Lag with low latency?

[computerweekend]

Hello all!

I've recently started a second server as I am away from home, and wanted to run one from my laptop. Everything set up just fine, I can log in and play with absolutely no problems, over the eqemulator public server (how I love and cherish it so!). However, my boyfriend, who sits right next to me, on the same connection, has some strange lag problems. This only happens on my server, not any other server we have tried.

Interestingly enough, he has lower latency than me :] (20ish)

The symptoms are: Inability to loot, inability to target (kind of spotty), inability to attack or cast, inability to interact with merchants or through hails/text triggers. If he casts, his spell gems go on cooldown, but nothing happens. It's as if he can start actions, but not complete them. The spikes can last up to 5 minutes or so, and even when they last until he logs out, he never goes LD or gets disconnected, but sometimes his client hangs when he camps, and he never gets back to the character select screen. His latency never gets higher than normal, never spikes high or anything, so I'm completely stumped.

I've searched the forums, and I apologize if this question was answered somewhere, but I couldn't find it! Thanks for reading!

[computerweekend]

Just a bit of an update:

It seems to get worse the longer he plays, as if it were a memory leak. He starts out with about 10 seconds of lag, then 30, then a couple minutes, then 10 minutes, then he eventually gets the "You have been disconnected message". We think he may be sending bad packets that the server doesn't know how to handle, but I've been poring over my logs and the only errors we get are opcode errors that we BOTH get - and I'm just fine. The only errors I see are upon login, and after his client disconnects from the server (after he is logged in with his character, that is), there are absolutely no more errors.

He can tell what an NPC will con based on the 3D ring or the target window color, but when he right clicks to con, it takes up to 10 minutes to get a con message in his chat window.

I can type to him, and he can see what I say, but I can't see what he says in the chat window. Sometimes I will see what he says, but entire blocks of words disappear from his text. IE, if he types "Hello, I see you! How are you doing?" I may see "Hello see you! you doing"

One of the stranger things that happened is his character began consuming food at an alarming rate (about one unit each per minute). When he logged out and back in, all of his food was back.

I've made sure we have the same spells text files. We both have dual core systems, and have set affinity properly. The server is on a x64 laptop, but we are both running xp, and the server is set to run in 32 bit mode. We have both tried creating different characters, different classes and races, but he consistently has the same issues. We have set up port forwarding, firewalls and routers are not an issue, and neither is connection strength nor speed. It doesn't even matter if he is the only one connected to the server.

We've been trying to figure this out for hours, poring over posts and trying everything short of editing and recompiling the code. As I have been reading more and more of the forums, I know many people have had this problem, but I haven't seen any solutions that have helped yet...

[computerweekend]

More to report!

He just restarted his computer, logged in and played for about 5 minutes with absolutely no lag at all, which was a miracle. Then he got about 5 seconds of lag for a couple minutes, then BAM... 1 minute of lag, then five.

We've been experimenting, trying things on my server, trying things on other servers... how is this happening? He got to level 9 with his main in Gloomingdeep with only one instance of this happening, and he logged out and in, and was just fine! It was as if he hit some milestone with his character that caused his client to start sending bad packets that my server logs are mysteriously not picking up.

He made an Iksar necromancer separate from his main, which he raised to his main's level, scribed his spells, and ran around cabeast for several minutes without any problems. In need of bone chips, he #zoned to tutorialb, bought some bone chips, summoned his skeleton, and then #zoned back to cabeast. Then he started having the same issues he had before on his main.

So he made a Barbarian warrior, who started in Halas. He #zoned to cabeast and had no problems at all the entire time he was there. Logged out, logged back in later, and started having issues again.

I logged in on his account, and attempted to #zone to halas. My client hung. #zoned from cabeast to ecommons just fine. #zoned from ecommons to halas, and client hung. #zoned from cabeast to nektulos, then to neriaka, then logged out.

He logged in, and started having the same issues in neriaka that he had been having all night on his main in cabeast.

We have an early morning, unfortunately, so we can't do any more testing tonight... I figure we'll try leveling different characters the same way we leveled our mains, and see if the same problems arise.

[MNWatchdog]

How are you guys networked together?

If its wirelessly, your networks cards might be colliding/changing speeds to deal with crosstalk so the cards are constantly changing connection speeds and/or trying to push the packets through.

This is even more likely if youre close together.

[computerweekend]

Thanks for the reply :]

We are indeed all of these things... networked wirelessly and in close proximity. However, we don't have these problems with any other games - they are all lag free! We've never had a problem quite like this before, but it doesn't sound impossible. Do you know of any way to get around it?

It seems to happen even when he is the only one on the server, too...

[MNWatchdog]

The reason this probably isnt a issue with other games is that both your machines are talking directly to each other and thus increasing the chance that they will be sending/recieving at the same time.

Ive personally experienced lag resulting from the wireless connection resyncing, so I tend to hard wire my gaming machines to my router/internet connections. But then again, I can see up to like 15 wireless networks when I scan for network SSIDs and those are the ones who are actually broadcasting SSIDs.

The easiest way to confirm/fix this issue would be to go into the properties for both your network cards and set them to a fixed transmission rate/lowering the maximum transmission rates.

Set them both to 11Mb/Wireless B rates.

You could also try changing which channel both cards on on. I think channel 6 is the channel most wireless networks default to, so most around you are likely on that channel by default, thus increasing the chance of interference.

If youre using a wireless router, set the channel there and your machines wireless should match the new channel when you connect to it. You might even be able to set the max transmission rates there so you wont have to change each machine.

The slower the rate, the less likely your network cards are going have to keep trying to negotiate maximum transmission speed as slower speeds are more forgiving.

You could also get a crossover cable and hardwire your connection. You should manually set your IP addresses on both machines to make sure youre both able to communicate. This would probably introduce the hastle of trying to get your machines connected to the internet too, which is possible, but beyond what Im going to write up here. Look up Internet Sharing in windows XP/Vista.

This might not be a issue though depending how well Windows handles multi-homing so you basicly have two network connections going at one time. I havent done this, so not sure how it will go.

Good luck.

[computerweekend]

Thank you so much for all your help, we will give it a try later and see how it goes :]

It's always networking that ends up being my downfall. It's like programming a recalcitrant VCR!