Lag while playing steam games.

[M3guy]

My problem as the title states is an excessive amount of lag while playing steam games. The games I play most often are DOD and DOD source, as well as CounterStrike Source and Red Orchestra. I have adjusted my rates but still find my choke or loss can go up to 14 or higher when I approach a hot zone on the map. My cmd and upd are 90 rate is 25000. My average ping is 80 to 120. Is there anything I can do to help ? I am beginning to think the server is a pos on some of the original DOD servers. Also I do have an older lower end DLINK router, any help will be appreciated.

[Alienware-XP]

I play CS 1.6/Source/DOD/DOD:S/Garry's Mod/and some others.

This seems like a router problem to me.

Did you try messing with your cl_updaterate?
max_fps? (best at 101)

But if your router if receiving too much information, that my be the problem.


I'd say stay on Regular DOD servers in your area.
Figure out the correct setting for your cl_updaterate and leave max_fps at 101. See if anything changes.

If that's the problem, I can probably send you a good .cfg for you to exec when you play. That way, all your commands are set up in the matter of 5 seconds and if you still lag, it's an ISP/Router problem.

[M3guy]

will do, thanks.

[M3guy]

Actually made the problem worse. I have done some more digging and it may be more of a router issue. My little brothers both play that retarded WOW game, some times simultaneously. A friend of mine told me something about QOS controls for routers, basically you can throttle and calibrate the router to give steam games the priority over the wow games and other programs. Has any body ever done this ? Or have any recommendations on which router to get ?

[Aus_Karlos]

QOS just Prioritizes packets. Online gaming sends a certain type of packet that the D-Link router recognizes as a gaming packet and sets the priority to 1. So both will be sent with the same priority. This is hard to change.

However first we need to know what connection speed you have. You will need a minimum of a 1mb line or 150kb/s download speed. If you want more than 1 PC playing online at a time and a maximum of 4.

Try using these rates..
Rate 10000 or as low as 8000 The amount of Data a client can receive per update (Some servers will limit this to 10000) Lowering this too much can cause lag so will increasing it to much. I recommend no higher than 20000.
cl_updaterate 20 or as high as 100 (some servers will limit this to 66)
net_maxfragments 512 (Fragmented bytes per packet or the size of the segments per packet. There can be upto 7 i think per packet. Default is 1260 min is 256) Can cause worse lag so play around with the value.
net_maxroutable 786 (Default 1024 min is 576. Maximum size of a packet.) Can cause worse lag so play around with the value.

[af3]

To add to Aus_Karlos's post:
http://speedtest.net

I have NEVER had to mess around with network vars in my console on the order of achieving greater network performance. Since when aren't the defaults adequate?

[Mcninjaguy]

as long as you have around 4mb/s speed you should be absolutely fine

[af3]

Well, Source games feel smooth to me with 3M downstream and 384K upstream. It depends on the game, and the connection to the server.

Sometimes, I wait untill everyone is asleep (around 10PM) then I disconnect all the other computers in the house from the router to play for a few hours lag-free. Some routers and firmwares allow bandwidth limits on a per-IP basis, but this doesn't seem to be a standard feature yet. Just be sure no one is downloading junk while your trying to play.

Another think to worry about is routing, meaning the path from you to the server. Hypothetically speaking, a connection from TX to NY could perform better than a connection from FL to NY due to routing. The only thing you can do to help this is to connect to servers with low pings. Source's server browser lets you sort by ping.

[M3guy]

Well I did just try what Aus Karlos suggested but it seemed to make minimal improvements. With everyone off of the internet like now the games seem to run better and I get much less choke, which I usually get a lot of.

Also my dload was 1235 and uload was 534 if that helps.

[af3]

While that connection seems sufficient for a single computer, it does not seem suitable for multiple computers to share.

Also, to Aus_Karlos... I did not mean for my post to sound like an insult if that is how it may be perceived.

[Mcninjaguy]

you should probably think about upgrading the internet speed. Like what af3 said its not really fast enough for multiple computers

I get around

4,000 kb/s download
800kb/s upload

[af3]

Let's hope his ISP has higher tiers of service, or he has a choice between a few different carriers like DSL or cable.

I would of course recommend cable over DSL for gaming due to the latency one can experience on DSL due to Interleaving.

[Aus_Karlos]

Most the Time your able to phone your ISP and disable Interleaving or Packet Shaping from their end. Thats what ive done. With only a 1.5mb line or 150kb/s Down and 32kb/s Up, i can have 3-4 people online at once and still have an average ping of 60-80 on TF2 Servers.

[M3guy]

Alrighty then I will call those guys today.

[af3]

You got lucky Aus_Karlos! My phone company didn't have the capibility of disabling Interleaving on a per-client level.

[Mcninjaguy]

if I asked to disable those two "packet shaping and interleaving" (looked em up wiki, so I have a good understanding of them now)

would it noticably speed up my connection?

[af3]

It would decrease latency (ping/ms) but increase instances of dropped connections, faild downloads etc depending on your phone line quality. Line noise can cause data loss prompting the missing data to be Interleaved later in the stream.

[Aus_Karlos]

I only get the odd disconnect every month or so, no download problems. But i had to beat down my ISP before they decided to disable Interleaving.
Also just re-reading the OP about choke and loss. Just to clarify a few things.

Choke is when your PC or the severs fps drop below a certain frame rate (Server is 100fps and PC is 30fps) the server then "holds" packets from you. Until you and the server are Synced again. So if you have a choke of 20 then it means the server is holding 20 packets a second. (I think its based on seconds)

Loss is the physical loss of a packet when attempting to receiving packets. This can be due to line traffic or damaged cables. Each packet also has a time stamp, if the packet is not received in a certain amount of time the packet is counted as a loss regardless of whether it is received or not.

You say that when you enter a hot zone you get choke and loss, What are your fps at?

[M3guy]

It is definitely worst when My bro is DLing some WOW crap, Any thing I can do to set my Games Priority higher ?

[Aus_Karlos]

If you have something like GameFuel on your router then you can manually prioritize your gaming packets. But like i said before WOW will be detected aswell and both games will take priority. But this shouldn't be affecting you.