My connection is getting worse........

Shit, I just upgrade my internet yesterday but I don't get a decent connection. Right now I'm using 15/6Mb cable and I think it's supposed to be better than my previous plan which was 6Mb/768kb DSL. I had couple matches last night but none of them were good enough for me.... Especially with KaminariOyagi, we did have full bars before but now reduce to 2 bars only....

Plague, Konjou, and LA. I really need your guys' help to figure out what's going on. I need some player who used to have good connections with me to compare the result. Maybe I shouldn't upgrade.....

 

Keep in mind that VF5 online doesn't really need that much bandwidth. I recently went from 2mbps download to 20-30mbps yet barely saw any increase in VF, though stability was better.

Your ISP may be further from certain players than your old one, which raises the ping and makes it worse than before. If it is the same ISP though, then there could be a problem.

 

The thing is that I barely saw any increase yesterday, and even worse.

I did test with Betabow and our connection was better than anyone I played yesterday. And I'm also wondering is there any effect if I'm using a USB extension plug for my stick? Currently I can't reach my console with my stick directly.

 

u could play me sometime. We had crappy, but bearable connection before. Maybe it will be good now. Who knows.

 

Of course man, I would like to see how my internet works now.
But I just feel a little bit disappointed about last night.

 

understandable for sure. Sorry to hear it.

 

Dennis pulled! Cuz I was gonna win! Asshole!

 

IMO, cable is the worst. Its a shared connection. The more people on the worse it is.

 

Dennis, if all that has changed is the bandwidth, then it is probably caused by an increase in packet fragmentation.

Typically the faster the broadband the large the data packets that will be sent between your router/cable modem and your ISP. This is done for efficiency reasons to reduce the waste of bandwidth from packet headers by reduce the number of packets that carry the data.
When you play against people on non cable (DSL) broadband services (at slower speeds and smaller packets), your large packets need broken into smaller packets for optimal bandwidth use in other networks; this in turn increases packet switching time, which is already one of the main causes of lag, with packet errors and resend packet requests being the other major cause.

You might have some QOS options that you can setup in your router to give highest traffic priority for your 360, which is supposed to adjust network conditions for minimal lag; attempting to negotiate down the packet size to improve QOS. Other options like uPNP should also be enabled as it will help your 360 negotiate QOS with your router. Use of static IP addresses will help reduce packet switching time in your router as it eliminates some of the NAT processing. You might also want to consider using the DMZ option for your Xbox360 IP address (no firewall) as firewall packet filtering will also introduce some lag.

The other thing you might want to check is your ISP’s traffic management small print for your upgraded service, as you may find that matches out of normal hours are free of lag, i.e. when the traffic management system is disabled/off.

Although I’m not sure exactly what strategy Sega went for with VF5 online I’m assuming that it is either a client/Server game or an biased peer to peer setup, with player 1 being host and the player 2 being the guest.
Normally in Client / Server network games, the server will typically receive less data from each client, than the server needs to broadcast to all clients. This is mostly because broadband is an asynchronous service (large downstream speed with a smaller upstream speed) and so this allows a larger number of users to have a suitable broadband to participate as clients.

I would therefore suggest that you try hosting games more often than not. Typically better network conditions for both players occur when the user with the faster broadband upstream servers the game.

With any luck one of these options will help reduce your lag.

 

Haha~ I thought it was an accident but actually it happens usually now. I can't press XBOX botton, otherwise, the screen will be pause and no more response....

 

Thanks for the info SicilianVizzini,
I'll go through and do as much as I can. Hopefully I can get a better connection asap~

 

Some other considerations if none of the others work:

It might be how Xbox Live is profiling user’s broadband. You might have already done this, but download 2.5GBs from Xbox Live on your new broadband; doesn’t matter what, 2.5GBs of shovelware demos would probably do the trick. That way any aggregated network info they use for your account will start to reflect your current broadband not your old one.

Check the heat from your router and cable modem, hot network hardware is very bad as it can be a source of packet corruption and laggy switching if the router CPU intermittently overheats, overheating is common when older equipment is used with faster broadband.

In some cases it might be worth having two sets configured identically (cloning all the MAC addresses also); so that you can swap out the hot hardware before going online to play VF5 (but that is an expense option). Alternatively switch off your router/cable modem for an hour to cool down before playing VF5 online.

Check that the MTU setting for your router isn’t a manual setting; if manual is the only option check with friends that don’t suffer excessive lag to see what MTUs they have set in your area. In the UK 1500 is normal, but occasionally people can have network problems if this value is set too high, and lower to something like 1452 which was the setting in my old ADSL 3com Wireless Routers. New wireless 802.11n hardware is set at 1600 iirc.

Lastly some common sense checks, but still worth checking, such as making sure the CATV cables are all snapped into their sockets, a loose cable could prove difficult to trouble shoot. And if you have new CATV cable spares, try using them; a crushed CATV cable could be damaged enough to degrade the QOS but leave broadband working happily for other uses.

 

This guy knows internets.

 

Hey SicilianVizzini and anyone,
How can I get a static IP? Should I apply one from my ISP company? If I setup a static IP on my router, does that mean every computer goes through this router will use the same IP address?? Which means I don't have to change any IP setup on XBOX360 console? Or do I have to update the IP address on console by myself again?
I have tried my internet these couple days and I found out sometimes it worked well but sometimes not. It provide me 2 bars with some JP players and that did not usually happen before.
I think I can get a good quality once I fix this shit....

Btw, if I directly connect my xbox360 to the modem, is that supposed to mean I can get the best quality?? Based on this situation, is that necessary that I should get a static IP afterward?
Thanks for the tip and I'll appreciate that!!

 

Myke,
I move into a new place so I don't have the same ISP as before.
Sorry about that misunderstanding....
I'm curious how many people are using DSL or cable like me? The cable service I'm using right now claims that it is fiber optics. I'm happy with a wider bandwidth so that I can download stuffs much more faster. However, I'm disappointed how it works on xbox360 which is also one of the most important issue for me.

 

You are correct Myke, I was assuming nothing else had changed, and that the problem wasn’t with his service provider.

Dennis
When I said static IP addresses I was meaning BOOTP within your home network; meaning you set a manual address in the devices on your network. If I assume you use 192.168.1.1 from your browser to login into your router. And the router is using DHCP to randomly assign IP numbers between the range of 192.168.1.2 and 192.168.1.255 to devices; as they get switched on and try to connect to your router.

If you wanted to statically assign 192.168.1.10 to your Xbox then you could go into the Xbox system settings/Network setup and set the following

IP address: 192.168.1.10
Netmask: 255.255.255.0
Gateway: 192.168.1.1

DNS server1: 192.168.1.1
DNS2 server2: leave blank (0.0.0.0)

This would result in your 360 always resolving to 192.168.1.10 in the routing table and thereby reducing the work that your router does in terms of address lookups/translations, the Xbox also then knows that your router is always at 192.168.1.1 as the gateway and the same address for namespace lookups which reduces the work it does.

Repeating this process with each device on your network (PC, laptop, PS3, PSP, pda smartphone, Wii, DS, etc) giving them each a different finishing number that doesn’t clash with the 360’s 192.168.1.10
eg. 192.168.1.2, 192.168.1.3, 192.168.1.4, 192.168.1.5, 192.168.1.6, 192.168.1.7, 192.168.1.8

And then change the router DHCP lower range to 192.168.1.11; to ensure that DHCP server won’t give out the static addresses to new devices or roaming devices you want to use, avoiding IP address conflicts.

Buying a static IP address from your ISP, possibly wouldn’t make the same difference; as memory latency in commercial routers is significantly lower than routers for the home market. Buying a static IP address may result in a better QOS (lower latency and less errors) from your ISP purely because you pay them more money for a service, but it is not something you should rely on, and probably is overkill.

 

Thank you very much Myke and SicilianVizzini!!!
I really appreciate your answers!!!
Yes, I'll go through all the test again and see how much I can improve my internet.

 

I finished most part on settings, but I haven't played online so far. I'm just curious what's the average pin time you guys have with "www.mainichi.co.jp"?? My average is about 125 to 130ms, does it mean fair enough??

Considering only on the USA, which website I should go to check the pine time response? Is there anything I should pay more attention?

One more question, do you guys have a experience which is when you press the "XBOX" button and sometimes the screen is frozen? I can't press the "B" button to return the main menu immediately and sometimes I just got disconnected. However, I wasn't really kicked out from the Xbox Live and I didn't have to log in again. I used to check my friends list when I was waiting in the lobby but now I don't dare to do that coz I probably will suffer another disconnection very soon.