Project Reality Forums

The problem:During the first five minutes of game play after joining a server, my latency is stable around 40-50. Then, it starts going up to 500-1000, causing stuttering and tanks flying off into the great blue sky. Hilarious, but only the first few times. After that, the spikes appear more often, ultimately disconnecting me from the server. Since these spikes are related to increasing latency, I've ruled out any graphical issues.

Background: I'm on a ASUS G75VW laptop, connected to a Thompson TG789vn though a wireless connection. Broadband tests indicate that I have a download speed of ~12mb/s and a upload of ~2mb/s. Other online games works fine without any latency fluctuations. I usually play on PRTA and NwA, both fairly close to home.

What I've tried so far:-Opened all BF2-ports indicated on the Port Forward page.
-Lowered Mumble sound quality.
-Disabled firewalls and antivirus (I'm using Avast).
-Updated internet adapter drivers (Qualcomm Atheros AR9485WB-EG).
-Installed the Leatrix Latency Fix.

As I can recall, I've been playing a couple of rounds without this issue earlier this months. Alas, I can't remember when I first started encounter the problem.

Comcast maybe? See if this relates: https://www.realitymod.com/forum/f27-pr ... nutes.html

Read through that thread and the problem is identical, even to the point where Ev_Dunedain got it to temporarily work after forwarding ports, which I also experienced. Also set a static IP.

I'm in Sweden and my internet provider is TeliaSonera. It would amaze me if Comcast managed to fuck up in such a grandiose way that it even spilled over the Atlantic, but I guess you really can't rule out the possibility.

Presumably the latency increase only affects the PRBF2 process, not the system networking itself?

Not sure how to check that, to be honest.

You could run the following from a command prompt before starting PR: ping -t google.se >C:\ping.txt

Use Control-C to end the task when you come out of PR (after encountering the latency problem), then check the resulting "ping.txt" file on the C: drive root. I suspect the ping will look fine there to be honest, but it's worth checking to be sure, in order to narrow the problem down.

Another thing that could be worth trying is to disable the PunkBuster system services (PnkBstrA, PnkBstrB - first stop them, then set to "Disabled"), then run PR, join a server, see what happens. I tried this here and was able to connect into an empty online server without problem and stay there for a good 15 minutes without being booted (for not having PB running), so hopefully it'll work the same for you there. If it turns out you don't get kicked or encounter the latency/loss of connection problem, then it could point to the problem being PB related. If you still encounter the latency problem with PB offline, then it should at least rule that out as the cause.

Did the ping test and made a chart out of it. The "|||||"-part indicates when the lag starts to appear in-game.

Will try the PunkBuster fix later.

OK, that's interesting, given that it appears to affect the wider system networking there.

If you're able to, try to plug the laptop direct into the router over Ethernet cable, as this should help to eliminate the wireless aspect as being at fault (disable the wireless adapter). Also, if you happen to have another machine there on the network, run the same ping test on that whilst you play PR on the laptop. This should help to identify whether the fault lies within the laptop itself, or router/wider network.

Tested with a cable, had a stable latency around 37 for more than twenty minutes. Tried with a different network receiver, which improved the overall performance to a more than playable state. Still got a few spikes, but only every 10 minutes or so, so it's no big deal.

Was hoping for something more exotic, to be honest, but that's that.

Thanks a lot for the feedback, Boris!