High ping :(

The test you posted:

Unfortunately that is not a good enough speed to play FL well on. Most of the servers are in the USA and Europe.

I should also add that a ping of 98ms to a server in your own country is also not great.

Yeah, if your ping to your own country is 98, then there’s no way you’ll be able to get 60 to Europe. Out of curiosity, what IS your country? I’ve played overseas with a 1mb connection and it works just fine, but below that it’s going to get pretty jumpy.

If you’re using a proxy already, then yes. But technically, using a proxy just means the packets need to be sent to the proxy and then back to you, and vice versa - making your ping go even higher.

Honestly, the only way to decrease your ping would be to get a better connection - Like I said, 1Mbit should be good enough.

Battlefield 2 uses a different server architecture than FL, hence why your ping in FL is higher. Plus, it always depends on the server/amount of players/distance to the server.

About PingTesterPro, I’ve never used it but http://pingtest.net/ works just as well.

EDIT: The Global List Server also can’t be the cause of your ping, since that’s only active while you’re browsing the list of servers. While you’re ingame, the only ping is between you and the actual game server.

Using windows? Open up your start menu, go to all programs, accessories, command prompt.

Then you can type in ping bbc.co.uk or ping the-starport.net

This will ping those sites and give you a time it takes for the ping to reach.

Things that may affect your ping will include the load of the network (anyone else using yours? You using the internet during peak times?), whether you are throttled by your ISP and so on.

If you get high ping in many games and whilst pinging servers around Europe (don’t just use FL as a way of discerning ping!) then I suggest you contact your ISP and ask

They are right about speed not really being important… but don’t forget that ping is small packets of data, a few bytes. FL may send kilobytes, so speed (amount of data per second) would matter. However, FL was developed with dial up in mind, so that connection should be fine to play FL on

Someone may correct me upon this

Play? Sure, though you have a fairly high chance of being “that guy” who’s making everyone lag in a 50k bubble. PvP would probably be fairly horrendous.

Host? Not a chance.

FriendlyFire wrote:
Play? Sure, though you have a fairly high chance of being “that guy” who’s making everyone lag in a 50k bubble. PvP would probably be fairly horrendous.

Host? Not a chance.

This.

Vesko wrote:

FriendlyFire wrote:
Play? Sure, though you have a fairly high chance of being “that guy” who’s making everyone lag in a 50k bubble. PvP would probably be fairly horrendous.

Host? Not a chance.

This.

Really? I don’t remember anyone lagging as others lag - they made fighting them tough as they were jumping all over - but didn’t cause lag for other players… so what’s changed?

Chips wrote:

Really? I don’t remember anyone lagging as others lag - they made fighting them tough as they were jumping all over - but didn’t cause lag for other players… so what’s changed?

What is changed, don’t ask me.

But i’m sure that depends on the connection the host is, that if one person is very laggy, it’s effecting the whole server.

In the past i had adsl, big crime if one person was laggy. The most players where laggy than to. Soon as we kicked the person with the highest lag/loss, it was over.

Now i have cable, 60/6 and now it hardley effect.

Since the person lags, anytime the server is trying to communicate something with him, you’ll get problems. For instance, NPCs might have erratic behavior near the player as they’re trying to fight him or scan him or whatever. Weapons might stutter. Missiles might stop tracking. Obviously the player’s ship will flicker badly.

It seems really random, probably based off a lot of different variables, but I’ve often seen one laggy player affecting everyone around him. It doesn’t always happen, but it definitely does happen.

Sorry, there are chances about 0 percent to get such a ping with your distance to EU or US servers. But don’t worry, most likely it won’t be necessary. I have played with a ping of 89 ms and all was fine, hence, (almost?) never other players complained about me.
Plus, a better connection won’t help in such “distance problems”, but you might still need a better connection.
I think if you can get a ping around 100 ms it will be fine.

PS: I have DSL 10k but I also just get a ping of at least 150 ms or higher to US servers (I am from Germany, Europe)

Optical fibre in your house won’t do much. The way from your house to the next connection line, a node, isn’t such far. You can’t correct the whole connection from Oman to Germany. You can only “correct” the connection from your house to the node by this way.
Yes, you might need to upgrade your internet connection (NOT that one in your house, this is unlikely to help you in any way, however, if you use WLAN you might want to use a cable network instead), but anything higher than DSL 2000 won’t help much for Freelancer, I guess. So please don’t get ADSL with 50 Megabit/s download speed, it is a waste of money then.
(Though, I am not a totally network pro, if someone like FriendlyFire says something different, better listen to him instead of me)

Don’t get confused between bandwidth and ping, you can have all the bandwidth in the world and still have a bad ping.

You have to understand that your broadband provider only sends the information so far, then you piggy back onto various other cable providers until you reach your destination.

Think of it as a train journey, you may get onto an empty platform and board a very fast train outside your house, but at some point you will have to stop and change trains. When you get off you might find that it’s a very busy terminal with people waiting in long lines and the next train you board might be old and slow.

All you can do is check your own lines and hardware, then download some software that can record the hops your connection is making to reach a server so you can see where the slowdown occurs. If you’re running on XP then you might be able to use the “tracert” command prompt and ping an ip address.