EPTStarlink vs fiber optics for better latency
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QuadroX
386 Posts
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WombaT
Northern Ireland26416 Posts
In that you can absolutely take a slower route from wherever you are to Korea to another, but there’s a hard limit of the physical distance that will always lead to pretty chunky latency over large distances. IIRC Starlink’s main selling point is in a high-speed solution for remote areas or regions with poor internet infrastructure, and from what I’ve heard it does it well. But if full fibre is available where you are it’s going to be the better option, especially for latency. Somebody more knowledgeable than moi by all means correct me if I’ve got any of that wrong! Which isn’t all that unlikely | ||
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iPlaY.NettleS
Australia4395 Posts
Starlink does not have the consistent ping that fibre does, you will get lag spikes. | ||
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tankgirl
Canada445 Posts
2 .play over ethernet not wifi 3. portforward UDP 6112 and check the setting in starcraft ingame options->network->prefer port 6112  Port Forwarding4. try using a vpn like Lagofast or wtfast (each has free trial) and connect to its South Korea server. https://www.lagofast.com/ https://www.wtfast.com/ https://www.vyprvpn.com/ | ||
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MeSaber
Sweden1235 Posts
Starlink tests seems to range between 20-100ms which for an RTS game would be ok. | ||
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MeSaber
Sweden1235 Posts
On April 15 2024 18:48 tankgirl wrote: 1. fibre > starlink 2 .play over ethernet not wifi 3. portforward UDP 6112 and check the setting in starcraft ingame options->network->prefer port 6112 Port Forwarding4. try using a vpn like Lagofast or wtfast (each has free trial) and connect to its South Korea server. https://www.lagofast.com/ https://www.wtfast.com/ https://www.vyprvpn.com/ You dont need portforwarding anymore. Fibre isnt necessarily better if you live far away. Starlink routing is very straight forward while fibre is a spiders web. I myself from Sweden with Fibre got 300-350ms to Seoul. | ||
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tec27
United States3702 Posts
Blizzard's netcode is not particularly resilient to packet loss, as it only resends data once it receives packets from another player and can see that that data has not been received. This is something we've changed/improved in ShieldBattery, but you won't get those benefits playing over bnet. In any case, you always want to reduce packet loss as much as possible for the best experience (which is why other people have also suggested not playing over WiFi, for example). | ||
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jinjin5000
United States1485 Posts
On April 16 2024 09:00 tec27 wrote: If you have the option of both, the better choice is fiber, no question. The latency of a single packet isn't really the problem here, it's packet loss that will screw you over. Starlink theoretically can improve upon latency (although last I heard, the things that would allow for these theoretical improvements are not even in use) but it will be worse for packet loss. Blizzard's netcode is not particularly resilient to packet loss, as it only resends data once it receives packets from another player and can see that that data has not been received. This is something we've changed/improved in ShieldBattery, but you won't get those benefits playing over bnet. In any case, you always want to reduce packet loss as much as possible for the best experience (which is why other people have also suggested not playing over WiFi, for example). I'm curious why battle.net is so consistently bad.... | ||
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Smorrie
Netherlands2926 Posts
On April 16 2024 09:00 tec27 wrote: If you have the option of both, the better choice is fiber, no question. The latency of a single packet isn't really the problem here, it's packet loss that will screw you over. Starlink theoretically can improve upon latency (although last I heard, the things that would allow for these theoretical improvements are not even in use) but it will be worse for packet loss. Blizzard's netcode is not particularly resilient to packet loss, as it only resends data once it receives packets from another player and can see that that data has not been received. This is something we've changed/improved in ShieldBattery, but you won't get those benefits playing over bnet. In any case, you always want to reduce packet loss as much as possible for the best experience (which is why other people have also suggested not playing over WiFi, for example). Is port forwarding still beneficial? I remember reading somewhere that whatever improvements were put in place weren't even working properly and it is still recommended to forward ports. I've never had any issues but forwarded ports regardless just in case. Also, when I host replays it consistently takes at least one of my friends exceptionally long to join my lobby. Could this be related with him not having his ports forwarded properly? | ||
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castleeMg
Canada786 Posts
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Bonyth
Poland595 Posts
![[image loading]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/89/Submarine_cable_map_umap.png/640px-Submarine_cable_map_umap.png) Starlink is supposed to connect you with South Korea via straight line, connecting from satelite to satelite, but i don't think they have this technology yet, so the signal ends up going from your home --> satelite --> ground station --> the same route from picture above Unverified info. | ||
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tec27
United States3702 Posts
On April 16 2024 10:48 Smorrie wrote: Is port forwarding still beneficial? I remember reading somewhere that whatever improvements were put in place weren't even working properly and it is still recommended to forward ports. I've never had any issues but forwarded ports regardless just in case. Also, when I host replays it consistently takes at least one of my friends exceptionally long to join my lobby. Could this be related with him not having his ports forwarded properly? The answer is really "it depends". Modern bnet uses a combination of STUN (to identify what your various IP addresses might be and possible ports, as well as what type of NAT you might be behind) and TURN (to relay packets between users who can't connect otherwise). STUN will often allow holepunching to work for a lot of home routers, but with NATs that are more strict it will fail (especially if the 2 players that are trying to connect both have more strict NATs). In that case TURN should still allow them to connect, but I have no idea where Blizzard hosts their servers for this, how reliable they are, how well the location choice works, etc. So, to be safe from that ever occurring, forwarding ports (or enabling UPNP on your router to make this happen automatically) is still a reasonable thing to do. Unfortunately, people that most need to forward ports are also generally the least able to do it (either because they lack the knowledge or they are on some network with infrastructure they do not control). Generally the game will send packets to both the player's IP and the TURN server until it verifies it can reach the player directly, so I doubt it should really add super noticeable time to joining a lobby. More likely it's the thing Blizzard changed in a recent patch randomly to scan people's maps/replays for duplicates when joining lobbies, and that person has a large map+replay collection that takes a while to scan. | ||
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tankgirl
Canada445 Posts
On April 16 2024 06:11 MeSaber wrote: You dont need portforwarding anymore. Fibre isnt necessarily better if you live far away. Starlink routing is very straight forward while fibre is a spiders web. I myself from Sweden with Fibre got 300-350ms to Seoul. ok maybe it not work for you sorry :/ my games against koreans went from TR14 low~TR20high to consistent TR16low w/ occasional TR20low (edit- canada) | ||
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sophisticated
60 Posts
On April 16 2024 14:47 Bonyth wrote: fiber connects you with South Korea through these lines Starlink is supposed to connect you with South Korea via straight line, connecting from satelite to satelite Just to make it clear: the signal doesn't go through earth, lol. It has to go round the planet too. If someone wants to connect from sweden there will be multiple hops among the satellites including "ceremony" for each just like when using cables (may be more hops too, cause at least you can curve the cable around the earth's surface) | ||
2Pacalypse-
Croatia9530 Posts
On April 16 2024 14:47 Bonyth wrote: fiber connects you with South Korea through these lines (and has to go through some sort of procedure on every dot?): Starlink is supposed to connect you with South Korea via straight line, connecting from satelite to satelite, but i don't think they have this technology yet, so the signal ends up going from your home --> satelite --> ground station --> the same route from picture above Unverified info. That map only shows the undersea internet cables. There are a lot of cables over land as well :d But yeah, the path that packets take to go from one place to another on internet is pretty complex and not consistent. You can sort of get a sense of the direction the packet takes with tracert command. For example, I just ran the command for a random Korean IP address, and the packet went from Croatia -> Germany -> Kansas (America) -> Seoul. It's wild. Starlink could theoritcally improve on latency of the packets (making them take shorter paths) with their satellite-to-satellite lasers, but it remains to be seen how this actually works in practice (see this video for an animation of how this could work). They do have this technology already; IIRC they added satellite-to-satellite lasers to their v1.5 and v2 mini satellites, which might even be the majority of their currently active satellites at this point. However, there's still a lot of variables which might impact the latency. For example, the signal still needs to go from/to the space/ground station which makes the path longer by ~1000km which land-based cables don't have. Although, that might be offset by the speed of light being higher in the vacuum of space than in fiber glass. In the end, it remains to be seen how it works actually in practice by doing some real-life tests with people who have Starlink. For now I would do what tec said and go with the fiber, since it's much more important to have a stable connection than potentially slightly lower latency on Battle.net. | ||
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RJBTV
194 Posts
In that case starlink would be wayfaster. | ||
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WombaT
Northern Ireland26416 Posts
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MeSaber
Sweden1235 Posts
On April 16 2024 15:14 tankgirl wrote: ok maybe it not work for you sorry :/ my games against koreans went from TR14 low~TR20high to consistent TR16low w/ occasional TR20low (edit- canada) Dynamic Turn Rate is very sensitive from what i can tell so you should ping a Korean server instead of trusting these numbers. | ||
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RJBTVYOUTUBE
Netherlands1165 Posts
On April 16 2024 20:55 MeSaber wrote: Dynamic Turn Rate is very sensitive from what i can tell so you should ping a Korean server instead of trusting these numbers. Dynamic turnrate is often one off where it has to be. Its incorrectly calibrated. | ||
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Smorrie
Netherlands2926 Posts
On April 16 2024 15:01 tec27 wrote: The answer is really "it depends". Modern bnet uses a combination of STUN (to identify what your various IP addresses might be and possible ports, as well as what type of NAT you might be behind) and TURN (to relay packets between users who can't connect otherwise). STUN will often allow holepunching to work for a lot of home routers, but with NATs that are more strict it will fail (especially if the 2 players that are trying to connect both have more strict NATs). In that case TURN should still allow them to connect, but I have no idea where Blizzard hosts their servers for this, how reliable they are, how well the location choice works, etc. So, to be safe from that ever occurring, forwarding ports (or enabling UPNP on your router to make this happen automatically) is still a reasonable thing to do. Unfortunately, people that most need to forward ports are also generally the least able to do it (either because they lack the knowledge or they are on some network with infrastructure they do not control). Generally the game will send packets to both the player's IP and the TURN server until it verifies it can reach the player directly, so I doubt it should really add super noticeable time to joining a lobby. More likely it's the thing Blizzard changed in a recent patch randomly to scan people's maps/replays for duplicates when joining lobbies, and that person has a large map+replay collection that takes a while to scan. Right, that makes sense. Thanks for the insights. I never heard about the folder scanning before - I'll ask my friend to archive his replay folder and test it out. I'll report back if it actually made a difference. | ||
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