jaygsi

iTrader: (46)

I've always had lag on my xbox and always thought it was my connection, but now i've got superfast broadband my lag is still there not as bad, but different. Is there anything i'm missing?

Galifrey

iTrader: (3)

Servers in UK or US?

timmy2take

iTrader: (7)

Have you tried an ethernet cable into it?

If wireless, try putting the router at a high point, not near other electrical equipment. Theres a few other tips if you google it too.

jaygsi

iTrader: (46)

I'm using ethernet, don't know where server is, but i'm in UK

BBB3

iTrader: (7)

If it's a xbox one you have, you need fibre broadband to get it to work properly.

I was suffering from lag etc...really pissed me off made a call to Xbox support and said the normal broadband isn't good enough and the one is designed for fibre.

Beef

Simply not true.

"Lag" means your're not seeing the state of the game as quickly as other players. The main causes for this are:

1) Latency: the time it takes for your Xbox to send a message to the server and get a response. In the dial-up days this was measured in hundreds of milliseconds, so if you had a latency of 250 milliseconds (1/4 second) and if you encountered someone who had a latency of just 50 milliseconds, they were seeing the game 1/5 of a second faster than you, giving them a huge advantage.

These days the difference between fibre and xDSL for latency is so small as to be negligible, certainly from an online gaming perspective.

Think of latency as the speed limit on a road.

2) Packet loss/traffic shaping/network problems: This is where the data you are sending/receiving is either being lost, or being prioritised below other data. Basically, it's congestion - either inside your house, from your house to your ISP, or from your ISP to the rest of the internet.

This is the most likely cause of 'lag' these days. If you send some data to the server (shoot my gun), and that bit of data doesn't make it, one of two things will happen: either it will wait a period of time and send it again, or it'll give up and move on.

The best outcome from that is that the server will be told about you firing your gun a significant amount of time later than you intended, possibly making you miss. The worst outcome is that it never knows you fired at all. Either way, that target you otherwise would have hit remains untouched.

This also happens in the other direction - if a target you're aiming at changes direction, the server will tell your Xbox that this has happened so you can see it on your screen. If that bit of data either makes it late (or never makes it to you at all) you will see the target in the wrong place, possibly causing you to miss.

This is most noticeable as a target suddenly 'jumping' to a different location - this happens when everything gets back into sync and your Xbox learns about the actual position of the target, not simply where it thought it was, and updates the screen accordingly.

Think of network problems as being congestion/diversions/road closures.

Fibre doesn't make things better for lag on it's own as it doesn't raise the "speed limit" in a meaningful way, it just simply means you can get more vehicles down the road before the weight of traffic starts slowing everyone down. Fibre does add more reliability to the connection from the home to the ISP, but if an xDSL connection is 'healthy' then again it's not actually helping with with the 'lag' problem. Moving from an unhealthy xDSL line to a healthy fibre line can make a huge improvement, but that's because you fixed the unhealthy line, not because fibre is better for gaming.

LSherratt

iTrader: (1)

Come on guys, don't blame your lack of gaming skills on "lag" .

hodgy0_2

mmm, without wishing to get too pedantic

I see latency and more akin to acceleration than speed

you can have high speed links that suffer from high latency

just like you can have high speed cars but take a long time to get to that speed

the actual effect of latency on the user experience is a function of the traffic profile - and I suspect as you say gaming is susceptible to high latency links

bioforger

iTrader: (1)

ISP at fault more than likely.

Littleted

ok 2 things come to mind. **** router change it or borrow a mates to test ISP.

Now if Its BT its probably them, my mates on standard BT ADSL not Infinity and we talk daily over Skype for Business so the traffics point to point, and the LAG on the calls is hoorendous, so much so that if he uses his IPhone the calls perfect.

Hes now moved from BT and its fine, I'm not saying its always BT but i wouldn't ever use them to much shaping in their network.

I use Virgin and my Pings are 30s and i never ever have LAG...

bioforger

iTrader: (1)

30s ping

Littleted

Yes always between 30 and 50 when I go onto Adsl that works supplies it's around 100

jaygsi

iTrader: (46)

I'm running fibre optic, i was on standard broadband, sometimes my speed was 1mb shocking now its 74mb still has lag, big delay on when i press button to when the game reacts. Youturbe video shows how to host every game by messing with settings on the hub, not sure if rubbish or not.

P1Fanatic

littleted - think you mean ms not s

Online gaming is all about latency. Whilst fibre is of course lower latency the actual difference between ADSL/ADSL2+ and FTTC is probably 10ms which I doubt you could tell the difference in game. Servers differ a lot - I play BF4 on PS4 and the official EA DICE Euro servers lag badly. Probably as running loads per physical server. Try and find a clan rented server as the difference is night & day for me in terms of how fast my guns fire in BF4.

If you lag on all servers then check your connection whilst playing. If you play at peak times the ISPs trunk to their IP core might be oversubscribed and you would see this from running speedtest type tools or extended pings. I had this with Talk Talk before moving to Sky.

P1Fanatic

What are you pinging to when getting 30-50ms on Virgin? I'm on BT Infinity 1 and speedtest always gives me 8-10ms. Of course it depends where you are geographically and closest speedtest server. But 30-50ms sounds high on fibre if testing within UK.

bioforger

iTrader: (1)

Mines around 20-25ms on Plusnet, which is basically BT's pipes.

riiidaa

iTrader: (2)

15-18ms Virgin Media

jaygsi

iTrader: (46)

My ping is 20ms

ScoobyWon't

Check the router port for the Xbox. My old 360 was really slow until I moved the port outside of the firewall at which point it was sorted. Never had any problems with the 360 or One since getting VM instead of BT's dismal offering.

Beef

Don't get too focussed on ping: while high-end players (pros/clan) might be able to distinguish between 10ms and 30ms in a blind test, most normal level players won't.

RS_Matt

If the lag is consistent and never drops or worsens then it could be your TV!

I've had TV's ranging from 16ms to 65ms (in game mode) and the difference is night and day.

This is a great list of fast TV's.

http://www.hdtvtest.co.uk/news/input-lag

...anything over 30ms and you'll start to feel hesitation. Over 45ms is unplayable imo.

jaygsi

iTrader: (46)

How do you do that?