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unmerged(45041)

First Lieutenant
Jun 4, 2005
266
0
Sorry if I post this in the wrong place.

My connection is 8mb/0.8mb and other hosts have done just fine with that AFAIK. But when I host, all the players experience lag. And always in the same way, at first no lag, then on a given signal all players report lag. Then they cant read my mess thinking I´ve ctd. I can read there´s messages.
After a while my mess becomes visible to them but it takes a while.
I was told it could have something to do with my computer. I recently bought a new one and its pretty fast.(athlon64 3800+, 2gb RAM with 2 Geforce 6600 graphic cards) I was told that my comp could be proccessing the data to fast and thus making a "que" at the receiver ends. That would explain why they at first cant see my replies until a bit later. But what do I know? :D I believe I´ve read somewhere in here the ideal host is: the one with the best connection and the "weakest" comp. Anyhow, when we shifted to another host with much lower connection speed it went much better. That doesnt feel logical to me.
I´m soon moving and will have much better connection but will this hosting problem disappear if it ismy comp that is the problem?
Grateful for any help, cause this has really puzzled me!

Thanks in advance!
 
-zag- said:
My connection is 8mb/0.8mb and other hosts have done just fine with that AFAIK. But when I host, all the players experience lag. And always in the same way, at first no lag, then on a given signal all players report lag. Then they cant read my mess thinking I´ve ctd. I can read there´s messages.
After a while my mess becomes visible to them but it takes a while.
Well mate, if you host, turn off all the auto-updaters and instant message programs. All. Every single one. All of them.

The symptoms you describe happens when your auto-updaters recognise you are not doing much, so they happily steal your processor power and connection speed.

So, be sure to turn off Microsoft updater, virus-program updater, acrobate-updater etc, and all instant message programs (MSN, Yahoo!, ICQ).

Also, don't play music with Mediaplayer, it is a real resource hog. Better yet, don't play music at all with your computer when you host :)


You should take a look at the processes Windows is running. You should think over every single one of them: Is this *absolutely* needed or not? Anybody can host, but if you want to be a good host for several people you need to do a bit work :)

Personally I can host for 12 people in Crusader Kings, even tough I have a 1.8 GHz computer (with a 512 connection) and CK eats much more resources than EU2 :)
 
You can also buy a normal CD player. Music quality is a top priority. Don't play shit.mp3. ;) Better, play 33-turns vinyl through a tupe amp. You'll feel the fullness of sound in your chest. :)

Sorry to be OT.

On topic now : having a fast computer shouln't make lag. There are a lot of possibilities imo :

1- Your ISP (or your card, or router, or cable) is unstable. My friend had a bad ethernet card : each 10 min (around), his connection was dead for some seconds.
2- Do you live far from the other player?
 
Distance, per se, has essentially no effect upon things like speed and lag. Think about it. These are electrons, zipping along at quite surprisingly fast speeds, even in electrical wires (ignoring the parts of the path that are EM radiation zipping along at the speed of light!). The entire circumference of the Earth is but a meaningless distance to them.

What matters much more are switches. The more the switches, the more the time is lost. The more antiquated the switching equipment, the more the time is lost.

In our Americans Take Europe game, we can have some players in South America being quite laggy, despite being in the same hemisphere with the host. Our player in Malaysia, who obviously is the beneficiary of quite new and modern equipment, experiences next to no lag; yet he's all the way around the world from some who host for us.