Rubberbanding - Is it me or system side?

[Troo]

Its been very bad the past couple days.

Speed test shows 300mps download 10mps upload.

 

[Kabuki]

I have experienced more than I had over the past week, yes. Full disclosure though, I only came back to CoH at the end of September, so I don't have a long sample period. However, the past week or so, I have had noticeable amounts of rubberbanding, usually right after zoning or performing a lengthy animation, then immediately running.

[Troo]

Thanks. It seems to be a new thing recently. I wish it was on my end so I could do something about it.

[EmmySky]

I have it too....it has caused debt and near-debt experiences.

[Tock]

The real issue isn't your download speed, but rather Network Latency.

 

Normally when using something, if you want to check the latency between yourself and somewhere else, you'd use Ping in the Command Line.  Just enter "ping verizon.net" (replacing verizon.net with any site you like that doesn't block PING requests.  mit.edu and google.com are two other examples) and you get a four-packet picture (or more if Mac/Linux) of what Internet connectivity looks like at the current moment.  But the only thing you can check is the Auth Server (shown in the Tequila Manifest), which is not the game server address (held by homecoming.exe and not visible to players without more command-promptery), where you're actually playing.

 

Fortunately, the game client has this covered.  Enter the following command.

/netgraph 1

To shut the graph off, use the same command, replacing the 1 with a 0.  You'll see this:

 

 

The important number is PING: that is the latency you're currently getting in-game.  If the number is beneath 250, you're doing fine.  If it's over 1,000, you'll notice lag spikes (large green, yellow, or red blocks in the graph that don't stop until the lag ends.)

 

What is latency?  It's the time it takes for a network packet to reach from the server to your client.  There's several reasons why this happens:

-- Connection Method.  If you're on Wi-Fi, and you're getting latency issues on other systems in your house that use Wi-Fi, you might have interference.  Either play closer to your Router/Access Point, or try a Ethernet connection (network cable).

-- Computer.  Your system's specs may be struggling when playing City of Heroes and multitasking with other sites.  Try closing other Internet using apps, browsers, and other intensive programs that could be weighing the CPU down.  (If your PC is stalling, even on a great connection, the game can't overcome that.)

-- ISP.  If you're using a hotspot or cellphone, signal loss is more frequent than a building connection.  Also, some service providers tend to affect gaming and video Quality of Service on the more affordable plans, making the low latency ones cost more.  If your ISP lists gaming as a feature on a more expensive plan, this might be why.  (This shouldn't be frequent, but still possible, as most folks are in a monopoly situation in the US concerning Home Internet use.  Only one provider, or you get nothing.)  If you use a Satellite Internet Service Provider like Exede, HughesNet, or other provider that uses a pizza-sized dish attached to your house, Satellite and Latency are unavoidable.  Your internet connection is travelling from your house to outer space, so anything between you and the satellite is interference.  Them's just the brakes.  (Although a LEO Constellation is currently in the works from a rich mogul you may have heard of to help combat this very issue. Stay tuned.)  Finally, your ISP may have a partial outage affecting gaming if COH is laggy but your Internet otherwise works.  Check with them if this is the case.

-- Regional Issues.  If there's an outage in a part of the country between your house and the servers that Homecoming uses, there's a chance packets from the game are being sent and lost before they reach your house.   Not much to do in this circumstance, just wait it out.

 

Hope that helps.

Edited October 27, 2019 by Tahquitz
Forgot about Satellite Internet: another reason why.

[Troo]

I will try this. Thank you!

Already tried graphics and network updates without success. (I used a wired connection)

 

Edited October 28, 2019 by Troo

[Ael]

Been having this issue for the last two days, off and on. It's *not* our connection or computers.

[Troo]

Using the netgraph shows that there are spikes in the otherwise decent ping.

[Erydanus]

Tahquitz mentioned regional issues. I wanted to expand on that.

 

For a moment, think of the Internet as being like the Interstate highway system. Bits of connection going from place to place, and there's multiple pathways to get from point A to point B. But, there's usually one path that is clearly the most direct. Also, these bits of of path are owned and maintained by different ISPs and they have to play nice together for it to all work (see also: why people are still concerned about network neutrality).  If you're testing your connection quality you're probably connecting to a fairly local server and it's just showing you that you have no interference from your house to the internet in general.  You can have a perfectly good local internet connection but if the "roads are bad" somewhere further out and your data packets are going through that area you're going to have issues.

 

Some of you might remember we had a very serious episode on the original live servers where all the west coast servers became unplayable with about 90% packet loss for a segment of the playerbase, but only a segment. It was the people in the middle of the US and to the east. The actual problem was an ISP directly next to the server farm. Anyone coming in to the servers from the east was going through them and losing almost all their data. Anyone in the local area of the server farm or coming from the northern or southern part of the west coast was absolutely fine.  I suspect the server farm team walked next door and Had A Chat with them to get it cleared up because it was a huge mess for a while and then it got fixed.

 

So, even though your connection gives you a good speed test result, if there's "bad roads" you're going to have problems.  The internet is pretty robust these days and I would be shocked if regional problems aren't cleared up within a few days or routed around. But it's always worth keeping in mind that these things do happen. I believe the game is hosted on OVH servers at their location near Montreal. If things keep being a problem then I'd Google How to Traceroute on (your operating system)  and perform a traceroute on the homecoming servers. If most of the hops are 4 milliseconds and suddenly one of them is like, 10 seconds, that's definitely the problem.

 

 

[Tock]

I know this doesn't solve the lag, but when you discuss what's happening with your ISP or to others, you now know how to cut past talk about "the connection is plenty fast for gaming".  All the speed in the world doesn't matter if the packets miss the server in the first place.

 

Further comment: wireless internet, satellite internet and other ones that use air as a medium WILL DROP PACKETS, even if everything is working as intended.  Without getting into a speech about Fresnel Zones and attenuation issues, this is a reality of any radio or microwave communication... you will see occasional lag when there's interference (and there will be.)  But persistent lag happening for days or weeks at a time isn't passive interference, it's a problem.

[Tath99]

Latency needs to be explained further:

 

Your connection between your PC, your ISP and the game server is served by a network of routers.  These are effectively "hops" between you and your intended destination.  Too many hops can result in a naturally slow, but performing correctly connection.  You might also suffer from these router hops performing poorly.  i.e. dropped packets and router hops timing out due to a hardware fault.

 

Use ping *and* tracert to see if there are any issues.

 

Theoretically, there might be a problematic hop effecting COH playerbase.  Theoretically this could be identified by someone knowledgeable within Titan Network team, its ownership determined and reported in hope of getting a fix.

 

 

 

 

[dmaker]

Packet loss is also important. The default ping for linux does not display packet loss. You need to add the -O argument to the ping command. Windows shows the timeouts by default, so don't need to do that. A linux ping could show nothing but speedy, low latency responses and you might think everything is great. Meanwhile some of those ping attempts are lost. Windows will display the timeouts in real time. 

 

Packet loss can be as damaging as high latency to the stability of a connection. Packet loss can be caused by upstream routing issues with your ISP or beyond. For home connections, that would almost always be the case.

 

Closer to home it could be a damaged patch cable or a home router or cable/dsl modem in need of a reboot. Or--in some probably rare cases with home infrastructure--things like speed and duplex mismatch on a switch connection can result in packet loss while those packets that do return would still have low latency.  Auto negotiation pretty much takes care of that nowadays. Occasionally, at work, I will see some intrepid server admin change his server from auto negotiate to 1000Mbps, full duplex, while the switch is set to auto. This can cause issues. For home gear, auto negotiation should almost always be successful with no issues. 

 

I just noticed packet loss was briefly mentioned above.  Apologies for any redundant comments.  I should also note that packet loss sometimes can be normal, as also mentioned above. Some devices are configured to drop icmp packets all together while others may police control plane traffic and drop icmp packets when under heavy load.  In both of those cases, there would be no impact to your connection. Traceroute would help show where packets are being lost, but again, most firewalls would drop the icmp packets by design. 

 

On linux you can install tcptraceroute to try to get around this for investigative purposes. For example, if you know a server listens on tcp port 443 (https) you can do a tcptraceroute using that port. This will be treated differently by firewalls since it is not icmp traffic. The syntax would be:

 

sudo tcptraceroute server.com 443       You can also use the ip address, of course.

 

Edited November 2, 2019 by dmaker

[Troo]

@Tahquitz This seemed to go away. now it's been back for a couple days. Others in game asking if there is lag for the last day or so.

 

It seems when there is a heavy graphics load (movement, zoning) the spikes show up (which makes little sense related to ping)

 

The yellow followed by red below is zoning into the tunnel from Atlas Park. The other red spikes occurred running from Atlas to the Tunnel entrance. 

 

 

not moving while doing black market on my main

 

 

running around Mercy jumping over the giant wall into town.

 

 

then zoning to base portals and then to Atlas Park big spikes and rubberbanding trying to get to Atlas.

 

new computer with updated drivers..

NVIDIA GTX 1660Ti

i5-9400F 4.1GHz

8GB

AV off

[Troo]

I closed the chat window zoned into the tunnel and then back to Atlas Park. Jumped to Atlas. The only red spike was zoning.

 

[SlimPickens]

I'm having the exact same issues and my netgraph shows huge lag spikes during heavy GPU load- as you explained above- zoning, quick turning, fast movement.

 

My system could probably be used for missile guidance so I know its not on my side. I have gig speed internet with massive up/download numbers. The program and its entire folder and launcher are excepted through my firewall as well.

 

I run 9900k, 2080ti, z390 motherboard all current drivers...

 

The post you made at 9:32 Monday shows the exact same spikes I see on my netgraph. Ive even seen large red blocks several times rather than just red bar spikes it will be a huge red block.

 

 

[Troo]

Seems significantly better today.