But when I see someone lagging badly to the extent they are a menace I ask if they are on wireless, and all but once they where.

Maybe I have something against wireless, but I try it here ( I would preffer not to have an ethernet cable between rooms) and I get the same thing: I dont notice the difference, but others do.

Is it not more likely that some wireless solutions are better than others? I'm not sure what circumstances prevail, but I think everyone realises that downloading stuff in the background messes things up.

The problem is with cars that continually ping pong and they do it in a particular manner that is instantly recogniseable, it's not like low latency or the odd missed packet, it's varied latency with lots of missed packets and the result is a very wild car.

I can post a link to an S patch replay, you'll have to wait for a T patch one.

http://www.bansheestudios.com/ftp/IkhamLag.mpr

The player on wireless here is Ikham, take a look if you can with an S patch install - that's the tell tale WiFi lag, and it's not playable, and it's not just a poor connection.

Maybe some router brands are better than others, maybe it's an 802.11g thing and not other protocols. I dont know, I just know that in the 10 players or so I spotted it on, only 1 said he wasnt on wireless, and when we discussed it afterwards nobody else then turned around and said "i'm on wireless am I lagging too?"

Perhaps it is something that effects single seaters more and so others get on fine with WiFi, but what i'm saying is please check you aren't lagging this badly - because in the case of the driver in that replay (who since went Ethernet, is a nice guy, and who i've had some good races with) I was taken out half a dozen times that night trying to avoid him.

Perhaps I should've left my original post as it was, and not tweaked it. It went something like this:

Quote :

Whilst we're on the subject, dial up users tend to warp a lot as well, not to mention those who play on UK servers, and live in the US, or the Asian regions. Perhaps we should get a geo-ip, and a minimum-latency feature in LFS?

Is this going over the top? Obviously, and my point was that in most situations people have no choice to change their infrastructure, and by requesting that they only play offline would make LFS less accessible; which as far as I can see, LFS is not about (see sprint racing, the availability of online servers, etc.).

Going back to the avoiding and warping, I'm afraid I disagree. Granted I don't play much these days, but when I do it tends to be open wheelers, and in the S1 days I almost exclusively played the MRT - all of which did and still do experience big warping issues. Again, you do get knocked off, its part of the online experience, but it is avoidable.

With regards to WiFi being blamed, perhaps we should be blaming those who advise WiFi, in poor situation's. Unfortunately Joe Public doesn't seem to grasp the concept of how it works (several of my customers thought you could get WiFi anywhere in the world, once you plugged up an access point), and its being pushed erroneously in PC World, Curry's, Best Buy, or whatever your local IT shop is. A lot of people are spending £40+ on what they're being told is good equipment, but incorrect for the situation. To these people £40+ is a lot of money, for something they just use to pick up their email and play a few games.

By definition the internet is not stable. Wireless less so, for obvious reasons.

For those who want some practical advice to improving their online experience;

• try changing the default "channel",
  
• high levels of encryption take up processor time (both yours and at the access point). This adds latency. You could just use MAC address filtering, and hope no one picks up the packets you're sending. This means no encryption, but if you fail to update the MAC address list with your laptops, then you won't beable to connect at all,
  
• if you're still using encryption, then consider WEP instead of WPA. WPA is stronger, but uses a TKIP (Temporal Key Integrity Protocol) system, which means that every X minutes it needs to create a new temporary key and start again. This causes a small drop in your connection. Again, this decreases performance for gaming,
  
• also consider using directional antenna's, so that they focus the signal in one area, rather than everywhere,
  
• move the access point. It's logical, but amazing how many people don't do this. Where possible avoid putting the WiFi next to "real walls" (i.e. a wall made out of proper brick's),
  
• disable any QoS. On home network's its pointless in most circumstance's
  

If there are a lot of other wireless connections (7+), then just give up. Theres a theoretical limit of about 10 or so wireless access point signal's in the same 20m^3 location (I've not yet managed to prove this, although I think I've tested it with enough 2.4GHz equipment that my microwave started to segfault (joke shamelessly stolen from bash.org)).

More over, I think this is a chicken and egg situation inherent in the LFS netcode. TCP is too slow for positioning, so UDP is used (with TCP as a failover). Unfortunately UDP is only faster because theres no order checking of packets, and no "guarantee" that the packet has been received by the intended destination, and more importantly when. As a result, using UDP on any line which is unstable, or has some kind of QoS, or is fundamentally unreliable (i.e. WiFi), you will experience issues; there are no 2 ways about it.

I know this sounds like a bit of a rant, and perhaps that what it is. Over and over again I deal with people deploying technologies incorrectly, or in the wrong circumstance's. Unfortunately theres no way around it, and its something we have to learn to live with. The internet was created to share, and connect people.

Additionally Becky, I know that you didn't mean (or at least I hope not) to say that I shouldn't use WiFi because you say so, but I feel that the statement is trying to restricting my Freedom (as in speech), to do what I want. Those who actively chose, with their own mind's, and were technically clued up should be "allowed" to use WiFi; because they are more likely to know what they doing, and how to minimise the effects on other people. Unfortuntely I'm a bit of a Freedom nut, both in terms of software, and what I can and cannot do in life, so I'm probably just taking your statement the wrong way...

Phew, thats a bit of a beast....time to actually do some work, I think

I use a USB wireless adapter, and I do fine. I've only ever been told I was lagging once, and that was because I'd accidentally left Napster downloading in the background. Granted, I race mostly TBO, but I can still race close to other people, and when I save an .SPR, I don't appear to fly everywhere on the track.

Most people aren't in the same situation as you, Becky, where they have a choice between wired and wireless, and I don't see the need to restrict people's use of LFS because of that.

P.S. I'm directly above my access point, and I get 90-100% signal strength all the time, but I need a 60 foot ethernet cable to get to my router, because it needs to go down the stairs, so it's doable but very inconvenient.

P.P.S. A slow computer causes more lag than a wireless internet connection.

Quote :

when I save an .SPR, I don't appear to fly everywhere on the track

You wouldn't, SPRs are a completely different thing to MPRs. SPRs I believe are recorded by controller input on your own PC which is why you never see the jerkyness of the car's wheel in replays whereas MPRs use interpolation with data received from other players. Packets via the server (the PPS value) are sent at a maximum rate of 6 per second. When you think about it quite a lot can happen in between the packets when you're moving at 100mph for example. Any sort of an overhead such as error detection and correction (TCP, not UDP though) or encryption that are typical on a wireless connection slow down the process of delivering the content to LFS.

I think the reason why even in MPRs if you are the one lagging, you see everyone else lagging instead yourself bouncing around is that there isn't the same sort of latency when dealing with your own packets, which can be captured even before sending them to the ether, but you're not receiving other players' packets, hence they are the ones that appear to lag.

What I'm trying to say is that if you lag online, your MPR will show everyone else lagging, not you; the other players' MPRs will show you lagging but not themselves.

[/speculation]

Sorry, I meant to say .mpr, but it wsa 4:30 AM LOL.

I always thought .mpr's were stored server side, so when you view them, you see what the server sees. I'm pretty sure of this, because the MP Stash space is on the server, not your computer.

Quote :

but I feel that the statement is trying to restricting my Freedom (as in speech),

ROFL, **** off ! I don't mean to be stepping on the toes of America, but seeing as I appear to have done so, I hope it hurt proper and it certainly does appears to have let out a cry! What a shame I wasn't wearing a pair of Doc Martin's...

Seriously, suggesting that WiFi users check if they have lag issues and to find an alternative solution if they do is not infringing your civil liberties or rights.

BTW: There's other solutions than ethernet, one very cost effective solution is those ethernet powerblocks that use the buildings power supply as a network hub, they cost about £11 a block, so £22 to take you to your router which is half the price of wireless.

Not using WiFi when it isn't up to the task is hardly saying you cannot play LFS online. It just means dont do it with WiFi if your WiFi setup doesnt work and causes grief for other players.

If a player intentionally crashes other players they are called a wrecker. If a player causes just as much carnage because of continual major lag spikes they are either ignorant of the problem (which I hoped this post would address - but it became a pro-America civil liberty thread instead) or ambivillent and dont give a hoot about other players.

WiFi is not the only solution to go between flaws, if the floors are on the same power phase you could have a much cheaper solution. If they aren't then there are other methods but sadly they do cost more money than WiFi - but if you want to race the Fox and have good close racing rather than playing LFS and believing that most people have trouble controlling their car because "you put so much pressure on them and they spin whenever your near" then it's an option to do something like fibre, or god forbid, put some trunking in or thread a cable into the walls.

With regards the free software foundation i'm not a member. I have release more games, utilities and demos than I could possibly count (probably over 100) in the last 25 years but I hardly see how that's a bartering chip for free speach ! lol.

Scawen charges for his game, is he a communist?

*blink*

All would be fine, but unless I'm grossly mistaken, we've already very clearly established in this thread that WiFi is just about the least likely cause of the effect that you're determined to blame on it.

Sorry.. it just doesn't stick, no matter how hard you throw it.

Quote from Becky Rose :

ROFL, **** off ! I don't mean to be stepping on the toes of America

Wrong country. I'm not American, and I certainly don't subscribe to certain views that they are stereotyped to hold. As an aside, perhaps the apache foundation would've been a better example to give. They're certainly less "pro-American", and make more of a point regarding freedom, etc, and why it exists, and why it should continue to exist for certain technologies. To make myself clear, I believe these to be critical systems for businesses and life (credit transactions, web serving, etc.) - which games do not, and will never comprise of. The FSF do tend to be up themselves a lot. Apologies for my mistake in communication (its so easy to do via text, and the lack of facial expressions)

Quote from Becky Rose :

BTW: There's other solutions than ethernet, one very cost effective solution is those ethernet powerblocks that use the buildings power supply as a network hub, they cost about £11 a block, so £22 to take you to your router which is half the price of wireless.

With similar speed's to WiFi generally. Granted its more "reliable", but certainly uncommon, difficult to get information on, and can require a higher level of knowledge, regarding the whole IP infrastructure / stack. As far as I am aware you cant just goto PC World, Curries, Best Buy, Tandy, whoever, to pick one of these units up. As such, most consumers will never see this technology.

Quote from Becky Rose :

Not using WiFi when it isn't up to the task is hardly saying you cannot play LFS online. It just means dont do it with WiFi if your WiFi setup doesnt work and causes grief for other players.

Theres a massive grey area between those two points in my opinion, and thats whats caused my issue.

Quote from Becky Rose :

but it became a pro-America civil liberty thread instead

Again, no. I was merely pointing out that the original comment came across incorrectly (at least in my head).

Quote from Becky Rose :

With regards the free software foundation i'm not a member. I have release more games, utilities and demos than I could possibly count (probably over 100) in the last 25 years but I hardly see how that's a bartering chip for free speach ! lol.

Scawen charges for his game, is he a communist?

*blink*

I've lost you on this point totally. Sorry, its probably because I'm knackered. I'm sure theres some sarcasm in your comment's regarding charging and communism (i.e. its totally backwards), but I'm afraid its lost on me. I guess 3 hours sleep does that to you.

My whole point that made me mention the FSF was that making a statement like "dont use wifi" wont be received well (and I tried to explain why it came across like this to me). I certainly didnt mean to turn this politicial in any way, shape or form. I was merely trying to justify my argument. I have no gripe with you Becky, whatsoever; so let me say again, I'm all for giving advice (see my last post), and I'm all for comments, but starting a thread in the manner you did just annoyed me a little. It kind of struck me to be similar to the whole "BLUE FLAG!!!" syndrome.

I'm sure you posted in frustration, which I'm certainly no stranger to; feel free to search my history on both LFS and RSC, so I know how you feel. I'll even admit that I probably posted my previous, and this comment with a certain amount of haste.

If you wish to continue this discussion, feel free to pm me or whatever, and I'll probably end up grovelling and hopefully explaining myself

Quote from SamH :

Sorry.. it just doesn't stick, no matter how hard you throw it.

Becky's argument does hold a certain amount of water, tbh. It's certainly not the core cause, and setup of your infrastructure will affect it (see my previous to-last-post (argh, I'm starting to get garbled, confusing and quite frankly duller than an inflight magazine produced by Air Belgium (no offence to Belgian's))).

Been reading some in this thread, and had to bump it big time. Now we don't want that American discussion all over again, but the wireless vs ethernet.

You can say much, and blame other scources, but wireless DOES make problems for online play. I know I canot say anything to back up my statement, but over the years I have been working for various ISP's, and I have had my share of strange conversations with people.

The biggest thing that goes again at this area is lag when playing online. Often their download speed is almost the same as with ethernet, and it seems perfectly normal, but the latency / respond time goes usually up to heavens with using wireless. Problem is that when checking in games or other utilities, it will not be accurate to show the drop-spots. It means that most of the time it's just fine, but every now and then (in real time that means often) a packet is either lost, slowed down or stuff like that, and it will cause a nightmare for the others on the server.

I am sorry to sound like a party pooper, but saying you canot use anything other than wireless due to the house is kind of an argument that canot be used. With today's technology you can run your net / ethernet thorugh the powerlines in the house itself. And personally, a 50 meter long eternet cable beats wireless by far in my eyes.

Sure, there are some, and by some that are of course many, that has wireless networks that works just fine. But the mayority of people that uses wireless are a darn botter when playing online. I yet have to meet a lagger that was not on wireless. Again, if you downloading or uploading anything you deserves a bullet to you head and using statements like "but I am limiting the speed of download/upload, so I shouldn't lag" is not valid either. The packets with information gets slowed down / lagged / canceled every now and then due to the reason that most of the information is used to give and recive information on the things you are downloading or uploading.

So, to sum this all up, sure - you can manage to get a wireless connection that works out, but the mayority of people that uses wireless will be a absolute nightmare for other online players. You should either try using a long ethernet cable or using ethernet thorught the powerlines within the house. Using a statement that the signal is strong is not correct either, because it's nothing to do with the strenght of the signal, it's the fact that wireless has so high chances to get interference, and to the fact that it will ALLWAYS give higher latency than wired connection. Information in the air is generally slower than information sent thorugh cables.

So for peace and love and happy fellow online players, use cables. Even if your connection has a strong signal that doesn't mean you won't lag. If you downloading or uploading while playing, well, let's just say you stop that before you make a fool of yourselfe.

The Very End, a big +1, but you missed one huge point in your statement. Over here in the U.S.A we tend to have some people who are either lazy or dishonest. Wireless signal theft is a huge problem over here. You're right, if a person has a wireless connection in the house it's very easy to run a cable to a pc used for LFS and other online activities. But if you're stealing wireless from your neighbor, well, it's either laggy wireless or nothing at all.

I've seen it many times over here. I caught my neighbor using my wireless and he makes more $ than I do, he owns his own company!!! I asked him why he was using my signal, his response, "I didn't see anything wrong with using it", and "why pay for something I only use occasionally". Needless to say, the police almost had to be called because I was ready to dismantle this arrogant prick. My red-faced, near heart attack rant must of scared him because his house is now for sale.

Pisses me off because shit like this just adds to the image of us americans as wanting everything for nothing. Some of us work for what we have.

Forgive this rant by an old, cranky, LFSer

Hehe, well but me too I would be pretty much pissed off if someone stole something from me (internet speed and usage) and then not saying sorry. If that arrogant person just had said sorry it would be no problem I guess, but beeing as arrogant as that makes the blood boil in the veins.

I agree on your statement, that there probally are a lot of people not aware that there are people using their net, and therfor will most likely lag (if the other person does things involving download / upload and such) .

Best thing is, if you refuses to go over to wired connection - make sure to have a custom cinfigurated password for using the network. Some sites on the internet can actually tell you what password routers have as standards aswell as ways how to crack the password for the wireless signal.

So, change it every now and then.

But please, try as far as it is reasonable to use wired connection when playing online.

Quote from robubba :

The Very End, a big +1, but you missed one huge point in your statement. Over here in the U.S.A we tend to have some people who are either lazy or dishonest. Wireless signal theft is a huge problem over here. You're right, if a person has a wireless connection in the house it's very easy to run a cable to a pc used for LFS and other online activities. But if you're stealing wireless from your neighbor, well, it's either laggy wireless or nothing at all.

I've seen it many times over here. I caught my neighbor using my wireless and he makes more $ than I do, he owns his own company!!! I asked him why he was using my signal, his response, "I didn't see anything wrong with using it", and "why pay for something I only use occasionally". Needless to say, the police almost had to be called because I was ready to dismantle this arrogant prick. My red-faced, near heart attack rant must of scared him because his house is now for sale.

Pisses me off because shit like this just adds to the image of us americans as wanting everything for nothing. Some of us work for what we have.

Forgive this rant by an old, cranky, LFSer

but if you have the wifi password protected not just open then it shouldn't be a problem unless your neighbor is a HAxOr hel probably be too lazy
i live in the us and nobody steals my wireless

I always use cable connection for my pc. Wifi is just for my wife's laptop.

Yes, I had the wireless protected by a password, but this jerk was hacking the password somehow.

OK if the line is 8M and your wireless is 50M+ ( and signal being good ).

But we really have to be careful. You don't know you're lagging unless told.

I've been told to be lagging for 2 or 3 times, but each time everyone else is still smooth on my end. Don't know why ~　

the_angry_angel is spot on ...............its not only the advice which joe public is given but also on what joe public believes. alot of my customers think that once they have a wireless router at home, they can surf the internet "where ever" they are :-).. also pc world will sell you a wifi dongle even if your desktop pc is a foot away from the master socket. "wireless" was /and too some extent still is a "braggin right" imo


i tho stand in the same corner as becky, i think wireless has its place,(mums laptop!!, email, internet) but relying on it for gaming is not the best option, it may be the cheapest option, and the tidest option if stapling some cable along a wall is not for you. Ethernet over power ive found to be better than wireless (tho not cheap).


Keling... same goes for lagging in a fps, a player with 200ping will appear like he is teleporting to most with under 50ping, but the player with 200ping will not see everyone else lagging, its may jump now and again...this gives the lagger a big advantage in fps, when he shoots at you, you are exactly where he is shooting, but when u shoot at him, he was there , maybe a second before, but not now!, has alot to do with netcode of course, and some games compensate for it with dodgy hitboxes, well thats the excuse!
:-)

Air has never been good in transporting data and never will be, but like for so many other things marketing went into overdrive and lazy bastards people generally are chose comfort over quality...

Quote from bbman :

Air has never been good in transporting data

Things like RONJA's help out over non-domestic distance, and it's not unknown for a number of ISPs to resort to free space optics over a good old fashioned cable sometimes, just because of the terrain. They're something we're considering at the moment for a company distributed between 3 offices, by 1/2 a mile or so just because leased lines are riduculously expensive in their area.

However I fear that I've become rather off-topic again

At the end of the day, best tool for the job. And sometimes that tool just happens to be a hammer if you're a server admin and you need to get rid of laggers.

2 years ago I advocated users doing what they want, and I'll stand by that. Equally tho, if you're lagging like crazy on a server I run, the odds are you won't last long. Freedoms work in both ways

I know its not exactly the same, as it is 3g internet, but it is wireless so kind of related to this...

What really pisses me off is the fact that all the documentation that came with my huawei e156g dongle says that it can run at 3.6mbps on the fastest (3g) network, which quite frankly total bollocks to be fair, as i can always pick up a 3g signal, usually between 2 and 5 bars, with 5 being full signal, and i have never had the upload speed go any faster than about 600kbps and download of about 5kbps regardless of weather i have full signal or only 2 bars.

So why is the so called available speed allowed to be, well, seemingly made up by the ISP, as i know of a few other people on other forums who have the same dongle as me and the best speed any of them have seen via a speed test is about 790kbps and 6kbps respectively, and he lives in central london on the top floor of a tower block with flat out full 3g signal all the time, which is still nowhere even remotely close to the 3.6meg quoted speed.

i have used wireless for ages now and the only time i have lost connection has been when my PC has crashed. I can't ever recall someone saying that i was lagging or anything like that either. I think as long as you have a good wireless router and dongle you should be fine.

It doesn't need to completeley disconnect to lag, small lags won't shut down the connection itself

But by all means, some wireless connections can work as charm, but they will allways be slower than wired ones, and have a higher chance of interference by other devices.

well ye i suppose interference is one thing. I dont get it on my internet but if i have the TV on while using the internet i get interference on the TV

You know what's funny, with this new laptop I decided to try out using wireless again - I had problems with using it on my old computer upstairs so had been using a very long bit of cat5! - and it hasnt dropped connection once, in comparison to disconnecting itself a few times over a day, going slow, or going so slow it was quicker to disconnect and reconnect.

*touch wood*

Suppose it all depends on your equipment, but tbh I still wouldn't feel totally safe using wireless but there you go.

This is what i mean about mine, three (3) and huawei both say that this thing should run at 3.6mb per second, but according to speedtest i can only get a d/l speed of 0.61...



And then, if i actually try and download something the speed is nearly ten times worse than what speedtest says my upload speed is...



So, all the way from a 'possible speed' of 3.6meg, and it actually works at about 70k, 51 times slower FFS!!!

Barely better than dial-up, actually, scratch that, it's worse, dial-up would be more stable!

How can they get away with quoting these big numbers that are nothing but lies.