General Section => General Discussions => Topic started by: cen on November 09, 2014, 21:25
Title: In game lag/spikes
Post by: cen on November 09, 2014, 21:25
There are some reports that games are lagging or spiking every few minutes/seconds even tho the ping to server seems normal. If you experience this problem let me know in a post below and explain when/how it happens. I'd like to add some profiling tools into gproxy and try to determine what is the reason for slowdowns.
Title: Re: In game lag/spikes
Post by: LordDoom on November 10, 2014, 11:39
Same here, in almost every game. Little spike's, although my ping is 13ms.
Title: Re: In game lag/spikes
Post by: Oceano on November 10, 2014, 14:07
Good day. Same problem occurred here : http://dota.eurobattle.net/la/forum/index.php?action=gameinfo;sa=game;gid=5610765
2 of my personal friends (Eniak,Neverevermore) can confirm that. They also had spikes even though ping was fine. After 5 / 8 players voted for rmk due to same problem, I was unfortunately forced to leave before min 5 to force rmk because it was unplayable.
Regards
Title: Re: In game lag/spikes
Post by: div.ide on November 10, 2014, 18:00
I've been facing this myself for a long time, back in the days when I was active.
What happened was basically game freezing briefly (usually 0,5-1s) in fairly regular time intervals (which varied from game to game, sometimes once each 10 minutes, sometimes even once each 10 seconds). It wasn't CPU related spikes as UI was responsive at that time, just the game flow stuttering.
It didn't always happen (many games were stutter-free), but had tendency to get heavier over longer play sessions. I initially thought it's related to poor specs I ran*, but I eventually learned to distinguish software from hardware related spikes.
It could be something related to how GProxy handles threading. It feels like socket gets briefly blocked out. I can't say for sure if it was blocked from CPU time by other thread, chokeponited on connection layer by other data being sent, or otherwise, but at some point I noticed HDD load led always flashing when it happened. Thus, I suggest it is (or was, around 2012) related to disk operations, perhaps something as simple as log file operations? Windows is notorious for having atrocious performance when handling large log files.
But I can't say for sure, I didn't really try to investigate it closer.
*some really cheapass netbook with 1gb RAM partially reserved ar VRAM, Win XP, I've had my FPS dropping below 5 in lategame teamfights
Title: Re: In game lag/spikes
Post by: cen on November 10, 2014, 18:07
When I did some tests like a month ago the whole packet processing section was executing in less than 1ms. I didn't test it through prolonged gaming sessions tho.
There are also no disk IO operations anywhere in gproxy while game is in progress so there is probably no connection there.
I will add some additional logging and release a beta version for interested people to try out.
Title: Re: In game lag/spikes
Post by: div.ide on November 10, 2014, 20:50
I see. You should take my post with grain of salt as 1) I stopped playing on regular basis around february 2013 (anything past that were just random singles or short streaks once in a while), my samples are mostly from 2012 2) I ran REALLY bad rig so there might have simply been interference with other processes in background 3) It is quite likely that HDD activity was just pagefile operations caused by RAM shortage
I really wouldn't expect packet processing itself to be issue, that would probably simply tax CPU more and just didn't feel like that. I think the key information is that it made gameflow stutter without freezing the game itself (no significant fps drops or observable UI unresponsiveness).
I wonder if it's actually corelated with OS - all happened on Win XP for me, I played on Win 7 for a short time, can't clearly recall if problem ever occured there.
Oh, and to clarify just in case: by longer sessions, I meant joining multiple consecutive games, rather than playing really long one.
Title: Re: In game lag/spikes
Post by: LordDoom on November 11, 2014, 08:52
here you go cen.. another fucked game cause of megaspikes..
Ping statistics for 173.194.44.144: Packets: Sent = 3536, Received = 3513, Lost = 3 (0% loss), Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds: Minimum = 35ms, Maximum = 963ms, Average = 36ms
Title: Re: In game lag/spikes
Post by: Saric on November 11, 2014, 20:48
i didnt have any problems...
Title: Re: In game lag/spikes
Post by: cen on November 11, 2014, 22:36
I will prepare a special gproxy binary this week to test for any longer-than-usual packet processing. This must be a network issue and nothing else.
Title: Re: In game lag/spikes
Post by: [Yuma]Psihijatar on November 11, 2014, 23:21
When i play on la (started 5 days ago)i got spikes every 3 sec but on ss i never had it
Title: Re: In game lag/spikes
Post by: Jimmy on November 11, 2014, 23:30
Because you are born To play Safelist League , not to waste time in Pubs :D
Title: Re: In game lag/spikes
Post by: Bart on November 11, 2014, 23:33
i have mini spikes on ss games time to time....
Title: Re: In game lag/spikes
Post by: bassonja on November 12, 2014, 15:22
I don't have any spikes at all.
Spikes can be experienced by low profile pc, or connection status. Before answering question i think its also important to know what kinda pc you have and your internet provider. If someone else is using your internet at same time you play dota, or any warcraft 3 game online you will experience spikes.
Title: Re: In game lag/spikes
Post by: cen on November 30, 2014, 12:59
This is a slightly modified gproxy that will output time in miliseconds if packet processing time exceeds 60ms.
The update function works like this:
1. Do some stuff 2. Check if there is anything to receive or send on sockets, wait at most 40ms 3. Process packets if any of the sockets is ready 4. Do some more stuff 5. GOTO 1
If something inside here would take too much time you would get a lag spike. If this is fast enough however, the only reason you would get a lag spike is if the packets are taking too long to go between host and gproxy (high ping). Even if your !p is low, it might be possible that it spikes up for a short time for some reason and you don't actually see that from the command output. If these results are OK I might write a test case for ping spikes in the future.
Feel free to dl this gproxy and send back gproxy.log after playing a game with spikes.