so what IS your avg ping?

Edit: Also, you're in Australia? Where are the servers you are connecting to?

My avg ping is usually about 39-50.
This is good for Australian connections, i guess.... unless you're one of the lucky people who lives near where the servers are hosted (wch, noetix & chacha, i'm looking at you)

Usually connect to syd2 or syd1, depending on which is less screwed. Playing syd1 (i believe) last night, and it was continual spikes every minute... Horrible for any kind of game.

Syd2 was bad a while ago, servers were overloaded or something, ta to noetix for fixing it.

Stories like this are just arguments for allowing ISPs and stuff to host servers =\

looks better than mine :(

well i cant really see much on that pic u got there, and afaik QL is unlagged upto a certain point so dont bother 'leading' rails oO

Better image would be

http://yfrog.com/j044472868j

silly esr for resizing the pic

are u sure u dont have any strange net settings in ur config?

besides that, the green stuff seems flat enough cept for the occasional hiccup wich i suppose can be annoying. the tiny yellow spikes at the top are packetloss (i think) wich can make the game feel asif u have double ur current ping. maybe u need "cl_packetdup 1" (can be 0-5). i believe it might increase ping just slightly but itl compensate for lag.

other than that, not too sure what there can be done. could check if it was merely a QL issue, or if u have it all the time in every game.

Only 2 problems:

The 2 red lines you see are packetloss. This can be caused by a tonne of things - bad ISP, bad server, congestion between you and the server etc etc. I've found that even when my connection is running perfectly to Syd #1, Syd #2 can be reporting a shit load of packetloss... which is normally in line with congestion. This is why I always suggest using Syd #1.

The little green bumps far left and far right are little hiccups where your ping has spiked. If you run a ping test in command prompt, you will probably see that your results are spiking. A good test would also be to set the ping to run (ping ipaddress -t) constantly and then get the other guys on your network to browse or use the internet normally. This should give you a good idea of how there usage will affect your gaming.

Seeing as you're in Queensland, test with the Sydney QuakeLive server IP's:

Syd #1: 203.217.24.101
Syd #2: 202.172.99.1

Thanks for the tips Mic, i'll give them a shot

the top line is supposed to be a sawtooth (i presume that's what you mean by serrated).

the bottom line can only be measured in multiples of your client's frametime (e.g. 8ms), it's normal for this measurement to fluctuate between 2 values (e.g. 16 and 24) for reasons which aren't important.

this is exactly what we see in your lagometer.

the only worry is the red lines (packet loss), and the small bumps (far left and far right).


add:


also this:

Also, i've got the two most irresponsible users on my network capped to 1mbit down 128k up BETWEEN them, yet i still lag on a 8mbit/384k connection.

is to be expected.

even though quake only uses about 64kbits downstream (rate 8000) and roughly the same upstream (maxpackets 125), you will still lag even if most of your bandwidth is free.

the analogy that is always used is that of water flowing through a pipe. for domestic internet connections (especially xDSL), the pipe analogy isn't very accurate.

i prefer the analogy of a machinegun - where the rate of fire represents your bandwidth. even though quake only wants to use a small amount of bandwidth, if the bullets are data packets, then quake's bullets have to get in a queue to wait for pr0n / torrent bullets to fire first - only one can fire at a time (which is why the water pipe analogy falls down).

tldr: even a small amount of bandwith usage can significantly affect the stability of your latency, unless you have QoS or equivalent in operation.

ty for clearing those few things up :P

edit, and yes, use QoS on ur router if it is necessary(wich it is in this case), always set games to priority #1 :)

haha, i do have QoS on my router, but only got it recenty so only probably very badly setup.... i've got a 73-00N billion.

Thanks for the help, i really appreciate it. I've got packetdup 1 on, and pretty standard rate setitngs, unless i have some crazy config setting i don't know about lol

I don't know about ADSL, but when I enable QoS on my router (using Cable)... my ping doubles and my download speeds get cut in half.

QoS is generally fucking terrible on home routers.

Awesome analogy, i really appreciate you taking the time to write that!

so what does yellow blocks mean in the green bar?

yellow is 'rate limited' iirc. that means the server is not sending you a snapshot because your 'rate' limit has been hit.

well then what is the point of using sv_fps 125 and snaps 125 in defrag if it just limits my rate?

because com_maxfps and sv_fps directly affect how the physics are calculated.

being rate limited only affects your *view* of objects in the world.

ya but using /snaps 125 just maxes my rate out so what is the point?

then lower your snaps if you dont like the yellow. either way the outcome is the same: you are receiving less information than the full 125 snaps whether you like it or not.

nope you are completely wrong.

ok

no shit its ok im a doctor.

Looks fine, stop complaining. :P

no u!

haha fffffuuuu

never gaunt fighting you again! :/

iam quake gaunt mastah

pfft! you were losing all our gaunt fights! :o

The syd1 servers are currently out of action because id has not updated them to the latest version of QL... and syd2 is giving 2-3 packets lost per second, shit is so unbearable.

Anyway, it probably explains why i felt my rail was random and i wasn't hitting particular shots, as had lagometer turned off for about a month, lol.

Anyway, i guess we'll have to wait for id to update the servers in my region, but it's okay, i've got my will written and my burial plot planned out.

Thirdly, and most importantly, why would i miss rails that should be hits. Shotgun too, any idea why? I've played at mates houses and they seem to have much more consistent rail rego that i do, and only have approx 5-10 less ping.

welcome to quake live m8

Yeah, rails go through people even during pr0 matches on 'lan servers' or whatever stuff id needs a whole day to set up before every event.

True, it's kind of infuriating though. Probably a combination of that and packetloss....