Help needed: what to do about lag

[lAmebAdger]

well, i'd like to mp more often over hamachi with someone who is about 6 timezones away (i'm +8 and he's +2 GMT)

the major problem:

laaaaaag T_T

after joining everything seems fine, in town there is little to no lagging, but then if we get out of the rogue camp to a bigger area with lots of monsters (catacombs levels 2 and 3) or even when we enter Act 2 into a big town filled with people, then it hits

he says he can see me walk up to a wp like 3 times although on my screen it's once... and a very slow 'once' too, i can't aim the mouse cursor properly to click on ok if he asks me for the trade window, also, it happens often that i see a single regular monster on a frozen screen and the next screen shows me dead...

i need about 10 seconds for every step i make once i enter these areas and we have no idea how to play anymore

i mean: is there ANY way to counter this? i would feel really stupid if technical issues prevented us from having any fun :scared:


EDIT: some general info: i have comodo pro firewall on while playing, it lags less for him than for me and apparently it doesn't matter who hosts... also, i use windows XP and sven's OpenGL-glide-wrapper while playing. i have firefox and skype on at the same time while mping...

[sorcererbob]

Lag is caused by two things: lack of geographical proximity and poor configuration. The fact that he is 6 timezones away would suggest to me that you won't be getting a ping of less than 200 - which is fairly annoying. This means that each action takes 200ms (1/5 of a second) to register at the other end. It doesn't sound like much, but its enough to frustrate most people.

To find out what your ping is, type "/fps" as a message to your friend (no quotes) - it will give all sorts of handy readouts which are updated every second. If you can both join games closer to your respective selves without lag issues, then its simply a matter of proximity. I doubt your firewall is slowing it down that considerably, although it might be worth your time to disable it. If you have a home network, chances are you're behind a NAT firewall anyway.

As an aside, some ISPs (internet service providers) will be better or worse for lag depending on where you're connecting to, and what ISP the other person has. If you have the same ISP, you can be fairly confident there won't be a geography-related lag issue, even if you're connecting from US West Coast to US East Coast or some similar distance.

[lAmebAdger]

thank you for your reply, sorcererbob :)

i think we both have a tiny bit of lag (enough small to play normally), when playing through our home networks.

i'l try disabling the firewall, but i still have a home network with a router, which means NAT firewall.

also, i doubt we can have the same ISP..., is there one that spans 6 timezones?

i might also try hosting everything myself, because he gets less lag than me from the games... (is that because i have poorer configuration? i have much more lag)

i'll also try typing /fps and see what i can do with the info

[sorcererbob]

You guys won't be sharing ISPs. Its very very improbable. If he gets less lag from you than you do from him hosting, then I would guess that you have a better or more stable internet connection.

Don't forget that anything you do on the internet will be sharing bandwidth with Diablo, so make sure to pause any downloads or torrents. If you live at a college or have other people using the internet, you're sharing bandwidth with them too.

Regarding the configuration of your routers and firewalls, I doubt its a problem. The configuration of the ISP routers can often cause a problem, especially if you have filtered content (such as if you live in China and you're connecting to a different country).

[lAmebAdger]

yup, that's the case, i'm in china and this may be it...

[skiffcz]

the only solution I can think of right now which could solve the problem a bit is finding a host in between you (topologically) with good connection ... find someone to host for you or hire a virtual server with windows on it ... its usually used to host web services but this could also work (its approx 30 US bucks/month, at least here in CZ, never really checked this services) - but Ive never tried this, so it may be completely undoable

[sorcererbob]

30US per month... plus the cost of a game. Not worth the cost IMO.