Cannot sustain connection

[DurrD]

I simply cannot sustain connection to Aces High, get disconnected constantly.  I would say on average the best case scenario is I get a disco about once every 20-30 minutes, worst case its every 5-10 minutes or so. 

This has been the case for quite awhile now, it resulted in me quitting for awhile because it was so rage-inducing to lose perk vehicles that way (as the AI invariably crashes them before I can get logged back on).  I started playing again a few months ago, and its still bad, but I thought maybe it was because I use my cell phone as a hotspot to connect to the internet (we are in an extremely rural area that had no other real options until recently).  My parents who live nearby had tried Hughesnet, but it was awful, very slow, had data caps, and was expensive.  The cell phone option works great for everything else, as there is a 4G tower about 3 miles or so away, so we have always just paid for lots of data so that we get internet that way. 

Fast-forward to now, though, I have been hearing great things about Starlink, so I have been on the waiting list for it for what seems like forever (since like 2 years ago), but I heard you could get the RV version without waiting, and only slightly more expensive monthly, so I ordered that.  It just came in today, and it is even worse for connectivity so far.  I tried to play and got disconnected 5 or 6 times within 5 minutes.  The last few times it was near instantaneous.  I can watch YouTube and stuff and it seems about the same speed as the 4G phone hotspot.  I am seeing that there are obstructions on the Starlink app, which we live in a forest, so I'm not sure what I'm going to do about that, and maybe that is causing the instability? 

I have tried updating the wifi drivers on this computer (which I bought back around 2011 specifically to run flight sims, AH2 in particular at that time).  It says they are updated so it appears that isn't the problem.  I have gotten less and less tech savvy as I age, and Google searches aren't turning up any potential solutions that I can understand.  Anybody have any ideas about what the issue could be?  I'm still running Windows 7, could that be part of the problem?   

I looked at the ping speed thing that it shows when you log into AH, and the number was fluctuating between like 20 something to 300 something, with it seeming to average between 40-180, with nonstop fluctuations.  Likewise, I tried downloading something in Steam, and I noticed that the download speed was all over the place from around 200 kb/sec to a max of around 900 kb/sec.  I don't know if those are good numbers or bad these days.

Anybody have any suggestions for a dumb country boy from Louisiana? 

[DurrD]

Just noticed there is an option to do a speed test in the Starlink app, it came back with 13Mbps, with 4.4Mbps Upload, and 44ms Latency.

[DurrD]

As of tonight, I cant stay connected at all, disco happens within 60 seconds on either cell phone hotspot OR Starlink.  I tried asking for suggestions on Ch200, but couldn't even stay connected long enough to see what people were saying.

[Bizman]

I looked at the ping speed thing that it shows when you log into AH, and the number was fluctuating between like 20 something to 300 something, with it seeming to average between 40-180, with nonstop fluctuations.

Guess the old rule for connections is still valid: AH relies on stability, not speed. Even a 56 kbps modem connection should work better than a randomly flickering broadband. Satellite connections were known to have issues at least back when Skuzzy was still around.

My ping time shown in the arena menu is about 185 ms, usually it's very stable but just now it seemed to frequently bounce to 200 every two seconds or so. While in game you can also right click the clipboard and check your Net Status. Both lines should be relatively level, the upper one at zero in the middle and the lower one in the bottom. Some sawtooth is common but it should stay at the metal saw level.

One thing to consider when using cell phone as a hotspot is the background processes of the phone. There's many that phone home every so often which naturally can affect stability.

[Meatwad]

can you do a traceroute from your house to the htc servers and see what it says?

If there is a certain time where the internet seems really buggy, do it then too and see if there is a difference

[The Fugitive]

Ping Plotter is a free program to test and check connections. Install the program and open it. On the left side is the settings area. In the top box (address to trace) type 71.252.137.153 which is the address for the main arena.

Toward the bottom of the settings area set the "# of times to trace" to unlimited, "Trace delay" to 1 second, and "samples to include" to 50. Then hit the trace button.

What your looking for is a "green" field in the box on the right with a graph plotted out for the times in milli-seconds to each hop the ping takes to get to the address you typed in. As stated above, steady is better than fast. Im lucky I have both. My average jumps from 62-83 with an average of 77.

Some red bars are going to show as not all hops have the return DNS info turned on so you get a 100% packet loss.

If your not sure what you have, do a screen capture and post a picture here. PostImages is a free picture hosting site you can use to upload and link the picture.

With all this Im afraid the phone hotspot is going to be the biggest hurtle. Cleaning up what the phone is running in the background may help, but I dont think the connection is going to be stable enough to play. Good Luck.

[Drano]

Good point Biz. On my android phone I have about a bezillion apps (zero games) for pretty much anything I can think of from alarm clock to zoom for work. If left to their own designs a lot of them are gonna phone home with whatever data they're looking to farm about what you're up to, sucking up data. Turning that off globally is a problem as you still want to use your data when you need it. You can stop the background stuff, but it's a setting per app. So you'd have to scroll thru settings/apps. Every app you don't want running all the time, just shut off background process. A time consuming pain if you have a lot of apps like me. But once it's done, it's done. Another setting, I forget where it is but it puts apps into deep sleep mode if unused for a while. You get a notification that "the following apps haven't been used and are being put into deep sleep". Cool feature if you have apps that are handy to have but get rarely used.

The added benefit of both of these settings is it also extends your battery life as that's less clock cycles for the processor not having all that extra crap running all the time.

It's worth a shot and may help, but I can't say I've ever heard of anyone being able to play AH using cell data. It's just too inconsistent. Ditto satellite. As Biz says, you don't need high speed so much as a consistent signal. That's always been the case since the days when we were all on dial-up.

Sent from my SM-G991U using Tapatalk

[Lazerr]

I am in a very rural area and I use US Cellular for my internet.  I think Verizon offers it too.  It's basically a modem that you put in an area with good service and it produces a wifi connection that you can connect to, or you run ethernet off the modem into you PC.  Might be worth looking into as it worked well for me after exhausting all my options.

I recently added a mesh wifi system to it, to expand my wireless connection out to my shop, and it works awesome.