How to Decrease Lag Over Kaillera

[th3kuzinator]

I know this question has been asked before, but I have not been able to find a solution that has worked for me. Even when I play on the Galaxy 64 server (I live in new york and my ping is very low), ssb lags pretty bad and I always have escalating lag spikes. This has lead me to assume its either my computer or my connection. I am on a laptop and although I am using a router I am literally 10 feet away from it so I doubt thats the problem. As for my computer, it is kinda old but I deleted all the useless applications and anti-virus systems that may eat up cpu and have closed all my background applications but I still end up having lag spikes. Anyone have any suggestions as to clean my computer/get better signal/optimal setting on p64k. Any help would be appreciated!
-Kuz

 

[Fireblaster]

Play ssb64 on your emulator offline, no kaillera. If your fps stays constantly at 60, then the lag is due to your wireless. I know nothing about wireless internet and it's probably your most likely cause, so maybe someone else here can help out.

 

[dandan]

Play ssb64 on your emulator offline, no kaillera. If your fps stays constantly at 60, then the lag is due to your wireless. I know nothing about wireless internet and it's probably your most likely cause, so maybe someone else here can help out.

and if it is not 60fps constant, then the problem could be with missing gpu drivers or chipset drivers.
if it is constant, try using a rj45 cable to connect your pc to the router and test it then.

 

[NixxxoN]

Wireless sucks, as simple as that.
Make sure that:
1)you connect through cable and no other PC uses the connection
2)Your PC is powerful enough to run the emu and dont use fullscreen
3)Keep your PC clean of virus/spyware malware and dont run anything else when playing

 

[samsonites101]

Actually, (usually) connecting over wifi is not a problem since it's not a bottleneck. The bandwidth set by your ISP is more likely the bottleneck. 802.11g (likely what your router uses) gives you up to 54 mbps over wifi. A pretty fast internet connection speed would be around 20 mbps. In other words, if wifi was the bottleneck, then you have very fast internet and the problem is not that.

 

[Red the Ghost]

Actually, (usually) connecting over wifi is not a problem since it's not a bottleneck. The bandwidth set by your ISP is more likely the bottleneck. 802.11g (likely what your router uses) gives you up to 54 mbps over wifi. A pretty fast internet connection speed would be around 20 mbps. In other words, if wifi was the bottleneck, then you have very fast internet and the problem is not that.

Do you think you ever reach that 54mbps? Wireless degrades pretty quickly as you move further, and there's always lag in data transfer. The data is accessed at the same speed, but it takes time to transmit to and from your router to the computer. Wired connections are always faster in that sense.

 

[th3kuzinator]

Quick Update:
I now have set up a wired connection to my computer and the game runs much faster. However there is still a little lag that is only noticeable when play with more than 2 ppl (usually). I am pretty sure its my computer, so if that is the case, any suggestions as how to free up CPU? I dont know what else to try
-Kuz

 

[DMoogle]

Lower the resolution it runs at.

 

[Sempiternity]

Apologies for bumping, but I figured the proper thing to do was post here, rather than create a new thread.

Anyway, I've been experiencing severe lag spikes, and a whole hell of a lot of them, sometimes upwards of 1000 spikes per match, while my opponents are netting five or six, making the match very choppy and unplayable.

I know it's not my computer (Win7, 4 GB RAM, 2.4 GHz dual core, Radeon 4330 graphics card), since emulation works perfect offline. I've also tried many of the suggestions in this thread, such as cleaning my PC with CCleaner and running Game Booster, as well as setting PJ64k to high priority in the task manager, among other little tweaks.

I fear it my be my internet, and I'm looking for confirmation or hopefully good news!

...

Here's the deal, I'm at the University of Connecticut, on their super fast T3 connection (although I'm in an older part of campus, so my line speed is only 10 Mbps, which gets me about 5 Mbps up and down. It used to be 100 Mbps when I tested with speedtest.net last year! D: ) The 5 up/down should be fine for online play, right?

Right?

I tried running tests here: http://web100.rit.edu:7123/
and got warnings that my network was of high traffic and congestion and that I was experiencing severe packet loss, so that all but confirms my suspicions...

The odd thing is that online console play works just fine, and maybe Kaillera and, say, PSN or Xbox live are different in nature (I can't be the judge of that), so I'm wondering if my computer is also at fault...

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

EDIT: A few more notes, I'm running PJ64 at a resolution of like 500x350, or whatever the equivalent is, which is pretty much as small as I'm willing to go. :/

 

[NixxxoN]

Its most likely your internet, but the speed probably has nothing to do, kaillera online needs very few bandwidth to play (I think 10kb/s or so) make sure your connection is stable and your pc is clean and no other program is open

 

[DMoogle]

Apologies for bumping, but I figured the proper thing to do was post here, rather than create a new thread.

Your post is a perfect example of how to acceptably bump a thread.

After reading your post, I'm pretty sure that it's a problem with the instability of your internet connection. My university's connection is (sometimes) really fast too (I was downloading at 6MB/s the other day), but I can't even reliably connect to the Galaxy 64 server. I'm not sure about what, specifically, causes the lag spikes, but I'm pretty sure there's nothing you (or I) can do about it.

Sorry, dude.

 

[NovaSmash]

is a 1.5 Mbps cable connection from comcast good enough to play on kaillera without lag?

 

[th3kuzinator]

What I did to fix my connection was:

buy a wireless extender from radio shack (40$) and hook one into my router and one into my room.

I then ran an ethernet cord from the one in my room into my computer.

Suprisingly this fixed my lag problems 95%

I see your on a college campus, so this may not help you. But if you can somehow get the signal into your room and run an ethernet cord from there to your computer, you should be better off.

 

[Sempiternity]

Thanks for the responses, guys.

I get great wireless speeds in my room, but I also have the option to connect through an ethernet cable, and both methods fail when it comes to Kaillera.

th3kuzinator, your suggestion makes sense to improve signal strength, but it's probably not what I'm looking for. I'll keep that in mind for when I go home.

Also, what if I were to purchase a router and possibly reroute the university's wired connection through that so I end up broadcasting my own signal (and wiring again)? I briefly considered that, but figured it'd be a waste, especially since it shouldn't (theoretically) work, since it's the same network in the end.

My options truly are limited since I'm in a cramped dorm room, and can't log into the university's connection router or anything...


And, regarding keeping the PC clean, and closing everything else, I did that. Rebooted the PC and ran only PJ64, but no difference.

A few more things: when I ran the test from the aforementioned site, these two lines of the stats area pretty much concluded that I am doomed when it comes to Kaillera at school:

Information: throughput is limited by other network traffic.

Excessive packet loss is impacting your performance, check the auto-negotiate function on your local PC and network switch

Both of those sound scary.

I'm going home this weekend, so that'll be the true test to see if Kaillera will be kind to me under my own network. :/ Fingers crossed!

 

[firo]

Bandwidth is never the issue for kaillera - people on dialup can play on kaillera just fine even on the LAN setting (albeit with high ping). The protocol was designed for this purpose in sacrifice of some stability. Remember that on kaillera you won't see players warping to an area or not being hit by an attack. If a message isn't recieved by a computer, gameplay stops. Emulinker only sends about the last 5 instructions to each client so if some are missed, there's a good chance that recovery will not happen.

What the issue probably is resulting from is some sort of stability issue. I know my university does some wonky things with upload speeds sometimes, and isn't optimized for kaillera as opposed to some other games where dropping a few packets every once and a while isn't a big deal. If you are experiencing a large amount of packet loss, contact someone in the technology help desk at your school and maybe they will take care of it.

Here's some things you can try:

-Play late at night or at obscure times when you know that network usage is low. This can remove the possibility that the school allocates connections in a way that lags kaillera. Also, close all other internet-connected applications.
-Try artificially raising your delay by increasing your ping (downloading something while you first connect to kaillera, for instance) as this may improve stability
-Play by p2p, or try using the /p2pon command on the server - every packet saved may help.
-Try playing on one of the campus computers if you can. These are sometimes not subject to the same bandwidth policies as the residence connections.

As a note, playing on wifi on kaillera is very doable to the point where there is no visible difference, but some router/card configurations work better than others.

 

[Sempiternity]

I just ran the test to the RIT server again (it is 1:30pm now) and it told me that no network congestion was found and that there was no packet loss (although they arrived out of order 0.45% of the time). This is definitely because not as many people are on now, as compared to the 5:30pm and 11:30pm times I tried the test yesterday.

I tried to play a few matches, and had relatively smooth gameplay, only 15 spikes the first match and 45 the second.

Thanks for the input, firo. I'll try the other suggestions you mentioned, but I'm pretty sure not much is going to change; it's all dependent on how many people are using the network at any given time. The next test is to try out a university computer in the library or lab or something during peak hours to see if there's any difference.

 

[rawrimamonster]

I played on wireless for years on kaillera without major issues, only problems I ever had was when my wireless network went down and that was rare in itself. Kaillera itself seems worse than it was before, I think its just the ****ty clients/server software showing its age with newer high speed technology at our command. Just because its all faster now doesn't mean it'll be better for kaillera, it could just increase instability like we've all seen.

For all we know the lag on galaxy we all complain about could be neither the server nor our issue but the aging clients/software we use.

 

[SmashFinale]

the isp can also serve as a problem for lag i.e Nova and his crappy internet Clear