my question comes from something i noticed while playing this online game, when i connect to a server with the lowest latency i get packet losses and stability pretty often but when i connect to a different server with almost 100ms higher latency its much more stable for my whole play session. does latency have anything to do or probably is just an overloaded server or messy routing?
Game networking typically uses UDP which is a connectionless protocol so what constitutes a connection and also a dropped connection is up to the game. Same for packet loss and retransmission handling, itâs entirely up to the game.
Latency is the time between when your client sends a packet and receives a response so lower latency generally means more packets for a given period of time and more chances for packet loss. Higher latency isnât really better in any way though. There could be any number of reasons you get a better connection to one server over another but I doubt higher latency is one of them.
4 Likes
Thereâs an issue somewhere on the line there, itâs not related directly to latency. It could be that your modem has a pretty low buffer so that causes a lot of packet loss and jittering (inconsistant packets delivery times), issues with the on board LAN adapter (software or hardware), issues with the cable youâre using, issues with some hops on the way.
Itâs pretty difficult to diagnose, but Iâd say you could start from whatâs in your network using iperf3 between two clients and work your way out. You can use ping plotter to analyze your connection to the problematic host and see if there are any bottlenecks on the way.
If nothing comes of it, itâs an issue with the server and you can only contact the owners to fix the issue.
As a rule in computing, lower latency to the server is better.
There can be situations in game netcode where players can take advantage of high latency, but thatâs game specific and unrelated to your stability question.
A single number like games so often display is often misleading for latency too, latency is constantly changing, a better picture would measure over a time window and record the min and max. Itâs normally the max that has things breaking. But a game server browser doesnât have much time to do that.
First of all 2 datapoints makes a rough basis for a representational analysis.
And secondly those are 2 different things. You can get high or low packet loss with high or low latency.
Latency is how fast people are driving on the freeway, packet loss is how many drivers end up in the bushes doing it.
FFS, look at all these feral philosophers.
No. The answer to your question is ânoâ.
Something along the route is causing packet loss.
A continuous pathping or tracert will expose which hop is the problem. Sometimes ICMP is suppressed so you may not get this info but⌠its def the cause.
meh, its ok, let them be, they must have a legit reason to be like that.
What?
People were answering your question is all.
Also:
Thatâs not how it works unless the client is waiting for a server response until it sends the next packet, which would be incredibly dumb to do especially when - as youâre pointing out - games tend to use UDP where there is no response.
Packets are sent at a steady rate, when they arrive at the destination is irrelevant for the sender side.
To send more packets in a given timeframe you need more bandwidth, not lower latency.
and im thankful, just playing along with the other guy. dont mind me.
Ideally packets are sent at a steady rate⌠but when ping is poor both the client and server may (and should) adjust their behavior. It is up to the game but something is generally done to cope with poor connections, either sending less often, sending less data or both. If no adjustment was made that would be dumb because then when thereâs a hiccup in the connection blindly continuing to send the same number and size of packets is likely to cause lag spikes or dropped âconnectionsâ. The concepts of responses and connections still exist, theyâre just not handled by UDP but by the game.
The time packets arrive at either side is also definitely relevant because the data weâre talking about is intended to synchronize state. Youâll see a lot less interpolation when data is received immediately after being sent. When packets arrive late games tend to guess where objects are heading leading to the well known issues with bizarre behavior of game objects when ping is high. How long it takes packets to arrive at either side is very important which is why ping is measured using both these times, itâs literally the round trip time.
Connections that are bandwidth limited on the client side would likely have poor ping regardless of which server was used. eg. someone else in the house is watching netflix.
2 Likes