Lag - What it is - What you can do

Lag Lag Lag Lag Lag Lag Lag.

All we ever hear about when we game, but what exactly is Lag?

I have super fast internet, why does the dude kill me when I was shooting him first?

------

Lag is slang for Latency. It is the time your network takes to commmunicate with the outside world and to receive communications.

No matter how fast your internet is, your internet provider still has to connect you to the outside world.

Think of it like this;
You are on the internet and you see a song that you want to download. You click the download button, and wait for the download confirmation box to appear. When you confirm it, you download the song as fast as your internet can go.
The Lag was the time it took your computer/network/internet provider to "talk" to the server that the song was on before giving you the download confirmation box. It was probably only like half a second, but a half a second can mean life or death in a first person shooter.

----

The game is Laggy and choppy.

The game servers need to sync with everyones machines. You can have the fastest internet in the world and still have this problem.

It is because the server "room" can only go as fast as the slowest person connecting to it.
So that dude living in a cave in the middle of the North Pole, using a 128k connection, is jacking the room up for everyone. The "room" server is reducing your smooth graphics play to match his slow machine/connection.

----

Back to the Lag and how to get it reduced.

Internet companies vary greatly as far as their "Lag Ratings" (made that up).

Satellite dishes have the greatest amount of Lag because of their communication times, going to space and back to Earth before hitting the fiber backbone of the world.

Cable internet is fast and reliable, but it seems it has around a half second to 3/4 second of lag.

DSL varies in lag, depending on how far you are from the central office. I have heard some players with DSL claim they rarley have problems with Lag and slay everyone without problem.

New Fiber backed DSL. Still depends on how far away you are from the central office, but nothing beats the speed of light, so in my techie experience, the current best you can get is the new fiber backed DSL. (Unless you can afford to pay someone to run a fiber line straight to your house).

----

What do you have? How is your Lag?

By letting us know, we can all find a better internet for gaming.

----

Check this page for an update letting you know how to perform a network lag test.

I have Cable internet, As for the gaming part on the internet its pritty good eccept if some one comes into the room (like you said) with shity internet and slows every one down that is the only time i get the lag. But for my computer conecting it is shit but thats most likely my comp any way cable is almost perfect for BFBC.

...well the ping here is hell... i get kicked frequently from PC BF2 servers because it can be 110-400 just depends that day. i have 1.5 meg internet and my only complaint is the ping.. and i live 10 miles from our provider. help me out here Gideon, you know way more than me.

[AOG]_LPST wrote:...well the ping here is hell... i get kicked frequently from PC BF2 servers because it can be 110-400 just depends that day. i have 1.5 meg internet and my only complaint is the ping.. and i live 10 miles from our provider. help me out here Gideon, you know way more than me.

110 - 400 is not great, but you shouldn't get kicked from it. I used to run 700 and rarely lost connection.

Cable? DSL? Other?
Provider?
Wireless? Wired?
Router?

Answer those questions.

AOG-Gideon wrote:

[AOG]_LPST wrote:...well the ping here is hell... i get kicked frequently from PC BF2 servers because it can be 110-400 just depends that day. i have 1.5 meg internet and my only complaint is the ping.. and i live 10 miles from our provider. help me out here Gideon, you know way more than me.

110 - 400 is not great, but you shouldn't get kicked from it. I used to run 700 and rarely lost connection.

Cable? DSL? Other?
Provider?
Wireless? Wired?
Router?

Answer those questions.

Its DSL, wired, got the cheap walmart Linksys router. our internet provider is our local phone service. i get kicked sometimes just because i was PINGING 150's. when its in the 400's ill be in the room for about 3 seconds then i get kicked... its hell.

dude my comp is 6 years old maxd out on shitty software i never use and my ping maxd out at like 500 i turned every thing off ctrl alt del go to programs and click end program just tossing that bit of info out there btw any one know how to kill mice little basterds to smart for traps ate the food and shit all over assholes

Shogunned........you kill mice with a sniper rifle....DUH ! Wtf? why you gotta act a fool all the time?

I am getting DSL on the 20th. I will be running a dual test on multiple machines to measure which one has the most lag.

DSL almost a quater second of lag, Cable had only 30ms. I am sticking with cable.
Do you know how many bullets you can fire in a quater second?

AOG-Gideon wrote:DSL almost a quater second of lag, Cable had only 30ms. I am sticking with cable.
Do you know how many bullets you can fire in a quater second?

enough to kill 3 people?

Another thought on LAG. With the PS3, we were connecting to EA BFBC servers. Same with PS2 bf2mc, Their servers were built for madden, hockey, etc.. everytime they make a new game they have to change their servers around and add more servers or shut down an old one and update it to work with the new game. These are not dedicated servers, it is a peer to peer network. the more people on it the heavier it is. Also, the servers were not built for the game so the server also has lag.
What a crap system.

The same server system structure was used for the Socom series and everyone knows the online play kept getting laggier and laggier and the Socom devs couldn't figure it out so they disappeared for 3 to 4 months at a time, then offered a new map. That pissed tons of people off.

I am excited to see the new MAG game. Zipper built servers for the game from the ground up. A dedicated server. Dedicated servers have the absolute least lag of all. They been testing since Nov 2008 and claim it is ultra smooth. Maybe they discovered the Holy Grail of Anti-Lag.

Just noticed that the new Madden 2010 is coming out in a couple days. Everyone notice how crappy the servers are lately? PS3 BFBC is laggy. PS2 BF2MC servers stopped tracking stats again and the servers keep switching from West Coast to East Coast to MultiPlay PUB rooms. I wonder how the PC versions are doing.

All PC servers, except the 2(lol) "official" servers, are all player maintained. So it shouldn't affect the PC version. I Haven;t played in a few weeks, I've had too much going on. Might try later today.

yeah EA by far has the worst servers.. they use 8 year old technology but with BFBC2 coming out, there are talks of this new cell-based server thatis going to take place of all of EA's 8 yr old shit so hopefully it will be better b/c EA f****** sux right now and I am sooo dissapointed with Battlefield failing miserably. They did ok with 1943 but I feel they could have done a hell of alot better.. maybe this is just a glimpse of what is coming soon