Minimizing Your Lag When Playing Brawl Online (Updated 01.21.08 Wii VGA Cable Info)

[mista_mista]

If one player has a bad connection, will everybody suffer from it, or is each persons lag independent of one another?

 

[Fox P McCloud]

not very many people, at all, have access to Verizon's FiOS Internet service...it's only available in the very large cities (this is also most likely why the latency is so low with it too).

The ethernet adapter will, indeed keep bandwidth more steady and it will have lower latency (not to mention, it won't be near as unstable as WiFi).

Connecting your Wii directly to the modem? This only isolates the bandwidth to the Wii only, and thus, it gets all the packets; if there's other PC's in the house, it'll definitely help, but if you have 2-3 PCs (and your Wii), and you're the only one who plays the Wii, just connect it to the router; home routers will hardly ever be under enough load to decrease their latency, after all, they don't even use a routing protocol; they just forward everything out a default-route (which is the WAN port in this case).

The whole video conversion thing is not a huge problem, what's more of anissue is the TV itself (that said, when TVs do conversions, it does add to the latency). I know I'm not going to make many people happy with my next statement, but....CRTs are still the best of the best in the TV world; the only thing that flat-panels have against them is size and weight....CRTs still have the best clarity, picture quality, colors, longevity, and latency. Sadly, there's not a whole lot of HDTV CRTs out there...though they did make them in the past (I've talked with a couple of people, and I've seen one myself...and the Sony KD 36XS955 CRT HDTV is awesome). I've seen Super Mario Galaxy, Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, and Star Fox Adventures (all of them in 480p mode) and the picture was positively astounding...that, and latency wasn't a problem (oh, I almost forgot...CRTs have no native resolution either; so they can display any picture you throw at them, provided they have the proper display technology).

if you have multiple PCs being used at the same time, and you absolutely cannot be the only one using the Wii, then I recommend you set up Quality of Service on your router (if you have a LinksysWRT54G, then I recommend installing Tomato on it, as Linksys' default QoS program sucks); once you find the port number that SSBB uses, you will be able to give that port top priority; that way, when data goes out, the router will put the SSBB packets first (you do not, however, have control over which packets come in...that's FC-FS). Hawking and Linksys both make stand-alone traffic shapers/QoS boxes....I can't vouch for how well they work, but from what I've read, the Hawking one does a little better.....I can't promise you how well it will work with the Wii though, as it's tailored to computers and PC gaming (though the ports the Wii uses may be the same).

other tips:
-make sure your PC's are spotless; spyware and the likes can upload data consistently while you're using the net, which means increased latency and lower bandwidth for you.
-make sure your Wii has a proper MTU, as an improper one will result in lower bandwidth (and slightly higher latency). To test the proper MTU, go to your PC, open command prompt, and type in "ping -f -l XXXX www.google.com" replace the X's with a number between 0 and 1472. keep on increasing/decreasing the numbers until the ping either times out every time, or it says the packet need to be fragments.....I'll give an example:

say you ping google with an MTU of 1472....it goes through...however, at 1473, it doesn't, or it says it need to be fragmented. You have no found your number (1472).

Once you've found the proper number, at 28 to it....most everyone who uses cable, DSL, or fiber-to-the-home will have an MTU of 1500 (this is after you added the 28)....I don't know what satellite will be like, and making adjustments for dial-up is unnecessary (by the by, it'll be interesting to see if dial-up can handle Brawl).

I know with EVDO (what I have), the MTU is often some strange number....for some people it's the default 1500...others (such as myself), have an MTU of 1024. AHh well, I don't really care, as long as I get the best speed and latency out of my service.

 

[cormano]

you will suffer from it in the form of that one player skipping or freezing or teleporting across the screen. it might bring performance down a bit for everyone else, but it will mostly affect him.

like a car with one flat tire. the other wheels will perform adequately, but that one flat tire will slow the car down.

 

[Sai Winner of Games]

If the person with a bad connection also happens to be the server Wii hosting the game, it will also effect everyone else.

@Fox
Those are some good ideas. I will have to try it.

Also, there is a map of FiOS availability: http://www.dslreports.com/gmaps/fios . I will add it to the original post.

 

[OnyxVulpine]

Ok....

I have an HDTV for my Wii.
And my Wii goes to my wireless router.
Which is connected to another router.
Which is connected to my Modem.
And I live in Hawaii..

Hmmm.....

-Onyx

 

[Fox P McCloud]

If the person with a bad connection also happens to be the server Wii hosting the game, it will also effect everyone else.

@Fox
Those are some good ideas. I will have to try it.

Also, there is a map of FiOS availability: http://www.dslreports.com/gmaps/fios . I will add it to the original post.

I'm a member of Broadband Reports (have been for a little while now) I know where FiOS is and isn't located.

There's a few errors on the map; for example, FiOS is not available in Ohio, at all.

Embarq has Fiber-to-the-home in Las Vegas, and a few tiny spots in a Cleveland suburb, but, all in all, Ohio is "in the dark" for home fiber connections.

 

[cormano]

will the matches be ran on nintendo's servers? that's another thing to look at. i imagine it will. i mean, if people drop out of matches and get replaced by cpu characters (which you can't tell anyways,) what if it was the host who dropped out and got replaced?

i imagine there's a moderate amount of people using nintendon's wi-fi right now, but do you think they'll be prepared for when brawl comes out?

i'm saying that, yes, because of the recent xbox live issue. according to microsoft, they didn't anticipate all the christmas people, overloading the servers. i know it's not going to be an epic amount of people, like last christmas, but seriously, we all know that we're gonna go online right off the bat.

 

[Fox P McCloud]

I'm going to guess it'll be Nintendo's servers. *sigh* That means they'll be based out of Washington, giving the West coast a huge advantage over the east coast.

 

[Monshou_no_Nazo]

I believe Nintendo WiFi matches are not hosted on the central servers. One of the Wii consoles acts as the host of the match, so it shouldn't give East Coast an automatic advantage.

 

[-NEOLINK-]

hey, Fox P, i heard that tomato was very good but it only supports wrt54Gv1-v4 (for MY type of Linksys router) i have V6 so i cant use it. Do you think you could pm me if Tomato ever gets updated to allow v5+ to use it? or should i use dd-wrt? Also does wired ethernet connection mean router to comp A or router to a modem that is connected to comp A, or something else?

 

[Fox P McCloud]

sure, I'll keep you posted on that.

what I mean by wired is this:

<internet capable device>-------<router>----<modem>______

legend: <> = device ---- = ethernet cable _____ = coaxial/phoneline/fiber/other WAN link

basically there's a WAN port on the router; your modem connects to this....typically there's 4 other ports, (labeled, not surprisingly 1-4) you can connect any network-capable device to any of these ports...from a PC, to a Wii, all the way up to your Dish Network DVR (though the latter-most is not enable yet ). If you have more than 4 devices, then you'll just have to use a switch on one of the 4 ports, then connect the needed devices to the switch.

 

[Sai Winner of Games]

I added information about a Wii VGA cable that seems good for connecting Wii consoles to monitors for playing in 480p, and its somewhat cheap (about $40). I'm not certain about its latency, but I will try to get one to test it.

 

[Sai Winner of Games]

..........

 

[Svkv]

I do not have exact numbers for this, but for my laptop, connecting to a network wirelessly has more latency, enough to hinder good smash play most likely, compared to connecting with an ethernet cord. The Wii LAN Adapter should help reduce latency by letting you connect with an ethernet cord. Also connecting directly to your modem (bypassing your router) may reduce a small amount lag. If you are using wireless, you may want to consider not using encryption. Decoding an encrypted wireless packet may add to the latency, so turning off your wireless network's encryption while you play may also reduce some lag.



Let me make sure I understand correctly. I connect wirelessly so I should buy a Wii LAN Adapter and then connect with an ethernet cord? Preferably by connecting directly to my modem, right?

 

[pesticide]

gah, too much technical stuff. head hurts...

my wireless router's never had bad lag at all, so i should be okay

 

[kellerdood32]

it would be much easier if nintendo just had good connection like XBL, all you should need is to be a state or two away and be somewhat close to your router, i dont feel like spending 100 bucks on connection that should already be good, if its not good ill just reconsider the next time i buy a nintendo game.

 

[Tristan Fattest of All Kids]

What the freak, Sai! Why do you make such long posts.

 

[CaliburChamp]

*bump*
Will a moderator please sticky this?

 

[CaliburChamp]

Help?
My main computer is not in the same room as my Wii. Is there no way for me to connect with the Wii LAN adapter? I own a laptop and 2 desktop computers, my main computer is hooked up with the dsl and router. Is it possible to hook up the secondary computer or laptop to the Wii LAN adapter for a solid wired connection?