Sporadic Rubber Banding

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Shifty
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Sporadic Rubber Banding

Post by Shifty » Sat Jul 03, 2010 5:58 pm

So I've had the wierdest lag over the last week. I would be playing with my usual ping of about 80ms on Warpath, everything is smooth, then all of a sudden my ping would jump to about 120ms and I would be thrown all over the place for about 2 minutes. Then things would go back to normal. Since yesterday, its gone from sporadic to constant. Now I can play at all.

I tried running a tracert on Warpath, and it would just not go through at all. I opened up ports 27005 and 27015 (as per Masakari's suggestion) and then was able to get a tracert to complete:

As you can see, the second hop failed (which also caused the trace to freeze for about 30 seconds). Whats going wrong here?!
C:\Users\>tracert tv8.theville.org

Tracing route to tv8.theville.org [63.210.145.203]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 5 ms <1 ms 5 ms 192.168.1.1
2 * * * Request timed out.
3 13 ms 10 ms 12 ms rd2bb-ge0-0-0-3.vc.shawcable.net [64.59.152.66]

4 10 ms 11 ms 10 ms rc2bb-tge0-2-2-0.vc.shawcable.net [66.163.69.133
]
5 13 ms 12 ms 15 ms rc2wh-tge0-8-1-0.vc.shawcable.net [66.163.69.117
]
6 24 ms 23 ms 52 ms rc1so-pos10-0-0.cg.shawcable.net [66.163.76.185]

7 50 ms 47 ms 53 ms rc1nr-tge0-9-1-0.wp.shawcable.net [66.163.77.30]

8 61 ms 59 ms 61 ms rc2ec-pos0-1-1-0.il.shawcable.net [66.163.77.246
]
9 60 ms 59 ms 67 ms equinix.xe-1-3-0.cr2.ord1.us.nlayer.net [206.223
.119.61]
10 118 ms 81 ms 111 ms xe-0-3-0.cr1.dfw1.us.nlayer.net [69.22.142.1]
11 83 ms 85 ms 86 ms ae1-60g.ar1.dfw1.us.nlayer.net [69.31.63.126]
12 84 ms 82 ms 84 ms as20473.xe-1-0-4-106.ar1.dfw1.us.nlayer.net [69.
31.63.38]
13 81 ms 82 ms 86 ms unknown.Level3.net [63.210.145.203]

Trace complete.
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Re: Sporadic Rubber Banding

Post by dredfox » Sat Jul 03, 2010 6:11 pm

The hop that failed didn't necessarily fail. The host that received it could be configured to not send a reply, but pass packets on anyway. Also, tracert works by sending a sequence of packets out each with longer "expiration dates". Each packet may not be following the same path as its predecessors. So, there may not be a link between any two adjacent hops; they could be on opposites sides of the world.

Personally I'd start by running a constant ping to various servers. Try something like this:

ping -t www.whatever.server.you.want

You can stop the pings and get a summary by pressing ctrl-c at any time. Let it run for a few minutes and see how bad your packet loss is. Packet loss much over 1 or 2 percent is pretty much unplayable.

Verifying packet loss would at least rule out internal PC issues.

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Re: Sporadic Rubber Banding

Post by Shifty » Sat Jul 03, 2010 7:08 pm

I pinged TV8 for a couple minutes earlier and it was a smooth 80ms ping the whole time.

I should note this has happened on all 5 TF2 server I've played on.
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Re: Sporadic Rubber Banding

Post by Shifty » Sat Jul 03, 2010 7:21 pm

I don't really know what it means, but when I get my lag, my net_graph looks like this:

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Re: Sporadic Rubber Banding

Post by Clay Pigeon » Sat Jul 03, 2010 7:30 pm

Shifty, that's not net_graph 5.
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Re: Sporadic Rubber Banding

Post by booner » Sat Jul 03, 2010 10:28 pm

I've been getting all sorts of weird lag on TV8 lately. Usually when it happens, the rest of the server is experiencing it as well.

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Re: Sporadic Rubber Banding

Post by pRyvvik » Tue Sep 07, 2010 8:09 am

Me too shifty! Ill be running around with a good ping, smooth play, then ill just 'stop moving'. I continue to see everyone else move (I assume its lag comp predicting where they will be) but I can't move. Suddenly ill 'unfreeze' and rubber band to where I should have been if I was moving smoothly.

I'm in florida. I haven't bothered to diagnose the problem since nothing has changed on my system besides TF2 patches.

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Re: Sporadic Rubber Banding

Post by metacide » Tue Sep 07, 2010 2:10 pm

I'm going to agree with Dred that the Tracert probably doesnt mean anything, but for different reasons.

Your net graph just shows that for a brief period you had severe latency, which is causing the problems you described, fortunately that could mean the issue is not on your computer. Probably.

What ISP do you have? Are there any other devices on your home network? What other processes/applications are running? Which OS do you have?

If everyone else were having the same issue at the same time (every time) I would say it's an issue with the TF2 server(s), but since you say it's only you, the problem lies in your connection to the server. If we can rule out your computer, then the only option left is your ISP (I just hope it isn't Comcast).
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