Fixing Mabinogi Lag (The Right Way)

• Yogurticecream wrote on 2013-07-31 02:54

  Quote from Gensokyou;1129622:

  As far as I can see it, the downside for me is security. As shit as they might be, I trust my ISP. It's well known, very reputable and has government contracts, etc. I don't use proxies or anything like that, and while i'm no tech wizard I make sure I use at least 3-4 different antiviruses that don't conflict (NORTONNNNNNNNNNNNN)
  
  Still, anything would be better then what i've got now. As I said, it's very frustrating playing on "quit lag" for Americans and then being laughed at. :u

  
  It's really not a big problem if the VPN service is safe to use and doesn't log your data. If you aren't doing something illegal, it isn't usually a problem.
  
  Cheapest I can find is this: http://pingzapper.com/plans
  They are also part of the few with a Privacy Policy section.
  Maybe you'll want to ask them more about security risk though they claim to use SSH and SSL (encryption?)
  They don't have Mabinogi so you'll have to request for it.
• Gensokyou wrote on 2013-07-31 03:23

  Quote from Yogurticecream;1129723:

  It's really not a big problem if the VPN service is safe to use and doesn't log your data. If you aren't doing something illegal, it isn't usually a problem.

  
  
  I'm not worried about doing anything illegal since I even follow the Nexon rules. I'm just really worried about security with identity theft being so prevalent and stuff today.
  
  

  Cheapest I can find is this: http://pingzapper.com/plans
  They are also part of the few with a Privacy Policy section.
  Maybe you'll want to ask them more about security risk though they claim to use SSH and SSL (encryption?)
  They don't have Mabinogi so you'll have to request for it.

  
  
  They have Maplestory and Vindictus (Had to resist making puns for both), but not Mabi?
  
  Wow. How lame. It seems like too much effort to be worth it, to be honest.
• Yogurticecream wrote on 2013-07-31 03:31

  Quote from Gensokyou;1129732:

  They have Maplestory and Vindictus (Had to resist making puns for both), but not Mabi?
  
  Wow. How lame. It seems like too much effort to be worth it, to be honest.

  
  I think that's because for years Mabinogi NA blocks out players from abroad, but now with the IP ban lifts, there will be increasing need for players from EU and Australia to use some service like this.
  
  If someone can manage to convince them to support Mabinogi and if someone can confirm that it works well for such a problem, that someone can take advantage of their referral promotion (stated here). Pioneer's advantage, I'd say.
  
  (I don't play NA Mabinogi so...
  I'll help you guys ask anyway about it but it'll be best if everyone can write in to ask. It helps if they see a number of people asking about it.)
• December wrote on 2013-07-31 07:00
  I'll definitely look into this when I have some free time. $2.5/month is a tiny price to pay and much more preferable than having to spend cash for reforges and stuff to suppliment damage to make up for connection.
  
  Does the VPN provider need to have a service specifically for the game in question for it to work? Eitherway, I'll request for Mabinogi to be added. c:
  
  Edit: request sent!
  
  I think someone asked if there was anyway to know how many hops there are to the Nexon servers? Well there was, you could just use the stand routetracing command which would tell you how many hops it takes or just tells you that the hops exceed the maximum (30). Mine used to say 30+, but Nexon changed their IP or blocked pinging or something, essentially doesn't work anymore :x.
• Gensokyou wrote on 2013-07-31 07:10

  Quote from Rydian;1129512:

  VPN = Virtual Private Network, it's encrypted (and other people don't have access to it).
  
  In addition, yes your data goes through the company's servers when you're using it, but the same thing applies to proxy servers, they can see everything you're doing through them too. Not to mention your ISP can almost always see what you're doing if they have a legal reason to, etc.
  
  As far as checking the number of hops, use the traceroute (tracert x.x.x.x) command in the command line, using the IP of the server/channel you want to test. Here's an example of what it looks like.
  
  [code]C:\Users\Rydian>tracert 8.8.8.8
  
  Tracing route to google-public-dns-a.google.com [8.8.8.8]
  over a maximum of 30 hops:
  
  1 2 ms 2 ms 2 ms 192.168.1.1
  2 10 ms 10 ms 8 ms 10.2.168.1
  3 9 ms 9 ms 9 ms 68.10.10.41
  4 11 ms 8 ms 10 ms 172.22.60.79
  5 11 ms 15 ms 11 ms 172.22.60.208
  6 9 ms 12 ms 10 ms 68.10.8.181
  7 17 ms 16 ms 18 ms 68.1.4.139
  8 40 ms 16 ms 18 ms ip70-167-150-18.at.at.cox.net [70.167.150.18]
  9 18 ms 21 ms 18 ms 216.239.46.250
  10 17 ms 16 ms 21 ms 72.14.236.146
  11 25 ms 24 ms 25 ms 66.249.95.231
  12 24 ms 27 ms 25 ms 72.14.234.65
  13 * * * Request timed out.
  14 26 ms 25 ms 24 ms google-public-dns-a.google.com [8.8.8.8]
  
  Trace complete.[/code]
  
  So you can see 14 hops between Google's primary DNS server and my machine, with one that's unresponsive to pinging (there's a number of good reasons some servers do not respond to ping).
  
  Though doing a traceroute to any of the game servers seems hard nowadays, since most of them give no info immediately after hitting NexonNXGames.demarc.cogentco.com [38.104.76.142], at least in my situation.
  
  Anyways I didn't add VPN here 'cause I'm in the US and have no experience with it, never gone on KR, etc. but a good point is that the VPN you're using should be geographically close to the servers you want to play on. You can use a GeoIP service like http://www.maxmind.com/ to get a rough estimation of the geographical location of various servers based on their allocated IP's nearest router.

  
  
  Okay, so I did this for the NexonNXGames.demarc.cogentco.com [38.104.76.142]?
  
  By line 15 I was 301 ms - 303 ms - 303 ms and something about cojentco.com.
  
  Then it timed out a bunch. Like, till 30.
  
  So going by what you had in your example, that means I either screwed something up or have over 30 hops to the server. O_O
  
  I'm going to do a speedtest in a little bit and then try a few other things and see how that goes.
• Yogurticecream wrote on 2013-07-31 08:37

  Quote from December;1129777:

  Does the VPN provider need to have a service specifically for the game in question for it to work? Eitherway, I'll request for Mabinogi to be added. c:

  
  The one (Pingzapper) I suggested seems to need a service specifically for the game.
  
  I also found another VPN service - FixMyLag which some people say works well for WOW and other games, but it is more costly (though not as costly as spamming reforges). From what they say, I think it doesn't have a specific game list. They also have an explanation of why lag happens: http://www.fixmylag.com/reduce-lag (If it was me, I'd probably just try out and request for a refund if it doesn't work.)
• Gensokyou wrote on 2013-07-31 08:45

  Quote from Yogurticecream;1129802:

  The one (Pingzapper) I suggested seems to need a service specifically for the game.
  
  I also found another VPN service - FixMyLag which some people say works well for WOW and other games, but it is more costly (though not as costly as spamming reforges). From what they say, I think it doesn't have a specific game list. They also have an explanation of why lag happens: http://www.fixmylag.com/reduce-lag (If it was me, I'd probably just try out and request for a refund if it doesn't work.)

  
  
  Nothing wrong with that D<<<<< XD
  
  Here's a speedtest I did earlier:
  
  

  [Image: http://www.speedtest.net/result/2871260404.png]

  
  
  I forgot my computer i'm using currently wasn't denagled, so I did that and did some line fixes and got a new modem courtesy of my ISP, and it's improved...ever so slightly. On average. Sometimes. xD
  
  I'm still kinda suspect about that VPN thing though.
• Yogurticecream wrote on 2013-07-31 08:50

  Quote from Gensokyou;1129805:

  Nothing wrong with that D<<<<< XD
  
  Here's a speedtest I did earlier:
  
  

  [Image: http://www.speedtest.net/result/2871260404.png]

  
  
  I forgot my computer i'm using currently wasn't denagled, so I did that and did some line fixes and got a new modem courtesy of my ISP, and it's improved...ever so slightly. On average. Sometimes. xD
  
  I'm still kinda suspect about that VPN thing though.

  
  That download speed is very problematic for games? I am not so certain...
  
  Never mind I'll upload one with a speedtest to a China server in a while....
  
  Edit:
  
  

  [Image: http://www.speedtest.net/result/2871381233.png]

  
  
  Also a US one...
  
  

  [Image: http://www.speedtest.net/result/2871384909.png]

  
  
  I think it's your ISP, but I would still have a bad ping to US just like you.
• Gensokyou wrote on 2013-07-31 09:01

  Quote from Yogurticecream;1129808:

  That download speed is very problematic for games? I am not so certain...
  
  Never mind I'll upload one with a speedtest to a China server in a while....
  
  Edit:
  
  

  [Image: http://www.speedtest.net/result/2871381233.png]

  
  
  Also a US one...
  
  

  [Image: http://www.speedtest.net/result/2871384909.png]

  
  
  I think it's your ISP, but I would still have a bad ping to US just like you.

  
  
  That download speed ;A;
  
  I really don't know how download speed influences gameplay. I also don't know how accurate the speedtest.net ping tests are since pingtesting and that tracert thing gives me much higher pings.
• Snowie Stormflower wrote on 2013-07-31 09:25
  I've been using WTFast for a year and a half now, and there are certainly no security issues with VPNs.
  (Need I add to it that I haven't used an Anti-Virus for 4 years now?)
  
  WTFast is 5,99$ a month but they have a 30-day free trial so you can try it out for a while first.
  (Or you can just play 30 days wih less lag for free, huehue)
• Yogurticecream wrote on 2013-07-31 09:32

  Quote from Gensokyou;1129813:

  That download speed ;A;
  
  I really don't know how download speed influences gameplay. I also don't know how accurate the speedtest.net ping tests are since pingtesting and that tracert thing gives me much higher pings.

  
  From what I am reading at the moment, it doesn't affect as much as ping does...
  
  What puzzles me is that I still get a high ping reading (200-500ms) on the Chinese game server without that VPN even when this speedtest.net ping tests say my ping to China should be 80ms. So I think the multiple hops are causing the problem. It's not something that can be solved by the ISP...
  
  

  Quote from Snowie Stormflower;1129820:

  I've been using WTFast for a year and a half now, and there are certainly no security issues with VPNs.
  (Need I add to it that I haven't used an Anti-Virus for 4 years now?)
  
  WTFast is 5,99$ a month but they have a 30-day free trial so you can try it out for a while first.
  (Or you can just play 30 days wih less lag for free, huehue)

  
  Seems that this does support Mabinogi, it's on their games list.
  How's your lag in Mabinogi like with and without WTFast?
  The trial would be helpful for people to test if it works.
• Snowie Stormflower wrote on 2013-07-31 09:41

  Quote from Yogurticecream;1129821:

  From what I am reading at the moment, it doesn't affect as much as ping does...
  
  What puzzles me is that I still get a high ping reading (200-500ms) on the Chinese game server without that VPN even when this speedtest.net ping tests say my ping to China should be 80ms. So I think the multiple hops are causing the problem. It's not something that can be solved by the ISP...
  
  
  Seems that this does support Mabinogi, it's on their games list.
  How's your lag in Mabinogi like with and without WTFast?
  The trial would be helpful for people to test if it works.

  
  
  I feel like I'm on par with someone who lives with the east coast, with this.
  
  These are old videos and actually a bad comparison because I made them during the time our servers were in a terrible state, and took numerous attempts to make without server spikes being recorded in.
  But it gives you a slight idea.
  
  Without WTFast:
  [video=youtube;6p6eMTsbXdU]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6p6eMTsbXdU[/video]
  
  With WTFast:
  [video=youtube;8xEn-6c6aas]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xEn-6c6aas[/video]
  (The horse was summoned at the end of a lag spike)
  
  I'll try making new ones later today, because it's a lot better compared to back then.
  Mabinogi was nearly unplayable.
• December wrote on 2013-07-31 10:55

  Quote from Yogurticecream;1129821:

  From what I am reading at the moment, it doesn't affect as much as ping does...
  
  What puzzles me is that I still get a high ping reading (200-500ms) on the Chinese game server without that VPN even when this speedtest.net ping tests say my ping to China should be 80ms. So I think the multiple hops are causing the problem. It's not something that can be solved by the ISP...

  
  
  Ping is the delay of a packet. Depending on where it's recieved there may be more or less hops. i.e Pinging chinese game server via VPN vs Pinging the speedtest server, quite different.
  
  Download speed shouldn't be important unless it is low to the point it restricts data too and from server, which I imagine isn't that much.
  
  Would definitely appreciate a new video, Snowie. East coast you say? Not West? XD
• Snowie Stormflower wrote on 2013-07-31 11:06

  Quote from December;1129834:

  Would definitely appreciate a new video, Snowie. East coast you say? Not West? XD

  
  
  West Coast would give me like 20~30 ms Ping, that sounds nearly impossible from this distance.
  
  Mine feels like 60~100 atm, dependng on the time of day.
• Gensokyou wrote on 2013-07-31 11:52

  Quote from Snowie Stormflower;1129820:

  I've been using WTFast for a year and a half now, and there are certainly no security issues with VPNs.
  (Need I add to it that I haven't used an Anti-Virus for 4 years now?)
  
  WTFast is 5,99$ a month but they have a 30-day free trial so you can try it out for a while first.
  (Or you can just play 30 days wih less lag for free, huehue)

  
  
  das jus st00pid
  
  y u no use antivirus
  
  Perhaps i'm UNNECESSARILY PARANOID, but anything that offers a free trial sounds like a scam of some sort to me.
  
  

  Quote from Yogurticecream:

  What puzzles me is that I still get a high ping reading (200-500ms) on the Chinese game server without that VPN even when this speedtest.net ping tests say my ping to China should be 80ms. So I think the multiple hops are causing the problem. It's not something that can be solved by the ISP...

  
  
  Can you please clarify what you mean?
  
  

  Quote from Snowie:

  I'll try making new ones later today, because it's a lot better compared to back then.
  Mabinogi was nearly unplayable.

  
  
  Request for new vids seconded please