To Lag Or Not To Lag?

[Tomisama]

Does the lag between two MII players increase with the physical distance between the two?

I thought the newer releases (Rome forward) all passed through GameSpy for the intire game.

If that is true then the overall distance to be considered is from player to GS, to player.

But if that were true, then Chinese players living next door to each other, would be hard pressed to have a game.

And where exactly are the GameSpy servers physically anyway?

Thanks in advance

[Puzz3D]

Does the lag between two MII players increase with the physical distance between the two?

It's the number of hops that matters.

I thought the newer releases (Rome forward) all passed through GameSpy for the intire game.

That's my understanding, and that's why you get dropped from a battle if you loose connect with GameSpy even though GameSpy is only a matchmaking server and, technically, is not needed after a battle launches. The game has a peer-to-peer network architecture design, so the host machine is the server for the battle not GameSpy.

If that is true then the overall distance to be considered is from player to GS, to player.

Yes, and it puts an extra machine in the battle with you which increases the chance of players being dropped from the battle.

But if that were true, then Chinese players living next door to each other, would be hard pressed to have a game.

Players next door to each other could have problems if they can't maintain a stable connection to GameSpy.

And where exactly are the GameSpy servers physically anyway?

The last time I checked they were on the west coast of the USA.

There is nothing you can do. It either works well for you or it doesn't. Yesterday, Comcast admitted that it has been secretly blocking people's network connection if they decide a person is downloading too much.

Posted on CNN at 12:02 p.m. EDT, Thu March 27, 2008:

"Comcast Corp., an Internet service provider under investigation for hampering online file-sharing by its subscribers, announced Thursday an about-face in its stance and said it will treat all types of Internet traffic equally.

Since user reports of interference with file-sharing traffic were confirmed by an Associated Press investigation in October, Comcast has been vigorously defending its practices, most recently at a hearing of the Federal Communications Commission in February."


I have Comcast, and I've had unexplained and repeated pauses when using the internet and when playing MTW online for about a year now. Their customer service acted dumb when I talked to them about it.

[Tomisama]

Thanks Yuuki-san


Using Ping Ploter I was easily able to chart the connection.

http://www.tucows.com/preview/306498

From my machine near Chicago Illinois is 15 hops from GameSpy in Santa Clara California.

So if I were playing my next door neigbor, we would be lookin at 30 hops between us, not counting the local connect.

Mesuring ping and comparing with what GS reads will be an interesting study.

[TosaInu]

Can you change ISP Yuuki?

[Tomisama]

More recently I have adopted the following theory.

Since all players in a RTW or MTWII based games have to stay connected to both the game host “and” GS, the game speed will be slowed to the worst case connection speed of any of the relationships involved.

This can be evaluated by getting measurements for all of the players to the host IP, and to GS. The highest ping of any of these will be the speed of the game.

So far, the ping to GS has always been higher than any interlayer pings measured, so it alone is now being used as the qualifier where pregame evaluations need to be done for contests. This makes sense when you consider the path from GS to the farthest point away, will always be farther than any two points in-between.

Edit: (That path “seeming” to always be across the US to Europe and Asia, but this may be wrong.)

We will see if this bears out

[KrooK]

Tomi - into MTW2 definitly, into RTW probably (I don't remember but I think so) you don't have to be connected to GS to play. If you lost connection to GS during game, you still can play.

[Tomisama]

Tomi - into MTW2 definitly, into RTW probably (I don't remember but I think so) you don't have to be connected to GS to play. If you lost connection to GS during game, you still can play.

Hi Krook

You may be right, and I may be lumping these two together. All I can say for sure is that in both cases the CWC had to lower it’s ideal 4v4 contests, to 3v3s. That was a major blow, as the “big game” competition was what we were all about.

How would you know that you had lost GS connection in a game, if you didn’t get dropped from the game?

And now it occurs to me that that is the difference between the two, because after all they are the same engine. That is, in RTW if you lost GS you were not automatically dropped, and in MTWII, you are.

Are we getting closer to the facts here?

[KrooK]

How would you know that you had lost GS connection in a game, if you didn’t get dropped from the game?

When I lost connection with gs there is communicate on the top of the screen, something like
"Game Spy Connection Lost. Results of this battle will not be saved"
But I can play this game normally without any problems.

[Puzz3D]

When I lost connection with gs there is communicate on the top of the screen, something like
"Game Spy Connection Lost. Results of this battle will not be saved"
But I can play this game normally without any problems.

Were you returned to the RTW foyer after the battle? If you had completely lost connection to the GameSpy matchmaking server, you wouldn't be returned to the foyer because you'd be logged out. As I recall in RTW and we see this in MTW as well, there is a type of lost connect to GameSpy where you are returned to the foyer after a battle, but you are not fully logged in. You then have to logout and login to get fully connected.

The only TW game that I know of where you could fully loose connect to the matchmaking server and have the battle continue unaffected was STW which used an EA matchmaking server. We know this because there were occasions where we came out of a battle and the matchmaking server was offline for everybody. Starting with MTW, which was the first TW game hosted through GameSpy, it's my understanding that all data packets between the host of a battle and the joiners are routed through the GameSpy server.

[KrooK]

If I remember it well (telling the truth GS is quite stable now - I don't remember when I lost GS connection during battle) when GS connection was lost, I did not back to RTW/M2TW lobby.
Anyway nowadays these problems with lost connections are not as big as they were earlier. Some players are lagging but
1) they have bad connection
2) they have bad or badly configured computers

[Puzz3D]

Anyway nowadays these problems with lost connections are not as big as they were earlier. Some players are lagging but
1) they have bad connection
2) they have bad or badly configured computers

Comcast cable here in the USA is making TW unplayable for their customers because they periodically (every 15 minutes or so) reduce the send and receive bandwidth to zero for 30 seconds or more which causes the player to drop from the battle.

[TosaInu]

Comcast cable here in the USA is making TW unplayable for their customers because they periodically (every 15 minutes or so) reduce the send and receive bandwidth to zero for 30 seconds or more which causes the player to drop from the battle.

What's the idea behind this?

[Puzz3D]

What's the idea behind this?

To discourage customers from using a lot of bandwidth even though the customers are paying for that bandwidth. Comcast cannot actually supply the advertised bandwith to all of their customers. They told the FCC that they would stop throttling customer's bandwith, but they obviously haven't stopped.

[Tomisama]

I have Comcast, and haven't had any problems yet (knocks on wood thrice)

[dadiroscaa2]

Can somone help me? i need help with the online battles in Medieval 2 total war and umm ya.. When i press online battles it freezes and i have to press ctrl + alt + delete to cancel the lagg so can somone help me i really want to play online. please.

[TosaInu]

To discourage customers from using a lot of bandwidth even though the customers are paying for that bandwidth. Comcast cannot actually supply the advertised bandwith to all of their customers. They told the FCC that they would stop throttling customer's bandwith, but they obviously haven't stopped.

But doesn't this just render the whole service useless? Even the occasional download of a utility or demo will break. A decent download manager will just resume. Wouldn't it be more effective to just stop the excessive users, say those who download more than 10 GB a month.

Can you change ISP?

I have Comcast, and haven't had any problems yet (knocks on wood thrice)

Different local/state policies perhaps?

[TosaInu]

Hello dadiroscaa2,

You may have to configure your firewall and/or router. Freezing after pressing online battles is often a case of ports being blocked.

[KrooK]

And turn off grass into battle

[dadiroscaa2]

Thanks il try doing that.

[dadiroscaa2]

ok, so what should i do turn off fire wall? if that idk if i could cuz im scared some other stuff will come in an crash my comp or what should i do i need help!

[TosaInu]

Hello dadiroscaa2,

It depends a bit which firewall you have. ZoneAlarm Pro for example can open ports that are used by M2TW and allow only that program to get through. So, the firewall is open at all times. ZoneAlarm basic has some option too, but it often has to be disabled.

What are you using dadiroscaa2?

[dadiroscaa2]

Hello dadiroscaa2,

It depends a bit which firewall you have. ZoneAlarm Pro for example can open ports that are used by M2TW and allow only that program to get through. So, the firewall is open at all times. ZoneAlarm basic has some option too, but it often has to be disabled.

What are you using dadiroscaa2?

umm im using windows fire wall =P and on exceptions i pressed check on medieval 2 total was but still dosent work when you press muliplayer battles how long do i wait?