Server, postcode lottery ?

[jnhoward]

OK I do not have a landline, my internet comes through a mobile broadband wifi router. It's not always performing great, so never been on multi player because I'm sure I will have problems.
But why is it that even on good signal days, good enough to watch YouTube vid's with little or no buffering for long periods sometimes. That I can't get logged in.
I only want the career bit, I've got the Steam version.
I don't know how it works ,I'm not very computer savvy, but if it's coming over the internet doesn't that mean that the whole country gets the same access.
Or is it split into small areas ?.
I only manage to get logged in about 20% probably less. But it must be working OK, so I don't want to start messing with IP addresses when I don't really know what I'm doing.
So would Glastonbury UK be a dead spot ?. Is there a list of IP addresses somewhere that will do a better job for this area ???....

 

[Algy-Lacey]

Hi Jnhoward, welcome to IL-2 Great Battles!

 

My landline broadband is sluggishly slow. So I am also interested to hear if people have a good experience with a 4G mobile router. I would ideally like to play online, but at the moment with landline that's just not possible as I get 200 Kb/s max. Mobile internet can be as fast as 50 Mb/s, or so they say.

 

Thoughts anyone?

[grcurmudgeon]

Landline vs mobile / wifi is more about latency and the lag it causes than it is about bandwidth. A mobile and/or wifi connection can get bursty, which still works okay for streaming (which buffers up packets) but can be very problematic for gaming where you want packets coming in as quick and steady as possible.

[RedKestrel]

1 hour ago, jnhoward said:

OK I do not have a landline, my internet comes through a mobile broadband wifi router. It's not always performing great, so never been on multi player because I'm sure I will have problems.
But why is it that even on good signal days, good enough to watch YouTube vid's with little or no buffering for long periods sometimes. That I can't get logged in.
I only want the career bit, I've got the Steam version.
I don't know how it works ,I'm not very computer savvy, but if it's coming over the internet doesn't that mean that the whole country gets the same access.
Or is it split into small areas ?.
I only manage to get logged in about 20% probably less. But it must be working OK, so I don't want to start messing with IP addresses when I don't really know what I'm doing.
So would Glastonbury UK be a dead spot ?. Is there a list of IP addresses somewhere that will do a better job for this area ???....

 

What you seem to have is an inconsistent internet connection. Mobile-based internet is known for this. Youtube videos are fairly well optimized to stream efficiently these days, meaning you don't need much of an internet connection to run them. You should probably do an Internet speed test if possible, to see what your speed, ping, and jitter are. Be advised that if you are on a plan that gives limited data, doing a speed test does consume a little bit of data. 

Your Upload and Download speeds are usually expressed in megabits/second (shortened to mbps) - if you have a slow connection, it will be expressed in kilobits/second (kbps). People also talk about this as 'bandwidth' - you can think of it as the capacity of the internet pipe, its how much data can flow through your connection at once. Your Internet Service Provider (ISP) will tell you you will get "up to X Mbps download/Y mbps upload". Download is the data coming to your computer from the internet, upload is the data going from your computer to the server. Most upload speeds are very slow compared to download speeds. Key point here: ISPs are often very optimistic about what your speeds are, your typical speed will likely be quite a bit less.

 

Ping is the length of time it takes your signal, measured in milliseconds (ms) to get from your computer, to the server, and then back to your computer. Some tests do round-trip, others do one way. 

 

Jitter  is the consistency of your connection - for example, if your ping is 45 ms, but it bumps up to 100 ms often, that's jitter. High jitter means that the time it takes for your information to get to and from the server is not consistent.

 

In online multiplayer play, Ping and Jitter are important. If your ping is high, that means it takes a long time for information from the server to reach you, and for you to send it back, which can result in odd things online, where you see players 'warping' around at high speed as the server tries to catch up to what they're doing. Most servers have a ping limit set so that players that have too poor of a connection can't play on the server, because the game becomes very frustrating with players constantly lagging or warping around due to connection issues. If your jitter is high, you may have OK ping sometimes but then spike up high, causing disconnects, kicks from the server, or just strange behaviour and loss of information.

 

Speed is less of an issue for online play, believe it or not. There is not a huge amount of data going back and forth for Il-2, relative to say, streaming video -  most of the hard, data intensive work is being handled and rendered by your computer. 

Probably what is happening is that your connection quality is inconsistent, so when you try to log in, the server loses the connection during log in. Do you get a specific error code? If so, post it. Sometimes all that is needed is just repeatedly trying to log in until the server recognizes it. 

The biggest issue you may face is that if you lose server connection while running a career mode mission or something, the mission will not be logged and you may be unable to progress. Also, downloading the game's updates may be a pain.

If you find your connection is consistently poor and its giving you issues with enjoying the game, you probably want to look into downloading Pat Wilson's Campaign Generator. It's an offline program that works with Il-2 to create an ongoing campaign, and it doesn't require an Internet connection to run. You can play it in offline mode. I haven't used it myself but it gets good reviews and Pat himself is a great guy. 

So basically, do a speed test if possible and post your results. It will likely vary quite a bit. That should give us some information on whether it is a connection issue or something else going on. 
 

Edited July 29, 2020 by RedKestrel

[Diggun]

2 hours ago, jnhoward said:

Glastonbury UK

Its the Ley Lines man! The cosmic rats messing with your receptions. And of course the 2nd coming of christ... 

[RedKestrel]

11 minutes ago, Diggun said:

Its the Ley Lines man! The cosmic rats messing with your receptions. And of course the 2nd coming of christ... 

On top of that some dude named Arthur keeps riding in circles around the place screwing up the wifi towers too. All that shining armor plays hell with your ping.

[jnhoward]

On 7/29/2020 at 3:48 PM, RedKestrel said:

What you seem to have is an inconsistent internet connection. Mobile-based internet is known for this. Youtube videos are fairly well optimized to stream efficiently these days, meaning you don't need much of an internet connection to run them. You should probably do an Internet speed test if possible, to see what your speed, ping, and jitter are. Be advised that if you are on a plan that gives limited data, doing a speed test does consume a little bit of data. 

Your Upload and Download speeds are usually expressed in megabits/second (shortened to mbps) - if you have a slow connection, it will be expressed in kilobits/second (kbps). People also talk about this as 'bandwidth' - you can think of it as the capacity of the internet pipe, its how much data can flow through your connection at once. Your Internet Service Provider (ISP) will tell you you will get "up to X Mbps download/Y mbps upload". Download is the data coming to your computer from the internet, upload is the data going from your computer to the server. Most upload speeds are very slow compared to download speeds. Key point here: ISPs are often very optimistic about what your speeds are, your typical speed will likely be quite a bit less.

 

Ping is the length of time it takes your signal, measured in milliseconds (ms) to get from your computer, to the server, and then back to your computer. Some tests do round-trip, others do one way. 

 

Jitter  is the consistency of your connection - for example, if your ping is 45 ms, but it bumps up to 100 ms often, that's jitter. High jitter means that the time it takes for your information to get to and from the server is not consistent.

 

In online multiplayer play, Ping and Jitter are important. If your ping is high, that means it takes a long time for information from the server to reach you, and for you to send it back, which can result in odd things online, where you see players 'warping' around at high speed as the server tries to catch up to what they're doing. Most servers have a ping limit set so that players that have too poor of a connection can't play on the server, because the game becomes very frustrating with players constantly lagging or warping around due to connection issues. If your jitter is high, you may have OK ping sometimes but then spike up high, causing disconnects, kicks from the server, or just strange behaviour and loss of information.

 

Speed is less of an issue for online play, believe it or not. There is not a huge amount of data going back and forth for Il-2, relative to say, streaming video -  most of the hard, data intensive work is being handled and rendered by your computer. 

Probably what is happening is that your connection quality is inconsistent, so when you try to log in, the server loses the connection during log in. Do you get a specific error code? If so, post it. Sometimes all that is needed is just repeatedly trying to log in until the server recognizes it. 

The biggest issue you may face is that if you lose server connection while running a career mode mission or something, the mission will not be logged and you may be unable to progress. Also, downloading the game's updates may be a pain.

If you find your connection is consistently poor and its giving you issues with enjoying the game, you probably want to look into downloading Pat Wilson's Campaign Generator. It's an offline program that works with Il-2 to create an ongoing campaign, and it doesn't require an Internet connection to run. You can play it in offline mode. I haven't used it myself but it gets good reviews and Pat himself is a great guy. 

So basically, do a speed test if possible and post your results. It will likely vary quite a bit. That should give us some information on whether it is a connection issue or something else going on. 
 

 Thanks for the reply, it must have took you ages.

yeah my internet can fluctuate a bit, depending on the weather believe it or not. I'm on the wrong side of a hill and only get a good signal when it's overcast [which is most of the time ]. But if it's heavy fog or crystal clear I'm struggling. I reckon the signal must bounce off the clouds. Anyway sometimes I'm lucky to get 1.00. 

But even on the rare occasions I've got over 3.00, I can still have trouble.    It doesn't happen so often with 'rise of flight' or 'blitz'.  I've tried straight after G/B failed and usually can get there servers to respond.  So I wondered if in rural areas this server gives us less priority..

 

[RedKestrel]

15 minutes ago, jnhoward said:

 Thanks for the reply, it must have took you ages.

yeah my internet can fluctuate a bit, depending on the weather believe it or not. I'm on the wrong side of a hill and only get a good signal when it's overcast [which is most of the time ]. But if it's heavy fog or crystal clear I'm struggling. I reckon the signal must bounce off the clouds. Anyway sometimes I'm lucky to get 1.00. 

But even on the rare occasions I've got over 3.00, I can still have trouble.    It doesn't happen so often with 'rise of flight' or 'blitz'.  I've tried straight after G/B failed and usually can get there servers to respond.  So I wondered if in rural areas this server gives us less priority..

 

I can almost guarantee the Il-2 server doesn't give priority one way or another to rural areas, its probably just connection quality. 

Do you try to connect multiple times in a row? At one point I was having an issue where the game would only connect on the second or third try, but it usually worked. ROF's servers are probably the same as Il-2s, but it could be that the one for ROF is closer and has less of a problem. Blitz would be different servers, that is purely through Steam.