a /rate of 2000 will get you kicked from every PB enabled server in the land - /rate 2500 is the minimum and it won’t work for ET. I’m guessing that most ppl here know that there are two types of lag - computer lag and internet lag. Depending on just how fast your m8’s machine is this will be more or less of an issue.
There are some rally important yet simple things that your friend can do to smooth things out a bit;
a) Make sure the line isn’t split (i.e. is shared with other ppl, physically from another house - BT engineers will do this this is you don’t tell them not to).
b) Enquire with BT about wether or not you can have your line ‘upgraded’ to data quality - some areas will, some won’t.
c) Have a serious investigation into line-noise - that guy will be responsible for 80% of your lag - causes re-trains, dropped packets and re-transmissions/
d) Avoid using telephony extension cables
e) Use an ISP with low contention and latency (Jolt or another alike game ISP will do)
f) Investigate using V92 - the upload speed is better, but of course your linenoise must be minimal to take advantage of it)
g) Investigate an ISP that supports STAC compression or even MS Compression
h) I personally have found that hardware compression on modern V90 modems is still more consistant than software compression - try it but never use both or none.
f) Investigate your default MTU setting and be prepared to add a registry entry to fix your MTU length - mine is 576 I think
g) Take a look at the AT command set and consider capping your connection speed to 45.5Kb (AT&N30 for US Robotics)- it’s a trade off but as V90 upload can never be faster than 33.3Kb you’ll find that although you have a higher ping, your connection will be more consistant.
h) Two phones lines (multilink) are not twice as good as one phone line, mainly due to line noise - avoid.
i) Avoid using servers outside of the UK - the less ‘hops’ (routers) there are to negotiate, the cleaner and more consistant your connection - ASE can help you out there.
j) In ET you can cap your fps - until very recently I capped mine @ 43fps but eventually realised that it’s at the expense of accuracy - I try to use com_maxfps 60 where my connection permits.
k) key parameters are these’
cl_lagometer
cl_maxpackets
rate
snaps
cl_packetdup
com_maxfps
cl_timenudge
These are my default settings which get tweated depending on the server and connection;
cg_lagometer 1
cl_maxpackets 22
rate 5200
com_maxfps 45
snaps 20
cl_timenudge -10
cl_packetdup 0
Those settings will change for every server you play on and evern on the same server on a daily basis. You’re much more vunerable to internet spikes than a digital rival. It’s best to have either scripts bound to keys that will auto-reset your connectivity vars to suit your circumstances, or you can manually tweak in-game. Be aware, ET servers have a nasty habit of screwing up when you change setting mid-game so if you find that all of a sudden your connection goes to shit try /reconnect in the console.
I’d advise your friend to run ET in a window and get used to joining a server and whilst still on the server breaking out into windows, dropping the connection and re-connecting - I’m not sure exactly why (maybe its something todo with LCR) but generally you’ll get a better connection when you re-connect.
Finally, get used to the idea that in certain places on certain maps you will just lag - avoid those places and get used to being a little more sneaky than if you were playing on BB - there’s no such thing as modem rambo medic in general (unless it’s 4:00am) - setup several keys with /rate variences /rate 3600, /rate 4400, rate 5200 and /rate 6000 - you can use /rate 6000 (ISDN speed) so long as you understand that it’ll choke and when it does you need to clear the choke down asap or you die - when this happens, hit your /rate 3600 bind and wait a couple of seconds for it to clear down before raising iit up again.
That’s it - can’t think of any more - hope that helps.
