Lag and Latency Explained

Newbie Guide: Lag and Latency

There are hundreds of ISPs all giving you access to the net, but how good are they for playing games on? The truth is the bigger named ISPs will often claim to be the fastest, but you will find that their number of users outweighs their capacity to serve them properly.

Gaming will test your internet connection like never before. Your modem is happy fetching pages when you click a link on a web page, or accessing your email. On external modems take a look at the send and receive lights. Whilst browsing they will flicker and your connection will go idle as you read what is on your screen. When playing games however, the lights will be constantly on like a pair of demon eyes. Why?

A massive amount of data needs to be relayed to the game server and back to your PC. In action games when you press the fire button the information is passed to the server and your player will fire its weapon. Simple? Well, not really. You have to take into account what else is going on. There are other players there as well all moving about and blowing things up, and you want to see them especially if they are firing at you! Also take into account doors opening, lifts moving, more players entering the server and you have a huge amount of data to shift via your connection. Hence, the faster your connection the more data you can handle and the less “latency” your likely to receive.

Latency:

When you play a single player game on your own machine against the computer you’ll have hardly any latency at all. You’ll aim at what ever is on screen and hit it no problem, however when you play a game online you’ll have to face a latency, as does every gamer. This is displayed as your “Ping time”. On a modem you can expect ping times of 60 – 120ms (milliseconds). This is the time it takes for data from you to be sent to the games server (i.e. you fired a shot), and back to your machine again (i.e. shot has been fired). The ping time can change during a game, especially when there is a lot of action on a players screen as there will be more data shifted back to and from your machine. Some players will have lower ping times than you. This is due to the different connection types available to the net:

Connection type Approximate expected ping time
Modem: 120 – 250
ISDN: 40 – 100
Cable Modem: 30 – 60
ADSL: 30-60

For example take the player highlighted green in the screenshot here who has a ping of 232ms. A ping of anything less than 350 is playable on a 56k modem (thankfully these are no longer used ). Trying to play with anything higher is like trying to sprint through a sea of treacle with lead weights attached to your legs. You will also see players with a huge range of pings. The reason for this is mainly down to three factors.
Distance from the games server. For instance if you live in the UK and are connected to a server in the US, players living in the US will have faster connections to it, hence lower pings than you.

How the Players have set-up their games configuration is also a factor. Games can be tweaked to lower pings by a few milliseconds and give a faster more enjoyable gaming experience.

Lastly a players connection type plays a big part in how fast the connection is going to be. The good old modem is the slowest and will give you pings in the range of anything from 110 – 300. Then there’s ISDN, cable modems, and ADSL, all of which can give pings as low as 30 – 80. Of course players with access to T1 lines are laughing as they zip along with pings in the low forties.

Not only does a lower ping result in less latency, but they are usually digital as well. This means they are often more stable for sending data which is also digital. This in turn means usually less lag along these connections. It also gives players an advantage over higher pinged players when it comes to reacting. A player with a ping of 50 is going to be able to react slightly faster than a player with a ping of 150 so in a one on one situation the lower ping player will have an edge. One factor still remains and that’s skill. Give a player who is never played online an ultra fast connection and another with a slower connection who knows the game inside and out and the skilled player will come out on top. So even if you do not have the lowest ping in the world you will still enjoy competing against other players on the game of your choice. As with all things in life, practice makes perfect.

Lag:

You’ll see this mentioned a few times, and is one word you are bound to hear constantly from other players and something your going to love to hate. Lag occurs when data from your machine to the games server is interrupted. To you this will appear as though you are stuck to the spot and can’t move/shoot, and anyone seeing you in the game will get a easy kill as you will be locked to the spot. Lag usually is temporary and only occurs for a few seconds.