High Ping & Packet Loss

15165684 · March 16, 2014, 1:07am

The conntest.log tells the story. If that wasn’t enough I pinged a godaddy hosted site to verify my connection was good.

I own a small business that one of the many things I do is host VMs. I would be happy to host a VM game server free of charge. Totally free. I am willing to do some light hardware upgrades if needed, add a processor or memory.

RAID, redundant power supply, redundant battery backup server…

I would be willing to give up 5M down and 1M up per second. If REALLY needed I could do more.

I always play with a license, I spend money to transfer synergy. The ONE thing you can do to lose me as a customer is continue to have servers with high lag.

I was having these issues both from my house, and my store.

4203428 · March 16, 2014, 1:56am

Forwarded.

4242384 · March 16, 2014, 1:57am

Last night i had couple games on russians servers, usually it is about 150 ping but stable, last nigth i had all RU games at ~200 ping and up to 20% packet loss, it was terrible, i started to suspect my side, restarted everything, pc modem, router, did speedtest for ping, same problem on RU servers, but whener i got on US, i had smooth 50-60 ping and no packet losses, as always.

13255646 · March 16, 2014, 12:27pm

I live in the EU and the russian servers are the only ones where I get packet loss and start to rubberband / ship starts to glitch around, even though the ping is only at 80. Even when there is no packet loss it still happens. When ever I play on EU (40 ping), USA (150 ping) or SA (300 ping) it’s fine… there is no packet loss. Why russia

1078853 · March 16, 2014, 1:06pm

I’m in the EU and I don’t get packet loss anywhere. These logs won’t help them much since they don’t know your peering/the route your connection takes to their servers.

Two of the three EU servers are often fairly laggy for me btw, these days I prefer playing on the Russian servers. Might be hardware differences on the servers.

5785254 · March 16, 2014, 7:46pm

You all call yours as lag? what about my 350+ average latancy over-all? let alone the frequent spikes of ping and/or data losses. At least the spikes can be temporarily remedied by doing a quick reconnect of LAN connection. Because then, it’ll give me a new ip address. I’d have to do it over and over until i land on a lucky ip add. Bottom line, just poor server…

12618661 · March 16, 2014, 10:41pm

The Russian servers are always bad from the US West Coast ping more than 200ms sometimes 280ms then the usual lags like cannot hit anything and your ship is jumping around (even with a Fighter).

You all call yours as lag? what about my 350+ average latancy over-all? let alone the frequent spikes of ping and/or data losses. At least the spikes can be temporarily remedied by doing a quick reconnect of LAN connection. Because then, it’ll give me a new ip address. I’d have to do it over and over until i land on a lucky ip add. Bottom line, just poor server…

For me that seems like an issue with your ISP when you have sometimes a good path sometimes a bad to the same server.

12618661 · March 16, 2014, 11:39pm

There seems to be a bug with the connection tester as there is always at least 3% packet loss (1 out of 30 even to google). When I do a ping in a command prompt to google I don’t lose any packet out of 60.

16:23:07.237 | Pinged for 30.0 seconds
16:23:07.237 | ya.ru: packets: 30/29 ( 3% loss), avg: 191ms, min: 184ms, max: 200ms
16:23:07.238 | google.com: packets: 30/29 ( 3% loss), avg: 94ms, min: 91ms, max: 110ms
16:23:07.238 | main01av-ru.star-conflict.com: packets: 30/29 ( 3% loss), avg: 296ms, min: 275ms, max: 333ms
16:23:07.239 | node01av-ru.star-conflict.com: packets: 30/29 ( 3% loss), avg: 305ms, min: 280ms, max: 338ms
16:23:07.239 | node02av-ru.star-conflict.com: packets: 30/29 ( 3% loss), avg: 314ms, min: 300ms, max: 334ms
16:23:07.240 | ConnectionTester: new state ‘CTS_UDP_TESTING’
16:23:14.051 | UdpTester(91.230.60.102|36000): Failed to connect
16:23:14.134 | UdpTester(91.230.61.156|36000): Failed to connect
16:23:14.212 | UdpTester(91.230.61.172|36000): Failed to connect
16:23:14.212 | UDP tester work time: 30.0 seconds
16:23:14.213 | UdpTester(91.230.60.102|36000): MTU size: 576
16:23:14.213 | UdpTester(91.230.60.102|36000): Ping: avg: -1ms, min: -1ms
16:23:14.214 | UdpTester(91.230.60.102|36000): Packets received by server: 0/0
16:23:14.214 | UdpTester(91.230.60.102|36000): Sizes of packets received from server (0):
16:23:14.215 | UdpTester(91.230.61.156|36000): MTU size: 576
16:23:14.215 | UdpTester(91.230.61.156|36000): Ping: avg: -1ms, min: -1ms
16:23:14.216 | UdpTester(91.230.61.156|36000): Packets received by server: 0/0
16:23:14.216 | UdpTester(91.230.61.156|36000): Sizes of packets received from server (0):
16:23:14.217 | UdpTester(91.230.61.172|36000): MTU size: 576
16:23:14.217 | UdpTester(91.230.61.172|36000): Ping: avg: -1ms, min: -1ms
16:23:14.218 | UdpTester(91.230.61.172|36000): Packets received by server: 0/0
16:23:14.218 | UdpTester(91.230.61.172|36000): Sizes of packets received from server (0):

Here are some match times (are PDT, UTC -7hours) and traces when I had packet loss and heavy lag.

15:07:19.948 | MasterServerSession: connect to dedicated server, session 5368757, at addr 91.230.61.172|35010, zoneId 0
15:07:19.971 | client: start connecting to 91.230.61.172|35010…

3 25 ms 23 ms 24 ms 108-238-128-2.lightspeed.sntcca.sbcglobal.net [108.238.128.2]
4 * * * Request timed out.
5 31 ms 37 ms 25 ms 12.83.39.205
6 25 ms 27 ms 28 ms 12.122.149.133
7 * * 43 ms 192.205.32.210
8 251 ms 256 ms 248 ms vlan80.csw3.SanJose1.Level3.net [4.69.152.190]
9 259 ms 259 ms 252 ms ae-81-81.ebr1.SanJose1.Level3.net [4.69.153.9]
10 255 ms 264 ms 264 ms ae-2-2.ebr2.NewYork1.Level3.net [4.69.135.186]
11 260 ms 264 ms 248 ms ae-62-62.csw1.NewYork1.Level3.net [4.69.148.34]

12 174 ms 174 ms 174 ms ae-61-61.ebr1.NewYork1.Level3.net [4.69.134.65]

13 246 ms 175 ms 175 ms ae-41-41.ebr2.London1.Level3.net [4.69.137.65]
14 175 ms 174 ms 173 ms ae-24-24.ebr2.Frankfurt1.Level3.net [4.69.148.198]
15 177 ms 177 ms 180 ms ae-82-82.csw3.Frankfurt1.Level3.net [4.69.140.26]
16 174 ms 173 ms 173 ms ae-3-80.edge7.Frankfurt1.Level3.net [4.69.154.139]
17 174 ms 173 ms 173 ms 195.16.162.54
18 * * * Request timed out.
19 * * * Request timed out.
20 295 ms 299 ms 299 ms 91.230.61.172

12:35:01.990 | MasterServerSession: connect to dedicated server, session 5367049, at addr 91.230.61.240|35025, zoneId 0
12:35:02.012 | client: start connecting to 91.230.61.240|35025…

13:27:33.031 | MasterServerSession: connect to dedicated server, session 5367727, at addr 91.230.61.240|35022, zoneId 0
13:27:33.054 | client: start connecting to 91.230.61.240|35022…

3 27 ms 23 ms 25 ms 108-238-128-2.lightspeed.sntcca.sbcglobal.net [108.238.128.2]
4 * * * Request timed out.
5 24 ms 31 ms 31 ms 12.83.39.201
6 28 ms 27 ms 27 ms 12.122.149.133
7 * 42 ms 42 ms 192.205.32.210
8 174 ms 175 ms 173 ms vlan70.csw2.SanJose1.Level3.net [4.69.152.126]
9 178 ms 180 ms 175 ms ae-71-71.ebr1.SanJose1.Level3.net [4.69.153.5]
10 262 ms 243 ms 234 ms ae-2-2.ebr2.NewYork1.Level3.net [4.69.135.186]
11 175 ms 174 ms 175 ms ae-82-82.csw3.NewYork1.Level3.net [4.69.148.42]

12 263 ms 263 ms 247 ms ae-81-81.ebr1.NewYork1.Level3.net [4.69.134.73]

13 176 ms 176 ms 175 ms ae-41-41.ebr2.London1.Level3.net [4.69.137.65]
14 177 ms 173 ms 174 ms ae-21-21.ebr2.Frankfurt1.Level3.net [4.69.148.186]
15 176 ms 177 ms 175 ms ae-82-82.csw3.Frankfurt1.Level3.net [4.69.140.26]
16 175 ms 174 ms 174 ms ae-3-80.edge7.Frankfurt1.Level3.net [4.69.154.139]
17 174 ms 175 ms 174 ms 195.16.162.54
18 * * * Request timed out.
19 * * * Request timed out.
20 212 ms 211 ms 212 ms 91.230.61.240

14:51:21.991 | MasterServerSession: connect to dedicated server, session 5368626, at addr 91.230.61.156|35011, zoneId 0
14:51:22.013 | client: start connecting to 91.230.61.156|35011…

3 28 ms 24 ms 24 ms 108-238-128-2.lightspeed.sntcca.sbcglobal.net [108.238.128.2]
4 * * * Request timed out.
5 27 ms 23 ms 23 ms 12.83.39.205
6 28 ms 27 ms 27 ms 12.122.149.133
7 * * * Request timed out.
8 175 ms 173 ms 178 ms vlan70.csw2.SanJose1.Level3.net [4.69.152.126]
9 175 ms 174 ms 178 ms ae-71-71.ebr1.SanJose1.Level3.net [4.69.153.5]
10 263 ms 252 ms 261 ms ae-2-2.ebr2.NewYork1.Level3.net [4.69.135.186]
11 175 ms 247 ms 254 ms ae-72-72.csw2.NewYork1.Level3.net [4.69.148.38]

12 257 ms 242 ms 243 ms ae-71-71.ebr1.NewYork1.Level3.net [4.69.134.69]

13 175 ms 174 ms 181 ms ae-41-41.ebr2.London1.Level3.net [4.69.137.65]
14 173 ms 264 ms 174 ms ae-21-21.ebr2.Frankfurt1.Level3.net [4.69.148.186]
15 175 ms 174 ms 175 ms ae-82-82.csw3.Frankfurt1.Level3.net [4.69.140.26]
16 174 ms 173 ms 174 ms ae-3-80.edge7.Frankfurt1.Level3.net [4.69.154.139]
17 174 ms 173 ms 175 ms 195.16.162.54
18 * * * Request timed out.
19 * * * Request timed out.
20 212 ms 284 ms 281 ms 91.230.61.156

13:14:09.779 | MasterServerSession: connect to dedicated server, session 5367561, at addr 91.230.61.170|35003, zoneId 0
13:14:09.801 | client: start connecting to 91.230.61.170|35003…

3 26 ms 25 ms 25 ms 108-238-128-2.lightspeed.sntcca.sbcglobal.net [108.238.128.2]
4 * * * Request timed out.
5 26 ms 23 ms 23 ms 12.83.39.205
6 27 ms 27 ms 27 ms 12.122.149.133
7 49 ms 44 ms * 192.205.32.210
8 175 ms 175 ms 174 ms vlan90.csw4.SanJose1.Level3.net [4.69.152.254]
9 258 ms 253 ms 253 ms ae-91-91.ebr1.SanJose1.Level3.net [4.69.153.13]

10 261 ms 258 ms 269 ms ae-2-2.ebr2.NewYork1.Level3.net [4.69.135.186]
11 175 ms 174 ms 174 ms ae-82-82.csw3.NewYork1.Level3.net [4.69.148.42]

12 237 ms 238 ms 239 ms ae-81-81.ebr1.NewYork1.Level3.net [4.69.134.73]

13 258 ms 261 ms 255 ms ae-44-44.ebr2.London1.Level3.net [4.69.137.77]
14 175 ms 174 ms 174 ms ae-23-23.ebr2.Frankfurt1.Level3.net [4.69.148.194]
15 175 ms 174 ms 174 ms ae-82-82.csw3.Frankfurt1.Level3.net [4.69.140.26]
16 211 ms 173 ms 174 ms ae-3-80.edge7.Frankfurt1.Level3.net [4.69.154.139]
17 174 ms 173 ms 173 ms 195.16.162.54
18 * * * Request timed out.
19 * * * Request timed out.
20 283 ms 294 ms 287 ms 91.230.61.170

1078853 · March 17, 2014, 8:29am

There seems to be a bug with the connection tester as there is always at least 3% packet loss (1 out of 30 even to google). When I do a ping in a command prompt to google I don’t lose any packet out of 60.

Maybe you got some software firewall or similar blocking/slowing requests? I get no packet loss:

09:11:10.466 | ya.ru: packets: 30/30 ( 0% loss), avg: 21ms, min: 18ms, max: 40ms
09:11:10.467 | google.com: packets: 30/30 ( 0% loss), avg: 15ms, min: 14ms, max: 19ms
09:11:10.468 | main01av-ru.star-conflict.com: packets: 30/30 ( 0% loss), avg: 58ms, min: 55ms, max: 62ms
09:11:10.469 | node01av-ru.star-conflict.com: packets: 30/30 ( 0% loss), avg: 63ms, min: 58ms, max: 69ms
09:11:10.470 | node02av-ru.star-conflict.com: packets: 30/30 ( 0% loss), avg: 63ms, min: 60ms, max: 70ms

The UDP test failing is normal though, that part doesn’t work.

Looking at your traces, the biggest latency seems to be caused in your home country, those 260ms to the Level3 backbone are massive, in particular since it’s in the neighbourhood. You should talk to your ISP about that or switch ISPs if that’s an option.

4662737 · March 17, 2014, 9:17am

Sorry to hijack this thread, but…

When ever I play on EU (40 ping), USA (150 ping) or SA (300 ping) it’s fine… there is no packet loss.

How does MM decide which server to place you in? I have my preferred server permanently set to SA, but I only have a grand total of 2 matches on that server. It’s the only server where I get double digit ping (as opposed to at least 300 on Russia, the next best server and the one I’m almost always matched to).

1078853 · March 17, 2014, 9:45am

How does MM decide which server to place you in? I have my preferred server permanently set to SA, but I only have a grand total of 2 matches on that server.

Keeps changing, I think currently it’s that if you set the preference it’ll queue you waiting for enough other players with that preference, but if it does not find them fast enough (5 minutes?) it’ll move you over to the “any” queue and try to match you to the next best session anywhere.

There have been iterations of the matchmaker where setting a preference would force others without a preference to get matched into a 3v3 in your region once you waited long enough but I don’t think that it’s still doing that.

12618661 · March 18, 2014, 1:40am

Maybe you got some software firewall or similar blocking/slowing requests? I get no packet loss:

09:11:10.466 | ya.ru: packets: 30/30 ( 0% loss), avg: 21ms, min: 18ms, max: 40ms
09:11:10.467 | google.com: packets: 30/30 ( 0% loss), avg: 15ms, min: 14ms, max: 19ms
09:11:10.468 | main01av-ru.star-conflict.com: packets: 30/30 ( 0% loss), avg: 58ms, min: 55ms, max: 62ms
09:11:10.469 | node01av-ru.star-conflict.com: packets: 30/30 ( 0% loss), avg: 63ms, min: 58ms, max: 69ms
09:11:10.470 | node02av-ru.star-conflict.com: packets: 30/30 ( 0% loss), avg: 63ms, min: 60ms, max: 70ms

The UDP test failing is normal though, that part doesn’t work.

Looking at your traces, the biggest latency seems to be caused in your home country, those 260ms to the Level3 backbone are massive, in particular since it’s in the neighbourhood. You should talk to your ISP about that or switch ISPs if that’s an option.

I don’t know why the latency is already high inside the US. I get the same trace from work where we use a different ISP but who also routes through Level3 but in the end the latency is not higher than expected. At short routes to Germany I usually have latencies of 160 -180ms and Russia is further away and not really at a major exchange point so it takes longer.

It could be an issue in Level 3 network that the latency in the trace fluctuates or have packet loss. Who knows. There is not much I can do. I really don’t want to call my home ISP and go through 20 questions (can you please power cycle this and do that…) and in the end is not gonna change anyway.

I do other online games where I sometimes have similar pings and don’t have issues like that. We wouldn’t have this issue if they finally release the game and matches are closer to the players location.

6820689 · March 18, 2014, 8:54pm

The Russian servers are always bad from the US West Coast ping more than 200ms sometimes 280ms then the usual lags like cannot hit anything and your ship is jumping around (even with a Fighter frigate).

For me that seems like an issue with your ISP when you have sometimes a good path sometimes a bad to the same server.

FTFY. I have seen it so bad I had I didn’t even bother with PvE.

Maybe you got some software firewall or similar blocking/slowing requests? I get no packet loss:

09:11:10.466 | ya.ru: packets: 30/30 ( 0% loss), avg: 21ms, min: 18ms, max: 40ms
09:11:10.467 | google.com: packets: 30/30 ( 0% loss), avg: 15ms, min: 14ms, max: 19ms
09:11:10.468 | main01av-ru.star-conflict.com: packets: 30/30 ( 0% loss), avg: 58ms, min: 55ms, max: 62ms
09:11:10.469 | node01av-ru.star-conflict.com: packets: 30/30 ( 0% loss), avg: 63ms, min: 58ms, max: 69ms
09:11:10.470 | node02av-ru.star-conflict.com: packets: 30/30 ( 0% loss), avg: 63ms, min: 60ms, max: 70ms

The UDP test failing is normal though, that part doesn’t work.

Looking at your traces, the biggest latency seems to be caused in your home country, those 260ms to the Level3 backbone are massive, in particular since it’s in the neighbourhood. You should talk to your ISP about that or switch ISPs if that’s an option.

I’m getting 1 packet lost also.

15:42:02.443 | Pinged for 30.0 seconds
15:42:02.443 | ya.ru: packets: 30/29 ( 3% loss), avg: 176ms, min: 169ms, max: 200ms
15:42:02.444 | google.com: packets: 30/30 ( 0% loss), avg: 24ms, min: 17ms, max: 49ms
15:42:02.444 | main01av-ru.star-conflict.com: packets: 30/29 ( 3% loss), avg: 163ms, min: 155ms, max: 185ms
15:42:02.445 | node01av-ru.star-conflict.com: packets: 30/29 ( 3% loss), avg: 160ms, min: 155ms, max: 185ms
15:42:02.445 | node02av-ru.star-conflict.com: packets: 30/29 ( 3% loss), avg: 165ms, min: 157ms, max: 186ms

I used to work fine. Also, the UDP tester used to work if you ran it as administrator, but now it is broken. I also wish it would test all the game servers instead of only the Russian ones.

I’ve also lost confidence in geographical IP locators.

6495374 · March 18, 2014, 10:18pm

I only get packet loss on American servers, but i live near nyc. Whats going on here?

9637827 · March 18, 2014, 11:51pm

Last night I played untill 5 AM UTC -5 and lag was terrible, up to 50% packet loss and random people disconnecting from game. Played with MrTwiddlerz and FunkyDonut they told me they reported it on skype so I didnt reported it. Also, this lag was with less then 500 players online… I dont even get that much lag when the server have 2000+ players…Whats going on ?

1078853 · March 19, 2014, 12:20am

I’m getting 1 packet lost also.

…

I also wish it would test all the game servers instead of only the Russian ones.

I only get packet loss on American servers, but i live near nyc. Whats going on here?

Quick & dirty ping tester for all SCon servers that I know of:

Snib’s Star Conflict Ping Tester v1.0

By default it will only ping each server a single time because that should be enough but you can set a higher amount of retries for your packet loss research (packet loss during a game has little to do with lost ping packets, however). Testing it I had 3 servers not responding to pings (EU 3, RU 4 & 5). Might be they are down or maybe they are configured not to respond to ping requests at all.

12618661 · March 19, 2014, 1:00am

Quick & dirty ping tester for all SCon servers that I know of:

Snib’s Star Conflict Ping Tester v1.0

By default it will only ping each server a single time because that should be enough but you can set a higher amount of retries for your packet loss research (packet loss during a game has little to do with lost ping packets, however). Testing it I had 3 servers not responding to pings (EU 3, RU 4 & 5). Might be they are down or maybe they are configured not to respond to ping requests at all.

Nice tool. I think 4 or more retries would be good. Can you add a traceroute too? It may also make a difference if you just use ICMP or UDP ping to a certain port…

1078853 · March 19, 2014, 1:51am

Nice tool. I think 4 or more retries would be good. Can you add a traceroute too? It may also make a difference if you just use ICMP or UDP ping to a certain port…

You can set it to 4 or anything up to 99, after that the tool questions your sanity and resets your input back to 1. The tester that comes with the game sets it to 30 which I thought excessive already.

You cannot ICMP ping a specific port since ICMP operates on a lower network layer, there are no ports. UDP datagrams are addressed to specific ports but as we know from the official tester we won’t even get a response from the server telling us that the port is open.

I wasn’t really planning to develop this any further but sure could add a traceroute, that’s no problem. May do so tomorrow.

9637827 · March 19, 2014, 2:16am

I guess a screen shot is better than anything else…

4507221 · March 19, 2014, 9:30am

You can set it to 4 or anything up to 99, after that the tool questions your sanity and resets your input back to 1. The tester that comes with the game sets it to 30 which I thought excessive already.

You cannot ICMP ping a specific port since ICMP operates on a lower network layer, there are no ports. UDP datagrams can be sent to specific ports but as we know from the official tester we won’t even get a response from the server telling us that the port is open.

I wasn’t really planning to develop this any further but sure could add a traceroute, that’s no problem. May do so tomorrow.

This is indeed a good tool, can you add ‘save log’ capabilities?