Keep Disconnecting

[Karallis]

Hi, new to SL - my friend is getting back into it so I thought I'd have a go. Problem is, I get disconnected every minute or so. After going through a bunch of threads, I've managed to piece together that my packet loss ranges from 0.5 to 7% depending on region, and my ping sim is usually 1000ms, which is Rather High. I've tried experimenting with bandwidth and graphics settings to fix it, but it only changed when bandwidth was set to 2k, sending ping to 525ms for the first test, but it jumped back up with every subsequent test. Would someone mind helping me figure out what's going wrong here?

 

(Bear in mind I'm very new to MMOs, so I may need some explanations on terminology and a bit of hand-holding with networking stuff)

[Coffee Pancake]

The only acceptable value for packet loss is 0.0% 

SL will log you out if no traffic has been received for 60 seconds.

Your ping is insane.

The bandwidth slider in SL is misnamed. It only affects incoming UDP traffic (time sensitive single use data), if you have problems, lower is better. It does not affect the speed objects load (etc)_ which will always be as fast as your net connection permits.

It's sounding a lot like your Friends net connection is junk. This could be between your friends PC and their router (wifi and SL are not great friends), or it could be between your friends router and their ISP.

I would suggest you start by getting your friend to use a wired connection from their PC to the router.

 

[Rolig Loon]

You may be able to improve the packet loss problem by simply rebooting both your router and your modem. Unplug them from the power for a minute or so and then plug them back in and restart everything.  And avoid using a wifi connection if you have a choice.  Lots of people have no trouble at all with wifi, but Linden Lab neither supports it nor recommends it.  There are many ways that stray electrical/electronic noise can mess with wifi.  You might also check cables and connectors to be sure that the cat hasn't been chewing on them again.

Ping time is harder to deal with.  Ping time is a measure of how long it takes a signal to travel between your machine and LL's servers.  Basically, it's a function of distance, which you can;t do a whole lot about.  If you are in Europe or even farther from California, your ping time will be lots longer than mine is in North America.  If you happen to be using a satellite connection, of course, your signal is travelling all the way to orbit and back, so you can deal with that but only by changing your ISP.  It's possible that your signal is passing through an abnormally slow node somewhere between your house and San Francisco.  If so, and if you can identify it, you may be able to convince your ISP to force a better route.

For diagnosing your sort of problem in greater depth, I recommend reading Nalates's blog >>> http://blog.nalates.net/2011/10/26/troubleshoot-your-sl-connection/

[Karallis]

1 minute ago, CoffeeDujour said:

The only acceptable value for packet loss is 0.0% 

SL will log you out if no traffic has been received for 60 seconds.

Your ping is insane.

The bandwidth slider in SL is misnamed. It only affects incoming UDP traffic (time sensitive single use data), if you have problems, lower is better. It does not affect the speed objects load (etc)_ which will always be as fast as your net connection permits.

It's sounding a lot like your Friends net connection is junk. This could be between your friends PC and their router (wifi and SL are not great friends), or it could be between your friends router and their ISP.

I would suggest you start by getting your friend to use a wired connection from their PC to the router.

 

Thanks! I'll try switching to wired, but I haven't got much hope for improving the overall internet connection - I'm in Canterbury, and the local council still thinks its a good idea for it to be illegal to build taller than three stories. The problem with ping is I don't think its being a reliable measurement at the moment, owing to the random 525 ping test, which I've been unable to replicate since. Another friend has confirmed that they started DCing in the tutorial island I was in, but it was after leaving there that my packet loss jumped from <1% to 7%, and has remained stable at 4% since then.

[Karallis]

This is a better illustration of why it concerns me - these are consistant results when testing my internet speed to California, whereas SL keeps saying I have 1000ms, which clearly does not add up

[Lindal Kidd]

It could be down to your ISP.  One thing you can try yourself is to switch to the free Google public DNS servers.  See: https://developers.google.com/speed/public-dns/

If that, and the router reboot Rolig suggested do not help, it may be time to call your ISP and become a squeaky wheel until they fix whatever is wrong in your connection.

Oh...two other things to try first... 1) try using a different router.  Some routers, especially older ones, have been known to have troubles with SL.  2) Make sure Firestorm, and especially its cache files, are whitelisted with your antivirus program.  Having it scan every texture you download can slow things.

[bigmoe Whitfield]

I remember when I was getting pings that high,  slow wifi internet and horrible horrible hardware,   I went wired to the modem and it dropped it to around 600ms, then once I upgraded I got normal pings,  bottlenecking the hardware will bottleneck everything else.

[Nalates Urriah]

On 2/28/2020 at 4:25 PM, Karallis said:

This is a better illustration of why it concerns me - these are consistant results when testing my internet speed to California, whereas SL keeps saying I have 1000ms, which clearly does not add up

PING in the viewer is not the same 'ping' as above. The viewer is talking to the server and they are deciding between themselves what the turnaround time is. If the viewer or server is lagging that 'ping' time will go up regardless of what the network is actually doing.

If you run tracert tests to the Linden server IP listed in the Viewer's HELP->About... you'll get good data. Also, ping [ip address] n 30 will provide good data on your specific connection to SL.

Ideally Packet Loss should be 0.0%. But, most of the SL communication is via error correcting HTTP. This makes it the combination of time and packet loss rate that determines when the SL servers give up and disconnects you. With a 166ms ping you can probably stay contacted with a 1%+/- packet loss.

You'll have to do some troubleshooting to figure out where the problem is, your hardware, ISP, or SL.