Official forums for BZFlag.org

I got booted for excessive packet loss. How can I remedy this? OSX 10.5.4.
Glad I found this game, but I seriously need to practice.

BTW- getting booted without much warning is awful...

Packetloss means your connection to the server is "dropping" occasionally. Think of it as if you were talking to someone, and every 10th word didn't make it to their ears.

The best way to fix this is to make sure nothing is hogging your internet connection, such as uploads, or another person on your network isn't hogging the connection. Trying running a traceroute to the server to see where the packets are being dropped.

Not sure what it might be, but I'll check it out. Thanks for the reply.

Where should noobies hang out, btw?

retox wrote:I got booted for excessive packet loss. How can I remedy this?

There is very little you can do. If you use WLAN change to a wired connection type. If limited bandwidth in combination of QoS rules of a router causes the loss you either need to lower the total traffic or to change QoS rules to give BZFlag priority. If none of the previously described things is the reason then it's likely all you can try is to change ISP.

retox wrote:BTW- getting booted without much warning is awful...

Why do you need much warnings? If you get one warning and then a kick chances are your connection is rather bad. In that case more warnings aren't likely to prevent a kick.

What internet connection do you have?

and just like Winny says, close any windows open in the background and try to terminate any application which you believe that will clog up the system memory uses and/or terminate any application that uses an internet connection. Also you can try reducing the quality settings. You go to "Options">"Display Settings". This helped me on my 500Mhz Apple computer. Hope we helped!


lol_u died

lol_u died
you had lag, not packet loss. settings in BZFlag will not change packet loss.

Thanks for the responses, guys. I'm on a cable modem, very fast. And I've actually seen packet loss, lag and UDP warnings. I'm on a newer macbook pro, graphics card, etc.

I think I am just over-thinking being disconnected as harsh. I'll tweak some stuff and keep trying...

retox wrote:Thanks for the responses, guys. I'm on a cable modem, very fast. And I've actually seen packet loss, lag and UDP warnings. I'm on a newer macbook pro, graphics card, etc.

I think I am just over-thinking being disconnected as harsh. I'll tweak some stuff and keep trying...

Are you on wireless on your MacBook Pro? It is possible your wireless connection has poor signal, or someone else is hijacking your connection and saturating it, causing packets to be dropped.

retox wrote:Thanks for the responses, guys. I'm on a cable modem, very fast. And I've actually seen packet loss, lag and UDP warnings. I'm on a newer macbook pro, graphics card, etc.

Well, cable modem isn't fast at all. There's a big difference to FTTH but FTTH with 100Mbit/s down and 10Mbit/s up is still a bit pricey (29.90€ with traffic flatrate here). Cable modem based connections are also a lot more depending on neighbours that DSL based connections for instance. However that does not mean all cable modem based connections are poor quality.

With packetloss lag spikes aren't unsual. In addition to that there are always servers that are too distant, like Japan and Australia for me. If you have quite a number of packetloss sometimes BZFlag can't "establish" a UDP connection to the server.

Finally the hardware your client runs on doesn't matter in this case. If your machine would be too slow then you would only lag.

In summary it looks like you ignored all good hints.

JeffM wrote:you had lag, not packet loss. settings in BZFlag will not change packet loss.

Yes and I feel a bit sad at this. Quake for example has an option to send UDP packets with same content several times. Of course this costs bandwidth…

Most residential broadband connections have asymmetrical bandwidth. Usually faster downstream, like 12Meg down, 512K up. Broadband speed over cable modem fluctuates greatly depending on number of people using it in a given area or neighborhood and network congestion. And sometimes the upstream speed is set very low, like 128K. Your connection to a bzflag server is effectively capped at the upstream speed.

Also packetloss in any "real time" application like a game or VoIP can also be attributed to out-of-order packets as they cannot be used either and will be dropped by the software. Any corrupted packets are dropped by the first router they get to.

Your computer hardware should not be an issue from what you've said. Have you tried a speedtest? And as stated earlier traceroute may help find the bottleneck, the problem may or may not be on your LAN.

ts wrote:Well, cable modem isn't fast at all. There's a big difference to FTTH but FTTH with 100Mbit/s down and 10Mbit/s up is still a bit pricey (29.90€ with traffic flatrate here). Cable modem based connections are also a lot more depending on neighbours that DSL based connections for instance. However that does not mean all cable modem based connections are poor quality.

"Fast" may be relative to what you're used to using, but most cable modem connections' effective speeds are plenty fast enough for BZFlag. Even when playing on the most popular servers, a client's bandwidth usage should always be below 100kbps (and that's primarily the downlink--the uplink will always be much less than that).

I have more or less the same problem. Strange thing is that on my (new) work Dell notebook it works fine, but on my (older) home PC (athlon 2000 + Geforce 5700) I get the problem.

Absolutely the same connection.

I though the BZF wasn't to demanding on HW??

I run McAfee, but disables the firewall when running BZF. Can anybody recommend a different malware protection SW? Preferably shareware.

vbr

Mike

Have you tried updating to the latest drivers for your network card (wired or wireless)? That can have a significant impact on the quality of your connection.

You'd probably want to check on all of your drivers for updates (video, network, audio). For example, slow video drivers can cause fake lag and packet loss.

mike_o
Take a look at http://www.f-prot.com
F-Prot is probably one of the best virus/malware scanners around. You can get the version that fits your needs. One friend runs f-prot on windows and has no problem with BZFlag.

And DON'T take your firewall down just to play bzflag!!!!

Your firewall should allow you to make an exception for bzflag so the bzflag traffic gets through.

Thanks.

I did suspect problems with the network card, but haven't found any drivers. I'll probably get a new card instead.

WRT McAfee firewall: I did put in an exeption for BZF, but it did not work. Doesn't work for BF2, either...

rgds

Mike