[SOLVED] Would this work to play FPS games like EFT?

[Peter4343]

Hello, right now I have a DSL connection that is 0.64 Mbps (80 KB/sec transfer rate) download speed. And 0.13 Mbps (16.3 KB/sec transfer rate) upload speed. I can play some games like classic WoW, Hearthstone. But when it comes to first person shooters like Escape From Tarkov the game is either using more download speed or upload speed than I have available causing too much latency.

What I would like to know is. How much of an increase in speed would I get if I got another separate DSL lined hooked up to my house, and used bonding mode on a VPN like speedify with two separate DSL connections of the same speed connected into my computer? And do you think it would work to play FPS games like Escape From Tarkov?

I think the internet speed I have now could be far from being able to play FPS games and this method may not work, or I'm just barely not able to play them so the slight increase might solve this issue. Anyway I'm thankful for any answers if anyone has any kind of idea if this will work or not, because I don't want to spend the $150 installation fee for another DSL line if this isn't going to help me.

 

[Lutfij]

Are you sure those are the speeds you're looking at? I get about 15Mbps and a little more for my package(in spite of being located in Asia) and I can play World of Warships without issues(sans a little ping spikes here and there).

How are you monitoring your ISP's speeds?

 

[bill001g]

In some ways speedify is honest that their solution will not work for games. It is buried way down in the fine print.

The problem with this form of bonding is it is very simplistic. It just shovels data down the 2 paths pretty much at random based on the load. It does get more raw throughput. What it ignores is the data is now out of order.

Say I have a data stream made up of a 1500 byte packet and 10 150byte packets

It sends the 150 byte packet on line 1 and 1500 on line 2 Since the 150byte packet will finish before it sends another and another 150byte packet on line 1 while line 2 is still busy sending the single 1500 byte packet.

So on the receiving end it gets the first 150 byte packet but it knows this is packet 2 in the stream so it assume packet 1 was lost or delayed. Most applications just wait. Now it get another 150 byte packet but it is still missing packet 1. It will send back a message saying I lost packet 1 please resent it. As each additional 150 packet comes in it will say I lost packet 1 please resend it.

Depending on the timing the sender may actually send multiple replacement copies of the 1500 byte packet. Most times this gets sorted out and the extra transmitted packets are just discarded. It wastes a little bandwidth and can cause performance issues because of all the data being buffered. Overall you still get more raw throughput.

Problem is games do not use any form of data re transmission. The out of order data is pretty much the same as if you just discarded it. It will cause lag spikes in games.

So speedify great solution to this problem gamers see. Just transmit duplicate copies of all data on both links. Almost laughable. You double your number of connection but you then doubt the amount of data. But of course you still pay speedify for their services so that is what is most important.

There is a solution for this where they place appliance device on both ends that chop the data into smaller pieces so they balance better and then reassemble the stream into the proper order. This fixes the basic problem but it adds a delay. The delay is fairly constant so games would be less affected. Problem is gamers can not afford this solution. Putting a $10,000 box in their house and paying for a similar device at the VPN provider tends to not be a option. A company called riverbed makes these and has lots of info on their site if you were interested.

 

[Phillip Corcoran]

Can't you just upgrade your existing internet service to fibre or fibre/DSL hybrid (change ISP if necessary)?

 

[Peter4343]

In some ways speedify is honest that their solution will not work for games. It is buried way down in the fine print.

The problem with this form of bonding is it is very simplistic. It just shovels data down the 2 paths pretty much at random based on the load. It does get more raw throughput. What it ignores is the data is now out of order.

Say I have a data stream made up of a 1500 byte packet and 10 150byte packets

It sends the 150 byte packet on line 1 and 1500 on line 2 Since the 150byte packet will finish before it sends another and another 150byte packet on line 1 while line 2 is still busy sending the single 1500 byte packet.

So on the receiving end it gets the first 150 byte packet but it knows this is packet 2 in the stream so it assume packet 1 was lost or delayed. Most applications just wait. Now it get another 150 byte packet but it is still missing packet 1. It will send back a message saying I lost packet 1 please resent it. As each additional 150 packet comes in it will say I lost packet 1 please resend it.

Depending on the timing the sender may actually send multiple replacement copies of the 1500 byte packet. Most times this gets sorted out and the extra transmitted packets are just discarded. It wastes a little bandwidth and can cause performance issues because of all the data being buffered. Overall you still get more raw throughput.

Problem is games do not use any form of data re transmission. The out of order data is pretty much the same as if you just discarded it. It will cause lag spikes in games.

So speedify great solution to this problem gamers see. Just transmit duplicate copies of all data on both links. Almost laughable. You double your number of connection but you then doubt the amount of data. But of course you still pay speedify for their services so that is what is most important.

There is a solution for this where they place appliance device on both ends that chop the data into smaller pieces so they balance better and then reassemble the stream into the proper order. This fixes the basic problem but it adds a delay. The delay is fairly constant so games would be less affected. Problem is gamers can not afford this solution. Putting a $10,000 box in their house and paying for a similar device at the VPN provider tends to not be a option. A company called riverbed makes these and has lots of info on their site if you were interested.

I get relatively good ping on the very few games I can play with this connection, by lag spikes do you mean hard lag or an increase of latency of lets say 20-30ms?

 

[bill001g]

You get both. The overall latency will be higher just because it is vpn and the data must go farther and be processed more. The game server will adjust for this. The server knows how much time difference there is between what is happening on the server and what you see on the client. It can adjust to compensate for this up to a point. Games do have limits on how much the maximum latency is for the game to run smoothly.

The problems come if this latency is not very consistent. When this happens what the server predicted and what really happens are not the same and so it must correct. This is what causes what people call lag spikes in the game where the server resync the client and server.

You have 2 variations on games running on a vpn like this. Out of order packets which it just discards, it is the same as say you had a lot of data loss. The game just does not feel smooth not so much a lag. The other is if a large packet got on one of the links and caused a large delay. Game packets tend to be fairly small so you would get a small lag spike on that.

It is a lot of money for something that only partially solves your issue.

 

[Peter4343]

You get both. The overall latency will be higher just because it is vpn and the data must go farther and be processed more. The game server will adjust for this. The server knows how much time difference there is between what is happening on the server and what you see on the client. It can adjust to compensate for this up to a point. Games do have limits on how much the maximum latency is for the game to run smoothly.

The problems come if this latency is not very consistent. When this happens what the server predicted and what really happens are not the same and so it must correct. This is what causes what people call lag spikes in the game where the server resync the client and server.

You have 2 variations on games running on a vpn like this. Out of order packets which it just discards, it is the same as say you had a lot of data loss. The game just does not feel smooth not so much a lag. The other is if a large packet got on one of the links and caused a large delay. Game packets tend to be fairly small so you would get a small lag spike on that.

It is a lot of money for something that only partially solves your issue.

do you know of PPPoE bonding (also known as MLPPP) bonding for DSL? Someone was telling me that might work.

 

[bill001g]

MLPPP is a layer 2 bonding method so it tends to combine links much better to give you a large connection than a layer 3 bonding method. Not sure about pppoe. It really doesn't matter to work the ISP would have to offer it.

The method used to bond DSL is VDSL but again the ISP needs to offer this. I suspect as slow as your connection is your ISP is just really cheap. From your description it appear you are on first generation DSL equipment. The newer stuff is much faster even on maximum distance lines and that is normal ADSL not even VDSL

 

[Peter4343]

MLPPP is a layer 2 bonding method so it tends to combine links much better to give you a large connection than a layer 3 bonding method. Not sure about pppoe. It really doesn't matter to work the ISP would have to offer it.

The method used to bond DSL is VDSL but again the ISP needs to offer this. I suspect as slow as your connection is your ISP is just really cheap. From your description it appear you are on first generation DSL equipment. The newer stuff is much faster even on maximum distance lines and that is normal ADSL not even VDSL

Yeah I just called them earlier and found out they won't do that for me. My only option would be to invest in a steelhead like you were saying it seems. Some people are also telling me if I have more than 1 DSL line hooked up to speedify as long as they're all from the same ISP and same internet speed it would create less lag and latency for gaming. And that the problem is bad if you're trying to combine two internet connections with different speeds or from a different ISP. I forgot to mention on here that the connections I'd be bonding are identical and from the same ISP. Like you said "It sends the 150 byte packet on line 1 and 1500 on line 2 Since the 150byte packet will finish before it sends another and another 150byte packet on line 1 while line 2 is still busy sending the single 1500 byte packet." If all of my internet speeds connected to the VPN were of the same speed would the packets it send through on both lines not be of the same size and create little to no lag? Or if I had lets say 4-5 connections hooked up to the VPN would it spread the packets more evenly in similar sized chunks?

 

[bill001g]

The trick that the stealhead box does is it chops all the packets up so it can spread them over mulitple connections. So it sends parts of the same packet over mulitple vpn connections. It does a bunch of other stuff too that I forget. Best case would be to do it at the bit level but there is too much overhead.

Have 2 connections of different latency just makes the problem even worse. Say you had a fiber and a satelite connection. There is more than 500ms of difference so even packets of the same size would get out of order.

What is really a strange coincidence is DSL uses ATM for transport on the end segment to your house. . ATM uses 53byte frames partially so it did not delay data (ie voice telephone calls). It chops all the longer packets up into atm frames and reassembles them. ATM was suppose to be the future of networking but pretty much went nowhere. For a very long time though it was the core to all the large phone company networks.....which was your only option before internet existed.

 

[Peter4343]

The trick that the stealhead box does is it chops all the packets up so it can spread them over mulitple connections. So it sends parts of the same packet over mulitple vpn connections. It does a bunch of other stuff too that I forget. Best case would be to do it at the bit level but there is too much overhead.

Have 2 connections of different latency just makes the problem even worse. Say you had a fiber and a satelite connection. There is more than 500ms of difference so even packets of the same size would get out of order.

What is really a strange coincidence is DSL uses ATM for transport on the end segment to your house. . ATM uses 53byte frames partially so it did not delay data (ie voice telephone calls). It chops all the longer packets up into atm frames and reassembles them. ATM was suppose to be the future of networking but pretty much went nowhere. For a very long time though it was the core to all the large phone company networks.....which was your only option before internet existed.

If DSL uses 53byte frames through ATM technology, Does this mean it will still cause lag for gaming using speedify if I'm only bonding with DSL connections?

 

[bill001g]

ATM is only used on the part between the ISP and you house. It is converted back to ip packets by the first router.