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Patcher is daaaamn slow. Help please :(

SystemSystem Member, NoReporting Posts: 178,019 Arc User
I have a 16 MBPS internet connection, but the patcher is damn slow while downloading a patch.

After 5 minutes of downloading I only have 3 MB received! That shouldn't really be the case with a 16 MBPS connection.
I have to wait days for that 334 MB to go with that slow speed.

Any ideas why the download could be so slow?
Post edited by Unknown User on
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  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2010
    ive got exactly the same issue, i guess the servers are overloaded again...

    Who would have though "Star Trek" would be popular hey...? :confused:
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2010
    Try going into the launcher options and using one of the proxies, or set your firewalls to fully allow the launcher and gameclient, plus ports 7000 through 7500.

    if this doesnt work run http://files.champions-online.com/nettest.exe and post a screenshot of the results.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2010
    wrote:
    I have a 16 MBPS internet connection, but the patcher is damn slow while downloading a patch.

    After 5 minutes of downloading I only have 3 MB received! That shouldn't really be the case with a 16 MBPS connection.
    I have to wait days for that 334 MB to go with that slow speed.

    Any ideas why the download could be so slow?
    Given how our patching system works (rolling reverse bindiff) the more important factor is your latency. Rather than a single pushed data stream like with HTTP, it works a lot more like BitTorrent (not about the P2P, just talking about how it requests blocks as it needs them). Each client is only allowed a certain number of outstanding requests to avoid server hogging, so if your latency is high your throughput will drop.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2010
    coderanger wrote:
    Given how our patching system works (rolling reverse bindiff) the more important factor is your latency. Rather than a single pushed data stream like with HTTP, it works a lot more like BitTorrent (not about the P2P, just talking about how it requests blocks as it needs them). Each client is only allowed a certain number of outstanding requests to avoid server hogging, so if your latency is high your throughput will drop.

    wondering if there are plan's to improve connectivity for europe as internap network is more focused on us and asia and possible there peering in europe is a lil bit over-stretched atm.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2010
    tedgp123 wrote: »
    Try going into the launcher options and using one of the proxies, or set your firewalls to fully allow the launcher and gameclient, plus ports 7000 through 7500.

    if this doesnt work run http://files.champions-online.com/nettest.exe and post a screenshot of the results.
    Is that serious? Port 7000-7500? That would mean that I have to open 500 ports!

    I switched to the EU proxy now, because I live in germany. But the speed is not much faster right now.
    coderanger wrote:
    Given how our patching system works (rolling reverse bindiff) the more important factor is your latency. Rather than a single pushed data stream like with HTTP, it works a lot more like BitTorrent (not about the P2P, just talking about how it requests blocks as it needs them). Each client is only allowed a certain number of outstanding requests to avoid server hogging, so if your latency is high your throughput will drop.
    My ping is 40ms (tested with speedtest.net).
    The ping from the nettest.exe is 601.8 msec! I guess that is the problem.

    Why is this ping so high? My normal ping is 40 ms and not 601.8. :(

    Edit:
    I made a pingtest on pingtest.net. The results are here:
    http://www.pingtest.net/result/10198514.png
    So the question is now: Why shows the nettest.exe that my ping is more than 600 ms?!
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2010
    Merlok wrote: »
    Is that serious? Port 7000-7500? That would mean that I have to open 500 ports!

    I switched to the EU proxy now, because I live in germany. But the speed is not much faster right now.


    My ping is 40ms (tested with speedtest.net).
    The ping from the nettest.exe is 601.8 msec! I guess that is the problem.

    Why is this ping so high? My normal ping is 40 ms and not 601.8. :(

    Edit:
    I made a pingtest on pingtest.net. The results are here:
    http://www.pingtest.net/result/10198514.png
    So the question is now: Why shows the nettest.exe that my ping is more than 600 ms?!

    Wish I had an answer for you. I get timeouts running the nettest. Anyways I wanted to make sure you also checked off the patch via proxy box as well as just selecting the proxy.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2010
    wrote:
    wondering if there are plan's to improve connectivity for europe as internap network is more focused on us and asia and possible there peering in europe is a lil bit over-stretched atm.
    Our peering is only in Boston (where the datacenter is). Once traffic is on the internet, it will follow the best route no matter the provider.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2010
    wrote:
    Is that serious? Port 7000-7500? That would mean that I have to open 500 ports!

    I switched to the EU proxy now, because I live in germany. But the speed is not much faster right now.


    My ping is 40ms (tested with speedtest.net).
    The ping from the nettest.exe is 601.8 msec! I guess that is the problem.

    Why is this ping so high? My normal ping is 40 ms and not 601.8. :(

    Edit:
    I made a pingtest on pingtest.net. The results are here:
    http://www.pingtest.net/result/10198514.png
    So the question is now: Why shows the nettest.exe that my ping is more than 600 ms?!
    I can promise you your ping from Germany to Boston is not 40ms, probably more like 150-200ms at the lowest. Forwarding ports will not help, nor will the proxies make patching any faster.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2010
    So any ideas what I could test or configure to get more speed based on the results I have posted above?
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2010
    coderanger wrote:
    I can promise you your ping from Germany to Boston is not 40ms, probably more like 150-200ms at the lowest. Forwarding ports will not help, nor will the proxies make patching any faster.

    That's odd. I guess it must have been a coincidence that when I had my proxy set to none the patching would get stuck at like 2% and when I set it to EU and patch via proxy then it didn't get stuck any more. Maybe my situation was a fluke but it sure can't hurt to try.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2010
    wrote:
    So any ideas what I could test or configure to get more speed based on the results I have posted above?
    600ms is indeed pretty bad, not much you can do about it though. Latency is determined by a mix of distance and ISP packet handling. Neither are things you change easily. You can try asking your ISP if they can change their QoS policies, but thats a long shot since there is nothing in it for them.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2010
    Loxone wrote: »
    That's odd. I guess it must have been a coincidence that when I had my proxy set to none the patching would get stuck at like 2% and when I set it to EU and patch via proxy then it didn't get stuck any more. Maybe my situation was a fluke but it sure can't hurt to try.

    Thanks for the suggestion. I had the same problem with very slow patching. Took about an hour to get to 10%. But after checking the patch via proxy box it completed in about 5 min.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2010
    Martin_83 wrote:
    Thanks for the suggestion. I had the same problem with very slow patching. Took about an hour to get to 10%. But after checking the patch via proxy box it completed in about 5 min.

    Glad to see it helped you as well. You may want to change your settings back to normal for actual gameplay as the proxy setting affect that and if it was running fine before I would change it back to none and only use the proxy for patching when needed.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2010
    Switched to the EU proxy and it jumped from being at 2.1% for 10 minutes straight to 3.2%....

    Not much of an improvement I realise.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2010
    That update-server is just a pain ** *** **** --- not more, not less.
    If patching is that slow because of how the patching works, maybe you at Cryptik should change how it works. Everyday there is a patch i am not able to play in my free time and thats not acceptable since i pay for a more or less reliable service. But there is nothing reliable at the moment - aside from the fact that you allready got my details for getting the abo-payments.
    And btw... i have a ping of 140 to your server currently but i'm just downloading with a whopping 12 KB/SEC - that's a joke compared to any other MMO i ever tried...
    Simple question: Why aren't you using EXE-Installation-Files as an alternative for those who have problems with your update-server and load them up on Rapidshare or another Filehost? They can easely handle the stress from this few MBs...

    Sorry that this sounds a bit like rage... but your servers are slowly but surely getting on my nerves.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2010
    coderanger wrote:
    600ms is indeed pretty bad, not much you can do about it though. Latency is determined by a mix of distance and ISP packet handling. Neither are things you change easily. You can try asking your ISP if they can change their QoS policies, but thats a long shot since there is nothing in it for them.
    Hm the odd thing of that is that I can download other data with full speed (almost 16 MBPS).

    Only the patcher of Star Trek Online is that slow.
    Maybe you should reenable the option for the HTTP-download of patches as it was in closed beta.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2010
    after numerous attempts, failures to connect, patcher not connecting all sorts, I disabled my bittorrent client that was open in the background (wasnt downloading anything - it just opens on start up)

    and - low and behold - 22% in about 1 minute and steadily climbing.

    so - disable any running bit torent clients (if you have them) and see if that helps!
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2010
    Maidel wrote: »
    after numerous attempts, failures to connect, patcher not connecting all sorts, I disabled my bittorrent client that was open in the background (wasnt downloading anything - it just opens on start up)

    and - low and behold - 22% in about 1 minute and steadily climbing.

    so - disable any running bit torent clients (if you have them) and see if that helps!
    That should be the first thing every experienced computer user should do!
    Besides that, I don't have Bittorrent clients open. And as I stated, I can download other data with full speed.

    I remember times in closed beta, where the patcher worked without that peer to peer thing. That was MUCH MUCH faster for me!

    Cryptic, please let the user choose how to download the data. The P2P thing is not the best for everyone. I saw other threads about this, and many users are screwed because of that.

    I come home from my work and I can't play the whole rest of the day because I have to download a about 300 MB patch with my highspeed connection. Look at this irony!

    And I personally are not able to download new patches before I go to work. Because new patches are deployed when I am at work. So I have to download them after working hours!
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2010
    coderanger wrote:
    600ms is indeed pretty bad, not much you can do about it though. Latency is determined by a mix of distance and ISP packet handling. Neither are things you change easily. You can try asking your ISP if they can change their QoS policies, but thats a long shot since there is nothing in it for them.

    Or you could have European patch hosting instead of having everything located in Planet America...
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2010
    Merlok wrote: »
    That should be the first thing every experienced computer user should do!

    Well - its never caused an issue with any other game/ mmo/ download...
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2010
    I had the same problem too. I switched to using just the US proxy and all of the jam ups left. I don't know what it is but it was acting as if it was trying to jump from US to EU and back again and would get hung up. That may not really be the case, but the hang ups were awful. I have never downloaded from torrent, so that would negate that possibility as well.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2010
    I had the same problems with very slow patching speed. I opened up ports 7000-7500 in my routers special applications section. This section on my router is for applications that require multiple connections such as STO. My speed wehnt from 5% in 15 mintues to 100% in around 5 mintues.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2010
    I had the same problems with very slow patching speed. I opened up ports 7000-7500 in my routers special applications section. This section on my router is for applications that require multiple connections such as STO. My speed wehnt from 5% in 15 mintues to 100% in around 5 mintues.

    But is it really required for the patcher to open 500 ports??? That sounds ridiculous!
    Can anyone confirm that we need to open that much ports?
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2010
    Open, yes. Forwarded, no. That is the port range we use for our servers, but thats all outbound connections for you. You do not need to forward any ports.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2010
    coderanger wrote:
    Open, yes. Forwarded, no. That is the port range we use for our servers, but thats all outbound connections for you. You do not need to forward any ports.

    Hm as far as I know I can't open ports for only outbound traffic in my router. My router can only open ports for both incoming and outgoing traffic together.
    In my software firewall I could setup these ports for only outgoing traffic.

    Would that be enough? If so, do we talk about TCP, UDP or both prots?
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2010
    why u dont take the step to create a external patch file ?
    instead of using the DL for that ?
    for example put the patches to a file hoster.. the ppl can DL it from there
    and apply the patch....
    this would for sure fix the slow DL stuff.....
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2010
    I already talked with coderanger about this in another thread and already offered a traceroute and a pingpath which showed quite good pingtimes for me and my 16Mbit line. After I posted the results, however, there was no more reply.

    There HAS to be a solution for this, at least try to find one. I really appreciate that coderanger at least talks to us, but we need answers, not information about what NOT causes this.

    Fact is, until release this worked just fine. After that it ceased to do so for obviously quite some customers.

    If this is a capacity or infrastructure problem (which I think it is), then solve it or give us at least another means of getting the updates via additional download locations and updating the launcher so we are able to feed it the patch file we downloaded.

    Thanks for your attention.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2010
    wrote:
    Hm as far as I know I can't open ports for only outbound traffic in my router. My router can only open ports for both incoming and outgoing traffic together.
    In my software firewall I could setup these ports for only outgoing traffic.

    Would that be enough? If so, do we talk about TCP, UDP or both prots?
    Residential routers don't block outgoing traffic, so you are fine on that.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2010
    a lot of isp's block bittorrent or QOS it to hell you should really look at alternative methods of patching
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2010
    Findell wrote:
    a lot of isp's block bittorrent or QOS it to hell you should really look at alternative methods of patching
    We do not patch via BitTorrent, only the installer downloader uses it (and that is optional and only provided as a courtesy for people that lose their DVD and whatnot).
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