[Bloat] how much delay is too much delay

[Bloat] how much delay is too much delay

[Mikael Abrahamsson]

https://www.youtube.com/user/xFPxAUTh0r1ty

This channel analyses several online games and how they work networkwise. 
It seems online games typically "tick" at 30-60Hz in that the game server 
and user application communicates this often. 60Hz seems to be the "golden 
standard", and I guess resolution of 17ms is fine for when things are 
happening.

In gaming they have multiple delay components, one is "input delay" which 
relates to the time it takes from you for instance press the mouse button, 
until the game shows that it has responded by showing you result on 
screen. It seems this is typically 40-60ms, because the game needs to 
handle the input, send data to the graphics card, which needs to render 
it, and then it needs to be sent to the monitor. There are of course a lot 
more than this, but you get the idea.

I don't know what the delay is from mouse-click to when the game knows you 
clicked, and then can send out this information to the game server, but 
from what I'm guessing from reading up on the topic, this is in the "less 
than 10ms" range. So theoretically, the game can send an update to the 
game server much quicker than it can display on the local screen.

Another data point for instance for the game "Rocket League", is that the 
highest ranking players have a hard time playing effectively when the 
user-to-game server "ping" is more than approximately 100ms. I don't know 
if this is RTT, but considering they're getting around 130ms from a user 
in Texas to a server in Europe, it seems reasonable that this is RTT.

My reason for bringing this up (again) in the bloat forum, is that these 
people are exactly the kind of people who are very sensitive to problems 
that "anti-bloat" solves. If we can come up with a solution that makes it 
less likely that these people will get "ping spikes" etc, and we can 
package up something that actually solves this (preferrably something they 
can go to the store and buy outright), this would be a great way to 
"market" it. I'm quite sure they'd be interested in making videos about it 
to make more people aware of the problem.

There are multiple "gaming routers" out there, with "QoS". I have no idea 
what this "QoS" does. If anyone knows, I'd be very interested in knowing 
more.

-- 
Mikael Abrahamsson    email: swmike@swm.pp.se

Re: [Bloat] how much delay is too much delay

[Jesper Dangaard Brouer]

On Fri, 13 Jan 2017 12:02:00 +0100 (CET) Mikael Abrahamsson <swmike@swm.pp.se> wrote:

> https://www.youtube.com/user/xFPxAUTh0r1ty
> 
> This channel analyses several online games and how they work networkwise. 
> It seems online games typically "tick" at 30-60Hz in that the game server 
> and user application communicates this often. 60Hz seems to be the "golden 
> standard", and I guess resolution of 17ms is fine for when things are 
> happening.
> 
> In gaming they have multiple delay components, one is "input delay" which 
> relates to the time it takes from you for instance press the mouse button, 
> until the game shows that it has responded by showing you result on 
> screen. It seems this is typically 40-60ms, because the game needs to 
> handle the input, send data to the graphics card, which needs to render 
> it, and then it needs to be sent to the monitor. There are of course a lot 
> more than this, but you get the idea.

(watched the video)
I love the way he measures the delay by recording the screen with a
high speed camera, and then correlate mouse-button activation by a
visual red-blink (some PC-local setup/app) and counting the frames
until the movement happen in the game.


> I don't know what the delay is from mouse-click to when the game knows you 
> clicked, and then can send out this information to the game server, but 
> from what I'm guessing from reading up on the topic, this is in the "less 
> than 10ms" range. So theoretically, the game can send an update to the 
> game server much quicker than it can display on the local screen.
> 
> Another data point for instance for the game "Rocket League", is that the 
> highest ranking players have a hard time playing effectively when the 
> user-to-game server "ping" is more than approximately 100ms. I don't know 
> if this is RTT, but considering they're getting around 130ms from a user 
> in Texas to a server in Europe, it seems reasonable that this is RTT.
> 
> My reason for bringing this up (again) in the bloat forum, is that these 
> people are exactly the kind of people who are very sensitive to problems 
> that "anti-bloat" solves. If we can come up with a solution that makes it 
> less likely that these people will get "ping spikes" etc, and we can 
> package up something that actually solves this (preferrably something they 
> can go to the store and buy outright), this would be a great way to 
> "market" it. I'm quite sure they'd be interested in making videos about it 
> to make more people aware of the problem.
> 
> There are multiple "gaming routers" out there, with "QoS". I have no idea 
> what this "QoS" does. If anyone knows, I'd be very interested in knowing 
> more.


-- 
Best regards,
  Jesper Dangaard Brouer
  MSc.CS, Principal Kernel Engineer at Red Hat
  LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/brouer

Re: [Bloat] how much delay is too much delay

[Mikael Abrahamsson]

On Fri, 13 Jan 2017, Jesper Dangaard Brouer wrote:

> I love the way he measures the delay by recording the screen with a high 
> speed camera, and then correlate mouse-button activation by a visual 
> red-blink (some PC-local setup/app) and counting the frames until the 
> movement happen in the game.

He actually has an LED connected to the mouse itself, so the red blink is 
when the electrical circuit is closed by the mouse button press.

-- 
Mikael Abrahamsson    email: swmike@swm.pp.se

Re: [Bloat] how much delay is too much delay

[Noah Causin]

He mentions symptoms of bufferbloat indirectly and states his 
recommended router with QOS from here on.

https://youtu.be/m1Nfxvl8vfc?t=14m36s

It is the Netgear Nighthawk X4S.

https://www.netgear.com/home/products/networking/wifi-routers/R7800.aspx

It uses fq_codel in its QOS implementation.

I'm not sure which models of the Netgear Nighthawk have airtime 
fairness, but I think that is the reason the routers are highly 
acclaimed by users.


On 1/13/2017 6:02 AM, Mikael Abrahamsson wrote:
>
> https://www.youtube.com/user/xFPxAUTh0r1ty
>
> This channel analyses several online games and how they work 
> networkwise. It seems online games typically "tick" at 30-60Hz in that 
> the game server and user application communicates this often. 60Hz 
> seems to be the "golden standard", and I guess resolution of 17ms is 
> fine for when things are happening.
>
> In gaming they have multiple delay components, one is "input delay" 
> which relates to the time it takes from you for instance press the 
> mouse button, until the game shows that it has responded by showing 
> you result on screen. It seems this is typically 40-60ms, because the 
> game needs to handle the input, send data to the graphics card, which 
> needs to render it, and then it needs to be sent to the monitor. There 
> are of course a lot more than this, but you get the idea.
>
> I don't know what the delay is from mouse-click to when the game knows 
> you clicked, and then can send out this information to the game 
> server, but from what I'm guessing from reading up on the topic, this 
> is in the "less than 10ms" range. So theoretically, the game can send 
> an update to the game server much quicker than it can display on the 
> local screen.
>
> Another data point for instance for the game "Rocket League", is that 
> the highest ranking players have a hard time playing effectively when 
> the user-to-game server "ping" is more than approximately 100ms. I 
> don't know if this is RTT, but considering they're getting around 
> 130ms from a user in Texas to a server in Europe, it seems reasonable 
> that this is RTT.
>
> My reason for bringing this up (again) in the bloat forum, is that 
> these people are exactly the kind of people who are very sensitive to 
> problems that "anti-bloat" solves. If we can come up with a solution 
> that makes it less likely that these people will get "ping spikes" 
> etc, and we can package up something that actually solves this 
> (preferrably something they can go to the store and buy outright), 
> this would be a great way to "market" it. I'm quite sure they'd be 
> interested in making videos about it to make more people aware of the 
> problem.
>
> There are multiple "gaming routers" out there, with "QoS". I have no 
> idea what this "QoS" does. If anyone knows, I'd be very interested in 
> knowing more.
>