High ping :(

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.

Timmy51m wrote:
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.

tracert?

in console type
tracert url

such as
tracert bbc.co.uk

NORT: You don’t seem to understand.

Here it is in clear words:

You have to change your Internet Provider (ISP) to get better connection speeds.

There is nothing you can do from your own house.

With 120ms-200ms ping my server is connecting and running well.

So it is your ISP that is causing the problems, and it is likely that they are also running through a Proxy. This will add more delay.

Just be careful with using ping or tracert on certain domains; Google and others have distributed infrastructure, so you might be pinging something much closer than you’d expect. It’s better to stick with smaller sites which you know are hosted only in a single spot. Using TSP guarantees you a good idea of your ping and route to Germany, for instance.

Also, you can’t expect to have fiber optics directly to your home. That’s something that numbers in the thousands of dollars, if not tens of thousands. Furthermore, for it to be worth it you’d have to connect directly to a backbone, which would cost thousands per month on top of that.

I’m sorry to say but… There are good chances your geographical location is hampering your chances of hosting a server for anyone not within a small area around you. You could upgrade your Internet package from your ISP, but even that doesn’t guarantee you’d get better pings and latency. It’s a bit like how Australian players are always getting the short end when trying to play on most servers (which are obviously hosted in the US or Europe).

StarTrader wrote:
NORT: You don’t seem to understand.

Here it is in clear words:

You have to change your Internet Provider (ISP) to get better connection speeds.

Not necessarily true. If he currently receives the best his installed line can provide, then changing ISP won’t make a single bit of difference.

Call your ISP and talk to them instead.

Could be. But it’s odd - he’s got a very low download speed. in any case he may not have another provider in Oman.

NORT There is no way we can tell about what ping times you will have, but don’t worry too much about how low it is, my server is 120-200ms and is running fine.

Today my server’s ping is 117ms, my download speed is 5.17Mb/sec and my upload is 0.38Mb/second.

If you have a wireless router in your house, it may be corrupted or bad somehow, try resetting it?

And if your machine is a desktop PC using a wireless card, move the aerial on the card a little and run the speed test again - mine worked well when it was horizontal (0.750Mb/sec when I had a 1Mb/sec link) but was very slow (less than 0.256Mb/sec) when it was vertical.

Or you may be at the edge of the ISP’s router’s range or capacity, this happened to me in Cyprus and my connection speed dropped very low. I had to wait for months until my ISP upgraded their router.

What is your connection speed supposed to be? Mine is 10Mb/sec nominal.

If you have tried a speed test on a machine in another location, what is it?

The ping delay is because of the number of routers & servers and proxies between your machine and the destination machine.

So ping is not link-speed dependent, but you do need reasonable speed too.

0.400Mb/second download is not enough, something is wrong

If your ping is 200ms or less I know it will be OK because mine is OK.