Telekom bad Peering till Mindnight...

T3ddy

Hi aLL,

After the last thread about server lags, I took a closer look at the topic of packet loss, especially in relation to connections to foreign servers on the part of Telekom. To cut a long story short, it is simply due to Telekom and their non-compliance with our applicable laws, especially regarding net neutrality. I don't need to try to play on the server before midnight, because the packet losses are simply unplayable. After midnight all is well and everything is at 0% packet loss and I can enjoy playing. The only way to play before prime time is to have a VPN connection. This also works wonderfully for a short time. Unfortunately, I am kicked after about 1-2 minutes, with the message: You have been kicked because of a timeout during the ACE checks. Yes I can set Split Tunnel, but unfortunately I see it so far that I can only add the whole game so the UnrealTournament.exe to the exception. Unfortunately, then at the time mentioned the packet loss is of course directly there again. Is there any other way to add only the Acev12e to the exception? Maybe you have a tip for me @snowguy ?

Thanks

snowguy

T3ddy

Good to hear you found where the packet loss is coming from but it's a shame if they won't do anything to improve it.

I don't have much experience with VPNs in a proxy type configuration, I've only used them to become part of an organizations network to use services on their intranet. There may be some setting that your VPN provider offers that can help though.

The short details are that the game and ACE (v1.0+) use UDP to communicate. The defaults are: game port 7777, query port 7778, and default ACE port of (game port + 2) so port 7779 on the london server. My guess is that either the VPN, your local NAT router, or another firewall are blocking some udp packets that the game server sends to you and ACE is detecting this as a connection issue.

NAT and VPN interoperability is a pretty deep topic but you might be able to change the VPN protocol you are using or find some settings to traverse the firewall. I would need more details to try and give more specific help such as which router and/or modem you have, which software firewall you might be running, and which VPN service provider you are using. Some packet capturing might also help to figure out where the problem is. Maybe this will be enough information already to point you in the right direction for finding a solution, I hope.

If you are able to solve the issue, I'd be really interested in hearing how you fixed it 🙂

VRNRon

T3ddy Got exactly the same issues since the last years already, surely snowguy can confirm. I tried to solve it with Telekom but they simply didn't see any issues from their side and closed the tickets. So I just gave up playing on this server. Haven't tried using a VPN though, thanks for the tip.

jerc

Good idea! I got a vpn bundled with my usenet service, never had a reason to use it since it won't work with iPlayer lol.

player_0

jerc
It seems to me that your packet loss will be worse, or at least you will have a higher ping than when you use VPN. You're from overseas. This may work for T3ddy

T3ddy

snowguy
UDP was the key word. Then I immediately remembered openvpn, which offers both protocols, TCP and UDP. I quickly downloaded openvpn and bluntly threw in a freely accessible server via UDP connection and lo and behold 0% packet loss!

Of course, there is no need to talk about the ping and the remaining quality of the connection 🙂 It's not that great, but you can still take your time looking for a good server. In any case, the fact is that the ACE check now also works perfectly via UDP and you only have very very few 2-3% to 0% packet losses. I think it would also be worth testing for everyone else.

All you need:

1.) The OpenVpn Client https://openvpn.net/community-downloads/

2.) Search at google: free openvpn server

As I said, I just clicked on the first best link in the search and created a config for server access and it worked. Good luck to the rest

Nicefu

Here's my ping test if it helps... (120sec test)

Btw, sometimes I have lags too.

player_0

Nicefu
Well, well. We have an artist here. Beautiful work. Did you draw with charcoal?

Nicefu

player_0 Picasso was standing next to me holding my beer when I painted this. 😂
Do you know the Dead Sea? guess who the killer is... 😁

jerc

That was funny LOL.

VRNRon

T3ddy Could you explain how you created a config for server access to a noob like me?

player_0

Ron got it wrong.
...he meant noobs like us

Ooper

I tried playing a game last night with this 4g/5g connection that i'm then connected to via a USB wifi dongle, I stopped after one game because I would imagine I would rightfully get banned for warping 👀

I wasn't bored and parsed this out of UnrealTournament.log 🤓 (I forced a max ping value of 300 to make the graph more readable as some pings were over 1-2k)
Note: Distance to server is ~ 160 miles, time difference between data points is 1 second.

Ooper

Finally got normal internet again, difference in ping graph to the server compared to my previous post :eyes:

Ooper

Anyone else get the red box at the start of every match, like the server just stops responding for a split second at the start of every match.

Nicefu

Ooper yup, same...

snowguy

Ooper

This happens whenever I turn the flags back on in the ATB leaderboard. I first noticed it with xc_engine on v451 and then later with v469 on the server. Not completely sure whether this is a replication limitation in the waiting state or a limitation with the server's cpu at the match start or some other reason because I don't notice the same behavior on the Atlanta server which has a faster cpu. I need to update the v469 version on the server and gather more details to report it properly if it still happens after the update. For now, I will just turn the flags back off and try them again after the update.

By the way, it happens even more or even more quickly if you try flying around the map before match start.

Kurogane

Ooper I also get this

Ooper

There are a few micro stutters now and then as well, maybe a few times a match where bytes/packets drop to 0 for a split second, maybe 1 or 2 ticks max.

Ooper

Server feels pretty poor tonight, even hitting players standing still some shots fail to register, even for zp the amount of no regs is unusual, my connection is by no means great but I've been watching f1 and seeing jittery pings of other players as well.

snowguy

Ooper

I see you got 1% packet loss there at the server. Everything looks good on the server though and no news from the host so probably just a temporary issue. mtr back to you had typical jitter nothing extraordinary and no packet loss. Scoreboard pings are a little slow to update and seeing them all over the place is normal tbh. Have to see if it corrects itself for you in time.