Ping Issues (Spiking)

[Seregon]

Hi there;

I'm completely new to these forums, having only signed up a few minutes ago in order to be able to view links in a helpful post I came across while Googling for information about reducing ping. I started playing Rakion a long time ago (when it first came out, basically) when I lived in the US. I had cable, with 5mb download and .5 mb upload, then upgraded to 10mb/1mb; lag was not an issue.

Now, however, I live in the UK, and I'm on BT DSL at 8mb/.5mb (actual speed more like 6mb/.25mb), and lag is ruining my life! My computer's specs are definitely not the problem -- I've got RAM and processor speed to spare. I forwarded my ports and called BT to have them turn "interleaving" off (which is something they offered to do, claiming it would speed things up; I'm not really sure what it does, technically). This made things a lot better, but I'm still having issues. Very often in games my ping will "spike" to 250-1000 ms to several other players, and many, many players have 600ms to me constantly.

Now, as far as some questions I anticipate being asked:

- I run Vista (ugh) with UAC turned off; don't seem to have any of the problems I've heard horror stories about with Rakion, though.
- I don't have any hacks or modifications. I just play the game. =P
- I do share an internet connection, but it's only with one other computer, and all it's doing while I play is playing music. I've also disconnected its ethernet cable and that had no noticeable effect. I don't download or run anything that (to my knowledge) takes up any bandwidth while I play. Rakion is the only thing running on my PC besides normal Windows stuff and Konfabulator (Yahoo! Widgets). I've also turned all my extraneous programs (like the widgets) off with no noticeable effect.

I hope I've been clear and specific enough, and thanks in advance for any and all replies, particularly the knowledgeable ones! ;)

[[ilikepie]]

Well, Rakion doesn't have good servers...
They are Softnex servers ARE NOT good. so go into UK servers?
People go into wrong servers, have sucky computers and such..

But I recommend getting Counter Strike, Battlefield, Call Of Duty
Of which has VERY good servers where you can play with people who are around you and with the host server near you.
If you have the money, buy counter strike, worth more than these cr*p servers

[Seregon]

Please try to stay on topic. For one thing, Rakion runs peer-to-peer. There are no servers, with the exception of the ones that run the waiting areas. I'm asking for specific help connecting to Rakion better, not for you to advertise for games that you enjoy more.

((edit))
Also, I guess I could add here to the list of questions that I should have anticipated answering:
- Yes, I do in fact play in Europe1, and try to avoid games that are really far away (Egypt, Israel, UAE, US, Canada, etc.). Distance might be a factor in the latency I'm experiencing, but it's certainly not the primary one. Firstly, I sometimes get the above described effects even with other people in the UK (even people in my same town). Also, I sometimes get the effects regardless of country (some Dutch people are 600 ms constantly, others 65 ms) and even regardless of person (individual players that I recognise sometimes lag to me and sometimes don't).