It's started with this about 3 months ago. It hasn't gone better since. Lately I finally decided to switch ISP because the disconnections are just unbearable anymore.

All other network activity works fine, bittorrents, browsing, downloads etc. Super smooth and no bandwidth "glitches" (I have a network monitor that shows the activity in real time).

Only LFS suffers extreme issues. Mainly: takes VERY long untill I connect to the master server for the list of games, many times with failure, when I try to connect to a server about 80% it just fails (on various errors during the connection), and when I'm able to connect it often disconnects. Network debug (SHIFT-F8) shows nothing interesting.

As a last measure, I tried connecting to the same ISP, with same telephony provider, but with my 56K dialup modem instead of my ADSL connection (1.5M/96K, Alcatel Speedtouch 510E firmware 4.2.7).

Amazingly, it worked beautifully. List of games comming very fast (with a bit higher pings: about 300ms with dialup vs 100-200 with ADSL), but other than the pings, it all worked flawlessly 100% of the times. I managed to connect to every server I tried, The connection monitor (bottom left when connected to a server) "pulsed" very regularly (vs WAY too many glitches and "stucks" through the ADSL), etc. Tried again with ADSL --> crap. Dialup again --> silky smooth.

So, 2 things:

1. Congrats to Scawen for absolutely amazing network code that works just perfect even with a dialup modem

2. WTF is going on with my ADSL connection? and why does it only affect LFS?

Some more data I have gathered:
- ping to liveforspeed.net is constant 115ms +/-5
- During the night GMT (now) it works MUCH better with ADSL. It nearly never disconnects, and works quite well in general, ALTHOUGH, the connection monitor still don't pulse regularly. Better than during evening time, but not as smooth as it used to be before november (or as smooth as with the dialup). As far as I've noticed, it's unrelated to the number of users on the server, i.e. it also mostely disconnects or unable to connect even if the server is empty.
- just before november I upgraded my ADSL modem's firmware to 4.2.7 to add support for 1.5Mbps (upgraded my adsl account), but it seemed to work well afterwards.
- The ADSL modem isn't configured in any special way. It doesn't act as NAT and/or firewall (as far as i know).

could it somehow be related to UPnP (I don't know much about it though, but I think it only matters if the modem is configured to block ports etc)?


- The same telephony provider and same ISP more or less eliminate all routing issues outside of the ISP.
- The fact that it runs smooth on dialup eliminate OS issues (spyware, firewalls, etc)
- The fact that it DOES work better (note: not perfect) during the night reduces the possibility for ADSL modem issues.


If anyone has some tools (or procedures) to try and pinpoint the difference between the 2 types of connection and gather "LFS net quality" I'll gladly use them. If anyone has any kind of Idea what might be going on, I'd appreciate the help.

thanks,
avih

Is it a USB modem?, I would suggest trying a router if possible, I have heard people having allsorts of problems with USB modems.

Dan,

I'd hazard a guess that the dialup and broadband systems are totally different and that theres a possible routing problem on their pipe(s) to the uk. I know of no providers (in the uk), who run the same set of systems.

thats exactly my situation, most of the times the master server doesnt respond or takes ages to do so, 80% of the servers drop me before i can get in, when i do get in i time out 90% of the times. my ping list is around 60 to 120, i dont risk playing with much more because i know what will happen.
i have a 2mbit cable connection, shared with a buddy, and i think its connected by usb, but anyway, every form of internet activity goes smooth just like avih, from ftp to http, bittorrent, other online games like call of duty and ET work fine, no issues at all, but when i fire up lfs its just dissapointing.
ive lost count of how many times i was having a nice lap/battle and suddenly the wheel loses FF screen goes black and that dreaded beep beeping: timed out, i even raced as time out a few times. ill try the ethernet card on the modem instead of usb but i dunno if this can solve anything.

Contention ratio? On ADSL you share the phone line with lots of other people and during the day it can be quite laggy. On a modem you have a private line, so although data transfer is slower, and ultimately more laggy, there are less lost packets.

(I know thats not exactly how ADSL/Dialup works, but it'll do for my example )

And to go with the USB modem train of thought, if it is a USB device, it needs drivers and becomes a device of the PC, using CPU cycles and so on, so if your PC gets bogged down for whatever reason - your connection could well suffer as a result

Also ADSL won't "automatically" increase your PING, it will increase the speed of your connection, but the ping is governed by much more.
What are your line specs, SNR Margin, Line ATT, Transmit power, are you running from the master socket in your house and not on an extension, have you tried a new microfilter.
Try a tracert on the master server and post the results.
Also, what does the ISP say about it?

Dan,

ping doesnt work either

If its any consolation, I can neither ping or tracert that IP either.
Is that the correct IP for the master server?

Dan,

IMO it is some problem caused by your ISP. Dialup technology is quite different form ADSL and when you were under dialup connection, there was no problem on your ISP side, now it probably is. Have you tested some other game(BF, CS...)? How is it running? Check if there isnt any spyware/virus or anything else that can slow down connection...
Updating modem drivers also isnt bad idea, as so as USB controller driver update...(if you have USB modem of course)

I have 1Mbit ADSL and USB modem and I have no lags when 16 cars are on the track, so it should work OK...

Thanks for the help guys

Here's some more info:

- The ADSL modem is not USB
- I haven't tried other online games, but download/web/bittorrent work flawlessly.
- It has worked perfectly well on ADSL for about a year before the problems started.
- Short while before the issues started I moved to another town, and stayed with the same telephony provider and ISP.
- It's most probably not virus/spyware because a. I keep my comp very clean and monitored and b. It runs super smooth on dialup modem from the same PC.


so far the ideas that made most sense to me are:

1. Network congestions during peek hours between my modem and external routing of the ISP. Could be due to different ADSL infrastructure in the new town or due to ISP/Telephony provider bandwidth throttling or just plain congensions there (solution probably to switch ISP?)

2. Different external routing for the ISP between ADSL/Dialup. sounds a bit weird to me that the external routing of an ISP changes according to the user connection, but I think the_angry_angle has more experience than me here. (again, switch ISP?)



usage = From LFS: getting empty servers list from master server (no server that match the filter), therefore, only cíntact master servers (monitored using AnalogX packerMon, it shows only successfull attempts)

Dialup usage: each time 4 packets were sent (48, 157, 40, 40 bytes) to port 29339, completed in about 0.6s every timeõ

ADSL usage: each time between 2 and 4/5 packets were sent to port 29339, completed in about 0.5s to 10s (!).


here's a tracert for the master server (note that the last hop always times out prob because it doesn't accept ICMP? what do the asterix mean on the different columns? can anyone interpret the results?

Now you might be connected to ADSL switchboard that is really full. For example, in Czech Republic is standard ADSL raito 1:50 - switchboard bandwith is shared by max 50 users. That can give an answer on question why in night ours gives ADSL better results - less users are online and switchboard bandwidth isnt "loaded" too high. When using dialup, no agregation is used(I think there is nothing like it) and it works... LFS has good netcode and it can run on dialup connection.
Connecting to LFS Master seems to me a little unordinary, LFS reports me ping approx 800ms on most of servers, but when I connect to any server, it runs really great - this can explain why you have problems with LFS. If possible, try to contact your ISP and ask them what can cause problems that you have... they might have some temporary local network problem...

Hope something of this will help you...

Not all ISP's are equal as madcatz has mentioned... When you look for an ISP you need to ask some quite specific questions about things like their backbone bandwidth and connection type, what backup connections they have, how many (max users) users at a time can be connected to your access point, what is the backbone bandwidth from your access point to there main site/internet, etc etc... Just because you have a 2MBit connection to the access point doesn't mean that you have a 2MBit connection to the net, if they oversubscribe the service it will degrade

As an example - perhaps when they implemented it (the majority weren't using even 50% of there capacity), it was fine with the level of use at that time, but now the majority of people that connect are using there max capacity (thx's to P2P networks, popularity of downloading music and TV programmes expanding expometially) and now it is becoming apparent that the ratio of users is too high for there infrastructure, this can happen, and until they do some major upgrades to the backbone infrastructure you can expierience very poor performance during peek times

So what to do, call your ISP and talk to a tech and ask some pointed questions... if you don't get a satisfactory answer call other ISP's and ask the same questions of there tech staff, if you find one that has satisfactory answers, try and see a demonstration of there service then if all's ok change as a side note quite often ISP will have different levels of service, i.e. their cheap service will be oversubscribed, but they may have a premium service which garrantees a certain level of performance unfortenately you often get what you pay for...

Seems like you have a lot of latency on your connection, I think you need to speak with your ISP TBH.

Dan,

It's your ISP. I'm with Tiscali and from Aug-Dec 05 online gaming was almost impossible. They went through the usual" your hardware is wrong/software settings are at faults" BS.

I build my own system, know it inside out and I hadn't moved a wire/changed software setting of anything. Full reinstalls of OS etc made no difference.

Doing tracerts during difficult periods showed the same timeouts as you. Playing CS:S I used to freeze then carry on (assuming I hadn't been wasted in the intevenining time) I'd just totally lose connection to LFS - so Valve has better netcode I guess.

It took a never ending series of phone calls/emails and time testing their latest wheeze to get me going. All of it made no difference.

I gave them rock all about contention ratios given the fact that worst service was a peak UK times when I finally noticed WHEN it happened - the evening and weekends. It worked fine in the small hours for instance.

Once I ripped them to pieces about the timings of the poor service they went away and had another look at their end - exchange or whatever an a miracle occured - the performance came back.

Bear in mind I have been with the same ISP for almost 2 years, so I got to measure the problem. If you are in the UK you should note that regardless of supplier, your ADSL goes through BTs exchanges in your local area. So not much point changing ISP...

@seahorse:
I don't live in the UK, I live in Israel, but it's not very different I think. BT is replaced with BEZEQ in Israel for ADSL/Telephony infrastructure, and the ISP is the same one I've been using for just less than 2 years IIRC (specifically: BARAK).

But the latency as shown in tracert is not a good enough indication. I tried another util called pathping (probably already installed on your system) which is like tracert but also shows packet loss on every hop (it pings every hop 100 times by default).

pathping turned out to show quite interesting results, machine 212.150.235.81 (one of the hops only through the ADSL routing and probably the outside gateway of the ISP to Eurpoe) lost about 20%-25% of the packets (!!), consistantly through several pathping runs. This machine is well within the ISP and already past the ADSL infrastructure. However, acording to the pathping result, it passes packets 100% and only loses 25% of packets intended directly for it. So I'm not quite sure if it's relevant info.

Still, it's quite fraustrating to be able to sun smoothly through dialup but suffer so many issues during peak hours on ADSL.

One of the reasons probably is the compulsury usage of UDP in LFS. These packets are easily lost forever when net congestions increase. and if you loose them frequently enough then LFS just freaks out and the otherwise beautiful netcode just collapses.

I seriously think that LFS should have TCP only fallback for such cases (the current TCP fallback - CTRL-T iirc is only for some of the packets). Especially when such ISP issues will only get more severe over time as they always try to reduce costs by utilizing their infrastructure beyont it's natural capabilities.

Complain loudly with much volume untill they relent and improve there hardware/software equipment to cope properly

Quote from B2B@300 :

Complain loudly with much volume untill they relent and improve there hardware/software equipment to cope properly

working on it... i'll keep this thread updated.
Currently they suggested to check if they can change the routing for this specific server. Let's see how it goes...

Quote from avih :

working on it... i'll keep this thread updated.
Currently they suggested to check if they can change the routing for this specific server. Let's see how it goes...

Cool if you keep up the pressure they'll fix it just to shut you up!

hmm.. i finally "got it" about the reason that other web data flows smoothly and LFS doesn't. All the other web apps that I've mentioned use TCP, while LFS uses UDP. UDP packets are not acknoledged when they go through the net and if a packet gets lost, it IS lost forever, while TCP packets are retransmitted if they havan't arrived on the destination machine.

Now, if there are congestions due to many users (peak hours) between 2 machines inside the ISP, then UDP packets jusr get lost, while TCP packets are instantly (?) retransmitted and the overall routing is flawless.

Well not instantly and to be honest the delay that it causes will kill you anyway so that's probably why they haven't gone that path

Quote from avih :

hmm.. i finally "got it" about the reason that other web data flows smoothly and LFS doesn't. All the other web apps that I've mentioned use TCP, while LFS uses UDP. UDP packets are not acknoledged when they go through the net and if a packet gets lost, it IS lost forever, while TCP packets are retransmitted if they havan't arrived on the destination machine.

Now, if there are congestions due to many users (peak hours) between 2 machines inside the ISP, then UDP packets jusr get lost, while TCP packets are instantly (?) retransmitted and the overall routing is flawless.

There is a way to force LFS to use TCP positioning packets. The problem is that the speed is pathetic for positioning (due to frame, error and packet loss checking), which is why LFS uses UDP packets instead. If I remember correctly its something like Control+T. As a little history lesson, LFS did use TCP positioning packets previously.

@the_angry_angel: I know, as I've written few posts above, it works for positioning but still some data goes UDP, and it still disconnects.

Anyway. It's now solved for me.

The ISP 1st changed my routing to the master server, and it had some effect, where the connection to the master server would happen quickly, but still skippy connection to the race servers, which still caused disconnections and lags.

Next, they've moved me completely to a different pool of users as far as the routing goes. That is, I'm now on the "Gamers" routing but with dynamic IP. "Gamers" is a new service they launched few months ago, which is supposed to have lower pings and better connectivity. Users that applied for a "Gamers" account pay more and get better routing and static IP address. My suspicion is that my normal connection's quality dropped in correletion with them launching this new service. Needless to say, I refused to apply for the Gamers account type.

So, anyway, it seems that my connection is now fast (read: back to what it used to be). Tried it with different LFS servers, even some with quite low ping (300ms) and it worked well. However, all other "normal" users still have these issues if they don't apply for the Gamers account. That kinda sucks if they use to play online games, And it's very annoying that the ISP let the normal service deteriorate when they launched "Gamers".

Oh well, If I can't change the world, at least I can help myself :/

cheers for the help guys.
avih

Glade to hear the complain loudly option worked, and you didn't even have to pay more to get the same service effectively as a premium account holder.

I'm affraid for some though it's a matter of dishing up more currency to get better quality service sometimes, although persistent requests often work well