low-latency router needed

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: RadiclDreamer
Spidey will own your face in every facet of interweb. Its best not to argue with him, it never ends well.

I'm not arguing with spidey07, I respect his knowledge highly. That's why I don't get it when he said not to use "ping" to test latency - ping was specifically written for that, and it's on every windows box. Why not use it? Is there some defect that I don't know about? Or is he just obliquely referring to using something like PingPlotter, with fancy graphs and the like? He hasn't answered that.

I do disagree that consumer ISPs should expect to see 100ms swings in the latency reported to a specific internet site. Unless there is congestion, it should ping relative to the physical distance and number of router hops that it takes, and in the case of both my friend's and my connections, that variability is much, much lower than 100ms. (On the order of 20ms for my friend's cable connection, and on the order of 3ms variability for my DSL connection.)

I was NOT saying that there wasn't a difference of 100ms, when comparing pinging say, a site close to you, and then pinging say, a site in China. Of course there is going to be variability relative to distance. But given the same site, pings shouldn't vary 100ms. If they do, then there is someething very wrong with your connection to the internet.

 

[spidey07]

VirtualLarry - ICMP "pings" are generally low queued in transit on the internet, they are not reliable to determine latency. To truly measure latency you would need probes at both ends and measure one way transit times of the packets in question. There is always congestion on the internet. Even the normal SLAs of peering connections guarantee nothing more than 60 ms one way delay (latency) coast to coast. Sure you can get better delay, but by the very nature of the internet it is difficult to guarantee any more.

But seriously, please understand how the internet works. There is always congestion which is why NO provider can or will guarantee 100% delivery of every packet on a public network.

-edit-
Latency for a SOHO router is nothing more than store and forward delay of serialization of the frame. If it's any more then the router is overloaded.

 

[Jeff7181]

Originally posted by: VirtualLarry

Originally posted by: TheKub

Originally posted by: VirtualLarry
1-2ms is too much.

No one can feel the difference of 1-2 ms. If they say they can they are delusional.

Competive gamers can tell the difference between 60fps and 80fps. Certainly they can tell the difference of a few ms as well.

In that case, tell him to get a Cisco 2800 series router... that will minimize latency introduced by the router. :roll:

*EDIT*

Seriously though... if this is THAT big a deal to him, he shouldn't be balking at a $100 router, nor should he be using a residential Internet connection.

There's a reason there are business class services and devices and residential class services and devices.

**EDIT** For what it's worth... I work at the corporate office in a fortune 500 company where the data center is housed. If I'm not mistaken, we have two DS3 MPLS PIP connections for the data center. One of our stores is less than 5 miles away and has a 1.5 Mbit MPLS PIP circuit as it's main network connection. I can ping my default gateway at the corporate office and get <1 to 1ms latency. I ping the PE and get 2ms max. When I ping the router at the store 5 miles away, latency varies from 19ms to 25ms. Granted this WAN does not require low latency, but with business class network services and thousands of dollars worth of routing equipment with only 5 miles between sites... surely you can't honestly expect more out of a service that costs $40 per month and a router that's under $100.

(as Spidey pointed out, running a ping is not the definitive test of latency... it's best used to test layer 3 connectivity... if you're concerned about 1-2 ms latency, you'll need to find a better method than running a ping... what? I don't know, there's a VERY VERY VERY small percentage of people worried about 1-2 ms latency on their Internet/WAN connection)

 

[TheKub]

Originally posted by: VirtualLarry
Conclusion: The router adds negligible latency to the connection, and therefore my friend is "seeing things" - blaming internet lag on the router.

Congrats. You now see what everyones been telling you.

 

[0roo0roo]

gaming routers are for qos.
if you dont need to throttle bandwidth hogs any router gets gaming level pings

 

[Nuwave]

Originally posted by: spidey07
VirtualLarry - ICMP "pings" are generally low queued in transit on the internet, they are not reliable to determine latency. To truly measure latency you would need probes at both ends and measure one way transit times of the packets in question. There is always congestion on the internet. Even the normal SLAs of peering connections guarantee nothing more than 60 ms one way delay (latency) coast to coast. Sure you can get better delay, but by the very nature of the internet it is difficult to guarantee any more.

But seriously, please understand how the internet works. There is always congestion which is why NO provider can or will guarantee 100% delivery of every packet on a public network.

-edit-
Latency for a SOHO router is nothing more than store and forward delay of serialization of the frame. If it's any more then the router is overloaded.

I'd just like to add that ping is a reliable tool for determining a destination is reachable, it is not reliable for much else. Like spidey is saying, to measure 1 way speed would require probes and is a pain in the ass on an intranet let alone on the internet.

 

[m1ldslide1]

lol at "gaming router"!!!

I know, I don't have anything to contribute.

 

[Atheus]

Originally posted by: spidey07
LULZ,

Sure, because ping is a great way to measure latency...NOT.

I dunno man, checking latency is one of the reasons ping exists, and loads of people use it for that. Sure, it's probably not accurate enough for serious network testing or whatever you get up to, but it's good enough for everyone here. IMO it is a pretty good indicator - especially since we're all agreed nobody can tell the difference between 40 and 50 ms anyway.

To truly measure latency you would need probes at both ends and measure one way transit times of the packets in question.

Surely you don't actually expect people to set that up just to measure latency to a game server...

Latency for a SOHO router is nothing more than store and forward delay of serialization of the frame. If it's any more then the router is overloaded.

Yea well that's the point isn't it - people bombard the things with connection requests and it does overload them. My crappy Belkin can introduce up to 200ms in games when it feels like it.

 

[NickOlsen8390]

Originally posted by: Atheus


Yea well that's the point isn't it - people bombard the things with connection requests and it does overload them. My crappy Belkin can introduce up to 200ms in games when it feels like it.

Chances are the game is not the reason for this. Games don't make and disconnect connections(once established) or even use much bandwidth (~30Kb/s)

 

[Atheus]

Originally posted by: NickOlsen8390

Originally posted by: Atheus


Yea well that's the point isn't it - people bombard the things with connection requests and it does overload them. My crappy Belkin can introduce up to 200ms in games when it feels like it.

Chances are the game is not the reason for this. Games don't make and disconnect connections(once established) or even use much bandwidth (~30Kb/s)

No it's things like torrents/p2p, and also nmap and nikto and other security scanners that cause it, but it does affect games more than anything else. My Belkin seems to need a restart to recover from this - even turning everything else off and leaving it won't help, like it can't clean up whatever data structures it creates as it goes.

I wish I could go back to my old wrt54gs but it has no ADSL modem and my standalone one is broken.

/edit: in fact I haven't run anything connection intensive today, just a bunch of web apps and ssh sessions, and it's *still* slowing to a crawl.

 

[NickOlsen8390]

Originally posted by: Atheus

Originally posted by: NickOlsen8390

Originally posted by: Atheus


Yea well that's the point isn't it - people bombard the things with connection requests and it does overload them. My crappy Belkin can introduce up to 200ms in games when it feels like it.

Chances are the game is not the reason for this. Games don't make and disconnect connections(once established) or even use much bandwidth (~30Kb/s)

No it's things like torrents/p2p, and also nmap and nikto and other security scanners that cause it, but it does affect games more than anything else. My Belkin seems to need a restart to recover from this - even turning everything else off and leaving it won't help, like it can't clean up whatever data structures it creates as it goes.

I wish I could go back to my old wrt54gs but it has no ADSL modem and my standalone one is broken.

/edit: in fact I haven't run anything connection intensive today, just a bunch of web apps and ssh sessions, and it's *still* slowing to a crawl.

Yes, I agree, Games to feel it the most when the latency goes way up. Games use very little bandwidth but need decent latency to work well (150ms and under depending on the game). Most of today's games could be played online with a 56K connection, As long as the latency is good (like a cable or DSL connection limited down to 56k).

 

[Nicot!ne]

I know I'm a little late here, but it seems that the most likely cause of the problem VirtualLarry described has been completely overlooked.

Larry said that when his friend uses his router, as compared to plugging his gaming console straight into the cable mode, he experiences a great deal of lag and his game lowers his connection rating from "green" to "yellow."

It seems very apparent to me that this severe change is not caused by the 1 to 2 ms latency imposed by a router. Instead, I suspect that the router is dropping some of the incoming packets. This is a firewall/NAT issue.

If you are in a similar situation as the one discussed above, I suggest you check the game's documentation to see if port forwarding is required for proper functionality. If your offer has a DMZ functionality, try putting your coming PC or console in a DMZ. I personally, prefer to connect straight to my cable modem when gaming to avoid such problems and to save on 1 or 2 ms (as silly as that may be), but I understand that for people who share their household Internet connection, this is not be an option.

Dylan Hall
Geeks on Wheels