Thread: What is LAG? Questions needing answers.

I have been hearing alot about LAG resently and I have a few questions about it.

What is LAG? how is it defined?

Is the term LAG and abreviation of anything?

What types of lag are they?

How can I tell if it's LAG or this so called stuttering?

is it LAG when my PC says i am having 0 packet loss?

Is any LAG that I have Infective to the people around me?

H

The word lag is a word, and it usually just means some kind of delay. Like "jet lag".

There are different types of lag, and it seems there are people who don't know the different types of lag, and will often just tell you "get a better computer". In reality, you have:

Graphics lag. When you have an older or slower video card, and have many high quality options enabled. Here you get low FPS (frames per second). Going into a busy town, or an instance where a lot of things are moving, will give you lag. Easiest thing to do is to turn down the graphics settings, or get a better video card.

Network lag is the lag which occurs between your computer and the server. This is what you see when you enable the latency meter (Connection status in alert panel, via the UI settings). It tells you something like 30ms, 0 packet loss. The first number, in this example, is 30ms, the amount of time it takes for a single packet to go from your computer to the server, and 30ms is very good. Higher latency means slower response. Anything over 1000ms is probably unacceptable. Packet loss is related. You don't ever want to see packet loss, and if you're getting loss, I hope it is in the very low numbers. For network lag, your network connection is the bottleneck. If you have a 56k dialup modem, you can't do much. If you have a cable connection with 10mb/s, you're probably doing good. Without getting to in-depth of network diagnostics, there are a number of other reasons why you may have high network latency. Things like running programs, how many people may be using the network in your house, etc.

Server lag is the time it takes for the server to respond once data is received, and there is nothing we, as players, can do about this. The best example is the stalling horses. We can see chat going on, people walking by, combatting, and so forth, and everything else is going fine. But our stable horse suddenly stops, and forgets where we are going. The server may eventually remember you. Another example is skill lag, like pressing an attack button, and having a huge amount of time pass before the server recognizes your command.

It is very hard to diagnose server lag from network lag, and this is why a lot of people will rofl at you when you talk about lag. Having done network support for over 10 years, one of the best things I can suggest for you to do, to determine if the lag is you or the server, is to enable the "Connection Status In Alert Panel"), and look at the numbers. Low numbers are best. Low ms, no packet loss usually means good connection, and you could throw thousands of dollars upgrading your computer or cable modem with no real noticeable impact.

lag - verb, lagged, lag·ging, noun

• 1.to fail to maintain a desired pace or to keep up; fall or staybehind: After five minutes of hard running, some of them began tolag.
• 2.to move or develop slowly, as toward a goal or objective, orin relation to an associated factor (often followed by behind): to lag behind in production.
• 3.to delay or fail in reaching full development: The factory lagsregularly in making its quota.
• 4.to hang back; linger; delay: The old friends lagged because theywanted to talk some more.
• 5.to decrease, wane, or flag gradually, as in intensity: Interestlagged as the meeting went on.
• 6.Marbles . to throw one's shooting marble toward a line (lagline) on the ground in order to decide on the order of play.
• 7.Billiards, Pool . string ( def. 17b )
  

All in all for LOTRO it means breaks, discontinuance, pause, stopover or time-out in you game. If you run and instance and suddenly your screen freezes and after like 5 seconds it continues moving again you had 5 seconds lag. It doesn't have any effect on the lag of your fellowship members but on their morale it does in some cases if you are the healer .

But you of course can be part of the major lag in your raid or fellowship by wearing certain outfits. For example the game becomes kinda laggy for people with a bad PC that doesn't fir the game requirements, when everyone is wearing a cloak of hat.

LAG is the delay between your PC and the Server, usually registered in milliseconds (ms)
The LOWER the ms is the better the connection.
If anybody tells you they have a Ping of LESS THAN 10ms they are sat on the servers.
You can check the state of your connection using speedtest.net and selecting the Boston Servers

Packet Loss is the amount of information lost between Server - Sending and PC - Receiving
In Lotro, this is usually 0.0% to 0.6%

Most players will do a system reboot if the Packet Loss exceeds 2.0%
You will also notice the chain link in Alerts Panel will change from Green to Yellow to Red depending on how bad it is getting

Your Lag will only effect the person using YOUR PC.
You may see others having the lag effect, usually running on spot for a few secs, or they may see you doing the same, depending on who is lagging

its how you determine who breaks.

like when Fast Eddie played Minnesota Fats!

A simple explanation of lag is a measurement of the fluidity and responsiveness of the game.

Most people want to have the following:

1) The rendered frame represents the current situation. Or close enough that it does not affect game play. The game executes on the servers on Boston. Everything you see is either client prediction or time delayed. One bad aspect is teleporting - often called rubber banding.

2) You issue a command like press a key for a skill. Something happens immediately. The animation starts. The induction bar appears and starts filling. Bad - Nothing happens - You have to keep trying. Or there is a delay of a couple seconds.

3) The game play is fluid. You try to turn. You turn. Bad - Your character hesitates. It takes a while before you begin turning.

4) You expect a high enough frame rate that it looks like continuous motion. Bad - Strobing effect. Seeing individual frames. Frozen in place.

A lot of these issues occur at the same time. The bad in 3 and 4 often are buddies.

There is lots of causes. Since there are lots of causes, there are a lot of potential fixes. There is no easy one size fits all solution.

I work designing distributed client server real time systems. It amazes me how well a game Lotro can work for customers scattered all over the world. The entire complex glued together via internet. The customers have a lot differences in the capability of the internet connection and their PCs. You got folks with 512 Megabyte of memory in their machine using dial up. Yula got a 8 Gigabytes of memory in my machine with a high speed cable connection. We can group and work together without a huge number of game play issues.