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[Pardner]

I don't know much about the network settings, but I need help. I am on a school's network and my lag makes it completely impossible to play online. Here is what my lag-o-meter looks like:

as you can see I don't have a mega ping (I get a ping of 70 on RAWHIDE). I get the same results if I tweak the graphical settings. Around 1AM~3AM my lag meter will drop off and be completely smooth... but that doesn't do any good because the servers are empty.

When I do a speed test I get around 4.5Mbps down and 1.6Mbps up! But SG is completely non-playable.

So, does anybody have any suggestions?

[Sucalakafufu]

I don't know much about the network settings, but I need help. I am on a school's network and my lag makes it completely impossible to play online. Here is what my lag-o-meter looks like:

as you can see I don't have a mega ping (I get a ping of 70 on RAWHIDE). I get the same results if I tweak the graphical settings. Around 1AM~3AM my lag meter will drop off and be completely smooth... but that doesn't do any good because the servers are empty.

When I do a speed test I get around 4.5Mbps down and 1.6Mbps up! But SG is completely non-playable.

So, does anybody have any suggestions?

I am currently on a school network also. The thing with these school networks is that it all depends on your IT department. It seems like you could be running into the type of trouble I have been running into. Its a bandwidth issue. Ping and upload/download speeds may seem good but other things could be taking your bandwidth. Your IT department could actually be limiting bandwidth in which case the only way to do things with no lag would be to ask them for more? lol. Other things that could affect your lag that you have no control over are: a firewall on IT's side, a packet shaper on IT's side (one that sniffs for game packets and gives them less bandwidth ), everyone on campus jumping on facebook at once!, alot of people torrenting and taking all the bandwidth, some other things could also apply like the switch that they have in your specific dorm could be slow.

Also, are you on a laptop or desktop and what kind of graphics card does it have? My laptop was actually spiking my ping even in single player mode! I found out it was actually my GPU overheating (or at least I think it was). I fixed this by cleaning out my heatsink (sadly not completely since its a laptop and that would take alot of time >_< ). If you have a desktop and you think your graphics card could maybe be getting too hot, you could open the case and clean out the dust in the fans and heatsink and on your card itself. This should help with your computers overall performance as well as maybe stopping the lag Either way I hope you find a way to get online soon because I havent played against you in ages!!!

BTW: I have a hunch its more of a bandwidth issue because, like you said, at 1-3 in the morning it becomes smooth. Which seems to indicate a rise in your bandwidth as everyone goes to sleep.

[Pardner]

BTW: I have a hunch its more of a bandwidth issue because, like you said, at 1-3 in the morning it becomes smooth. Which seems to indicate a rise in your bandwidth as everyone goes to sleep.

I am on a laptop. Like I said I can tweak the graphics settings, but I get the same results. If I have 12FPS I get the lag, and if i have 125fps I get the lag. I have two laptops (old and new):

ACER Extensa 4630z (new but not so good performance)
win Vista
4GB Ram
Mobile Intel 4 integrated grapics

Dell something (5 years old, good performance)
win XP
1GB Ram
nVidia Go 5200 (64MB)

Both have the same lag issue. Sometimes... in a great while.... both are smooth durring the day too

[Lucky Bro]

Your ping on the screenshot is 170ms.
And client does a lot of extrapolation. You are just playing predicted game
You have to show screenshot with 70ms ping. The current one isn't much helpful - the only recommendation is to switch to other closer to you server.
Check your rate and timenudge values. If your bandwidth is very tiny - you better lower the rate value to corresponding value (search this forum for corresponding topics - there is a lot of such). And if you have high negative timenudge value - better to reduce it.
Also it can be caused by server load. I don't see any other players on the screenshot you gave. Better to use bots-free server for client network setting tunning.
Wi-Fi can also be the reason.
Have fun.

[moRtem]

in my humble opinion your problem is that you are sharing your connection with others.

Smooth gameplay needs a steady connection (while only a very little bandwidth is needed), but as soon as others are surfing the web or start a download, your connection ain't steady anymore. Your ping starts jumping up and down which results in choppy gameplay (just like your lagometer shows).

There's not much you can do about that. Probably your Router is able to grant you a certain bandwidth, otherwise you'll need to wait until everyone else stopped his web-activities.


/quit

[Sucalakafufu]

@Pardner: like moRtem says it could be a bandwidth stability issue.

though with those laptops i see where there could be problems lol. my laptop has an integrated card also and its not always fun to do games with

you can test your laptop out to see if its bandwidth or just your graphics card getting hot. run single player with 5 bots. turn off frag and time limits. kill them for about 15 min and just run around (use dm_tiny_alamo). watch your fps AND your ping. if you lag at any point, hold tab to see your ping and watch ur fps too. during the lag your ping may jump up 30 or so and your fps may slow. if this happens, i would suspect your graphics card is throttling down the only suggestion i could give for that is to: quickly clean out your fan and other openings with compressed air, or if you have time- follow a tut on your laptop online to open it up and clean out the heatsink entirely.

if its an internet issue you're probably out of luck (as i am when mine gets jumpy )

EDIT: o i just remembered that you can check one more thing. on the nVidia at least, you may be able to see the heat of the GPU core from your nVidia graphics settings. if you can, when you lag exit out of the game and take a look at how hot your GPU may be running. before i cleaned out my fan, my GPU was getting up to 128 degrees Celsius just from playing SG for 20 min!!! at this point i would lag, because my GPU would throttle down to cool itself off!!!

[/dev/random]

Could be a routing issue aswell, when the school's network is not properly set up. Or increased delay (aka ping) due to filtering.
Quake does not need that much bandwith, I could play Jedi Academy on a 56k modem back in the good ol' days


The problem with laptops is, that they try to save energy and throttle cpu and graphics. Make sure to disable automatic adjusting of these when connected to the plug.

[Pardner]

Your ping on the screenshot is 170ms.
And client does a lot of extrapolation. You are just playing predicted game
You have to show screenshot with 70ms ping. The current one isn't much helpful - the only recommendation is to switch to other closer to you server.

. The lag problem is the same on all servers, obviously my ping changes, but I still have that sawtooth.

Wi-Fi can also be the reason.
Have fun.

Yes, I use wifi. Wifi was my first guess, but I get the same results when I am directly wired to the router, or directly to my drop.

The problem with laptops is, that they try to save energy and throttle cpu and graphics. Make sure to disable automatic adjusting of these when connected to the plug.

I checked that too. I have my laptops set to run at max performance both on battery and plugged in (max cpu, max gpu, etc)

you may be able to see the heat of the GPU core from your nVidia graphics settings.

I thought of that. Both laptops get hot while running SG, but my lag is the same the instant I join to the instant I quit an hour later. The lag you see in the lag meter is always a constant sawtooth.

Here is some of my settings:
seta snaps "25"
seta rate "3000"
seta com_maxfps 125 (used for both the integrated and the nVidia, the nVidia actually gets 125)
seta cl_timeNudge "0"
seta cl_maxpackets "15"

[Sucalakafufu]

hmm i think setting maxfps that high makes things kind of buggy. there is another thread talking about that and i think it messes up your ability to jump and stuff. so im not sure, but maybe it could link in to your lag issue?

and that is very unusual that you have a continuous sawtooth >_< if i find anything out ill let you know.

[/dev/random]

Rate 3000? I think this would not be enough even for modem-users. The lowest rate I recommend is 5000, cable users can aswell try 25000.

[DeUgli]

I favor the school IT throttle theory. At University of Washington, where I work, they openly announced that they are throttling game play and bittorrent from campus. Maybe you can find out something from your tech center, Pardner.

[Pardner]

@/dev/random:
OK, I will try that this evening. dbozan had suggested some settings to me (not the ones I posted) but I had minimal improvement.

@DeUgli:
Hehe this sounds familiar (different school), but at least SG is playable this time! My ping is normal, but I have that lag sawtooth which gives everything a "strobe light" effect. This started happening end of Spring 09 semester. Before that its was pretty good.