Why the lag in online servers?

[Black_Sage29]

My specs are:

Intel Celeron 900
2 Gigs of Ram
Intel GMA 4500M

It's an old laptop but I can run this game smoothe as butter OFFLINE


When I get online the game lags so much it's pretty much unplayable. Specifically when there's a lot of people in Battlefields 1 server and especially IRSS Dogfight server.

IRSS Dogfight I expect some lag because it's a russian server but Battlefields and Skies of Valor are closer and I ping pretty good there...yet there is still tons of lag especially when getting around other players

When there's not a lot of players in the server the game runs pretty smoothe even on the russian server. But when more players join it gets really choppy


I have fast cable internet so my connection can't be the problem. The lag is so bad it's forcing me to stop playing the game all together

[IceFire]

Hi Black Sage... hard to say exactly without more details.

What kinds of things do you do offline that would put your system in a similar workload position as multiplayer? Play any big campaigns with lots of aircraft flying around?

Battlefields1 (I'm an admin and a map maker so I have a bit of an idea there anyways - can't speak to Skies of Valor quite as much) is a 64 player server and on a weekend we do tend to see at least 30 players if not approaching our max around 55-60 players the odd time. That's a lot of net traffic and keeping track of objects. We do strive for efficiency in the map design but there is only so much we can do without making everything totally static and uninteresting.

Your system is very low spec. The Celeron 900 is a single core with a TDP of 35W which essentially means that it's designed for power efficiency (at least by 2009 standards). The Intel GMA 4500 draws CPU cycles for overhead on the graphics work and it doesn't have its own memory so it draws from your 2GB of ram to do the video work as well. If the network chipset is integrated and it also requires some CPU use to process all of that... then you're really taxing a CPU that doesn't have a lot of overhead to work with.

So to summarize... my guess is that a couple of things are happening:

1) Offline you aren't stressing the system to the same level.
2) Online you're stressing the system more and with more players comes more net traffic that puts quite a bit of overhead on a bottlenecked system.

Has it gotten worse recently? Do you notice a pattern of when there is a performance loss? Is it actually lag (i.e. does your ping time increase when this happening) or is it other performance related issues.

I can suggest some things:

1) Make sure that when you're playing IL-2 that whatever performance features are available on your system are enabled. So rather than power saving you want to go for maximum performance. Check the windows power settings for details.

2) Make sure that there is nothing unnecessarily running in the background. Some anti-virus software suck down CPU and RAM just sitting there doing nothing particularly useful. Do you have a lot of helper applications running for things like Skype, SkyDrive, DropBox, etc.? Try temporarily disabling some of those.

3) Make sure all of your devices have updated drivers. Windows Update can help with that fairly automatically these days. Less hunting around than required before.

Not sure what else to suggest... what OS is the system running? Back in the Windows XP days I always suggested Googling how to setup a static memory page file as IL-2 hated XP's memory management and whenever it resized the memory it would cause terrible pausing and stutters online. Windows Vista and on fixed that particular problem.

[Black_Sage29]

Thanks for responding.

I think my specs are the problem then. My ping is always good online, but since everything is being drawn from the 2 gigs of RAM that's probably causing a performance issue.

[IceFire]

If you have the budget... a low-medium spec barebones PC (I'm assuming this is a tower?) with a Core i5 and 4GB of RAM with a dedicated (but nothing top end) video card would be the way to go if IL-2 1946 is your only gaming need. You can sometimes find these for $350-$450ish. Barebones... so assuming you already have keyboard/mouse/monitor/etc. and just need a tower to plug it all in to. Save some money that way :)

[RPS69]

More players at the same time, means more traffic.
So... are you connected by Wi-Fi, or by wire?
If you are using Wi-Fi, try conecting the wire and test it again. Wi-Fi is processor dependant, and if your processor gots too heavy loaded, you may get a slower connection.

just a guess... but it was very common on older NB with slow processors.

[EJGr.Ost_Caspar]

Just a an idea (and a question)... would it help it a bit, if he sets up 'ISDN' or eben '56kb' in the network setting? Might this cut the traffic down to 'slower but lighter' packages?

[KG26_Alpha]

Setting the network to 56k is always a good idea on DF servers.

But I think its just a simple matter of processing power online.

[Black_Sage29]

I usually play On LAN network settings since that's the fastest speed

I always thought setting it to ISDN would cause things to slow down

[IceFire]

I usually play On LAN network settings since that's the fastest speed

I always thought setting it to ISDN would cause things to slow down

Changes how the packets are handled and it might reduce the overhead required to process them. In some cases it could provide a performance increase. You can easily experiment and then if it provides no tangible benefit then you can always switch back.

[MaxGunz]

See how others are experiencing lag when you do. It's possible that the server is trying to host too many players at once.

[IceFire]

See how others are experiencing lag when you do. It's possible that the server is trying to host too many players at once.

It's a good point. Some cases can be attributed to server issues.

If its Battlefield1 like he mentioned, then it's fully capable of handling 64 players without lag or performance issues. We tested this on several of our heavier scenarios and all was fine. We did retire a couple of scenarios as they caused persistent and periodic stutter for most players but that was a map object issu (NW Germany has too many objects).

More recently I discovered that 6 C-47s dropping 16 paratroopers each will kill the server and lag everyone out. Did that just once :) But that would show on the user side as net lag, rather than a performance related freeze or stutter.

[MaXMhZ]

I usually play On LAN network settings since that's the fastest speed

I always thought setting it to ISDN would cause things to slow down


Nope. LAN setting in IL-2 means biggest packets, nothing else...

And when a packet gets lost (happens a lot), it needs to be re-send and re-checked.

Use 56k as already suggested. That will use the smallest packets. Use a wired connection. WiFi has a HUGE overhead bogging down your system even further.
You do need a far better computer with more RAM too. Your current computer probably has 100 Mb/s maximum Ethernet speed, to say nothing about the performance of the rest of the system. Ancient, maybe good for notepad, a bit of surfing (not even all sites will work), and the occational email.

When you say it runs IL-2 smooth, you probably mean on the absolute minimum settings?

[Storebror]

You do need a far better computer with more RAM too. Your current computer probably has 100 Mb/s maximum Ethernet speed, to say nothing about the performance of the rest of the system. Ancient, maybe good for notepad, a bit of surfing (not even all sites will work), and the occational email.

When you say it runs IL-2 smooth, you probably mean on the absolute minimum settings?

Whether his current PC can provide 100 Mbit/s, 1 Gbit/s or just 10 Mbit/s doesn't matter at all. Any of these will do for IL-2.
I've been running IL-2 on a PC with less than half the CPU power (Pentium 4 w/ 3.0 GHz) and far sub-par GPU (4670 AGP) with perfect settings @XGA resolution with a solid frame rate of 30-40 FPS.
Explain why "not even all sites will work" on that PC and in contrast, which PC you've seen where all sites would.


I agree that it's not a top-notch PC which has been discussed in this topic, but that's no reason for the issues described.

Best regards - Mike

[Igo kyu]

[LIST=1] I've been running IL-2 on a PC with less than half the CPU power (Pentium 4 w/ 3.0 GHz)
The Celeron 900 is a one core CPU, which runs at 2.2 GHz, it does not have twice the compute capacity of a Pentium 4 at 3.0 GHz.

It also depends which version of IL*2 under which operating system version. 1946 will run under Windows 7, I don't know what the most modern OS version that the original IL*2 will run under would have been, I originally ran it under Windows 98, but I'm pretty sure it won't run from the original disk under Windows 7.

[MaXMhZ]

IL-2 1946 runs on my Atom 330 ION under Windows 7 Ultimate 32 bit, but nowhere nearsmooth. Flying a single plane on an empty small map without objects like trees or even worse buildings will get me just about 20 - 30 fps.

I think the 2 GB is the biggest problem here. I am running 4GB DDR2-800 dual channel in my atom. The ION is much more capable than the Intel integrated graphics too, and the Atom is a dual core with hyperthreading (4 threads).

[IceFire]

IL-2 1946 runs on my Atom 330 ION under Windows 7 Ultimate 32 bit, but nowhere nearsmooth. Flying a single plane on an empty small map without objects like trees or even worse buildings will get me just about 20 - 30 fps.

I think the 2 GB is the biggest problem here. I am running 4GB DDR2-800 dual channel in my atom. The ION is much more capable than the Intel integrated graphics too, and the Atom is a dual core with hyperthreading (4 threads).

The amazing bit there is that the TDP is 8W... very low power CPU.