Optimise your connection for FGs tips thread

General Discussion
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  1. If you’re on ADSL, contact your isp and request you have interleaving turned off on your line (sometimes this is called ‘FastPath’ which is what you want) This reduced my ping by almost **half. **There is a supposed chance of increased instability but I’ve not noticed anything.

  2. Stop other devices on your network sending traffic over your connection, even devices not in use can send enough data in the background to cause lag spikes in your games. Turn them off, pull their cable from the router, whatever. When I want to play I’ll hit the disable network button on my laptop, disable wifi on my smartphone and run a little script on my media pc which blocks all traffic (Spotify likes to cache in the background). A little ott maybe. If you have other people actively using the internet then you’re going to have a lousy time (unless your router has some good QoS priority stuff built-in)

  3. For everyone’s sake, use a wired connection.

  4. Reboot your router periodically.

  5. Ensure NAT is configured correctly, there are plenty of guides for this on the net but the basic gist is, you want to either enable uPnP on your router (probably on by default) or add it to the DMZ or manually forward the correct ports.

  6. Try a different router if you’re still seeing poor performance, I’ve just switched from the isp supplied unit to an old, cheap one I had lying around and it is drastically better.

  7. Play Skullgirls.

Last and by no means least, forget about bandwidth. So many people are throwing money away on super high bandwidth connections they just don’t need. Online gaming uses a minuscule amount of bandwidth, iirc I believe most require less than 1mbps. What is important is latency and how stable that latency is. I have just switched from a 30mbps FIOS connection to a ~4mbps ADSL connection and online gaming is 100x better because of how oversubscribed the FIOS connection was (good download speeds but massively high and irregular ping) By all means change isp if your current one performs badly for online gaming but don’t assume high bandwidth = good gaming. Ping a local server, if you’re seeing either high pings/high packet loss/high jitter (jitter is basically how irregular your latency values are or how much they deviate), especially around peak times then considering switching.

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I really don’t know why this is here… but for what it’s worth…

Have a look at what your Operating System is doing. You might have some malware phoning home, or listening on a port(s). Windows does some phoning home itself. Network drivers can get wonky and cause all sorts of latency problems. Driver conflicts can be hard to pin point, but they do exists and can conflict with network drivers.

Installing 3rd party apps can alter network drivers. Check network properties for stupid shit installed there. It doesn’t happen much anymore (I’m looking at you, AOL), but still.

Keep your system tray clean. You don’t nee anything in the system tray besides the clock and your antivirus program. Maybe something like a video card overclock program or STEAM or something. Programs that load in startup environment are known for sapping up resources and being stingy about giving them back. Also, they could be updating themselves in the background while you’re not aware (Apple, apple, apple). Just say no to icons on the sys tray.

Read up on basic networking. OP already covered some basics, but a few good simple rules is much better (and faster!) than a really complicated tangle of rules for each and every program you use. Port forwarding is not that difficult and there a re countless guides to get you going.

Buy a good router. Don’t skimp on this. What OP said about rebooting your router periodically is nonsense. Well, not really. Perhaps a cheap router may need rebooting, but a good router shouldn’t need it.

Also, password it. PLEASE. Even if it’s ABC123, that will better protect you from getting scanned by an automated tool and having your router owned than the so common admin/password or admin/admin default insta-own crap. Your router sits out on the internet just like everything else and your only protection is that password, so use it.

Also update the firmware every now & then. At least the ones that include security, if not all.

Umm… stay safe? Don’t download and run without scanning anything you wouldn’t stick your raw dick into if it were flesh. AV scanner = condom. Update < scan < THEN install. Don’t trust any executable you download, even from reputable sites. Infections on major sites happen and are starting to become more common as a tasty infection vector.

:tup:

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And for crying out loud…DON’T make your ssid/network name the same set of digits/letters as your password!! I’m borrowing connections all damn day on my vita or Droid X when I’m on the road because idiots keep doing this.