low-latency router needed

[NickOlsen8390]

Originally posted by: VirtualLarry

Originally posted by: spidey07
VituralLarry, Internet latency can vary as much as 100 ms or more. You aren't going to notice anything with a SOHO router unless it is overloaded. Game traffic is very small and you can't control it once it gets on the Internet...that's the whole point.

When gamers get "lag" it's because that's just the way the Internet works.

If internet latency was that bad, then online realtime game playing would be impossible. On a decent broadband ISP connection, the latency should be under 50ms at most, although it this case it's 25ms +/- 5. If my latency was 100ms, I would cancel my ISP subscription. In case you just skimmed and didn't read my math, in this particular case, a 3ms lag from the SOHO router in fact does matter, and causes the game to skip frames, making it far less playable.

This issue is consistant (according to my friend), not random internet lag. Then again, that's hard to objectively prove, but I hope to on Fri. when I go over to his house to run some extended ping tests.

Lol, He already made a fool out of himself. Just in thinking that in online games the game will drop frames if you are at a higher ping. Almost like its streaming the frames from the server.

This is great. It has been explained to him many times and now hes just denying what were all saying.


Larry obviously knows nothing about how the internet works or how games work with said internet.
Go buy a 150 dollar gaming router. It shouldn't change anything at all. 1-3ms of change is not noticeable, I don't care what bullshit math you pull out. Because your whole theory is based on the idea that if you ping is not lower then x then the game drops frames. But it doesn't work like that. The game engine and network engine are much more separate. The game is going to render frames weather there is network data coming in or not. Otherwise the game would be a slide show for every dropped packet you get, Which is much more frequent then you think.

 

[TheKub]

Originally posted by: VirtualLarry
If internet latency was that bad, then online realtime game playing would be impossible. On a decent broadband ISP connection, the latency should be under 50ms at most, although it this case it's 25ms +/- 5. If my latency was 100ms, I would cancel my ISP subscription. In case you just skimmed and didn't read my math, in this particular case, a 3ms lag from the SOHO router in fact does matter, and causes the game to skip frames, making it far less playable.

Ping time != frame rate.

I can make up math too, it doesn't mean its right.

Lower is always better but 10-30 ms isn't going to make a difference.

I suggest posting in the PC Gaming thread how 30+ms ping = impossible to play, just to see what kind of replies you get.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: NickOlsen8390
Lol, He already made a fool out of himself. Just in thinking that in online games the game will drop frames if you are at a higher ping. Almost like its streaming the frames from the server.

Your the only fool here. Have you actually played the games in question, online, and watched what happens when it lags? The game engines pause for a frame or two until the updates catch up. That's the only way that the game can continue to operate properly synchronized between the two machines.

I used to be a professional game programmer, I know what I'm talking about.

Originally posted by: NickOlsen8390
Larry obviously knows nothing about how the internet works or how games work with said internet.
Go buy a 150 dollar gaming router. It shouldn't change anything at all. 1-3ms of change is not noticeable, I don't care what bullshit math you pull out. Because your whole theory is based on the idea that if you ping is not lower then x then the game drops frames. But it doesn't work like that. The game engine and network engine are much more separate. The game is going to render frames weather there is network data coming in or not. Otherwise the game would be a slide show for every dropped packet you get, Which is much more frequent then you think.

You are thinking about 3D MMORPGs, not frame-based fighting games. Frame-based fighting games operate how I describe. And yes, the game can become a slide show if the network connection is really bad.

You should really familiarize yourself with the subject matter at hand before you open your mouth.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: spidey07
Sure, because ping is a great way to measure latency...NOT.

Ok, have anything better to suggest then?

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: TheKub
Ping time != frame rate.

They are directly related, for the game engines that I am talking about.

Originally posted by: TheKub
I can make up math too, it doesn't mean its right.

Lower is always better but 10-30 ms isn't going to make a difference.

I suggest posting in the PC Gaming thread how 30+ms ping = impossible to play, just to see what kind of replies you get.

Again, these are NOT PC GAMES. These are frame-based console fighting games. Totally different story. Why don't you people understand this and know what you are talking about.

 

[Crusty]

Perhaps because you never mentioned that in the OP?

 

[Modelworks]

Originally posted by: VirtualLarry

Originally posted by: TheKub
Ping time != frame rate.

They are directly related, for the game engines that I am talking about.

No they are not.
As someone who works with developers I can tell you that frame rate is completely independent , especially on consoles. If a game only updated frames when it received packets on time you wouldn't be able to see 30fps let alone 60fps.

Again, these are NOT PC GAMES. These are frame-based console fighting games. Totally different story. Why don't you people understand this and know what you are talking about.

They are not frame based. Games are designed to run at a preset frame rate in order to qualify for licensing. If they cannot maintain that rate then either the game engine is optimized or features are cut. The code for networking and rendering are totally separate .

 

[Aarondeep]

Wow, this thread is getting long and drawn out. VirtualLarry, saying that there is a noticeable difference in 1-3ms variance in ping times is utterly ludicrous. Getting into scientific arguments is pointless.
Remember he is on a cable connection that is shared and who knows what kind of traffic shaping these new cablecos are doing these days, different peak usage times, etc..

Since you say your friend does notice a difference when he isn't behind the router....
Here's what you do:
1. Check for available firmware updates on that router.
2. See if it makes any difference (if there was a firmware update)
If there is no difference and your friend still detects lag, try and get your hands on a temporary router and isolate if it is a hardware issue. (Hardware/Firmware seem to be the only plausible causes)
If he is STILL claiming lag:
It could be that the PS3 doesn't like being behind a NAT (guessing here)
Try portforwarding all known ps3 network ports:
Check at www.portforward.com under common ports.
Make sure to assign a static IP address on the PS3.
oh yeah.. You could also put that static IP on a DMZ if you can't find the correct ports to use.

If that still has no effect on lag, then your friend is delusional.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: Modelworks
They are not frame based. Games are designed to run at a preset frame rate in order to qualify for licensing. If they cannot maintain that rate then either the game engine is optimized or features are cut. The code for networking and rendering are totally separate .

These fighting game engines are frame-based state machines. They require input before they can update to the next state transition. If they didn't, they would desyncronize. Note that I've been talking about engine frame-rate, not display frame-rate. Display frame-rate is fixed, at the frame rate of the display device. But things like movement updates are synchronized to controller input updates, which means that the controller input coming over the wire. If you played these games, you would see how this works. When the network lags, the whole game lags and pauses. The music keeps running at a normal rate though, and the display keeps updating at 60fps or whatever.


In comparison, most MMO engines are totally seperate, and work asyncronously with updates. That's why you see "warping", when updates get delayed by the network, and then finally the updates kick in and the client updates. There is no warping in console games, the game engine pauses instead.

 

[spidey07]

VirtualLarry...stop it, you don't have a fundamental understanding of how the Internet works.

If you want to compute router latency then do the math - here's your homework assignment.

1) Serialization delay (based on clock speed of carrier) of NIC to put frame onto wire, that's all there is there. You'll have to research frame size for gaming - hint...it's small.
2) Latency of router to make forwarding decision, build state (already formed...it's gaming traffic, it's really small).
3) Serialization delay of router to put frame onto wire, based on clock speed of carrier on the egress interface, forwarding state is already formed
4) The Internet!!!!!!!!!!!!

Come back with those calculations. They will be less than 2 ms.

 

[NickOlsen8390]

Originally posted by: VirtualLarry

Originally posted by: NickOlsen8390
Lol, He already made a fool out of himself. Just in thinking that in online games the game will drop frames if you are at a higher ping. Almost like its streaming the frames from the server.

Your the only fool here. Have you actually played the games in question, online, and watched what happens when it lags? The game engines pause for a frame or two until the updates catch up. That's the only way that the game can continue to operate properly synchronized between the two machines.

I used to be a professional game programmer, I know what I'm talking about.

Originally posted by: NickOlsen8390
Larry obviously knows nothing about how the internet works or how games work with said internet.
Go buy a 150 dollar gaming router. It shouldn't change anything at all. 1-3ms of change is not noticeable, I don't care what bullshit math you pull out. Because your whole theory is based on the idea that if you ping is not lower then x then the game drops frames. But it doesn't work like that. The game engine and network engine are much more separate. The game is going to render frames weather there is network data coming in or not. Otherwise the game would be a slide show for every dropped packet you get, Which is much more frequent then you think.

You are thinking about 3D MMORPGs, not frame-based fighting games. Frame-based fighting games operate how I describe. And yes, the game can become a slide show if the network connection is really bad.

You should really familiarize yourself with the subject matter at hand before you open your mouth.

lawl, Dude.
I don't care if you were a professional gamer. I have been playing games for years and currently run 3 dedicated tf2 servers, On my server hosted at the ISP i work for. Mabey you need to stop playing video games and start understanding how the internet works, or games for that matter.

But really, it all goes back to the start. The fact that a 3ms difference isn't noticeable.
And as stated, If you or your friend say they can see a difference, they are ridiculously delusional.
Hell, even if you got the added latency of the router down to like .00000000001ms your still going to see 5-50ms changes just in your cable connection. So anything you do will be futile, your on cable, get use to it.


/thread

 

[Modelworks]

Originally posted by: VirtualLarry

Originally posted by: Modelworks
They are not frame based. Games are designed to run at a preset frame rate in order to qualify for licensing. If they cannot maintain that rate then either the game engine is optimized or features are cut. The code for networking and rendering are totally separate .

These fighting game engines are frame-based state machines. They require input before they can update to the next state transition. If they didn't, they would desyncronize. Note that I've been talking about engine frame-rate, not display frame-rate. Display frame-rate is fixed, at the frame rate of the display device. But things like movement updates are synchronized to controller input updates, which means that the controller input coming over the wire. If you played these games, you would see how this works. When the network lags, the whole game lags and pauses. The music keeps running at a normal rate though, and the display keeps updating at 60fps or whatever.


In comparison, most MMO engines are totally seperate, and work asyncronously with updates. That's why you see "warping", when updates get delayed by the network, and then finally the updates kick in and the client updates. There is no warping in console games, the game engine pauses instead.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/..._on_a_288_network_.php

 

[funkbass81]

why are people arguing with this troll? this is the same guy who thinks win98 is superior to XP in every way. this thread is nothing but trollbait, and he got you all hook line and sinker

 

[TheKub]

Originally posted by: VirtualLarry
Again, these are NOT PC GAMES. These are frame-based console fighting games. Totally different story. Why don't you people understand this and know what you are talking about.

Go to ANY home connection and ping any ip 100 times you are WITHOUT a doubt going to see fluctuations of a higher magnitude than 1-2 ms.

But who am I kidding, this has been say multiple times and you are being ignorant. You do not want to listen to the people you asked for help.

If games are that important to your friend tell him to directly connect the PS3 to the modem. On the rare occasions that he needs to use the PC have him plug the PC in via the router. I'd love to be able to tell you that a $100 gaming router will work but if your router is operating normally and only generating 1-2ms of additional latency NO other router you can buy will get around this.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: TheKub
Go to ANY home connection and ping any ip 100 times you are WITHOUT a doubt going to see fluctuations of a higher magnitude than 1-2 ms.

Well Duh. I've never said anything different.

Originally posted by: TheKub
But who am I kidding, this has been say multiple times and you are being ignorant. You do not want to listen to the people you asked for help.

I'm not ignorant. I understand perfectly well how the internet works, how routers work, and how fighting game engines work.

Originally posted by: TheKub
If games are that important to your friend tell him to directly connect the PS3 to the modem. On the rare occasions that he needs to use the PC have him plug the PC in via the router. I'd love to be able to tell you that a $100 gaming router will work but if your router is operating normally and only generating 1-2ms of additional latency NO other router you can buy will get around this.

The hypothesis was that, given a marginal ping, that the router produced enough latency to affect the ping such that the frame rate on the game would be affected. (Resultant ping of internet+router latency greater than 33.3ms.)

Well, here's the hard numbers.

Ping -n 100 64.233.161.147 (www.google.com)
with router (min,max,ave) --- without router (min,max,ave)
--------------------------------------------------------------------
22,50,24 --- 21,43,24
22,42,24 --- 21,41,23
22,43,24 --- 21,44,23
22,39,25

Looking at the numbers, the min ping is 1ms less without the router, and the average is also approx 1ms less.

Given that the average is 23-24ms, then the average ping is NOT marginal, and therefore the 1ms increase in latency due to the router doesn't make any difference in frame rates.

Conclusion: The router adds negligible latency to the connection, and therefore my friend is "seeing things" - blaming internet lag on the router.

Now, it's always possible that the PS3 acts slightly differently compared to ping, as far as the router handles the connection. But even if that were true, I don't think it would matter enough to affect frame rates.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: funkbass81
why are people arguing with this troll? this is the same guy who thinks win98 is superior to XP in every way. this thread is nothing but trollbait, and he got you all hook line and sinker

Stop smoking weed, and stop lying about me. I've never said that, never will, and you must be confusing me with someone else.

 

[JackMDS]

No need to derail the thread to "silly" personal attacks. :shocked:

Please let keep the discussion on technology. :thumbsup:

 

[us3rnotfound]

so what's the question then?

 

[ScottMac]

Originally posted by: VirtualLarry

Originally posted by: spidey07
VituralLarry, Internet latency can vary as much as 100 ms or more. You aren't going to notice anything with a SOHO router unless it is overloaded. Game traffic is very small and you can't control it once it gets on the Internet...that's the whole point.

When gamers get "lag" it's because that's just the way the Internet works.

If internet latency was that bad, then online realtime game playing would be impossible. On a decent broadband ISP connection, the latency should be under 50ms at most, although it this case it's 25ms +/- 5. If my latency was 100ms, I would cancel my ISP subscription. In case you just skimmed and didn't read my math, in this particular case, a 3ms lag from the SOHO router in fact does matter, and causes the game to skip frames, making it far less playable.

This issue is consistant (according to my friend), not random internet lag. Then again, that's hard to objectively prove, but I hope to on Fri. when I go over to his house to run some extended ping tests.

Lag doesn't skip frames, or cause skipped frames (if you're timing out a TCP packet, you have bigger problems than a router)
.
Lag is the result of congestion, and the traffic being buffered somewhere.

It could be buffered locally because the Torrent Traffic is eating all the bandwidth, or it could be buffered at the ISP (because Torrents are eating all the bandwidth), or it could be buffered in transit through "The Internet" (the non-"your"-ISP portion of the 'Net).

Un-congested traffic travels at full speed, constrained only by serialization and physics of the media (i.e., in an un-congested network, pings across town will always be faster then ping across the country).

 

[kevnich2]

VirtualLarry, the guys that you are calling idiots are pretty bright here. If you are going to argue with them then quit posting and just do what you think is best and when it doesn't work then you can just figure it out yourself. For everyone else, stop feeding him, if he wants to be ignorant and not take what anyone else is saying, that's his own decision. He obviously doesn't know how a network or the internet for that matter works. We can tell that just by his posts so let's just stop posting in this thread and be done.

And a quick answer, if the router is actually decent and configured properly, won't affect gaming at all. If the router is bad, well yes it could. If the guy is that concerned about his gaming speeds I certainly hope he didn't think some $10 router was going to perform that well. Spend a little money and get a $50-$100 SOHO router. The "gaming" routers are nothing more than a marketing ploy to get some more money from people.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: kevnich2
VirtualLarry, the guys that you are calling idiots are pretty bright here. If you are going to argue with them then quit posting and just do what you think is best and when it doesn't work then you can just figure it out yourself. For everyone else, stop feeding him, if he wants to be ignorant and not take what anyone else is saying, that's his own decision. He obviously doesn't know how a network or the internet for that matter works. We can tell that just by his posts so let's just stop posting in this thread and be done.

Put up or shut up. What have I said that showed somehow that I don't understand the internet?

The only thing that I can see, is that no one else has shown any understanding about how these two particular games react, when presented with internet latency, except me, because I've played them. I'm even going to go out on a limb here and suggest that no-one else has shown any understanding of the term "frame-based state machine", because if they did, then they would realize why the game engine pauses when it is waiting for an update, causing effective frame rate to drop. For those that don't believe me when I say that - all they have to do is actually try playing these games in question and test it out. No one in this thread has said that they have played either one of these games. They just keep referring to PC gaming, which is irrelevant.

Is it because I suggested using "ping" to measure latency? I mean, it's an essential tool that was specifically designed to measure latency, and the oh-so-brilliant spidey07 tells me that I'm using the wrong tool for the job, but refuses to suggest a better one. Nice one.

All in all, it's shown that there are a lot of sadistic people on this forum, that prefer to belittle people rather than have a civilized discussion, especially when the subject matter is outside of their experience. I guess no-one else here plays console games.

Originally posted by: kevnich2
And a quick answer, if the router is actually decent and configured properly, won't affect gaming at all. If the router is bad, well yes it could. If the guy is that concerned about his gaming speeds I certainly hope he didn't think some $10 router was going to perform that well. Spend a little money and get a $50-$100 SOHO router. The "gaming" routers are nothing more than a marketing ploy to get some more money from people.

It was the "if the router is bad" part that I set out to test. The concern was that it was an older wired router, and sometimes older routers have slow CPUs and can definately add noticable latency to a connection. I had an old SMC Barricade (?) router that slowed the connection down when you enabled the SPI firewall. It had a 16-bit 80286 inside, which was slow, or at least their code was slow. It made playing Unreal Tournament online basically unplayable with the firewall enabled. I don't know what the CPU is inside this Netgear wired router.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Just did a ping -n 100 www.google.com, and on my Verizon DSL connection, I get min/max/ave latency of 40,292,42. The 292 was a single outlier, all of the other pings were either 40 or 41 ms. So this idea that internet connection are "highly" variable is nonsense, in my case.

It's disappointing that my latency is so high, I probably will never get a PS3 to play online games, as I would be skipping frames all the time on those games on my connection.

(Clarification, when I'm talking about skipping frames, I guess I really mean delaying frames, sorry.)

Edit: I tried it again, this time I get 39,42,40.

 

[Crusty]

Do you honestly expect your game serversto have quite the connections google does? Try pinging something other then google.

 

[NickOlsen8390]

This thread needs to be locked. Or it will keep going on like this.

 

[RadiclDreamer]

Originally posted by: VirtualLarry

Originally posted by: kevnich2
VirtualLarry, the guys that you are calling idiots are pretty bright here. If you are going to argue with them then quit posting and just do what you think is best and when it doesn't work then you can just figure it out yourself. For everyone else, stop feeding him, if he wants to be ignorant and not take what anyone else is saying, that's his own decision. He obviously doesn't know how a network or the internet for that matter works. We can tell that just by his posts so let's just stop posting in this thread and be done.

Put up or shut up. What have I said that showed somehow that I don't understand the internet?

The only thing that I can see, is that no one else has shown any understanding about how these two particular games react, when presented with internet latency, except me, because I've played them. I'm even going to go out on a limb here and suggest that no-one else has shown any understanding of the term "frame-based state machine", because if they did, then they would realize why the game engine pauses when it is waiting for an update, causing effective frame rate to drop. For those that don't believe me when I say that - all they have to do is actually try playing these games in question and test it out. No one in this thread has said that they have played either one of these games. They just keep referring to PC gaming, which is irrelevant.

Is it because I suggested using "ping" to measure latency? I mean, it's an essential tool that was specifically designed to measure latency, and the oh-so-brilliant spidey07 tells me that I'm using the wrong tool for the job, but refuses to suggest a better one. Nice one.

All in all, it's shown that there are a lot of sadistic people on this forum, that prefer to belittle people rather than have a civilized discussion, especially when the subject matter is outside of their experience. I guess no-one else here plays console games.

Originally posted by: kevnich2
And a quick answer, if the router is actually decent and configured properly, won't affect gaming at all. If the router is bad, well yes it could. If the guy is that concerned about his gaming speeds I certainly hope he didn't think some $10 router was going to perform that well. Spend a little money and get a $50-$100 SOHO router. The "gaming" routers are nothing more than a marketing ploy to get some more money from people.

It was the "if the router is bad" part that I set out to test. The concern was that it was an older wired router, and sometimes older routers have slow CPUs and can definately add noticable latency to a connection. I had an old SMC Barricade (?) router that slowed the connection down when you enabled the SPI firewall. It had a 16-bit 80286 inside, which was slow, or at least their code was slow. It made playing Unreal Tournament online basically unplayable with the firewall enabled. I don't know what the CPU is inside this Netgear wired router.

Spidey will own your face in every facet of interweb. Its best not to argue with him, it never ends well.