llrr:
Yes, combined lag is a problem, and yes it is cumulative, not in a serial fashion, but in parallel. The reason why the person with 300+ms bears the focus is that the player with the highest lag is the weakest link; You have to start enforcement somewhere. Usually most players will have in the 60-80ms range, with a few in the 100+ range. If the server is laggy, yes, it isn't as pleasant to play there.
Instead of commiserating about lag and talking about lag theories blamed exclusively on the ISP, why not focus on an area that you (the user) can indeed affect? Namely the client machine. Check your ping times to the server; That is a good starting point. I personally have had two or three computers that all produced very different lag and gameplay. You have to be resourceful; Try different things to see what affects the problem.
The bottom line is: If you can't get the lag below the threshold, you just shouldn't play. If it's your ISP, call them up and see what they can do. I have known several users that did just that and got amazing results. Getting mad and cussing the admin who is just enforcing the rules is completely nonproductive, as well as being crude and uncivilized; Remember: The admins have feelings too.
lag
i never said i cuss at admins just coz they're enfocing the rules ;]-
Abominable
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Re: lag
I don't even see a reason to kick a player due to high lag. The autokick plug-in that is ran kicks them for you after 3 warnings, so why waste your time? I can understand kicking/banning a player that repetitively joins with a consistent 3k+ lag or extraordinarily high jitter. But if someone joins and lags because they're a bit to far from the server, why even bother? But, mostly it's up to the admin team and the server owners.
Re: lag
Well, I see no point in waiting for the server to kick players with poor connections. (It's also not a plugin - it's built-in functionality) I prefer to warn people before that happens and possibly try to help them fix it. For example, jitter can sometimes be fixed by closing down any other software (including browser), changing the wifi channel, or not using wifi at all. Sometimes it's obvious that someone has a slow computer and then I'll notify them of that as well.
"In addition to knowing the secrets of the Universe, I can assure you that I am also quite potty trained." -Koenma (Yu Yu Hakusho)
Re: lag
I take a simpler approach to the maths behind lag.
Speed of light in a vacuum = 300,000 km/s / 1000 = 300 km/ms.
Light signals propagate at 2/3 speed in optical fiber = 200 km/ms.
A ping must be returned, i.e. travel from source to destination and then back to source, thus halve the distance traveled in that time : 100 km/ms.
The circumference of the Earth is ~40,000 km, or 400 ms in ping time. Half that for traveling from one side to its opposite side of the Earth and you get a 200 ms ping. And that assumes a cable going the most direct path across the Earth's surface - but cables both of the subterranean and submarine type tend not to go absolutely straight to its destination on the shortest path, and additionally you will have optical relays and all sorts of other things in between that add a ms here and there.
I am someone who has both been kicked and has kicked others for lag on many occasions. I do find the lag-cheat argument offensive and wrong - the last cry of a player that can't accept their own skill shortcomings in playing BZflag. I've even had the joy of soundly beating the same people who have previously complained about my lag on US servers again while having (all too uncommon) occasions for playing them on an Australian server, where our latencies are reversed.
But I also agree that map owners should put hard limits on the lag, and it is appropriate to short-term ban people who just keep reconnecting after lag kicks.
Some admins will kick or ban people under the lag that the map has been set up to allow without auto-kick. While it is their prerogative to do so, I find the action bemusing - if they find a latency unacceptable then surely they should petition the map owner to change it. Sometimes it seems that I have been kicked not so much because of the lag in itself but because I was also successful while having such a lag. If that was their motive, then it is a hypocritical one to have.
Speed of light in a vacuum = 300,000 km/s / 1000 = 300 km/ms.
Light signals propagate at 2/3 speed in optical fiber = 200 km/ms.
A ping must be returned, i.e. travel from source to destination and then back to source, thus halve the distance traveled in that time : 100 km/ms.
The circumference of the Earth is ~40,000 km, or 400 ms in ping time. Half that for traveling from one side to its opposite side of the Earth and you get a 200 ms ping. And that assumes a cable going the most direct path across the Earth's surface - but cables both of the subterranean and submarine type tend not to go absolutely straight to its destination on the shortest path, and additionally you will have optical relays and all sorts of other things in between that add a ms here and there.
I am someone who has both been kicked and has kicked others for lag on many occasions. I do find the lag-cheat argument offensive and wrong - the last cry of a player that can't accept their own skill shortcomings in playing BZflag. I've even had the joy of soundly beating the same people who have previously complained about my lag on US servers again while having (all too uncommon) occasions for playing them on an Australian server, where our latencies are reversed.
But I also agree that map owners should put hard limits on the lag, and it is appropriate to short-term ban people who just keep reconnecting after lag kicks.
Some admins will kick or ban people under the lag that the map has been set up to allow without auto-kick. While it is their prerogative to do so, I find the action bemusing - if they find a latency unacceptable then surely they should petition the map owner to change it. Sometimes it seems that I have been kicked not so much because of the lag in itself but because I was also successful while having such a lag. If that was their motive, then it is a hypocritical one to have.
"Hell, I'll kill a man in a fair fight, or if I think he's gonna start a fair fight, or if he bothers me, or if there's a woman, or if I'm gettin paid; mostly only when I'm gettin paid. But eating people alive, when does that get fun?"