Absolutely horrible connection issues in online games

[psy_commando]

Hey, its been months that its been getting worse and worse and now its just unbearable.

 

The game that is the most affected by this is TF2, and then KF.

I get decent pings in both games ranging from 20 to 100. But even though the ping stays at that, I'm getting lots of networking issues.

 

Mostly others moving oddly, appearing out of nowhere, or warping several meters away from their original position. There's also the issue of movement delays, around a few hundred milliseconds, rockets disappearing after being shot, rockets going through objects or even the ground, crits not harming anyone, crits not killing me or hurting me at all, others moving slowly towards me and my character being like almost attracted like a magnet and then killed.. Rockets being fired too late, getting stuck in the falling anim for several milliseconds when hitting the ground and not being able to move, weapons changing back to the last one when switching weapons, airblasts having no effects, sentries not getting repaired when hit with the wrench, etc etc..

 

On KF I get randomly de-synched, and for several seconds I can't move or hurt anything and 2-3 seconds later, I appear somewhere surrounded by zeds and about to die..

 

My cable company is Videotron, and we got 30mbits download, 10mbits upload plan, so I don't see why it would have issues. And pretty often, I was the only one using a computer and it still happened..

 

I'm using the on-board network adapter, a realtek adapter most likely..

 

I've been trying various things throughout the last few months, but it gave no results.. And I don't know who to contact in terms of tech support..

[Dr. Orange]

I have the same problem with KF in where I can't move for a couple seconds. I not sure anymore if it's a network problem if others have had it as well. 

[Hidi]

This sounds like me except I'm just getting really bad service.

 

Have you tried moving your routers around at all? You could also try an exterior WiFi adapter which tend to be more powerful than the ones in laptops.

[Icy]

I have no idea why your ping would be <100 and you would still get these crazy problems... I can only talk about what I have experience with.

 

I used to get a lot of lag on various games, but my ping would spike to 100+ when that happened. The Internet would also just go off and on multiple times a day. I figured that was just Comcast being Comcast, but most of that was from the router just being really bad. Some of it was also my terrible USB wireless adapter.

 

So, honestly, I'd just recommend you buy a good old Ethernet cable that you can run from your router to your PC. If it is indeed your adapter or just the router having issues with sending its wireless signals, then an Ethernet cable ought to solve the problem.

 

I have had no real trouble at all since I did that myself. (Aside from the occasional, typical Comcast Internet problems) Our router is a few rooms away, but a good 100ft cable for less than $15 (USD, at least) should be more than enough.

[psy_commando]

Well, I'm already using a wire to connect to my router. And it used not to be like that before..

 

Here, for example last game night:

 

 

That crit..

[DZComposer]

Sounds like packet loss to me.

Try running a long ping (ping -t on windows will ping until you stop it with ctrl+c) against something you know is up, like google. Dropped packets will return "timed out." If there are a bunch of timeouts, then you're dropping packets.

[psy_commando]

Well I ran the ping test for more than 5 minutes, and not one packet dropped and the latency stayed around 35ms

 

Ping statistics for 74.125.228.68:
    Packets: Sent = 519, Received = 519, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 31ms, Maximum = 45ms, Average = 34ms
Control-C

 

I ran those in the past too from my router, and still no issues there.

 

I'm more curious about that value in the net_graph panel in-game called "choke". Supposedly that it means the amount of updates retained by the server.. But I have no idea why my client would make the server retain updates..

[DZComposer]

I did some digging and apparently choke is the percentage of outgoing packets from your client that are dropped.

Your long ping makes it clear that the issue is not your internet connection. Are you using any configs or command options?

[Kursed]

Sounds like Packet loss to me I hope you can figure this out DZ.

[psy_commando]

I did some digging and apparently choke is the percentage of outgoing packets from your client that are dropped.

Your long ping makes it clear that the issue is not your internet connection. Are you using any configs or command options?

Oh well, I must have read it wrong then..

 

And I only used the stock settings, until I tried some custom net settings 1 or 2 weeks ago, it barely changed anything though.

 

Now that I think of it, I have this software running on my computer called Asus network icontrol .. It came with the software suite for my motherboard, and I had to use it to confirm something with their tech support, mostly a question of temps and voltages, nothing about the network.It works like some high level QoS software. But I ran with it disabled for a while.. And besides, I still had those connection issues before changing most of my computer in late August.

 

The only thing that's left I can think of is either the router, or the modem.. The router is a Linksys E1200.. Or if I'm really unlucky the cable, but, my computer hardly ever moves, so Idk if it could be a problem, given it would either work or not if its a cable problem..

[DZComposer]

Packet loss from specific apps only makes me think your network cable and router are likely fine. I doubt it is firewall-related because some packets do get through and consumer-level firewalls are not granular enough block only certain packets like the big enterprise ones can.

You said you started using some custom net settings. Can you elaborate? I really think it is your game network configs.

[psy_commando]

Packet loss from specific apps only makes me think your network cable and router are likely fine. I doubt it is firewall-related because some packets do get through and consumer-level firewalls are not granular enough block only certain packets like the big enterprise ones can.

You said you started using some custom net settings. Can you elaborate? I really think it is your game network configs.

I used settings generated by this: http://clugu.com/tf2mate/

I removed a lot of crap from those though.

 

But today, I just cleared my entire cfg folder and my command line. it made a slight difference. Much much less choking, but I'm still getting lots of weirdness, its just "lerped" better.. And, tonight wasn't particularly crowded, and usually that choke value goes crazy when lots of people are around. Still its an improvement somewhat.

[Clearwater]

I once had the same kind of probs last night when I was playing Team Fortress Classic online.

This might not work, but I found out recently that switching over my wireless internet access for wired

actually fixed the problem.

[psy_commando]

I once had the same kind of probs last night when I was playing Team Fortress Classic online.

This might not work, but I found out recently that switching over my wireless internet access for wired

actually fixed the problem.

Well, I'm already using a wire to connect to my router. And it used not to be like that before..

Thanks, but I have a desktop pc with a wired connection.

[Clearwater]

Thanks, but I have a desktop pc with a wired connection.

Sorry pal, but I don't know then.

[psy_commando]

I finally got an answer from the Valve tech support after 3 business days.. And the first thing they've asked was a screenshot of the issue...

We'll see if this goes anywhere..

[psy_commando]

Well after a few back and forth with them, they finally told me to disable the Nvidia auto-updater, and Avast.. Quite frankly, I don't think I can't disable that Nvidia thing fully, I turned it off in the settings but it keeps being aware of new updates anyways.. I couldn't even stop windows from installing new drivers.. >_<

And avast is crap, but Microsoft security essential proven to be not really very good from what I read.. I used to run without anti-virus, but now that I'm working on projects, with many people involved, I try to be more careful, given something they've caught could easily sneak by me..

And I'm now pretty sure the issue isn't related to my connection, but to my PC given that when I played KF with friends on my server, I was getting the same weird lag and stutter, and they weren't.. And I used the local LAN address of my server to connect, so.. I suspect something is wrong with my mainboard, since once in a while my keyboard+mouse and probably everything USB as well disconnects randomly..

Also, I really gotta switch to Linux soon, but I want to dual-boot first. And I need a new hdd for that, not enough space right now.. Plus Windows 7 screwed up my GPT partition table, because I didn't know I needed to boot the win7 install boot cd in UEFI mode..

Anyways, I'll try to see if this fixes the issue, but I haven't been feeling really TF2 these days.

[psy_commando]

Argh, Valve tech support.. It seriously sucks. It takes them 3 business days to answer anything, and they don't seem to understand anything.. Its like writing to a robot..

 

Hello Guillaume,

Please disable the following programs from your PC and re-test the issue:

Avast

daemonu.exe

Please make sure your network is properly optimized for Steam:

Title: Troubleshooting Network Connectivity

Link: http://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=1456-EUDN-2493

Additionally, disable any programs from this guide to further test the issue:

Title: Programs Which May Interfere with Steam

Link: http://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=9828-SFLZ-9289

If the issue persists, please reply with a new MSinfo that reflects the changes

Message by you on Fri, 22nd Nov 2013 1:58 am

The issue continues even though I disabled both Avast and the NVidia update daemon.

I also went ahead and disabled all the power saving features in the device manager properties for my network interface card. I updated the video card drivers to the latest version, even though I was strongly advised against by friends, and updated both my soundcard driver and mainboard driver/suite to their latest version.

It also seem that my FPS are very unstable and go from 200 to 10 in a split second constantly. This is the only game in which it does this.

However, I'm having strange texture issues in Saints Row 4 where the normal maps for some buildings are moving like a conveyor belt for some reasons..

Message by Support Tech Jace on Mon, 25th Nov 2013 8:14 pm

Hello Guillaume,

Please provide a msinfo that reflects these changes.

Message by you on Mon, 25th Nov 2013 9:21 pm

Alright, however, I had to rollback to the 314.22 nvidia drivers, given that I had issues with the latest drivers, including a blue screen. However now, Aero is constantly disabled. And each times the UAC prompt pops up it shows me a message that says that "Nvidia settings" has stopped working..

However there has been no noticeable changes in-game.

Message by Support Tech Jace on Wed, 27th Nov 2013 9:54 pm

Hello Guillaume,

Please disable the following programs from your PC and re-test the issue:

daemonu.exe

Avast

If the issue persists, please reply with a new MSinfo that reflects the changes

Message by you on Thu, 28th Nov 2013 8:53 pm

You already told me 2 messages ago.

I disabled the NVidia update manager in the task manager temporarily when playing TF2, and I disabled my anti-virus in the options temporarily when playing it as well, and nothing changed..

If you mean uninstalling you'll have to be more precise.

That's really depressing.. And the worst part, is that after the months its gonna take to solve this problem, my warranties are gonna be over, and if anything is broken, I'll have to buy new stuff, even though I had the problem long before..