Internet Causing "Lag"?

philman07 · January 2016

Okay, "lag" isn't really the best word to describe it. I've noticed that sometimes whenever I try to move, it will let me go a certain distance and then it places me right back where I started, and it will keep doing it. It's almost like a "glitchy lag". I hypothesize it to be caused by the internet for a few reasons: 1) It only happens during certain days and on certain parts of the day. (Usually on weekends, it will go without having the "glitchy lag" between 1:00am to about 7:00am or 8:00am. On weekdays, I can usually play for just about all morning and into the afternoon; it seems to start acting up about the time that everyone would be getting off work.); 2), whenever I close the program after a "glitchy lag" and immediately open an internet browser, it'll say that the internet is unavailable for a few seconds; 3), it usually seems to start happening after a load screen, even if it's doing just fine before. (Also, whenever a "glitchy lag" is occurring, all actions seem delayed. For example, if I'm at Earth Spacedock and I want to beam back up to my ship, it'll take about half a minute or so before it'll execute the action.) So how internet reliant is STO? Is it so reliant that a less than favorable network would cause it to go haywire? (I have DishNet satellite internet, and it doesn't seem to do too well when it's put under a fairly sizable load.)

jbmaverick · January 2016

What you are experiencing is commonly called "rubber banding" as it resembles what would happen if someone were to attach a particularly strong rubber band to your character, snapping them back to where they were once it's been stretched a bit. It's a common occurrence with unstable connections of various types, caused by the client and game server disagreeing about whether or not you moved. Actions are delayed because on the client side you've requested the action take place but the server needs to actually receive the request then actually perform it and let the client know it's done.

Given that STO is an MMO with the O standing for Online, I'd say it's pretty reliant on internet. It sounds like you might be fighting for bandwidth during peak hours, which is hard to get around.

philman07 · January 2016

Alright. Thanks!

murkalael · January 2016

That happened to me yesterday on DS9 and I was only trying to place some gear on exchange but never had such problem. Even on badlands where the computing lag was awesome, no rubberbanding at all.

spiritwalker1969 · January 2016

One thing to note with long map transfers and loading times - these might not be internet related. Try opening task manager and look at disk usage - if this is high it might be your problem. Check for anything running that might be affecting disk access times - it is quite common for things to be set to start-up with windows, which is fine if you are going to use them or they can need to be accessed by other app but think seriously does say adobe updater or q-time updater really need to running when you are playing STO? Skype and messenger apps are the other culprits - the may change to show you as unavailable but they are still running and crucially still connected to the internet using bandwidth.

I remember AMD used to have an app years ago which would shut down non-essential programs to free up RAM and CPU time for gamers, not sure if they are still available though.

philman07 · January 2016

spiritwalker1969 wrote: »

One thing to note with long map transfers and loading times - these might not be internet related. Try opening task manager and look at disk usage - if this is high it might be your problem. Check for anything running that might be affecting disk access times - it is quite common for things to be set to start-up with windows, which is fine if you are going to use them or they can need to be accessed by other app but think seriously does say adobe updater or q-time updater really need to running when you are playing STO? Skype and messenger apps are the other culprits - the may change to show you as unavailable but they are still running and crucially still connected to the internet using bandwidth.

I remember AMD used to have an app years ago which would shut down non-essential programs to free up RAM and CPU time for gamers, not sure if they are still available though.

I ran some "tests" on the performance while running STO (running alone and with programs in the background). The only parts of performance that ran high (for both) was the CPU and Ethernet, and even then the program ran rather well. So I believe it's safe to assume that it's not background programs (in my case). But thanks for the advice. I'll keep it in mind.

antzudan · January 2016

I had this for ages when I started playing the game. Eventually after much digging I found a fix that generally stops rubber-banding (although it can still happen at peak times as you say).

I only know for Windows:
Once the game is running, press alt-tab to go back to your desktop and in the search program bar type "CMD" then press enter to open the command window (you probably need to run as administrator). Then type (without the quote marks): "ipconfig /release" and press enter then "ipconfig /renew" and press enter. Then open the window with the game again. It will have disconnected you from the server but if you log back in and select a character then lag/rubberbanding should be greatly reduced in my experience.

I have no idea why or how this work. But it's a minor miracle.

jbmaverick · January 2016

Unfortunately, it seems the most common cause of lag recently in the game is due to DDoS attacks (see Trendy's official post in the News section), which really has no counter on the user end or even the developer end. It has much of the same symptoms as a user connection issue, most prominently rubber banding, but what's actually happening is the game server is getting overloaded with incoming data from the attacker, preventing it from properly receiving and responding to players in the game. There's not much that can be done about this other than waiting for the attack to end.

cokebear · January 2016

Often, rubber banding is due to disruption of your upstream bandwidth. When your connection is slow, it takes longer for the messages to tell the server where you are and what you are doing, and in that time the server sends back to you where you are supposed to be, and *BOING* you are snapped back like a rubber band.

When a DDOS is going on, it causes the server to take a very long time to respond and causes the problem of lost packets and so on, which can also cause rubber banding but also a myriad of other issues.

The thing is, you are on a satellite connection which, compared to most terrestrial internet connections, has an ENORMOUS amount of latency. Just to give you an idea, it's like turning on a tap that is far away from your hot water heater compared to one right beside it - it takes a lot longer for heat to travel 30 feet of pipe than 5. Your bandwidth in those circumstances is a non-issue, as Star Trek Online transfers very little information relative to the size of your "pipe" - it's HOW LONG it takes to travel up to space, back to Earth, and then to the servers and then the same path back to you (the pipe is REALLY REALLY long). You are always going to have high ping times and you are going to be VERY sensitive to every disruption which slows things down a little, because your high-latency connection is already taking over a second to go up and down to the satellite.

I considered getting satellite internet, and rejected it because I like to play online games. It's pretty awful if you ever try and play something AGAINST/WITH someone with regular internet, as they see information and react to it before your connection has even got it halfway to you.

cokebear · January 2016

antzudan wrote: »

I had this for ages when I started playing the game. Eventually after much digging I found a fix that generally stops rubber-banding (although it can still happen at peak times as you say).

I only know for Windows:
Once the game is running, press alt-tab to go back to your desktop and in the search program bar type "CMD" then press enter to open the command window (you probably need to run as administrator). Then type (without the quote marks): "ipconfig /release" and press enter then "ipconfig /renew" and press enter. Then open the window with the game again. It will have disconnected you from the server but if you log back in and select a character then lag/rubberbanding should be greatly reduced in my experience.

I have no idea why or how this work. But it's a minor miracle.

All this does is release and reassign an IP address. If you are with an internet company that shares bandwidth among pools of IP addresses, when you renew your IP you are probably switching to a pool which has fewer people connected to it. It's possible it clears some caches and the like as well when you change addresses, but the actual mechanic of it is simply saying "I don't want this IP address any more, please give me another one." In some cases, it just gives the same one back to you.

Internet Causing "Lag"?

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