lost packets using 1.7g1

Defman · Post by **Defman** » Sun Apr 20, 2003 2:20 am

Iron Foot pointed out tonight on Turkey that it appears this version of bzflag is dropping alot of packets and thus causing problems for everybody else.

Does anybody know why that is happening and what can be done about it? (besides the obvious answer of going back to 1.7g0)

Has anybody else noticed this with 1.7g1? (or was there a thread going on already about this that I missed?)

Tanks
The tank formally known as Defman

Chestal · Post by **Chestal** » Sun Apr 20, 2003 3:45 pm

Without further proof I'd just say it is coincidence at is not related to the bzflag version at all. What makes Iron Foot think so anyway? The number of lost packets displayed in /lagstats? This is the number of lag ping packets for which the server did not receive a reply from this particular player. This means that either the UDP ping packet itself or the reply got lost. A player which loses a significant amoutn of packets there (let's say 10%) will probably also not receive all other UDP packets, some of which are shots fired at the player, so from another player's point of view you may shoot right though this player. This is not a very good indication, but it was easy to do. For good connectons, usually no packets are lost at all. In a future bzflag version with a different protocol, the server will probably know a lot more about a player's quality of connection.

Spaceman Spiff · Post by **Spaceman Spiff** » Sun Apr 20, 2003 6:26 pm

Part of Iron Foot's conclusion came from the fact that Defman and I were both using the 1.7g1 client. I am not sure why this is, but I do lose less packets when I run 1.7g0. I tried this right when he said it, and it worked perfectly... only 5 packets lost or something as opposed to my 50 or something before.

Help? Hehehe.

Chestal · Post by **Chestal** » Sun Apr 20, 2003 7:04 pm

This may sound obvious, but I'll still ask: Did you compare it after having played for the same amount of time? It's best to compare the number of lost packets in /lagstats to the number of measurements. So say, you had 50 lost packets with g1 for 500 measurements, that would be 10%.

Spaceman Spiff · Post by **Spaceman Spiff** » Sun Apr 20, 2003 8:04 pm

Ahh.. forgot to mention that. I think that it ended up being about a 25% increase... oy... I should've written the numbers down and stuff.

Defman · Post by **Defman** » Sun Apr 20, 2003 10:29 pm

I didn't keep track of the numbers either but I was in there for quite a few hours before Spiff showed up. I had in excess of 1000 lost packets. Is this number shown then in lagstats a total number of packets lost over the total time played? And I understand that is the second set of numbers displayed as (xxxx).

I still switched back to 1.7g0 for the time being until I understand this more.

Tanks fer all the help

Chestal · Post by **Chestal** » Mon Apr 21, 2003 10:34 am

/lagstats shows something like:

Code: Select all

Chestal     :  150ms (327)  10 lost

Which means that the current exponentially smoothed lag average is at 150ms round-trip time, that there have been 327 lag pings since the player joined of which 10 haven't been answered by the player.

Spaceman Spiff · Post by **Spaceman Spiff** » Mon Apr 21, 2003 1:41 pm

Heh. I wondered about that... Iron Foot had us reading the "(327)" number. LoL! I kept wondering why it said "Lost" next to it sometimes.. oops. Thanks for the help... now I look stupid.

Looking at the lost now.... I don't have any for the most part. Back to 1.7g1!!! YAY!!!!!

Defman · Post by **Defman** » Mon Apr 21, 2003 10:36 pm

Same here Spiff!

Jeez, now I gotta go mod my script again so it points to the right version! hehe, no problem

Tanks all