ping time

[velvetgurl]

i reside in the uk, did a speed test to servers in usa, got a ping time of 18 ms download speed 70 m bits, upload speed of 20 m bits my prob is when using firestorm, or any other view, when i visit certain regions on sl, i ge a ping of well over 600 ms, this seems to be problem with lag, can anyone give me info how to get this lower my connection is very good help would be appreciated, thank you

[Deann3]

There's nothing that can really be done. Unfortunately  - despite other peoples claims - linden lab's extremely lenient restrictions in regards to owners/developers building and absolute failure to police such restrictions allow owners/developers to put as much  stuff onto a sim as they wish without regard to lag time. And of course the more attractive/appealing something seems, the more sheep flock to it, the more lag you get. It's just part of the lackadaisical attitude of SL.

[animats]

Running out of CPU time in the main thread in the viewer, where the graphics are drawn, will increase reported ping time. This has nothing to do with the network.

SL viewer measured ping time isn't just network delay. It includes the time until the viewer gets around to looking at incoming network traffic, which seems to happen once per frame. Increase your graphics settings to "Ultra" and watch ping time climb.

 

[Oz Linden]

On 9/7/2018 at 2:58 PM, binder59 said:

i reside in the uk, did a speed test to servers in usa, got a ping time of 18 ms

Sorry ... that's not possible. You were not doing what you thought you were doing. The speed of light isn't that fast.

animats is correct; the 'ping' time in the viewer measures the viewer->simulator->viewer time with the message being handled at the application level at both ends, so it is affected by the load at either end as well as the network you're sending over.

[Qie Niangao]

29 minutes ago, Oz Linden said:

The speed of light isn't that fast.

It's pretty unlikely because there's a bunch of electronics in the way, but the speed of light is 299,792,458 m/s, so in 18 ms it goes about 5.4 million meters, or 3355 miles, whereas the distance from Swansea to Bangor is only 2920 miles. (No SL servers in Maine, though, I'm guessing.)

(One starts really feeling the speed of light bouncing signals off a geostationary satellite in orbit 22,236 miles above the equator.)

[Oz Linden]

The speed of light in optical fiber is about 1/3 slower than in a vacuum (the number you used), and there are lots of electronics in the way (a repeater about every 15km on undersea cable, for example).

 

[Beq Janus]

All the above replies being true a ping time of 600ms from the UK is very high, unless you are in the outer hebrides. What is your frame rate, are you running with a frame rate limiter and are you ensuring that the viewer is in focus when you are testing?

My ICMP ping time from South East England to a Linden lab server is ~160ms, I have 220Mbps down and about 14 Mbps up over my ISP (Virgin) and my ping time to London is around 15ms). My viewer ping swings about a bit more but running with the framerate uncapped, and the viewer in focus it tends to be around 180. The ping time goes up if you click away and the viewer is in the background because the viewer de-prioritises itself. Amusingly this is evident if you try to capture the ping time using gyazo and forget to click back into the viewer, as the clip below helps illustrate.

The following clip shows an ICMP ping on the left (blue) and the FS viewer ping on the right. The viewer is not focussed and thus responds to pings more slowly. as soon as I refocus the viewer (the blue box vanishes), you see that the ping time returns to something around the 180 mark. 

In my case, I am not CPU bound on my machine and thus the ping time corresponds quite well to the ICMP. Even going to a very busy region where my frame rate drops to single digit I might still expect to see ~200-220ms ping times.

600ms is, therefore, higher than I would expect based on my own setup, but of course, your local conditions will be different but it still seems on the high side. To narrow this down you might want to try the following:-

Does the high inworld ping persist regardless of:-

• which region you are in? Test a major shopping event and a quiet/empty region for example
• whether you are looking at a beautiful complex scene or clear blue sky? 
• Does it remain irrespective of your graphic settings and draw distance etc? Set your graphics setting to low and see what happens.
• Is your computer using all its CPU or other resources? Use task monitor to have a look?

If your PC has idle time and spare RAM and the 600ms persist throughout, no matter where you go and what you do in SL, then you might want to look more closely at your network and other potential influences. While lag and ping time are not the same thing, you might want to take a look at our wiki page for common lag causes (https://wiki.phoenixviewer.com/fs_very_laggy). Certainly, a restart of your router and making sure that your bandwidth setting in the viewer and your LAN/Wifi speeds are not out of sync is going to do you no harm.

 

[velvetgurl]

On 9/12/2018 at 4:14 PM, Oz Linden said:

Sorry ... that's not possible. You were not doing what you thought you were doing. The speed of light isn't that fast.

animats is correct; the 'ping' time in the viewer measures the viewer->simulator->viewer time with the message being handled at the application level at both ends, so it is affected by the load at either end as well as the network you're sending over.

thats what the test results said using one of the best ip providers in the uk bt british telecom

[velvetgurl]

On 9/16/2018 at 1:06 AM, Beq Janus said:

All the above replies being true a ping time of 600ms from the UK is very high, unless you are in the outer hebrides. What is your frame rate, are you running with a frame rate limiter and are you ensuring that the viewer is in focus when you are testing?

My ICMP ping time from South East England to a Linden lab server is ~160ms, I have 220Mbps down and about 14 Mbps up over my ISP (Virgin) and my ping time to London is around 15ms). My viewer ping swings about a bit more but running with the framerate uncapped, and the viewer in focus it tends to be around 180. The ping time goes up if you click away and the viewer is in the background because the viewer de-prioritises itself. Amusingly this is evident if you try to capture the ping time using gyazo and forget to click back into the viewer, as the clip below helps illustrate.

The following clip shows an ICMP ping on the left (blue) and the FS viewer ping on the right. The viewer is not focussed and thus responds to pings more slowly. as soon as I refocus the viewer (the blue box vanishes), you see that the ping time returns to something around the 180 mark. 

In my case, I am not CPU bound on my machine and thus the ping time corresponds quite well to the ICMP. Even going to a very busy region where my frame rate drops to single digit I might still expect to see ~200-220ms ping times.

600ms is, therefore, higher than I would expect based on my own setup, but of course, your local conditions will be different but it still seems on the high side. To narrow this down you might want to try the following:-

Does the high inworld ping persist regardless of:-

• which region you are in? Test a major shopping event and a quiet/empty region for example
• whether you are looking at a beautiful complex scene or clear blue sky? 
• Does it remain irrespective of your graphic settings and draw distance etc? Set your graphics setting to low and see what happens.
• Is your computer using all its CPU or other resources? Use task monitor to have a look?

If your PC has idle time and spare RAM and the 600ms persist throughout, no matter where you go and what you do in SL, then you might want to look more closely at your network and other potential influences. While lag and ping time are not the same thing, you might want to take a look at our wiki page for common lag causes (https://wiki.phoenixviewer.com/fs_very_laggy). Certainly, a restart of your router and making sure that your bandwidth setting in the viewer and your LAN/Wifi speeds are not out of sync is going to do you no harm.

 

every thing is fine cpu is capable , no freme rate limiter but it says network problem which there is not, or file sharing app which i dont have

[Beq Janus]

29 minutes ago, binder59 said:

thats what the test results said using one of the best ip providers in the uk bt british telecom

It can only have been reporting the local UK ping time. Even BT can't make stuff go faster than light. The network ping times you quoted are similar to my own "home to London" round trips.

 

28 minutes ago, binder59 said:

every thing is fine cpu is capable , no freme rate limiter but it says network problem which there is not, or file sharing app which i dont have

How are you identifying that there is no problem? If we can prove that this is not network then you are back to examining your PC setup and the steps I listed. There are n't really many other variables at play here, especially if it is occurring on all regions, in which case the server side is not the problem.

If your in-world ping is 600, then packet loss would be a good thing to look at. Assuming you have checked that already, you might want to run a traceroute to find out where all the time is going or at least prove that it is not getting lost on the network. 

 

 

[bigmoe Whitfield]

remember too guys all the LL sim servers live in arizona now,  I'm 2 hours outside the data center and my pings fluctuate too.  so it's going to be the routes between you and your isp.   you could have the best up and down ever, but that does no good when the routes getting there are congested and such.

[Qie Niangao]

On 9/7/2018 at 2:58 PM, binder59 said:

i reside in the uk, did a speed test to servers in usa, got a ping time of 18 ms download speed 70 m bits, upload speed of 20 m bits my prob is when using firestorm, or any other view, when i visit certain regions on sl, i ge a ping of well over 600 ms, this seems to be problem with lag, can anyone give me info how to get this lower my connection is very good help would be appreciated, thank you [emphasis mine]

I'm returning to this first post because something must generate those long ping times, so if we were ever to actually establish that it's neither network nor client host, then it would have to be on the server side -- and maybe it is, if it's really true that only certain regions produce that elevated ping time.

And if that's true, then there are still two possibilities: either everybody gets the same elevated ping times for those specific regions, or it's only those connecting over a specific network to those specific regions. (The latter seems crazy, but routing errors can have pretty exotic effects.)

So: On which regions does it happen, and just as importantly, on which regions does it not happen?

[Beq Janus]

7 hours ago, Qie Niangao said:

I'm returning to this first post because something must generate those long ping times, so if we were ever to actually establish that it's neither network nor client host, then it would have to be on the server side -- and maybe it is, if it's really true that only certain regions produce that elevated ping time.

And if that's true, then there are still two possibilities: either everybody gets the same elevated ping times for those specific regions, or it's only those connecting over a specific network to those specific regions. (The latter seems crazy, but routing errors can have pretty exotic effects.)

So: On which regions does it happen, and just as importantly, on which regions does it not happen?

Yes, knowing which regions would help, but even then that does not rule out client lag, because the high ping could be caused by the content/avatars present in that region. I concur though, that without taking this in a logical stepwise process of elimination, we're not going to get any closer. 

 

[velvetgurl]

On 9/20/2018 at 9:00 AM, Qie Niangao said:

I'm returning to this first post because something must generate those long ping times, so if we were ever to actually establish that it's neither network nor client host, then it would have to be on the server side -- and maybe it is, if it's really true that only certain regions produce that elevated ping time.

And if that's true, then there are still two possibilities: either everybody gets the same elevated ping times for those specific regions, or it's only those connecting over a specific network to those specific regions. (The latter seems crazy, but routing errors can have pretty exotic effects.)

So: On which regions does it happen, and just as importantly, on which regions does it not happen?

its not to bad when i use a diff browser ie singularity is not to bad, because with a better ping i get less lag, last night where i live on sl, tahoma i think my fps was right down to 8 fps then i elogged tweaked a few settings wih loss of qual, could only reach 12 ps 

[velvetgurl]

bingo, just did a trace route test  , got no packet loss, still at low ping, 

[Beq Janus]

1 hour ago, binder59 said:

bingo, just did a trace route test  , got no packet loss, still at low ping, 

What IP address did you traceroute to? and what was the result?

 

[velvetgurl]

Google Public DNS 8.8.8.8 bytes = 32, time = 13 ms, ttl=120

[velvetgurl]

this was on cloud ping which is higher 

US-West (Oregon)

169 ms

On 9/23/2018 at 8:54 PM, Beq Janus said:

What IP address did you traceroute to? and what was the result?

 

 

4 minutes ago, binder59 said:

Google Public DNS 8.8.8.8 bytes = 32, time = 13 ms, ttl=120

 

[velvetgurl]

On 9/23/2018 at 8:54 PM, Beq Janus said:

What IP address did you traceroute to? and what was the result?

 

cloudflare was 1.1.1.1 bytes=32, time =11ms,ttl=57, and i am using cloudflare dns servers so there we go

[velvetgurl]

thinking now it may be to do with firestorm as was said earlier could be client side ie firefox browser ? 

[Beq Janus]

Your ping times above are local to the UK with the exception of the US Oregon servers which are closer to what we would expect. Google DNS is a distributed service that responds from the most local instance. Cloudflare is a cloud and content distribution service, their job is to be local. Your traceroute results would confirm this as they'd show very few hops for the local responses and a long list for the actual US servers. If you want to test the actual ping latency to your region as I did for mine then ping the actual IP address of your region. You will find this in help->about in the viewer.

As has been said a bottleneck in the viewer performance is most likely, suggesting that your graphics settings are too high for your machine, the disk cache is not keeping up (anti Virus is often a cause of this) or local network (esp wifi is weak), etc. You can only diagnose these properly by testing various settings and seeing which ones help/hinder as has been suggested. You might want to walk through all of the advice on the "my FS is very laggy" wiki page . 

 

 

 

[velvetgurl]

2 hours ago, Beq Janus said:

Your ping times above are local to the UK with the exception of the US Oregon servers which are closer to what we would expect. Google DNS is a distributed service that responds from the most local instance. Cloudflare is a cloud and content distribution service, their job is to be local. Your traceroute results would confirm this as they'd show very few hops for the local responses and a long list for the actual US servers. If you want to test the actual ping latency to your region as I did for mine then ping the actual IP address of your region. You will find this in help->about in the viewer.

As has been said a bottleneck in the viewer performance is most likely, suggesting that your graphics settings are too high for your machine, the disk cache is not keeping up (anti Virus is often a cause of this) or local network (esp wifi is weak), etc. You can only diagnose these properly by testing various settings and seeing which ones help/hinder as has been suggested. You might want to walk through all of the advice on the "my FS is very laggy" wiki page . 

 

 

 

thank you for your help, will tweek my graphics card see what happens you have been very helpfull cheers

[somazT]

On 9/8/2018 at 12:28 AM, binder59 said:

i reside in the uk, did a speed test to servers in usa, got a ping time of 18 ms download speed 70 m bits, upload speed of 20 m bits my prob is when using firestorm, or any other view, when i visit certain regions on sl, i ge a ping of well over 600 ms, this seems to be problem with lag, can anyone give me info how to get this lower my connection is very good help would be appreciated, thank you

I am  facing the same issue from here.