Online Lag

Development Programming & Scripting Multiplayer & Networking
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1

I’m getting a lot of lag when testing a client to dedicated server 3rd person multiplayer template setup. When we tested internally (3 clients to 1 server), no lag, but externally, a lot of lag both with camera rotation and actor movement (1 client to 1 server)

External testing was done with a laptop on a free wifi hotspot, resmon in win 7 showed 9 kbps usage for the client, youtube showed 1 Mbps hotspot speed. I had the server running on a pc with a 3 Mbps internet speed. We have a wireless radio connected to an internet tower. The radio works as a first hop, then is wired to a router where internally everything is wire connected. We have UDP 7777 fowarded on the radio POE and port 7777 with the server static ip address forward on the router with ddwrt.

I’m coming from a 3D animation and c++ programming (minor) background, but I’m very light with networking. Our game is going to be online multiplayer, so I need to start with and master networking before getting to the game dev.

I know the above setup isn’t optimal, but for testing I thought it should perform adequate. Can someone point me in the direction of what I need to research, try or learn? Thanks.

Just to understand, the map and actor are loaded on the client, and camera/actor input is sent to the server for confirmation before sending back to the client for movement…is that right?

2

Have you tried to ping your server? what are ping values?

1 Mbps for multiplayer is slow. You will have a big ping and as a result lag. I understand that there is no much data to transmit, but a speed of transmission is a key. You will feel a big difference having 50 Mbps vs 1 Mbps transmitting the same data.

3

I did do a traceroute at the time and had some non responsive hops…it could be that, but I thought I’d check for anything else I could check.

When I’m playing online multiplayer on ps4 I’m only using 150 Kbps on a 3 Mbps connection, I would think the connection would be enough.

My lag was like response delay…that’s why I didn’t think the traceroute was the culprit.

I see if I can find a faster hotspot to test.

4

OK, last night I was able to test with a 5 Mbps connection and the result was identical. Delay in input response. I couldn’t ping my server. I think I’ll check with my internet service provider to see why.