Laggy gameplay
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**Update: Figured out my modem/router had gone bad. Got a new one and the game runs much better.
I've had really laggy gameplay recently. Desync, ghost monsters that aren't really where they appear, melee attacks that seem to miss a lot even with 90% accuracy. I ran a trace shown below. My connection is an ethernet cable to a wireless router which also serves a laptop, two tablets and a printer. Any suggestions on how to improve the performance? |------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | WinMTR statistics | | Host - % | Sent | Recv | Best | Avrg | Wrst | Last | |------------------------------------------------|------|------|------|------|------|------| | No response from host - 100 | 25 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | | xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx - 0 | 123 | 123 | 6 | 10 | 88 | 8 | | xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx - 34 | 53 | 35 | 0 | 18 | 33 | 16 | |xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx - 68 | 34 | 11 | 0 | 23 | 33 | 25 | | xxxxxxxxxxxx - 45 | 45 | 25 | 0 | 20 | 31 | 20 | | xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx - 45 | 45 | 25 | 17 | 21 | 38 | 17 | | xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx - 47 | 43 | 23 | 0 | 20 | 28 | 23 | | No response from host - 100 | 25 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | | No response from host - 100 | 25 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | | No response from host - 100 | 25 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | | patch101.pathofexile.com - 0 | 123 | 123 | 36 | 38 | 55 | 41 | |________________________________________________|______|______|______|______|______|______| Last edited by Shuks on Oct 24, 2014, 8:08:08 AM
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the fact that you can't resolve your first hop (the router) concerns me.
have you rebooted your equipment recently? also, you don't need to edit everything so heavily. in fact, editing anting past the first couple hops actually makes it harder to see what's going on. | |
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Thanks for looking at it. I use Kaspersky, so I think the first hop has to do with "looping". When I checked netstat, the local column is Kaspersky sites, and the foreign are mine. Looking through their forums it looks as if this is normal, provides some protection. I'll try un-redacting some of it, but I'm not too familiar with this stuff so a little reluctant to post too much. I've rebooted my modem many times in the last few weeks but I'll try again and see if the test changes.
|------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | WinMTR statistics | | Host - % | Sent | Recv | Best | Avrg | Wrst | Last | |------------------------------------------------|------|------|------|------|------|------| | No response from host - 100 | 33 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | | xxxx-rtr2 - 0 | 163 | 163 | 7 | 13 | 46 | 12 | | xxx-rtr1 - 22 | 90 | 71 | 0 | 18 | 27 | 20 | |xx-etherxx.xxx - 85 | 38 | 6 | 19 | 22 | 31 | 19 | | 107.14.19.99 - 50 | 55 | 28 | 18 | 20 | 25 | 19 | | te1-6.bbr01.tl01.atl01.networklayer.com - 50 | 55 | 28 | 0 | 20 | 32 | 20 | | ae7.bbr01.tl01.atl01.networklayer.com - 53 | 53 | 25 | 0 | 20 | 24 | 20 | | No response from host - 100 | 33 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | | No response from host - 100 | 33 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | | No response from host - 100 | 33 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | | patch101.pathofexile.com - 0 | 163 | 163 | 36 | 39 | 51 | 41 | |________________________________________________|______|______|______|______|______|______| | |
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disable all your antivirus and firewall stuff. that interferes with the network and causes all sorts of issues (probably including the one you're complaining about here).
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After a modem/router reboot, got the first column losses to around 2-8% which I think is good, compared to the 30-50% on the first trace. If I can keep it there, I'll just play through the virus protection.
|------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | WinMTR statistics | | Host - % | Sent | Recv | Best | Avrg | Wrst | Last | |------------------------------------------------|------|------|------|------|------|------| | No response from host - 100 | 28 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | | xxx-rtr2xxx- 4 | 125 | 120 | 4 | 7 | 32 | 7 | | xxx-rtr1.xxx - 2 | 136 | 134 | 0 | 15 | 24 | 14 | |xxx-etherxxxx - 8 | 112 | 104 | 0 | 19 | 25 | 18 | | 107.14.19.99 - 6 | 117 | 110 | 0 | 25 | 76 | 36 | | te1-6.bbr01.tl01.atl01.networklayer.com - 3 | 131 | 128 | 0 | 18 | 52 | 17 | | ae7.bbr01.tl01.atl01.networklayer.com - 6 | 119 | 113 | 0 | 17 | 30 | 17 | | ae13.bbr02.eq01.dal03.networklayer.com - 13 | 96 | 84 | 0 | 37 | 68 | 35 | | ae1.dar01.sr01.dal01.networklayer.com - 12 | 100 | 88 | 0 | 36 | 44 | 36 | | po1.fcr05.sr06.dal01.networklayer.com - 16 | 88 | 74 | 0 | 38 | 68 | 37 | | patch101.pathofexile.com - 0 | 144 | 144 | 33 | 36 | 45 | 37 | |________________________________________________|______|______|______|______|______|______| | |
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Hi Shuks,
Was this report run with your antivirus/firewall on? Could you please try running one with those off if so? I definitely don't recommend playing with 2-8% packet loss, as depending on which packets are lost, that could be quite detrimental to your gameplay. Gameplay & Level Design
Need help? Contact support@grindinggear.com | |
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I did my last Daily Missions with 30-60% packet loss according to that first test, so that 2-8% seemed really smooth. I'm guessing that a large portion of your player base is playing through firewalls and anti-virus programs and experiencing similar packet loss. That's why people suggest tweaking the game a little to account for this.
I think if you are expecting people to turn off their firewall and virus protection you should provide some detailed information and advice on how to minimize the risk. What if a player gets a trade request while playing, and decides to alt-tab and check Poe.xyz for prices. Is connecting to the internet with all security off a risk? What about open internet connections, is there some way to close ones that aren't needed for playing PoE. For example, I went to run the WinMtr trace as you suggested, with my Kaspersky Pure 3.0 virus protection turned off. I got a warning that I had 7 open internet connections. I went ahead and ran WinMtr for about 1 minute. When I went to restart Kaspersky, it said 3 modules had been corrupted. So I had to uninstall it, re-install and run a 6 hour full scan (yes I need to clean up my PC). I think the result with virus scan off was still in the 4-8% loss range; but a lot was going on, warning messages and things. Kind of a side note, but I think when downloading the WinMtr trace program, I got a pop-up that asked if I wanted to download WinZip. I thought I already had this, but between an Administrator account and User account I forget what is where, so I said OK. Somewhere in that process a malware called "Astromenda" got installed. It's not necessarily a major threat, but a real pain to get rid of. Just a heads up to anyone doing a trace, careful not to get tricked into downloading that. | |
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I've been in the industry a very long time, and I can tell you that I don't run with any firewall or antivirus SOFTWARE running on my PCs. They're generally crap, they waste PC resources, and for the most part (for me) are useless.
Most threats that an AV would catch are going to be threats from people being stupid with their browsing habits and behaviors. The rest of the threats that are actually going to HURT you are going to be zero-day threats which your AV software isn't going to stop, prevent, or even catch. I DO have antivirus software for when I want to scan a download to make sure it isn't malicious. That is a far cry however from persistent real-time "threat" protection that most crap AV provides. They sell to people's fears, and to the people who don't know how to otherwise protect themselves. That said, I also run HARDWARE to protect myself in my network. Most routers on the market today provide a basic level of firewall protection (assuming you have configured it correctly and have NOT enabled the DMZ). Most antivirus and firewall types of software only get in the way of legitimate software... for the VERY off-chance that it will actually CATCH anything... which is mostly unlikely unless you're not careful with your online habits. Most of the threats on the internet are not going to be caught by your AV software. Sorry if that is news to you. I'n not saying it isn't a good idea to have something you can run on-demand, or on a weekly/daily schedule or whatever... but you really just have to be careful and scan the things you download. Most other things aren't going to hurt you unless you run them without scanning. Good luck. | |
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Thanks for the advice Drakier. I was able to fix some issues and got the trace to look much better.
Windows Firewall Off, just Virus Protection working |------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | WinMTR statistics | | Host - % | Sent | Recv | Best | Avrg | Wrst | Last | |------------------------------------------------|------|------|------|------|------|------| | No response from host - 100 | 72 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | | xe-xxx-rtr2.xxxx.com - 3 | 333 | 324 | 5 | 9 | 52 | 8 | | aexxxx-rtr1.xxxx.com - 3 | 335 | 327 | 0 | 16 | 40 | 17 | |bu-etherxxxxxxx.com - 3 | 336 | 328 | 0 | 20 | 100 | 20 | | 107.14.19.99 - 3 | 335 | 327 | 15 | 19 | 76 | 18 | | te1-6.bbr01.tl01.atl01.networklayer.com - 3 | 339 | 332 | 15 | 21 | 119 | 19 | | ae7.bbr01.tl01.atl01.networklayer.com - 3 | 336 | 328 | 0 | 21 | 43 | 40 | | ae13.bbr02.eq01.dal03.networklayer.com - 7 | 297 | 279 | 0 | 38 | 108 | 38 | | ae1.dar01.sr01.dal01.networklayer.com - 10 | 267 | 242 | 0 | 38 | 85 | 37 | | po1.fcr05.sr06.dal01.networklayer.com - 4 | 332 | 322 | 0 | 39 | 166 | 37 | | patch101.pathofexile.com - 0 | 368 | 368 | 33 | 37 | 57 | 38 | |________________________________________________|______|______|______|______|______|______| Some of the issues were removing an old Nvdia Forceware Network Access Manager, no idea what that was. Started to uninstall Windows Live (used for GTAIV accounts) and it asked if I wanted to repair it. Umm wtf, of course. And updated all the Adobe and Java which I thought was being auto-updated, but was out of date and showed up as vulnerabilities. Haven't tried it with virus protection off, but gameplay is so much better now. | |
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Just to close this out and provide information to anyone with similar issues; I found out my modem/router had gone bad.
It worked fine except when it came to playing PoE. As a last step in trying to figure out why I was seeing big packet losses in the WinMTR report, I called my ISP and actually talked to someone who was helpful!, this really surprised me. He was able to see the packet loss as well and suggested I plug another router in that I had in the house just for phones, and saw that this replacement showed zero packet loss, thus identifying the problem. I still play with my virus protection running. I configured it to not monitor the PoE game and Client executables. Here's a report with the new modem. |------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | WinMTR statistics | | Host - % | Sent | Recv | Best | Avrg | Wrst | Last | |------------------------------------------------|------|------|------|------|------|------| | xxxxxx - 0 | 201 | 201 | 0 | 0 | 19 | 0 | | No response from host - 100 | 40 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | | xxxxx-rtr2.xxx.com - 0 | 204 | 204 | 4 | 8 | 52 | 7 | | xxxxxrtr1.xxxcom - 0 | 203 | 203 | 12 | 15 | 39 | 21 | |bu-etherxxxxx - 0 | 204 | 204 | 16 | 20 | 66 | 26 | | 107.14.19.11 - 0 | 203 | 203 | 15 | 23 | 101 | 20 | | te1-6.bbr01.tl01.atl01.networklayer.com - 0 | 203 | 203 | 15 | 18 | 42 | 21 | | ae7.bbr01.tl01.atl01.networklayer.com - 0 | 204 | 204 | 16 | 20 | 48 | 24 | | ae13.bbr02.eq01.dal03.networklayer.com - 0 | 204 | 204 | 34 | 38 | 87 | 36 | | ae1.dar02.sr01.dal01.networklayer.com - 0 | 204 | 204 | 34 | 37 | 83 | 35 | | po2.fcr05.sr06.dal01.networklayer.com - 0 | 204 | 204 | 34 | 40 | 219 | 38 | | patch101.pathofexile.com - 0 | 204 | 204 | 34 | 37 | 56 | 37 | |________________________________________________|______|______|______|______|______|______| WinMTR v0.92 GPL V2 by Appnor MSP - Fully Managed Hosting & Cloud Provider I don't know what the "Best, Avrg, Wrst, Last" are showing, if these are good or bad readings. But the packet loss is zero now. |
