high ping after a few very short distance hops

[Ohrami]

i'm a complete networking noob, and i'm only trying to learn to fix some problems so i can get lower ping on some games. one game in particular uses a server located in Manassas, Virginia, roughly 450 plane miles from my residence (Louisville, Kentucky). despite that it's such a short distance, i still get ~40-45 ping at peak times and ~30 ping (neither of which are ideal pings) when late at night or early in the morning.

however, the 3rd hop on my traceroute gets 8-17 ms every time (a very ideal ping), and is less than 50 miles away from the destination according to this website. on the 8th hop, it leaves my ISP's network ("insightbb" and "rr" are both from my ISP, Time Warner Cable) and heads toward the final destination, which is, like i said, usually around 30 ms when nobody is awake or 40-45 ms at peak hours.

my question is, why are all those other hops that build up to reaching the final destination necessary? is there any way around it? it seems like the only reason why my ping is so high is because of how many hops are between Herndon, VA and Manassas, VA (less than 50 miles away from each other!)

i even know of a person who pings 12-15 to this server and lives in Quebec (much farther from the server than me), despite that he used to ping 45 ms when he first started playing the game, but he's completely antisocial and won't tell anyone how he improved his latency cuz gay

my traceroute:

 

[JackMDS]

I think that the saying is: "that's the way the cookie crumbles".

The only thing you can try is using another Public DNS.

Like:

8.8.8.8
8.8.4.4

 

[Ohrami]

I think that the saying is: "that's the way the cookie crumbles".

The only thing you can try is using another Public DNS.

Like:

8.8.8.8
8.8.4.4

from the OP: "i'm a complete networking noob"

in other words: explain pls

edit: ok i just tried what google said here but i got this and what should i put in place of "IP address", "Subnet mask", and "Default gateway"?

edit again: nevermind

 

[Ohrami]

ok my first post has been bombarded with so many edits i just decided to put this in a double post: what was this supposed to do because it seems to have had absolutely no effect

 

[imagoon]

You can't control the route your data takes though the internet, you are completely at the mercy of your ISP and the core networks. The only thing you really can do is pay for a connection higher up the core but that is large amounts of $$. IE a Level3 OC 192 would get you great pings to most of the Level3 network but would cost more that $5k a month in a downtown location and possible 30k+ a month in the country side.

 

[Ohrami]

You can't control the route your data takes though the internet, you are completely at the mercy of your ISP and the core networks. The only thing you really can do is pay for a connection higher up the core but that is large amounts of $$. IE a Level3 OC 192 would get you great pings to most of the Level3 network but would cost more that $5k a month in a downtown location and possible 30k+ a month in the country side.

please explain what is a level 3 OC 192 and what level or OC am I likely to be and how can I check

 

[JackMDS]

The point in imagoon post is that when you are using the Internet connecting via consumer account there is nothing you can do about the condition of the system that are out of your personal reach.

Playing with your hardware does not have bearing on the traffic out of your home/business.

Hence my comment about "that's the way the cookie crumbles".

If you subscribe to a industrial service that cost $5000 a month and above you might have more control on bigger part of the puzzle.

 

[imagoon]

please explain what is a level 3 OC 192 and what level or OC am I likely to be and how can I check

Level3 -> One of the internet backbone companies
OC192 -> Near 10Gb connection to the internet
You are likely not OC anything

 

[Ohrami]

why does the bandwidth matter for packets which are so small? is it just because i would have so much money invested the ISP would be more willing to kiss my ass and do what I ask them, or perhaps just give me a more "premium" routing path?

 

[imagoon]

Circuits like that would be hooked directly to the core network. That would eliminate a good number of hops. It would also be guaranteed bandwidth and not overcommited. You would also get hooked to higher power routers reducing routing time. For a company like Level3, even an OC192 would be "small potatoes."

 

[Pandasaurus]

To give you a slightly more detailed picture of what imagoon is referring to about Level 3...

Level 3 Communications current customers include Valve (Steam content delivery), Apple (iTunes music/video downloads), Netflix (streaming HD video), United States Department of Defense (Defense Information Systems Agency), among others. They also own or operate a fair chunk of the inter-continental fiber links running between the US and Europe, as well as a fair portion of the US internet backbone routers.

This is *not* the company you go to for your home internet. (Well, I guess maybe if you have a ton of cash to burn, but... At that point, I'd just tell you to share. ) They are the kind of company that doesn't post their prices, because if you have to ask, you can't afford it.

With that said... I can almost guarantee you aren't going to be able to get better ping times in your situation, due simply to the way the internet works. Your home router sends all of it's packets to your ISP's nearest router. That router is (likely) connected to several other routers within your ISP's private network. The routing protocol(s) in use will know either the fastest or shortest path (depending on the protocol, some calculate by number of hops, some use other information such as bandwidth of the links along the path, or a combination of these) to get to the destination and send the packet to the appropriate physically connected router, that router sends it to the next router in the path, etc, etc. The only way to change the path a packet takes through the network ("the network" being the entirety of the Internet, in this case) is by either A) Adding or upgrading hardware along the path to create a new, "better" (faster or shorter) path to the destination in question, or B) Modifying the metrics used by the routing protocol to optimize the hardware usage (IE: if a router is receiving more packets than it can process or buffer, it simply drops the packets).

Since we're talking about the backbone of the Internet, option B has (I can virtually guarantee you) already been done, long ago. That leaves option A. Since (again) we're talking about the backbone of the Internet, there's a decent chance that at least part of the path is running (at least) 10Gb links. And since it's taking ~40ms to communicate with somebody that's in a different *state* than you, I'd say that's not bad. A 40ms ping is well within playable ranges for any game out there. I mean, let's be realistic. It takes me 16-27ms just to get out of my own and my ISP's private networks out to the public Internet. My average ping from Arizona to Canada (I want to say the server is either in Vancouver or Toronto, but I don't remember at the moment) is ~90ms, and that's easily playable.

In theory, you could find out who owns the routers between you and your destination and complain about the route packets are taking, but I have yet to hear of anyone who has tried that and actually been successful. (I've personally known I think 3 people who have tried, and the response was something to the effect of "LOLNO, WE'RE NOT CHANGING ANYTHING FOR YOU!")

(Side note, for the people out there who are probably way smarter than I am {I'm looking at you, imagoon and JackMDS}: I'm probably over-simplifying things here, and I might be a bit off on some details, I'm just trying to give the OP a better picture of why what he wants is way outside the realm of reality for the average Joe, if not outright impossible)

 

[Ohrami]

In theory, you could find out who owns the routers between you and your destination and complain about the route packets are taking, but I have yet to hear of anyone who has tried that and actually been successful. (I've personally known I think 3 people who have tried, and the response was something to the effect of "LOLNO, WE'RE NOT CHANGING ANYTHING FOR YOU!")

most of those hops you will see are owned by my isp though, and like you said, when i called them and asked them to do something about it, they told me they can't

anyway thanks men though i disagree with you saying 40 ms is playable i actually don't even play when i have 40 ms only when i am getting a stable 30 (which still feels gei cuz have to lead shots halfway across the screen anyway cuz fps with slow-moving projectiles with no lag compensation and also rate of fire is slower on my favorite weapons cuz gaygame)

anyway i will still be searching for ways to optimize my ping cuz autism and obsessed with low ping

 

[Ohrami]

oh ofcoruse I forgot to ask, what exactly could/would my ISP do to improve my connection, assuming they actually wanted to?

 

[BarkingGhostar]

Level3 -> One of the internet backbone companies
OC192 -> Near 10Gb connection to the internet
You are likely not OC anything

Why use ATM (e.g. OC/Optical Carrier)? In today's world of optical Ethernet I would think Ethernet service is better. Just curious.

And I doubt even if the OP had a 10G pipe at his location it would help with latency between his ISP and the Tier-1 providers and the destination's ISP.

 

[Mushkins]

most of those hops you will see are owned by my isp though, and like you said, when i called them and asked them to do something about it, they told me they can't

anyway thanks men though i disagree with you saying 40 ms is playable i actually don't even play when i have 40 ms only when i am getting a stable 30 (which still feels gei cuz have to lead shots halfway across the screen anyway cuz fps with slow-moving projectiles with no lag compensation and also rate of fire is slower on my favorite weapons cuz gaygame)

anyway i will still be searching for ways to optimize my ping cuz autism and obsessed with low ping

Your ISP is 100% correct in what they told you. They can't do anything to reduce your ping to that server lower than what it is, nor is it their responsibility to.

You can disagree all you want, but 40ms is about the best ping you're ever going to get to a public internet game server. There's a million different factors going into why that might be 40ms instead of, say, 27ms. Some of them belong to you, some of them belong to the company running the server, some of them belong to the ISP, and some of them are flat out physics.

 

[imagoon]

Why use ATM (e.g. OC/Optical Carrier)? In today's world of optical Ethernet I would think Ethernet service is better. Just curious.

And I doubt even if the OP had a 10G pipe at his location it would help with latency between his ISP and the Tier-1 providers and the destination's ISP.

ATM? Irrelevant to the thread.
It would eliminate a ton of hops. Obviously it wouldn't eliminate the latency from the Tier 1 to the server. However most of the issue is inside RoadRunner, so if you eliminate RoadRunner the problem would be reduced.

The mentioned "12-15ms" ping is a pipe dream. Even if the Quebec guy had a direct, uninterrupted fiber from Qubec to Virginia, he would have 5.2ms of latency one direction. so the ping round trip there would be 10.4ms ignoring processing delays

Add in that most fiber needs a repeater around the 13mile mark, each repeat introduces some delay (20KM), the Quebec guy would have at least 51 repeaters. Also fiber rarely goes line of site.

The kansas one at 450 miles would have at least 3.7ms one way, 7.4ms being the floor for the connection.

So unless the Quebec guy is using the Stargate to connect, he isn't doing it in 12-15ms.

FYI light travels about 65% of its max speed in SM fiber so ~194865098 m/s

 

[Ohrami]

Your ISP is 100% correct in what they told you. They can't do anything to reduce your ping to that server lower than what it is, nor is it their responsibility to.

You can disagree all you want, but 40ms is about the best ping you're ever going to get to a public internet game server. There's a million different factors going into why that might be 40ms instead of, say, 27ms. Some of them belong to you, some of them belong to the company running the server, some of them belong to the ISP, and some of them are flat out physics.

27 ms still sucks i'm looking for below 20 i already get like 29-35 on that server during the early morning

40 ms clearly isn't the best you can get when most of the good players get anywhere between 4 and 20 (and a lot of them live farther away from the server than me), i guess roadrunner and/or kentucky routing is just complete garbage then

So unless the Quebec guy is using the Stargate to connect, he isn't doing it in 12-15ms.

but he's posted plenty of videos of him playing the game and it clearly shows and plays like 12-15 ping

 

[imagoon]

but he's posted plenty of videos of him playing the game and it clearly shows and plays like 12-15 ping

I can post videos of me benching the Sears tower also.

Manassas VA to the Quebec border is about 1025KM. Light speed in a vacuum would give him a ping of 6.7ms at that distance.

Light travels around 65-70% of the speed of light through the fiber. That makes a direct connection in perfect conditions (ie his computer connected to the fiber directly to the server with no processing delays [ie not real conditions])

Some where around: 8.71ms - 9.05ms. So that leaves around 3ms to 6ms for routing, packet transition delays and other circuit delays. Since the fiber is a) not a single jump b) doesn't likely go straight from Quebec to the server, it is really hard to believe that he is getting 12-15ms pings. I get 7ms pings just going from downtown in the Chicago Loop to the Chicago north side. 13ms to Milwaukee WI.

--edit--

I used the "better fiber figure" here to give him the benefit of the doubt. Hence the slightly better times in this post compared to above.

 

[Mushkins]

27 ms still sucks i'm looking for below 20 i already get like 29-35 on that server during the early morning

40 ms clearly isn't the best you can get when most of the good players get anywhere between 4 and 20 (and a lot of them live farther away from the server than me), i guess roadrunner and/or kentucky routing is just complete garbage then

27 ms ping times do not "suck," and you can't physically perceive the difference between 27 ms and 20 ms. The human body simply does not react that quickly.

And no, that guy isn't actually getting between 4 and 20 ms latency unless he's literally sitting on the same LAN as the server (which is possible if he's the one hosting the server). It's considerably more likely that the game is simply incorrectly measuring latency and displaying an inaccurate number. As Imagoon pointed out, you can't mystically will your internet connection to ignore the speed of light.

 

[Ohrami]

27 ms ping times do not "suck," and you can't physically perceive the difference between 27 ms and 20 ms. The human body simply does not react that quickly.

And no, that guy isn't actually getting between 4 and 20 ms latency unless he's literally sitting on the same LAN as the server (which is possible if he's the one hosting the server). It's considerably more likely that the game is simply incorrectly measuring latency and displaying an inaccurate number. As Imagoon pointed out, you can't mystically will your internet connection to ignore the speed of light.

i've seen plenty of people pinging 10 or less with command prompt (of course most of them do live closer to the server than me, but plenty of 15-20 ping players live farther), and yes it's actually very very noticeable between 20 ms and 27 ms
dps on some weapons will be decreased by as much as 4-5% between those 7 ms plus 7 ms of extra leading is quite a bit, plus obviously if you fire your weapon 6 ms earlier than the guy who has 20 ms you will die instead of him

 

[Mushkins]

i've seen plenty of people pinging 10 or less with command prompt (of course most of them do live closer to the server than me, but plenty of 15-20 ping players live farther), and yes it's actually very very noticeable between 20 ms and 27 ms
dps on some weapons will be decreased by as much as 4-5% between those 7 ms plus 7 ms of extra leading is quite a bit, plus obviously if you fire your weapon 6 ms earlier than the guy who has 20 ms you will die instead of him

Again, you cannot make light move faster than the speed of light, there's really nothing to argue about here.

You're welcome to try to prove that you can somehow perceive and react to a 7ms difference in latency, but I'm not sure how you're going to reliably prove that it was the latency and not that he simply was the one who clicked the button first, or has a slightly faster computer that registered the mouse click first, or any other of the million variables involved.

You're chasing smoke and mirrors here. Networking is the most static piece of the puzzle, there's no magic button for you to have a better connection than the other guy.

 

[Ohrami]

wut you must not need to move faster than speed of light to get 10 ping at 450 miles away

 

[Fardringle]

wut you must not need to move faster than speed of light to get 10 ping at 450 miles away

No, but you do need to have a straight, uninterrupted path with no slow hops, no network congestion, and nothing else slowing down the transmission (all of which are ALWAYS issues on any network anywhere).

If you honestly can tell the difference between 20ms and 27ms, you need to tell us what your superhero name is (or what planet you come from) since no human being is able to do that.

 

[Mushkins]

wut you must not need to move faster than speed of light to get 10 ping at 450 miles away

With a direct, 1 to 1 fibre connection between you and the destination server, sure.

1) The data needs to be processed by your TCP/IP stack through your NIC.
2) It then travels from your NIC and is processed by your switch
3) It then travels from your switch to your router
4) Which then processes it and sends it to your modem
5) The modem sends it out to the local cable node, which shares bandwidth with all your neighbors on the node
6) It's then pushed out to your ISPs router, AKA hop 2 on your tracert
7) The data is processed and pushed to the next device on Time Warner's network until hop 8, where it's handed off to TATA communication's router
8) Over the final few hops, it is handed over to Leaseweb's datacenter, where they have final authority over how to balance network load and determine when your data gets handed to the game server and processed compared to every other connection coming and going from that datacenter.

Reverse the *entire process*, and then your game gets to see the whole picture of what happened when you clicked that mouse. Every single step of this process, in both directions, has overhead attached to it. Your data does not have priority over anyone elses data at any step in this process.

So you've got four options to get that ping under 10 ms: reduce the number of hops by moving yourself physically closer to the destination server (reduce transmission distance), develop a new networking technology to reliably transmit data using a medium that moves faster than light (move faster), develop new backbone networking hardware to process innumerable connections at a speed faster than what we have (reduce overhead), or pay to install a dedicated direct fibre trunk between your home and the datacenter of the game server (throw millions of dollars at the problem).

 

[azazel1024]

Yeah, I think the fastest ping in any game I have ever observed was in the high teens, like 17-18ms. The typical high end I see in games is around low 20's to 30's.

I tend to have a pretty good connection to a number of servers and I'll be lucky to be in the high 20's with jumps in to the mid to high 30's sometimes for East Coast US based servers.

Simply Pinging local servers near me I get 12-16ms response times. These are physically located roughly 15 miles from my house and they do NOT have issues with bandwidth (big gov't iron).

Unless you start talking >100ms, you aren't going to really preceive the lag. I'll grant it might be possible to preceive the lag difference between 20ms and 80ms, but even then, you are talking around 17ms per frame at 60fps and human reaction time is significantly more than 17ms. Things aren't likely to be preceivable as "laggy" until you start pushing a 100ms figure or more.