Lag during games

[Supergoal]

Again, this could be related to a router I recently bought.

I'm having the annoying issue of lag in games like street fighter for the PC. I moved house this month and made a new contract with a cable company for the internet. I opted for a 160mb package which is their fastest one specifically for gaming.

However it lags every now and then and it's really annoying. I've done some of those online speed tests and the latest one pinged back 9ms with 113mb download and 6mb upload. Is that bad for gaming? I'm more annoyed because in my old flat I had cable which was flawless for gaming.

Again, more help needed.

[speedlolita]

That's stupidly good.

I get 2mb down and .1mb up and I don't get any lag. Maybe you're not near the exchange or that the mass of people near you is causing heavy traffic?

EDIT: Saw about the router, most likely that.

Could try a hard reset of the router?

[Supergoal]

I will reset it but this morning I actually unplugged the router and ran the ethernet cable straight into my pc from the cable modem and still got lag.

I then connected my PS3 and it lagged as well. So I'm assuming it isn't hardware related nor router.

I just don't get it. Could my ISP be tricking me?

[speedlolita]

It could be router related, only way of testing it is to have another router on hand though.

[Matt]

First things first - do you actually mean Lag or do you mean Latency? They're very different and each can have different causes (but can of course be related).

[Supergoal]

Which one is which? I think the problem I'm trying to describe is when in game, it feels sloppy and sometimes slow. Not crisp and sharp reaction times like it was before. I find it hard to do moves at times (in Street fighter). It seems to start off well (sometimes) then slow down later on the match.

Update. I directly plugged the PS3 into the cable modem and it was pretty much how I remembered it, fast and no lag (latency?)

What's the best way to test ping, latency?

[speedlolita]

speedtest.net

Your PS3 will tell you your net speeds when you plug it in though. In terms of lag, make sure nobody else is using your network (secure wireless).

Is it regular intervals of lag, which may be packet loss, or is it just lag at random times - in which case might be the above. Hard to say though, you're playing people with green bars in SSFIV yeah?

[Matt]

Which one is which? I think the problem I'm trying to describe is when in game, it feels sloppy and sometimes slow. Not crisp and sharp reaction times like it was before. I find it hard to do moves at times (in Street fighter). It seems to start off well (sometimes) then slow down later on the match.

Update. I directly plugged the PS3 into the cable modem and it was pretty much how I remembered it, fast and no lag (latency?)

What's the best way to test ping, latency?

Yeah, the term "Lag" is used all the time online when people mean Latency.

Lag is dropped packets / packets not arriving at their destination on time. Basically, when you're playing a game and you see someone jumping all over the place, he's Lagging. Hopefully because of a poor connection rather than being a cheating bastard. If you start jumping all over the place, you're Lagging.

Latency is "I pressed shoot but it took a second until the rocket left the launcher". The time to send a "I'm firing my launcher" to the server and for you (the client) to get a confirmation that you have fired [and you then see the rocket being fired].

I'm on a one man crusade to straighten this matter in gaming chat!

Yes, best way to test Latency is a Ping test, because that's all Latency really is - time to server, and time back again.

Sounds like your router is at fault. Give all your consoles static IPs, not DHCP. Set up port fowarding (a pain for the PS3 as there are loads of ports to forward). On the router, turn on uPnP (just a tick box). Unplug all other devices from the router and give that all try

[Psyduck]

use pingtest.net instead, look out for dropped packets.

If you're using wifi then that'll cause problems, you'll be much better off with a wired connection.

[Matt]

It's worth pointing out that just because you get a great ping to a ping test server, doesn't mean you're getting a good ping to the game server you're using. Also, latency can fluctuate.

If you know the PC game server, try "ping servername -t" and watch it for 10 mins, see if the ping is stable or not.

[Supergoal]

I just tried that ping test .net and it's telling me my nearest sever is in Korea, 700 miles from my location! Seriously is that normal?

[Psyduck]

Could be that something in your setup is making it use a proxy, ie route all traffic via a certain location? Try looking around in your browser/router settings?

Or try using start -> run -> command
and then type "tracert www.google.jp" or any other web address. That will show you the steps it takes to send data to the web address you put in. They'll typically go to your router, then ISP, then head off to google, that might help see if it's going anywhere odd maybe?

[Supergoal]

This is really starting to annoy now. I've called my new cable company and they said my line is operating fine. I've disconnected my router and directly used a new Cat6e ethernet cable from the cable modem into my PC and then PS3 and ran both SSF4 Arcade Edition.
Both systems have this so called latency issue. It's so hard to explain to my provider what the issue is, since the internet is working and downloads fast enough, yet for this bloody game, it won't run half as good as my old provider did for 2 and a half years flawlessly. The game does run as it is but every now and then it freezes for less than a second in some matches or the match is played ever so slightly in slow motion . An issue I rarely had before.

It's not a PC hardware issue since my PS3 also suffers the same. It's not a router problem since I've completely removed it from the network.
It's not a software issue because I've tried both games on two systems. They were working perfectly before this new cable provider.
It's not the a cabling problem as I've tried and switched multiple cables around.

Cancelling my provider no more than a week after having signed up may seem extreme, but I'm very peed off with this so called "fast for games" service they advertised.