Improved Stability Online?

[jjaisli]

I want to pose a general question. Does anybody else feel that the general stability of on-line lobbies has improved lately? I have not seen or experienced anybody kicked from a lobby or seen a lobby collapse in nearly 2 months. I don't mean to suggest that Eutechnyx slipped everybody a magic update and nobody noticed. But I wonder if there was some tweaking done to the server in anticipation of SuperCar Challenge and as a result, things have improved during the handshake process.

For the last 250 GTO event, we ran most of the time (nearly 2.5 hours in total) with 8 people in the lobby and had both a 20 minute race and a 30 minute race. Aside from Joao, who confirmed the problem was on his end, nobody was ejected and the lobby remained stable. I'm not sure if the rest of you noticed but during the Spa race, several people came in and out of the lobby, including Segel. And it was rock solid. What's more, aside from the lag PiotrB mentioned when driving behind Energiya, I found the 'lagginess' in general was very acceptable. I was able to race side by side with people during this event and the usual stuttering, sputtering, flashing, teleporting and bouncing cars, never manifested itself.

It's Ferrari Challenge. We know there are issues with on-line races and with larger lobbies. But compared to the disaster we had during Hun200kmh's original events late last year, there seems to have been a marked improvement. I know that I have a very quick and stable internet connection with little latency. And I'm sure that helps.

What I'm getting at, is I'm considering opening a 16 player lobby for the next event. That does NOT mean that I expect 16 people to run the race. But if we had had so much as one person kicked out of the lobby during the first two events and serious lag issues, I wouldn't be suggesting it now.

How about the rest of you. Have any of you been in a lobby which collapsed in the last month?

 

[Biggles]

I don't remember "bouncing cars" in the last few weeks.

BTW: can anyone comment on the difference between having a wired connection & wireless when it comes to online gaming in general?

 

[Ardius]

I still get my problems I had a few months ago with repeated lobby crashes, even when I first join, as I experienced with ENERGYIA a couple of days ago when he invited me into his lobby. I hit join and it just loaded the lobby screen with no names or text then said the host connection had failed, and repeatedly did this anytime I tried to join.

Online hasn't become more stable imo, there are just less people online anymore and thus the chances of lobby crashes seem reduced, and the people that are online seem to have better connections from my perspective anyway.

Its only become more bearable for me now when I turn FC on specifically to join a race online, but if I try to spend a night playing online I quite often still get frustrated with lobby crashes.

 

[jjaisli]

Biggles, I have my PS3 set up on an 802.11g network (wirelessly). I have my wireless router set up on the top floor with an addition booster on the main floor and another in the basement. (Most wireless routers produce a good signal laterally but not vertically.) Many people claim otherwise but I don't think there's a noticeable difference in speed or latency whether you go through WiFi or your Ethernet port. As long as (1) it's stable (2) you have a good clear signal and (3) you don't have other users hijacking all your bandwidth. In other words, if you want to race on-line, make sure your wife isn't downloading an HD movie on the laptop in the other room.

 

[jjaisli]

Ardius, I'm just curious, do you have any connection problems, stability problems or other issues with your internet connection? I know for example that WayneJones used to be the bogey man when he'd show up in a lobby. He'd enter, and 3-4 others would get kicked out. And when I used to race with him the lag was terrible. People with a slow ping time to the host sometimes have their car bounce up and down like a ball. In Wayne's case, I once saw his car literally float above the track like a hovercraft. It turned out he had an issue with his connection which he was otherwise unaware of, and since it's been addressed, I've raced with him twice and it's been fine.

But either way, it's disappointing to know this is still happening. I was just amazed that I ran a lobby for 2 & 1/2 hours with 7-8 people and no issues.

I'm not in the Beta program for Supercar Challenge but I understand that people who race each other in the Beta are able to monitor each other's bandwidth and/or seek time somehow. The next time you have a problem entering a lobby or if you get kicked out of a lobby with a 'known' player, it may be interesting for you to exchange IP addresses and run a test.

 

[Ardius]

No, I have no internet issues normally, all other games are fine, my laptop and PC have no problems either. I rarely get massive amounts of lag, and this is usually because of other people's connections.

When I'm racing in FC online, I have no other connection issues, I don't normally get the bouncing cars or anything like that, its purely these lobby crashes.

I'm also surprised, as in ENERGYIA's lobby a few weeks ago, it was perfectly fine with 5 or 6 other drivers, but then randomly a few days later I can't even join ENERGYIA's lobby and he only had him and one other person in....

 

[Lion-Face]

For wired or wifi connections, i dont have a problem with either setting. I believe its got more to do with your wifi router than anything. I have an N Class Wifi router, while i know Nclass doesnt give me an increase in speed for my b/g PS3, it does offer a stronger signal for b/g devices. I run my PS3 through 2 walls at about 50% signal strength and can play online just as well as i could wired. Well, certainly from my end i dont notice any problems.

I dont know about the performance of the FC lobbies of the past few months, but just the past week i've been able to get online and play a few races without a hitch for a good hour or so. Thumbs up from me

 

[hm66]

hi
I played for an hour with ENERGIYA yesterday and the lag was terrible.I dont know if it's my connection or his but i dont have that much lag when playing others.I fund this http://sdtekken.com/t5dr/online/setup-guide/ and i'll try when i get home.I know my NAT is 2 and i'll try a speedtest on the ps3 and compare with pc.

Did a speedtest at speedtest.net.I have a 12/1 connection.On my labtop(wireless) i tested sweden,usa and australia.my ping is sweden=19 ms usa=150 ms australia=350 ms

did the same with ps3(wireless).sweden=16 ms usa=152 ms australia=355 ms

maby somebody else can check and compare.

 

[kjb]

Normally when I go online it hasn't been a problem but the last few days I entered a couple different lobbies and they have crashed on me.

 

[GTP_ENERGIYA]

I think there are still problems or it's getting worse, i've had the same problem ARDIUS is talking about & the problem with lag, well in the last 3 day, i've seen cars flying, bouncing, tires smoking for whole race. etc.

And with lobby issues. It cant be a problem at my end since my moderm is 20cm away from my PS3

 

[jjaisli]

Hmmm. I see. For some it's fine. For others it's awful. Sometimes good, sometimes bad. And everywhere in between. In other words, just like it's always been. I guess it was too much to hope for.

Thanks for the link Henrik. Very useful. Although naturally this test is inconclusive since the only ping speed that matters is between each other's PS3 and those numbers could vary greatly. None the less it's a good basis. I did the test myself and my results:
Through my Wireless network:
Brazil: 295 ms
Portugal: 117 ms
Germany: 105 ms
USA: 20 ms
Australia: 285 ms

I'll re-run it again later today from my laptop and also from my wired desktop and from my wireless PS3 to see if the numbers differ significantly.

 

[DaddyVDUB]

I'm afraid at least for me online has not improved. Sat night 3 or 4 times while in a 7 to 8 player lobby I got kicked off 3 times in a row. I still Enjoy being able to talk with my friends B4 race "in lobby" but when race starts I sometimes get booted.

 

[jjaisli]

BTW, Henrik, I read through the setup guide. It's very interesting and the author makes some good points. Because most online gaming is done through a P2P network, people's individual network setups could inevitably hinder each other and are likely the root cause of not being able to enter lobbies and getting dropped connections. I'm even willing to bet a 16 player lobby with everybody running a NAT1 wired connection with 25 ms or less latency would be both stable and relatively lag free. But it's just not realistic.

FWIW, I take my personal internet security very seriously and would never dream of doing some of the things they suggest. As a matter of fact, I can't even log onto my work network from home because our sonic wall needs to read the IP address of the connecting PC to complete the log-on and my router is set up to block the IP address of everything behind it--something I refuse to change.

Just out of curiosity, I ran the speed test from here at work at 6:45 am this morning when nobody was on the network. We have a dedicated T3 line. I was amazed to see that for 3 of the 5 locations, I had less latency through my home cable modem, using my ancient laptop on a heavily firewalled 802.11g Wi-Fi network, than from work, using the main server and a T3! Go figure.

 

[jjaisli]

At any rate, I was so pleased with the reliable and stable lobbies of the first two events, I was seriously considering opening a 16 player lobby for the next event (probably coming up on May 23/24). But based on what I'm reading here, I'm now having second thoughts. I'm still thinking we should give it a try and if the lobby collapses we'll have a plan in place to re-open two lobbies. (Assuming we have that many participants).

 

[GTP_ENERGIYA]

At any rate, I was so pleased with the reliable and stable lobbies of the first two events, I was seriously considering opening a 16 player lobby for the next event (probably coming up on May 23/24). But based on what I'm reading here, I'm now having second thoughts. I'm still thinking we should give it a try and if the lobby collapses we'll have a plan in place to re-open two lobbies. (Assuming we have that many participants).

You could organise a test run with an open lobby before your event starts to see if it's stable or not.

Maybe create a F430 lobby due to there are allways people running with that car & make it 16 for lobby.