odd gaming lag in general

Hello there, this is probably my first post here, and it's about an issue that has plagued my gaming experience for as many years as i can remember, i'll try explain it as best i can and provide examples...

In multiplayer games (mainly shooters), i get a sort of lag that makes it seem like my enemies are always ahead of me even when my latency is as low as 20ms.

In Battlefield 4 i get "ghost shots" when using vehicles and aircraft, tank shells for example can land directly on a chopper but will often not register as hits, or i might miss the chopper entirely but it will blow up a second later from a registered hit.. in return i am killed around corners quite often (hitbox lagging behind), and i visually see projectiles miss but register as hits on the vehicle or aircraft that i'm using.

In APB: Reloaded the hitreg is wonky at best, using shotguns is a nightmare as half the blasts don't register as hits, but when an enemy uses one they appear to get perfect hitreg, i have also been killed around corners in APB but not quite as blatant as in BF4.

I started noticing this sort of lag around the time CoD: Modern Warfare 2 released, the hitbox lag was apparent from the very first match i played, it then happened in CoD: Black Ops 2 and finally in CoD: Modern Warfare 3, some side-effect of the matchmaking i imagine, but is it really?

I made this thread to try figure out why this is happening, what made it start happening, and if there is literally anything i can do to alleviate the problem.

We are currently with virgin media, using the "medium" broadband package which is 30/2, and have used this ISP for many years across several house moves

Thanks for any help/advice,

(not entirely sure this is the right place to post but it seemed like it)

?
In February weren't you on EE?

Is this wireless or wired to your router? If wireless, is it different wired?

Is it affected by the time of day, and perhaps also the day of the week?

yehhh you jogged my memory, i was living with a family member at the time but it didn't last long..

this is wired, the lag is persistent throughout the day, week, month, year

Get thinkbroadband or f8lure ping monitoring on your connection for a day or so, and then post the graph here.

What router? Try disabling firewall on it.

Cable services tend to have more lag and variability in ping than their xDSL cousins and if you are in a busy area this can be worse.

What upload speed are you on? If running voice as well as gameplay it is possible you might get oddities if for example someone else is in the house and browses to a web page - faster connections suffer this less.

Beyond that was are standard out going pings like e.g. ping -n 30 www.thinkbroadband.com which will ping us 30 times to give a reasonable average.

the upload speed we have is 2mb which i think is 256kb/s...

the ping had 0% loss with a minumum of 15ms and a maximum of 24ms

___

the router is a netgear WGR614V9 hooked up to a virgin media superhub (1 i believe)that's in modem mode.. the netgear router provides a better wireless signal though i've seen no difference in wired connectivity when using the superhub either

Edited by deleted (Wed 27-Aug-14 20:01:00)

Okay try a ping -t www.thinkbroadband.com running for a longer period (CTRL C will stop it to get stats) and see if there are spikes every so often.

It is possible for one site to be good, so if pings to us are stable then pick some other sites to ping or ideally the servers you regularly play on.

no spikes in the longer ping but i did notice a difference when i pinged a few battlefield game servers, just that the TTL was 113 instead of 51 which it was when pinging thinkbroadband.. does this mean anything?

Just that they are probably further away. Some games have a tendency to pick foreign servers i.e. coders think as UK is in European a mainland Europe server is a good choice

you tried different machines?

all on microsoft?

as on alleviating the problem practice practice practice - play so much you know what they are going to do before they do. dont play games by lazy usless developers that use hitscan as the norm.

Edited by deleted (Wed 27-Aug-14 21:56:04)

had a few different computers over the years and nothing has changed significantly, i'm using win7 atm, and vista before..

alleviating as in fixing whatever network setting is throwing artificial lag at my connection that on the surface seems totally fine

same mouse? look at everything starting from your end.

I'm sorry but I worked for Xerox for 27yrs and was heavily involved with the development of Ethernet., It was designed as a medium for fast data transfer - not who could shoot someone faster than another.......rant over.

??????

Try my suggestions.

@pipexer

the netgear router doesn't have a firefall as far as i can tell, or at the very least a setting to turn it off if one exists.

i tried the thinkbroadband monitor months back but i couldn't get it working, i'll get the f8lure monitor and run it over the next 24 hours

@bigbadpirate

not at all mate, i've went through a bunch of mice in the last 5 years, from cheap £3 ones that broke apart in a handful of weeks, to gaming mice that are built to last, most recently is a mionix branded mouse that i bought a week ago

as for the rest of the pc, i've had 3 computers, one was pre- built, the second was selected piece by piece, and the 3rd was as well, each of these had slight upgrades along the way

the only consistent medium would be the internet connection which as i said in a previous posts shows no issues on the surface so i believe there's a setting or a handful of settings somewhere either in windows or in the very coding of these games that is screwing with my connection, or perhaps it's infrastructure related

Edited by deleted (Wed 27-Aug-14 23:09:21)

F8lure will be fine as you also get a 2nd opinion with it. This will at least show-up lag spikes and might save a lot of faffing about. I look forward to viewing the graph tomorrow.

sorry but how do i use F8lure, it's asking for a host so i can create a test? i assumed it was a downloadable program that i could run in the background

What anti-virus and firewall software are you running?

no anti-virus and bog-standard windows firewall

i don't use an anti-virus because i have flashblock and adblock plus in firefox, then have spybot 2 running and updating/re-immunizing every month or so.. i've had this setup for years now on multiple computers and so far it hasn't posed a problem, though i also stay away from dodgy sites

*flak shield activated*

Host as in your public ip address the tool at
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ip.html

Will tell you that

got it MrSaffron, cheers

what do i do after adding a test? does it just run if i close the browser?

Edited by deleted (Wed 27-Aug-14 23:46:20)

nevermind, figured it out, will post the graph later on tonight

http://beusergroup.co.uk/drsox/f8lure/index.php/5403...

as promised, here's the graph over 22 hours, the big spike at the start might have been caused by APB: Reloaded freezing frequently, but through general use it seems to be a steady connection

That does look a little bit spikey - are you using your connection constantly from 10:00 to 23:30 (approx)? Even overnight it looks a bit less stable than I'd like but not necessarily cause for concern.

Does the firebrick graph show more serious spikes? They ping more frequently than what the top graph on f8lure does..

the spike i spoke about was long gone but i did notice several more big spikes just like it across the last few days..

here's the firebrick one http://f8lure.mouselike.org/proxyfirebrick.asp?Host=...

hello again, does anyone have any idea what's causing this? the answer will most likely decide what ISP i'll go with in my new place, provided it isn't a UK-wide issue

Getting off of the cable network even if just a reasonable speed ADSL2+ connection could bring you better stability ping wise - that's if the instability is down to the connection.

ping isn't the problem, netcode hooha is.. maybe it's just the games after all, but it's so consistent it makes me feel like there's something on my end just killing it

what's fibre like though? i was thinking of going with plusnet fibre@38/9 but there's a large upfront cost and around a month of waiting before it's installed and ready to use so i'm on the edge.. just waiting to pinpoint an ISP with the least chance of having these issues

Well if its the games netcode then no connection will help.

Given the millions with connections your speed and faster I'd expect gaming forums to be a lot more awash with issues.

In reply to a post by NuPe:

what's fibre like though? i was thinking of going with plusnet fibre@38/9 but there's a large upfront cost and around a month of waiting before it's installed and ready to use

It's 38/19.5 or 76/19.5 and if you also take Plusnet line rental (on anything but VM Cable you have to take line rental from someone) the upfront cost should be at most £49.99 for a new line or transfer from a cable line, plus perhaps the £5.99 P & P on a Plusnet router. Your VM router should work but may itself be dodgy.

ah, could've been 19.5, only looked at it once or twice..

i'll be honest, i don't work, and there's still a lot more i need to buy before my flat is able to be comfortably lived in at all, so throwing down the £75 (1st month/installation/router) for a service i'd not get for almost a month is a bit out there y'know?

but where else do i turn since i've just about had it with virgin media, and would really like to try someone else, it just seems like the best fibre deal around but at this rate i'm gona miss the discount and prolong the time i have no internet/phone line, the only other thing offputting about this fibre deal is the discount that would only last 6 of the 18 contract months

Keep an eye on both Topcashback and Quidco who these days seem to alternate with good Plusnet deals, though perhaps only on the 76/19.5. Check them out for any ISP, and anything you buy online.

Best to keep a different browser for use on such sites, as if the provider company has cookies on your machine from previous browsing the cashback can be rejected.

PlusNet fibre offers have until 28th October now.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Keep an eye on both Topcashback and Quidco who these days seem to alternate with good Plusnet deals, though perhaps only on the 76/19.5. Check them out for any ISP, and anything you buy online.

Best to keep a different browser for use on such sites, as if the provider company has cookies on your machine from previous browsing the cashback can be rejected.

had a change of luck and got my hands on a load of free stuff for my flat so i can spare the £75 now

topcashback have an offer on the fibre deal i was looking at, up to £157.50 cashback.. i don't have a clue what this entails but cheers for the heads-up... would it be possible to get your plusnet username so i can add you as a referrer?

I don't think you can get Cashback and use a referrer, because the cashback sites are referrers as well. I'd hate to screw up that much cashback for you. Thanks for asking though .

You have to take Plusnet line rental as well as the FTTC to get it that .

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

I don't think you can get Cashback and use a referrer, because the cashback sites are referrers as well. I'd hate to screw up that much cashback for you. Thanks for asking though .

ahh yeh, that makes perfect sense, i will be ordering the landline along with the fibre because i'll need one.. there's a BT phone socket and another BT box thingy right next to it but i doubt that's enough to warrant a discount or something on the installation fee so i'll not fuss around any longer

alright, that's ordered.. in 2-3 weeks i'll update the thread with how well the fibre is working out for me, cheers

Edited by deleted (Wed 03-Sep-14 20:48:33)

Are you guys forgetting something!?!

I'm with PN fiber fttc and even with a rock solid connection this very same hit reg problem is consists. The real problem is ISP's not taking responsibility for the quality for their providers(the service they pay for). Basicly they are paying bottom end prices for their link agreements that affect our connection to these game servers.


But what really annoys me is the way you guys promote dsl connections (BT) for no good reason. If anything cable is a better choice for gamers, firstly because it doesn't use BT's rubbish infrastructure and because cable had been and still is by far evolved past dsl. Cable has a faster tick rate and shares less nods than BT's network.

What would be really nice is if someone could provide some REAL useful info about this problem and not make it worse by encouraging everyone to use BT making them the dominating, monopolizing company that has no intentions in fixing or giving two f's about anything other than money.

I am disgusted with this behaviour. What has this world come to!?!

Post deleted by mlmclaren

Well until Virgin Media improves its local links and removing congestion between me and 10 miles away then we can discuss what providers have better connections beyond!