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[1piemaster1]

  Just got into a game called combat arms that i used to play but now i'm not lucky enough to have the internet i used to, I use satellite for browsing and dial up for gaming ( mainly rts ).

Was wondering if anyone knew how to "lower your dial up rates". I see people say it all the time on games like counter strike but how do i actually do it? I hear it can prevent packet loss which may also be the reason SC2 games get really laggy after 2 or 3 matches. Any help is appreciated.

[Batman Wayne]

yup, google knows how to "lower your dial up rates"

[sluissa]

It may be something along the lines of forcing your modem to work at a slower speed. (If it's a 56k modem, lower down to 33.6k or even 28.8k.)

You'll be transmitting/recieving less information overall, but it is possible that what does get sent/received could concievably go through more reliably.


Windows probably has a setting somewhere, or the software that came with your modem might. Older games had settings for it, I remember, but newer games might not.

On the other hand, they could simply be telling you to find the modem equivalent of headlight fluid or drop bear repellent.

It's been probably a decade since I've dealt with dialup, so half of what I'm saying is only halfway remembered bits or possibly misremembered, and the other half is completely pulled out of my ass.

EDIT: A tiny amount of research leads me to believe that anything over 33.6k involves some amount of compression of the data being sent, which could lower accuracy of the data once it reaches the end point and slow down individual packets of data as they have to be compressed/decompressed at each end.

[eerr]

Dial-up is technically cheaper? what?

[Girlinhat]

For people living in rural areas dialup is usually the only option.  That's why satellite internet exists really, as an alternative for people who live more than 10 minutes past the edge of town.

[Rex_Nex]

Guh, I wish I could do what you do OP. I have satellite internet too, along with the complimentary 1000 ping. I'd love to have Dial Up, but I have no phone service, so... fuck, yea, I haven't been able to play any online games for about 6 months.

I'm switching to broadband relatively soon, but I'm a bit worried about the speed and stability (we are just on the edge of their service area...). It'll be nice to get back to being able to play.

For those wondering about whether to get satellite internet; don't. STICK WITH DIAL UP IF YOU CARE ABOUT LATENCY. Even dial up can manage ~200-300 latency rates, which is like 5x lower then Satellite can. Let us not ignore that Satellite internet is EXPENSIVE. Just don't get it unless you couldn't give a rats ass about doing anything delay might hinder and have the money to blow on it.

[Girlinhat]

As I understand it, satellite's big feature is that it's always active, with no delay when you're waiting on dial-up to actually dial.  But you're bouncing off far too many space objects to expect any real latency.  It can get good data flow, so youtube will like it, but it won't get good reaction time.

[Rex_Nex]

Indeed so, videos do load fine, but you have to be extremely good at monitoring how many videos you watch and what you download. Using Hughesnet, one of the big-name satellite companies, you can burn through your entire days worth of data in about an hour and a half of downloading. After you run out of data, Hughesnet cuts your internet back enough to make downloading and watching videos a nightmare. Expect 15kb/s download speeds and waiting 15-20 minutes for a video to load.

Satellite isn't made for people who ritualistically use the internet. It's just not. The caps are extremely small, the delay is terrible, the service cuts out (or gets spotty) during storms, and the prices are high. It's just not a good thing. Deal with the 20 seconds it takes to connect to a phone line, and work with getting people to communicate to you via cellphone more often then not.

[Leonon]

On the other hand, they could simply be telling you to find the modem equivalent of headlight fluid or drop bear repellent.

Are you implying drop bear repellent isn't real? What am I going to do about this then?

[Frumple]

Pee yourself and run screaming.

It won't save you, but at least your dignity will die before you do.

[Orb]

Feels the pain

Satellite internet does allow you to have multiple users on at once. When I had dial-up, my sister and I would argue almost every single day who got to use the phone line. Then my parents would get in wanting to talk on the phone, and it got interesting.

I've never actually heard of 'lower your dial-up rates'. However, IIRC, there's this gradually slow down of dial-up as you use it in one continuous session. Restarting it almost always worked. Also, NEVER start a download of any kind and then just exit out (like loading a website page or downloading a file). It will continue to download it, like a residual effect, slowing your internet down, for a long time, longer than it should have took.

Why does any of this happen? Idk. It's just experience with using it for 8 years of my life. Now I'm using Satellite and I hate it too. 

Also, I would like to mention that if you get Satellite internet, you can drop your home phone line and get cell phones. Not exactly cheaper, but it comes somewhat close to breaking even, since cell phone service is cheaper than a phone line, at least around here.

[1piemaster1]

Wow thanks for all these replies. Didn't realize there were a few people on here that also had dial up / satellite. Still haven't found out how to lower my rates though.

Only thing i have found is "Maximum port speed" which i guess could be it? It is at 115200 right now, Not sure what I should lower it to if that's even the correct thing.

[Rex_Nex]

IMHO lowering your rate is probably not going to happen.

[1piemaster1]

Ahh okay. Was worth a try.

[0x517A5D]

Basically, most of your latency comes from two places.  The first is the speed of light in optical fiber.  You can't do anything about that.  Not even Einstein could.

The other is the two modems involved in the 'last mile' of your internet connection.  And, unless you're a modem manufacturer, you probably can't do anything about that either.

The thing that causes modems to lag for gaming is:

Modern modems send their data in packets.  (When error correction or compression is turned on, or the modem speed is 28.8 or higher.)

And internet protocols are also in packets, of course.  Generally, TCP/IP over modems is sent using a format called PPP.

The killer problem is, the modem doesn't know when the PPP packet ends.  So it sits around waiting for more data to fill out its own packet.  Eventually (20 milliseconds?  50?), the modem notices that it hasn't received more data for a while, so it sends a small packet.

If modems would parse PPP packets for length, or even just send their own packet immediately when they see the PPP end-of-packet character (ASCII 126, tilde), those milliseconds wouldn't be wasted.

Unfortunately, no modems do this.

Alternately, if a modem had some out-of-band way to signal it that it should send any queued data right away, that time wouldn't be wasted.

No modems do this either.  It's a crappy situation.

If you're playing a twitch game that doesn't send all that much data, you might be able to improve things by lowering your modem speed to 14.4, and turning off error correction and compression.  But if the game needs to transfer more raw data than 14.4kbps can manage, you're sunk anyway.

(By speed, I am referring to the modem-to-modem speed, usually 56K, 33K, or 28.8K.  Not the 115200 port speed you mentioned.  Leave that alone.)


Relevant:

The Latency Rant, a.k.a. It's The Latency, Stupid.

Some ideas about IP networking, in the section Multiplayer games and modems.

A thread on the linuxsa mailing list, dated 1999, PPP and compression and 56kbps modems .

A discussion on a Linux-related forum, also dated 1999, Reducing PPP latency.

The Hype About 56K Modems, sections 8 through 10.