Great post, MC. I would only add...
1) Most ISP's seem to be giving ping requests, from what I see on
VROC. I do see some 700+'s, but they seem to be in the minority.
2) Alt-L is the key combo to use to check pings once connected to
a GPL server. Close the chat window, hit Alt-L, then open the
chat window again -- the ping will be shown there on the
'notepad'. Personally, based on experience, anything over 500
(will be reported by GPL as 0.500) is going to be iffy. But,
there are going to be other people in the race with 400-600
pings, so give it a shot. However, if you keep getting
disconnected (two or three times) it's time to retire from that
host as you will probably be warping badly to the others. Also,
if you get timeout errors trying to connect to the host, give it
up -- the ping's too high.
3) If in doubt after the Alt-L, once connected to the server, sit
in the pits and 'ride' with the host's car using TV1 or TV2. If
you forget who the host is, he/she will be in car #4. If the
host's car seems extremely warpy or jerky, or blinks 'on and
off', you have a bad ping and/or link to the host. Minor jinks
are okay, but if you see the car snapping around all over the
track... not good.
4) In-country hosts (Australia in the thread case), disregard the
ping reported by VROC... join the game and once connected check
the ping again. I dunno how VROC is checking the pings but let's
take a guess that it may be checking from itself to the host...
which would be a lot higher than the local client in this
particular case.
On Sat, 26 Dec 1998 16:24:56 GMT, "Michael E. Carver"
>% I've just about caught up with the AI, so I'm ready to try human
>% opponents.
>% But when I go to VROC, the pings displayed for me are always very
>% high: usually 700+, sometimes 500 but never lower.
>The 700+ report by VROC is misleading. This ping rate usually indicates
>that VROC was unable to retreive a valid ping from the host. For some
>reason some ISP seem to refuse ping requests (defense against Denial of
>Service attacks?).
>There are other criteria besides the actual ping rate, like lost packets
>which are even more important. I would say try a couple of hosts with
>low pings (for you) and once you contect check the latency count inside
>GPL. If they are consistently over 1.000, you will probably be a major
>warper or will eventually get disconnected from the host.
>The other big problem, may be caused by your ISP's routers or connection
>to the Internet backbone. You can check this out by doing a traceroute
>to a server. Use VROC to "join" a host, but before you actually join
>inside GPL, note the IP address of the host. Exit GPL and open a DOS
>box and run tracert <IP address of host>. You may want to to do this
>for 5-6 times in a row. Watch for hops that either time out or take
>significant longer to report than other hops. The following is a
>traceroute done to your news server:
>traceroute to venus.networx.net.au (203.30.239.20), 30 hops max, 40 byte
>packets
> 1 cisco.teleport.com (192.108.254.1) 1 ms 1 ms 0 ms
> 2 hssi4-1-0.pdx-border1.nw.verio.net (199.238.101.250) 1 ms 1 ms 1 ms
> 3 fe4-1-0.pdx1.verio.net (205.238.52.177) 1 ms 1 ms 1 ms
> 4 pdx1.pdx0.verio.net (129.250.2.37) 1 ms 1 ms 3 ms
> 5 pdx0.smf1.verio.net (129.250.3.21) 14 ms 14 ms 18 ms
> 6 smf1.smf0.verio.net (129.250.3.17) 17 ms 14 ms 14 ms
> 7 smf0.pao5.verio.net (129.250.3.13) 18 ms 18 ms 18 ms
> 8 pao5.pao1.verio.net (129.250.3.1) 19 ms 19 ms 18 ms
> 9 paix-1.hlc.net (198.32.176.8) 29 ms 31 ms 32 ms
>10 155.229.120.106 (155.229.120.106) 29 ms 29 ms 29 ms
>11 fe0-0.core0.paix.paradox.net.au (202.61.200.62) 20 ms 20 ms 19 ms
>12 paix-gw.napa.paradox.net.au (202.61.200.194) 23 ms 25 ms 22 ms
>13 pas-1-gw.per.paradox.net.au (202.61.225.234) 507 ms 502 ms 504 ms
>14 eth1.rs0.per.pix.paradox.net.au (202.61.225.47) 503 ms 505 ms 510 ms
>15 networx-gw.per.pix.paradox.net.au (202.61.225.134) 516 ms 513 ms 507 ms
>16 203.56.13.130 (203.56.13.130) 520 ms 526 ms 525 ms
>17 venus.networx.net.au (203.30.239.20) 511 ms 512 ms 523 ms
>Take a look at hops 11-13. I am getting good response from sites in
>Australia for the hops 11 & 12 (this is my end of your ISP's backbone to
>the Internet). However at hop 13 on, the responses are extremely high.
>This suggests that either your ISP needs to talk to paradox.net.au and
>get that router fixed, or you need to find another ISP.
>% Even the time that there was a host listed from Perth Australia (which
>% is where I am) it still showed a ping of 600!
>% From what I read, a ping of less than 450, and preferably less than
>% 250, is needed for GPL. Is that right?
>% I'm hesitant to test how it works myself, coz I'm a very inexperienced
>% sim racer, especially online, and my greatest fear is crashing into
>% everyone and spoiling their race, so if my connection isn't good
>% enough in the first place, I don't want to spoil the fun for everyone
>% else.
>% So, is there any point in me trying to connect to the races I see with
>% pings of 500?
>% Cheers
>% Alan
>--
>**************************** Michael E. Carver *************************
> Upside out, or inside down...False alarm the only game in town.
>=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=<[ /./. [- < ]>=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
