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General FreeSpace => Multiplayer => Topic started by: captain-custard on January 08, 2009, 05:32:46 am

Title: how can we set up servers so the ping is a little more equal
Post by: captain-custard on January 08, 2009, 05:32:46 am
basically as it reads , we have players all over the world atm and its ok for the europeans and americans but for players in asia , australia it seems to be bad and leaves themù not wanting to play;

so is there anyway that we can find a solution , is it possible for an american , european, asian servers to be connnected together so that it will equalise the ping a little?

i wish i new something about this so those who do please post a solution


thanks
Title: Re: how can we set up servers so the ping is a little more equal
Post by: Dilmah G on January 08, 2009, 06:16:23 am
Well I'll put forth my idea

Anyone who has a speed of 10mbps should b able to host decently, so if we have a list of areas where players suffer from bad connection difficulties and assign a member closest to that area with decent internet, and convince them to host as much/as soon as possible, we can kind of create our own localised servers

There are many flaws with the idea, so what, sue me, but it's just an idea
Title: Re: how can we set up servers so the ping is a little more equal
Post by: chief1983 on January 08, 2009, 11:02:17 am
As far as 'equalization' goes, it's not like money where you can rob from the rich and give to the poor.  You can't make someone's faster, so you could only bring everyone else down with the laggiest person in the game.  Sure it equals the playing field, but it also ruins the game for everyone instead of just the poor sap in Australia trying to play with his EU buddies.  Getting more people to host in more places is a far better idea, and with the standalone server working soon, you could put up dedicated servers all over the world and really help alleviate that problem a lot.
Title: Re: how can we set up servers so the ping is a little more equal
Post by: JGZinv on January 08, 2009, 12:01:45 pm
You can only do two things:

1. Get a much better connection, like business class.
There are inherent amounts of lag everytime the "signal" has to connect to a new line to
go a little bit farther towards the server or recipient. So no matter how much you fight it,
there's going to be X amount of lag between Australia and where ever. The only thing you
can do is get a better connection yourself on the player's end, and tweak it to get the lowest ping.

2. Have servers equidistant between all players, accounting for difference in connection speeds and
how many node/hubs/connection points you have to jump through. If a guy in Germany has a 10 MBps connection
but you have to go through 32 connections to get to him, you may be better off with the dude in Spain with the
5 MBps connection and 5 links to hop through.

Having the server on the person with the lowest ping has been a staple of the gaming life just about forever.
Title: Re: how can we set up servers so the ping is a little more equal
Post by: Dilmah G on January 14, 2009, 09:23:14 pm
Is there a proven way to hack your ping? I did the Reg entries they have up on youtube, but my ping is the same
Title: Re: how can we set up servers so the ping is a little more equal
Post by: FUBAR-BDHR on January 14, 2009, 09:34:47 pm
Ping is nothing more than the round trip time it takes to get to a location and back.  No matter how much faster you connection is (and that is a bit misleading since you connection isn't faster it just transfers more at one time) it still takes time to get from one place to another.  The only thing that can really decrease the time is a more direct root or bigger pipe.  The bigger pipe only helps if there is a bottle neck on your end otherwise the traffic has to be routed along with everyone else's.  A more direct route will cost you big bucks ans still may only cut you ping down 10-20ms.  It the case of FS2 anything over 256k should be plenty of bandwidth to host.  Less than that to play.  Remember this game was written when 56k was the most common connection type.  Unless you lived in a big population area DSL and cable were still a couple of years off.   
Title: Re: how can we set up servers so the ping is a little more equal
Post by: JGZinv on January 14, 2009, 11:25:16 pm
There's people that can go into oodles of detail over at the dslreports.com forums.
It's not DSL centric by any means, and there's forums for every major internet connection type.

I used to tweak my connection settings by editing the RWIN and some other data back
when I was using mobile broadband by sprint. There was a fair amount of difference in ping and
up/download after I did the tweaks. How well those same tweaks would affect a landline, is debatable.
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r18650881-Evdo-Tweaks-and-Tuning

Again... find the section for your type of connection, and ask questions (first read the FAQ for that section in the left
hand side bar or you'll be run off) there. The stuff in the link above was for mobile internet, the Dr. TCP would
apply to you, but there's no telling what the values would be for your connection type. That's why you need to ask
people that know.

What FUBAR said is correct - in terms of ping isn't the same as bandwith aka how much water you can carry in
the "tube." All you can do is clean up/tune up your PC and connection to run at it's optimum, then you have to work
at it from what servers give everyone the best overall experience.

Personally, I wouldn't trust anything put on youtube.
Title: Re: how can we set up servers so the ping is a little more equal
Post by: Dilmah G on January 14, 2009, 11:32:46 pm
Okkayy fair enough

I'll just stick to trying to obtain my 25mbps 25GB dl limit net and hope it helps
Title: Re: how can we set up servers so the ping is a little more equal
Post by: FUBAR-BDHR on January 14, 2009, 11:44:25 pm
I know some of those settings used to work on dial-up and ISDN in win95 and maybe 98.  I know I had to tweek mine because I was using 3 modems shotgunned at one time before I got dual channel ISDN.  That was because of limits in the OS though and wasn't necessary once ME/2000/XP came out.  I don't see how they could help if you are using a DSL or cable router since the settings would need to be changed on the router itself.  Your already connecting to the router at 10/100/1000 or whatever.  Unless of course you have an internal modem for your cable/DSL. 
Title: Re: how can we set up servers so the ping is a little more equal
Post by: Bas on January 16, 2009, 07:23:20 pm
When standalone-/dedicated serversoftware is running better (next final version of build, foobar told me) I *might* be able to spend a 24/7 server in Europe
It depends on the OS and if FS2 will work on it - The machine is at a data centre so connection (and traffic to) are no matters.