Mechanics of Packet Loss in Online Gaming?

[Slowhand]

Hi everyone, I'm trying to learn something and solve a problem at the same time. Ok, I'm one of those geeks that still plays Unreal Tournament 2004 online with friends that I've played with for 7 years now.

Usually I have the sweetest ping (28) and (0) packet loss but for the last week or so I've been getting packet loss from 2 all the way up to 88. So my view of the various maps is just "me" warping in freeze frames all over whatever map we are playing. BUT, it's only happening to me! None of my friends are getting packet loss.

What do you think would be the cause of me suddenly getting a run of PL? Now I know a fair amount about computers, but the internet and wifi are my least areas of expertise. :$ But I guess it's time for me to start learning.

It's odd don't you think that I would suddenly get such a problem, when everyone else in the game is doing fine.....and I used to be.

Any takers? Thx

 

[BrightCandle]

Games typically use UDP as the protocol to pass their data. Unlike TCP its not guaranteed to be delivered at all or in any particular order. Because there is no affirmation by the receiving computer in the protocol that it was delivered ultimately all the devices between your computer and the server are free to just throw away UDP packets. They might do so because there isn't enough bandwidth at that moment, or because the packet is quite old, or because of a misconfiguration.

You could for example be finding that your wifi is the issue, someone could have bought a new router next door which is interfering, reducing your bandwidth and your router is dropping the packets when they get to old or when they get corrupted in transport. Or it could be your ISP is more congested recently and its dropping your packets. It could be any device between you and the server.

You can run trace routes from your machine with pings and UDP packets and time to live and all that to see which device is the likely cause. I would hazard a guess its either the wifi or your ISP. The internet strangely enough seems to normally be quite reliable, in my experience more than ISP and its devices. But really tracert and other such tools are what you need to look into and find the device adding inconsistent latency or that is actively dropping packets. Just be aware unless its in your network its going to be really hard and slow to get it fixed.

 

[Slowhand]

Games typically use UDP as the protocol to pass their data. Unlike TCP its not guaranteed to be delivered at all or in any particular order. Because there is no affirmation by the receiving computer in the protocol that it was delivered ultimately all the devices between your computer and the server are free to just throw away UDP packets. They might do so because there isn't enough bandwidth at that moment, or because the packet is quite old, or because of a misconfiguration.

You could for example be finding that your wifi is the issue, someone could have bought a new router next door which is interfering, reducing your bandwidth and your router is dropping the packets when they get to old or when they get corrupted in transport. Or it could be your ISP is more congested recently and its dropping your packets. It could be any device between you and the server.

You can run trace routes from your machine with pings and UDP packets and time to live and all that to see which device is the likely cause. I would hazard a guess its either the wifi or your ISP. The internet strangely enough seems to normally be quite reliable, in my experience more than ISP and its devices. But really tracert and other such tools are what you need to look into and find the device adding inconsistent latency or that is actively dropping packets. Just be aware unless its in your network its going to be really hard and slow to get it fixed.

Thank you so much for your reply. Well, I'll go do some research and see if I can find if there are any command lines that I can use to isolate the problem and actually pinpoint the cause. Thx.

 

[JamesV]

Run cmd.exe

type in

tracert

that will show all options and tell you how to use it.

I've always used that when I had problems with my connection, and it's almost always a jump being hammered that wasn't before.

 

[Slowhand]

Run cmd.exe

type in

tracert

that will show all options and tell you how to use it.

I've always used that when I had problems with my connection, and it's almost always a jump being hammered that wasn't before.

Thanks JamesV, I'll tinker around with it a bit and see what I find.

 

[BrightCandle]

Just be aware that tracert is a ping tool. You might want to do other types of traces that it can't support. Their are a variety of tools in Linux that can do more types of tests so you might want to try a virtual machine with Linux and some of those tools.

 

[imaheadcase]

Try using it without wifi and just a wire connection. Wifi can get packetloss easier than a lan connection from all the interference if others nearby.