Hi all, I have a strange network problem that is preventing me from playing multiplayer, I am not completly sure where the problem is so have been doing some testing using the LFS (shift + F8) net debug messages.
My first question is what do all the messages mean exactly?

messages like.
TCP AV : InitTime +=1 (yellow)
TCP ER : InitTime -=20 (red)
TCP ES : InitTime +=20 (green)
MP time speed adjust -2.6 (blue)

The main reason I ask about these messages is that, when spectating a single car lapping in multiplayer mode, if I change the view from TV to wheels for 20 secs then back to TV for 20 secs, the messages change from red ERs (wheels) to green ES (TV) as seen in these pics.......


Is this normal?

Another thing I noticed was when joining a much more populated server and spectating (mostly from TV or chase cam) The TCP ER messages get more frequent and the numbers climb slowly until when over aprox TCP ER -=300 everyones cars just show the (lagXX.XX) stationary at what I assume is their last recieved position, however I don't get dosconnected, the numbers keep climbing, and when spectated players cross sector/lap checkpoints the timing is shown perfectly.
Now if I leave the server and go to play the replay file (autosave on) the replay plays perfectly for all cars, maybe a little laggy, but why couldn't I see these cars when on the server?
another screenshot below from online at a busy server.


Any help would be apreciated, I am continuing testing LFS on other PCs because I am not sure if this prob is with PC, LAN or WAN, HW or SW, and I admit I know little about most of it
If I know a little more about the network debug messages it might help, I think I can guess at most of them tho.

SD.

It's a shot into dark, but is the clock on your machine in sync? Maybe you can check if say five minutes in LFS really is five mintutes. I remember a thread where a guy was experiencing a PC clock running faster than it should and it caused some pretty odd behaviour when he was playing online. He finally tracked the problem down to some wireless gamepad or something, I don't really recall.

The search function seemed to like me today and I dug up two threads which might be helpful:

http://www.lfsforum.net/showth ... 3&highlight=time+sync

http://www.lfsforum.net/showth ... 6&highlight=time+sync

Thanks for the links MadCat, I did some searching for network debug, but didn't find alot
my PC seems to keep good time but Ill test LFS time against real time soon,
Going to try unplugging perifirals (sp) also to see if I can track it.

thanks for your help.

SD.

Update, I am thinking this problem is somewhere in the software/drivers, my reason is I have dual boot system and was getting the same errors in both Win7 and XP, I was doing all my testing (uninstalling things/updating drivers etc) in the win xp partition, nothing seemed to work.
last night I booted into W7 and tested and was very suprised to see lfs ran perfectly no debug messages what so ever (I had to check I had pressed shift+F8 lol) I promptly tried some TBO races at IHR, with no lagg or warping, I am super happy I can drive again.

So as far as the problem I have goes I am now thinking maybe an xp network adaptor driver or something in my xp install, i will keep testing when I get some more time, as I would like to put my finger on this one.

Incidentially I tried to update the ACPI drivers in xp and was told (windows is using the best driver) type message, so this may need manually updating maybe?

Will post more when I know it

SD.

Did you resolve this Dave?

I'm back to LFS after a long absence and am struggling with the exact same problem. I'm experiencing a brief pause every few seconds and my network debug looks the same as yours although I've not tried changing the view to see if the interval goes positive.

I too have a dual boot Win 7/XP. Hardware is P6T Deluxe MB/i7 920.

I tried to update the ACPI device but as you found, the driver in use is the latest and there doesn't seem to be an update for this on the ASUS site.

When I first tried yesterday, I thought I'd start by killing a few processes. I killed two and tried LFS again and found the problem had gone. Tried killing the same two today and the problem has returned.

All other multiplayer games seem fine.

It's a long shot, but do you have QoS disabled both in windows and your router(if you have any)?

Hi Interceptor, unfortunatly I have not solved the problem.

I have tried many things to try to race online, but no luck. so I have now given up, I just dont have the time to keep on at this, and so dont play LFS anymore.

I ended up spending so much time testing and trying things, with little to no luck, I decided to cut my losses, as my time is better spent doing something more constructive, I hope you find a solution and dont give up on it like me, but I wouldn't blame you if you did

I have a hunch () that I may see a solution to this when I renew my network cables, change router and ISP and also change my PC.

SD.

PS Good luck.

Bump..

I had exactly same problem like SparkyDave has for a while.
It seems solved after what I did;
The port 63392 was already defined on my firewall exception or "my ports" list. I add the port "29339" and it seems working now.

For ppl struggle with same issue, I hope this would help.