Gaming Question for the Network folks

Walker34

Hi,
I am in a house full of Gamers.....myself included. While having studied some networking stuff I am still mystified when confronted with a list of servers, and in particular which one is best to chose.
Most servers on a game like Battlefield Bad Company seem to be in France or Germany or the US.

Ping is of limited value as a measure of speed as it fluctuates by the second, and the range I see is from 16ms to 999ms.They are sorted by ping....now I know the French have always been decades ahead of Ireland or GB,but how do I chose the best server and what can I do to optimize my game speed/results. If I subscribe to a private one is it better and is it expensive.

What are the factors which govern the speed of a game from the processor/graphics card/ISP to the game-server.I know there are a lot of links but what is the priority.

brendanL

The french decades ahead??? 0_o lol you sure???

If your in Ireland ... don't waste your time connecting to a US server as more then likely it'll lag for you.

British, German, and even Irish (who'd a thought it) is where you should be thinking.

Ping is a fantastic indication, that's how long it took for a packet from you to be sent to another server. Generally any server below 100ms should be fine to play on. If you join a game where your ping was below 100ms on the server browser and once you join the server you ping is fluctuating hugely... then the problem isn't the servers its you.

Generally private servers do have better pings... but usually because the server is being paid for by membership fees so hardcore players can get their game on without worrying about lag. This should not be an issue for a casual or even regular player.

To host a server generally you need a very high upload connection, to enable you to be able to talk to all the client gamer pc's. Other then that you just need a decent processor to crunch numbers. Unless you plan on playing on the machine as well .... in which case then you need a decent graphics card.

I'm curious how in a 'house full of gamers' you need help figuring out which servers to connect to? possibly the other guys gaming are your problem... or someones watching 20 youtube videos some where else in the house while your trying to game. Your ping should not fluctuate from 1 to 999 for all servers. Obviously there's a few too far away that are gonna have insane ping for you but there should be plenty of perfect ones available.

Antar Bolaeisk

As said above, connect to nearer servers to get better ping.

Have a look here for Irish BC2 servers

Also, if your router allows if, you could be sneaky and tweak the QOS settings to give you priority on your network or set it up that certain types of traffic, such as data being sent over certain ports, is more important than other traffic such as torrents.

Finally, if anyone is torrenting when you're trying to game then it will have a severely adverse effect on performance unless their client has been setup to limit bandwidth usage.

Hal1

Try game-monitor it lets you filter by ping.

lmimmfn

^^ game-monitor doesnt support Bad Company 2 yet.

if you get/have a G15 keyboard( i.e. it has a small LCD screen ) you can monitor the server pings in Bad Company 2 when playing, its handy to see if it fluctuates while gaming.

put "UK" or Ireland or IRL in the search in Bad Company 2 and youll get uk/irish servers which are obviously closer and will have lower pings than french ones

Some_Person

Latency to servers in the east coast of USA is about 110ms, 22ms to Multiplay in the UK, pings should be fine around France/Germany too.

tazzzZ

this wouldnt really work on bf bc 2 but if u have enough gamers in the house try setting up ur own server on one of ur boxes for lan games. couldnt really open it up to public though as ur upload wouldnt be good enough but its a thought.

Walker34

Thanks for the replies folks.....I even tried trace-rout to try to find a decent server/connection, but its a pointless exercise as no two packets are guaranteed to follow exactly the same rout to a server, and the path packets follow can change by the second.Why packets need to go to Bulgaria while on their way to Swansea will always amaze me.

Processor,mobo,memory,and graphics card do have some impact but once you get out of the PC case into the network then there are many potential drags on performance.....and its only as fast as the slowest link.
Just thought I`d ask the question in case I had overlooked some obvious nugget of information which would boost my score.