I wanted to post some info here for all to see regarding network traffic, latency, and connection quality over the Internet. Since HTC has no control over this, I want you guys to have some info so you can figure out what's going on when your connection to AH seems bad.
Here are a couple of links:
http://www.internettrafficreport.com/index.html See what's up on the Internet as a whole. This site includes packet loss, latency, and traffic graphs. Good info.
Is there a "problem" happening, such as there has been lately with Code Red worm?
http://www.incidents.org/ This one will give you some details about any big problems that might be causing Internet slowdowns and packet loss around the Internet as a whole.
Now, lets say you do have a problem, and you want to know what's up. You need to go get
http://www.pingplotter.com and install the program. Once installed, trace beta.hitechcreations.com and alt.hitechcreations.com. Let the traces run for a while and watch the results. You will see a nice little graph like so...
Look along the bottom and the black line should be nice and smooth, not jumping up and down too much. The MOST important section of this graph is the red lines and numberes... your packet loss percentages. Any packet loss will cause "warps" and such in games, and you'll notice it in Aces High. Your connection speed isn't as important as the quality, your "round trip" time is your "ping" or latency, and should be under 300 or so. What you do not want to see is those red numbers that indicate packet loss.
Now... what does this tell you? First of all, by comparing the two traces from beta and alt, you can figure out which route to the AH main arena you should be taking. Pick the one with the most stable "round trip" time and no packet loss. If the beta connect is best, use the normal menu selection for the main arena. If the alt connect is better, be sure to choose the alternate route connection to the main from the arena selection screen after you log in.
If you are having problems pingplotter tells you where the problems are SOMETIMES. In the picture above, you can see that problems start at hop #9, an alternet router. Anything AFTER that point will show problems because the packets are getting dropped at 9, so any hop after that will show problems. It's the first "hop" along the way that shows problems that you are looking for as being the "source" of your connection woes.
Notice above I said "sometimes".
The problem is that there is more and more often a situation where your data takes one path going to HTC's servers, and a different path coming back to you. This is called an asynchronous route. Now tracing tools can't really deal with an asynchronous route, it has no way to tell what's going on for the return trip. The reason I bring this up is that it is common for folks with asynchronous routes to have problems with the return trip, and that doesn't show up on the graph properly. Generally if there is an asynchronous route and a problem on the return trip, the graph just shows the last 2 hops or so to be causing you problems. Basically, with an asynchronous route, any problem on the Internet that screws up the return trip will look like a problem with the last few hops... it makes it look like HTC's links to the net are the problem. While it is possible for HTC's links to have problems, it's pretty rare, and Skuzzy (their ISP) is normally right on top of any issue. It is far far more common that an asynchronous route will combine with network problems to hide the problem from you and make it LOOK like a problem in the last few hops of your connect. Basically, the only way to REALLY find out what's going on in this case is to paste the results of your trace into a message in the Internet Connectivity forum and have Skuzzy trace the problem from his end.
Lastly, if you are having problems, don't hesitate to post the traces up in the Internet Connectivity forum. Sometimes there are things that can be done to help the situation, and Skuzzy monitors that forum and may be able to help. Myself and others can help you diagnose problems if you post traces in there, so if you have problems give us a shot to help out.
Oh, btw, to paste trace results into a BBS message, go to the edit menu of Ping Plotter and choose "Copy as text". You can then open a BBS post and press CNTRL-V to paste that text into the post itself.
If you have a place on the web to post pictures, you can also choose "copy as image" to save a picture like the one above. Then post it on the web someplace, and you can link to the graph picture using the "image" button on the UBB.
[ 08-03-2001: Message edited by: Lephturn ]
