PG would drop my FPS dramatically.. I made it my job to make sure I could run that game with atleast 30 PGs in one room <!--emo&;)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/wink.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='wink.gif'><!--endemo--> About the lowest my FPS gets now is around 35 in large rooms with loads of stuff happening. Cramped places always maxes out at 60 (I set it as 60 for a max).
AS you read from my earlier post.. I fixed this.. I think.. but I'll explain it.
My ping will be fine with only around say.. 6 people in a room. But if like 3 marines would come into that room and start shooting at stuff, causeing havoc and all that, my ping would increase by about ten times.. making it very hard to even attempt to stop them in my end. Once I die, or kill them, or run away, basically remove myself from the area, my ping will go back to normal.
<!--QuoteBegin--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->PS: Follow up question - are you running 32-bit color in NS, and what are your NS screen resolution settings? To check for 32-bit, look at the properties of your NS shortcut for the line '-32bpp'.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Err.. I dunno about the bitcolor, the command line for my NS shorcut looks like this
D:\Sierra\Counter-Strike\cstrike.exe -game ns -noipx -nointro -console
I run it in 1024x786 in openGL.
Maybe it'd just be best if I posted a SS of my netgraph next time I get into a situation like that? Reply if it'd help.
And if you are running with good cable, your rate should have been set higher. When you install NS, the installer asks you about what speed your connection is. That section of code then takes your answer and writes out (fairly) optimal settings in your config file. If it said 1500 that means you ignored the question from the installer and just clicked 'next'. With fast cable it should be somewhere from 7500-8500 usually.
^_^
And if you are running with good cable, your rate should have been set higher. When you install NS, the installer asks you about what speed your connection is. That section of code then takes your answer and writes out (fairly) optimal settings in your config file. If it said 1500 that means you ignored the question from the installer and just clicked 'next'. With fast cable it should be somewhere from 7500-8500 usually.
^_^ <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
ok time to try to put a pic here...
Edit: *to retarded to find out how to post a pic*
I cropped em up so that they'd be nice and small.
The problem is those red graph lines on the bottom half - those show a large amount of time where you are not receiving data from the server (packet loss) and are operating heavily in client prediction. That would explain the freezing up process you see, where everything gets very choppy and things start teleporting. Your client is only getting enough data to draw your 'NS world' infrequently.
Weird... and this only happens when you get into intensive action with lots of onscreen data? Do you experience anything like this in other games or HL mods, or just NS? A fascinating problem, considering your network latency and FPS rates stay very acceptable. Still, it points towards a net issue at this point.
What is the network card you have installed (exact make and model please) and the associated driver?
The problem is those red graph lines on the bottom half - those show a large amount of time where you are not receiving data from the server (packet loss) and are operating heavily in client prediction. That would explain the freezing up process you see, where everything gets very choppy and things start teleporting. Your client is only getting enough data to draw your 'NS world' infrequently.
Weird... and this only happens when you get into intensive action with lots of onscreen data? Do you experience anything like this in other games or HL mods, or just NS? A fascinating problem, considering your network latency and FPS rates stay very acceptable. Still, it points towards a net issue at this point.
What is the network card you have installed (exact make and model please) and the associated driver? <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
Glad to know I'm a unique case <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo-->
Yes, this only happens with intess action with lots of onscreen data.. I does happen in DoD.. but I've never really experianced it in CS.. well.. not that I can remember.. it's been so long since I've played it :x
Over all, NS has made this problem well known.. since the battles are so much more severe in this mod compared to others.. since they're more "kill or be killed in a second".
My Network card? =/
I think I know what you're talking about.. I use an ethernet something or another.. lemme go search around a bit.
Local Area Connection 2
Enabled
Linksys NC100 Fast Ethernet Adapter
1394 Connection
Enabled
1394 Net Adapter #2
Local Area Connection #1
Disabled
Realtek RTL8139 Family PCI Fast Ethernet NIC
The only Card I actually use, as far as I remember, would be Linksys Ethernet one. I had to buy this to use cable on my old comp, and just threw it into this new comp thinking it needed it to run online, the cable also is inserted into this card from my modem.
Oh, and MonsE, what exactly is perfmon? (never mind, just google ;D)
Before i switched to Win XP pro, i had pings of 450.
But after years of copping with my ping, i've learned to play more defensively, cuz i know if i go head on, ill get killed.
It's really just a matter of getting used to it..
safe to say, when i play CS on LANs.. im unbeatable.
Thansal - Start | Run | 'perfmon', run it. You will see a graphical performance monitor (get it? <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif'><!--endemo--> ) server load up. This tool has been around for a long time (NT 3.5), and is the main way to diagnose a lot of issues in NT/2000/XP/2003. To try it out, click the '+' sign up top, then in the sub-dialog, drop down the 'Performance Object' field. As you can see, you will be able to track performance and information on almost every single aspect of your PC, from true network traffic, process info, hard drive activity, memory info, leaking apps, .... almost anything. You can also log the data, set up alarms to tell you when things are going haywire, and so on. It's an often unknown tool to many people, but one of the best in the NT-kernel toolbox...
<!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->