Throw Off Your BANDWIDTH SHACKLES! .. Help Test Multi-Player

[alexcraig]

Greetings one and all!

Our Multi-Player (MP) test base is growing. However, we still need a few more good men & women!

As we have brought additional players into the MP test loop, we continue to glean additional valuable information; however, one factor that we already knew was salient, BANDWIDTH, continues to rank as perhaps the biggest factor with respsect to sucessful MP missions.

Thus far, it would appear that a client player needs something in the range of 1000 KB/S down and 325 KB/S up. That's not to say cirucits with less won't run. However, we haven't found any with less that are STABLE, thus far. Stability is a primary key factor. Without it, you don't have a prayer of getting in the air on a MP mission.

Serendipitously, a few current players have benefited as a function of our testing.

Bottom line, we've identified 3 testers with unstable circuits, one of which has already complained to AT&T. They checked into it; agreed that there was a problem; fixed it and gave him a $300.00 credit for his trouble.

Another chap, has already had his provider concur that he has a problem and they are looking into it.

We just discovered a circuit problem with the 3rd gent today. The jury is still out as to if it is a one-off thing or a persistent circuit issue for him. Film at 1100 hours on that one.

OK .... here's the reason for the hype ..... my wife is off to FL again next week to wrap up some personal business. Starting Tuesday afternoon, I'm going to have plenty of time to host missions.

I'll be posting my availability on this thread.

Come give it a shot.

If you are able to get in the air, you'll a stable Beta of MP (albeit not ready for Prime Time as it will still have plenty of issues which we need to fix), but it's working well enough for us whereby we're having a ball testing. Bottom line, you'll be in a postion (if you pay attention and have the bandwidth) to host missions for some of your friends while we continue to iron out the rest of the bugs!

Hope to see you in the air in BoB II!

[alexcraig]

A Multi-Player Test/Fun session is scheduled starting at 1900 hours Eastern Daylight Time this evening (3/31/09). I'll need to take a break from around 2100 to 2200 hours or so; however, at that point there may be others on-line who can host while I'm away.

Anyone, who hasn't flown with us before can contact me at alexcraig5555 on Skype

[alexcraig]

We're flying tonight!

Sessions starting at 1700 hours on & off through to midnight.

As always, if you haven't flown MP before give me a shout on Skype at alexcraig5555.

[Buddye]

Hi Alex, sorry I have been out of pocket yesterday and today.

Real life has struck. I am in the middle of getting my house fixed from Hurricane Ike damage.

Interesting problem being fixed on my roof.

I do not seem to be able to focus when the roof is getting ripped off and replaced.

I will try to check in tonight.

[alexcraig]

Hi Alex, sorry I have been out of pocket yesterday and today.

Real life has struck. I am in the middle of getting my house fixed from Hurricane Ike damage.

Interesting problem being fixed on my roof.

I do not seem to be able to focus when the roof is getting ripped off and replaced.

I will try to check in tonight.

Afternoon Buddye,

'Twas a nasty storm indeed to do that level of damage to your roof.

Here's a smidge of news to cheer you up.

It would appear that your AI 'Taking Off' fix also fixed the human undercarriage view problem. I.E. Other human planes now appear with wheels down on the ground. Unfortunately, they also show their wheels down while flying after the gear has been brought up.

Hosting tonight from 1900 hours on/off with breaks to let out the dogs, etc.

[Uriah]

Who, who, who let the dogs out?

Come on all you slackers, If a new guy can help out with online play so can you old hands.

[rhinomonkey]

Hi There,

I would like to help test the MP! when is the next session and how do i get involved!

[alexcraig]

Hi There,

I would like to help test the MP! when is the next session and how do i get involved!

Please see my response at http://www.a2asimulations.com/forum/vie ... a&start=60

[Baza]

Come on guys, get involved - I have and I'm having more fun flying than I've had for ages. The difference in flying with real people is immense - they're all great guys and in addition to the enjoyment and challenge of flying cooperatively, there's also a lot of laughter.

It took me a while to be able to join in because of latency problems with my ADSL where I was causing the sim to freeze for everyone. However, I contacted BT and they've fixed the problem. Apparently, as far as I can gather, all ISPs use a system of automatic error correction called interleaving, which is turned 'on' by default. Although this prevents loss of packets of data and sudden disconnections from the internet, it also increase the time taken to send data, which can, as in my case, stop you playing online games. If you request it, interleaving can be switched off. How this will affect your overall internet experience will depend on a number of factors such as distance from your local exchange and the quality of the line/equipment between it and you; and if you experience too many problems you can always get it switched back on. I've had it switched off for about a week now and apart from the huge benefit of being able to join in MP, haven't experienced any negative effects.

I would encourage anyone/everyone to give multiplayer a try; Buddye is working his socks off debugging and improving MP but he needs feedback on how many people the system will support. With the current numbers using it, it's difficult to coordinate any more than about four people at any one time to fly together. I'm sure that having a viable MP option will expand the BoB user base, which can only benefit all of us - so come on, step up to the plate (as they say across the pond) and help further improve this wonderful time machine we call BoB!

[alexcraig]

Come on guys, get involved - I have and I'm having more fun flying than I've had for ages. The difference in flying with real people is immense - they're all great guys and in addition to the enjoyment and challenge of flying cooperatively, there's also a lot of laughter.

It took me a while to be able to join in because of latency problems with my ADSL where I was causing the sim to freeze for everyone. However, I contacted BT and they've fixed the problem. Apparently, as far as I can gather, all ISPs use a system of automatic error correction called interleaving, which is turned 'on' by default. Although this prevents loss of packets of data and sudden disconnections from the internet, it also increase the time taken to send data, which can, as in my case, stop you playing online games. If you request it, interleaving can be switched off. How this will affect your overall internet experience will depend on a number of factors such as distance from your local exchange and the quality of the line/equipment between it and you; and if you experience too many problems you can always get it switched back on. I've had it switched off for about a week now and apart from the huge benefit of being able to join in MP, haven't experienced any negative effects.

I would encourage anyone/everyone to give multiplayer a try; Buddye is working his socks off debugging and improving MP but he needs feedback on how many people the system will support. With the current numbers using it, it's difficult to coordinate any more than about four people at any one time to fly together. I'm sure that having a viable MP option will expand the BoB user base, which can only benefit all of us - so come on, step up to the plate (as they say across the pond) and help further improve this wonderful time machine we call BoB!

Good day Barry,

Thank you for the post.

I was almost as delighted as you to see you able to fly with us! Frankly, I was a bit surprised while pleased that the problem was recitified in relatively short order.

You're a gentleman whose enthusiasm for the sim is only matched by your super attitude.

I look foward to spending additional hours with you in MP.

Aside .... I've been spending a fair amount of my stand alone time in the sim practicing in a 109. My aim is to get good enough whereby from time to time, I'll drop off the coop team and go over to the other side just to spice things up a bit.

EDIT: After some additional thought, I'm wondering if your ISP wasn't "shining you on" (pardon the American idiom, I don't know of a UK equivalent) a bit. If "all" ISPs used the technology to which you referred, I think we'd have run into that issue previously. Also, even the older dial-up modems have error correcting technology built into them. Thus, one would think additional error correcting in mid stream would be redundant.

I suspect, the real bottom line involves bandwidth conservation. I'd be interested in hearing from any TCP/IP networking gurus on this subject.

[Baza]

First of all, thank you for the kind words Alex - without people like you taking a lead with projects within BoB, it wouldn't be what it is.

Found this on a site AV Forums http://www.avforums.com/forums/xbox-liv ... -live.html

Originally Posted by Ian Wilmore, Nildram
The intention of this post is to explain what interleaving is and what it is used for.

Interleaving is a process/function that is applied between the equipment in the exchange (DSLAM) and the router in the customer premises (CPE)

Interleaving is applied at layer one of the OSI model http://www.webopedia.com/quick_ref/OSI_Layers.asp
This is the level were data bits, ones and zeros, are sent over the physical line. It is these bits that ultimately make up any information passing over the line.

There are 2 scenarios, something referred to as fast or (Non-Interleaved) and Interleaved.
Terms to note: Tx = Transmit; Rx = Receive

Fast:
The data bits that are sent at layer one are all sent in a consecutive order e.g.
Tx & Rx Bit order (Non-Interleaved): 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16
If there are errors on the line the errors will usually occur in a consecutive order e.g.
TX & Rx Bit order (Non-Interleaved): 1 2 3 x x x 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16
How DSL works is that is can recover from such errors automatically as long as no more that one consecutive data bit is lost at a time.

This comes on to Interleaving:
When interleaving is applied to the line the data bits are not sent in consecutive order, they are buffered and then reordered to look something like this.
TX & Rx Bit order (Interleaved): 1 8 15 2 9 16 3 10 17 4 11 18 5 12 19 6
So if the same errors as above were to occur on the data stream they would appear as follows.
TX & Rx Bit order (Interleaved): 1 8 15 2 9 16 3 10 17 x 11 18 x 12 19 x
Now because only one consecutive data bit was lost at a time the system could recover without any affect on the line.

The concerns that some of you have raised are that there will be an increase in Lag on the line should interleaving be applied. This is true because the process of buffering the data bits and reordering them can add anything between 5ms and 20ms onto the time. This is also only in one direction, data travel in 2 directions, Tx and Rx. So this will mean that it could realistically add 10ms to 40ms on the round trip time.

It is also important to note that the time is not random it depends on the make of the DSLAM, some manufacturers kit can do this process in a shorter time than others. BT Wholesale does not have one supplier of equipment so we can not say what the effect will be on each line.

Having interleaving on will increase the line stability, there will be less likely hood of dropped connections or slow speeds, but it does increase your response times which gamers may not want.

Other posts seem to imply that other ISPs also use interleaving; when I Googled interleaving the other day, I also found references to Orange and others. Maybe it's only a UK thing?

Roll on fibre optics!

[alexcraig]

....
Having interleaving on will increase the line stability, there will be less likely hood of dropped connections or slow speeds, but it does increase your response times which gamers may not want.[/i]

Other posts seem to imply that other ISPs also use interleaving; when I Googled interleaving the other day, I also found references to Orange and others. Maybe it's only a UK thing?

Roll on fibre optics!

Afteroon Baza,

Thanks much for taking the time to do a bit of research to provide the tutorial.

It is another bit of info we can add to our bag of tricks to try and get others running MP who may be experiencing a similar issue.

[alexcraig]

FYI, we'll be flying tonight at 1900 hours EDT.

We need some humans brave enough to jockey 109's to serve as prey! Of course, more RAF pilots are always welcome.

I may climb into a 109 myself for a few missions.

Stickman .... perhaps you'll loan me one of your custom painted yellow nosed rascals to fly!?

Slowly but surely, the level of interest is increasing!

[inferno493]

I had some good times playing last night with alex and Barry (regardless of my frightful inability to make my aircraft leave the ground). I'm running a fairly modest machine on a residential circuit and didn't have any problems in flight other than the normal multiplayer teething issues (I did not try hosting). Here are my specs so you can compare: Athlon 64 2.4 o/c to 2.68 with 2gb of ddr2 400 o/c to 433. Video is an Nvidia 8600gt w/512mb on board (now that I think about it I don't think I'm currently overclocking the card so I can probably squeeze a bit more out of that as well). I'm running fairly modest settings with 2xani filtering and low ground object density although I do have the new trees enabled also on low density (52,1 i think). I also have multiskin enabled. I would certainly love to get something with a bit more spirit but things are still enjoyable as they currently stand.

Cheers,

Dante

[alexcraig]

I had some good times playing last night with alex and larry (regardless of my frightful inability to make my aircraft leave the ground). I'm running a fairly modest machine on a residential circuit and didn't have any problems in flight other than the normal multiplayer teething issues (I did not try hosting). Here are my specs so you can compare: Athlon 64 2.4 o/c to 2.68 with 2gb of ddr2 400 o/c to 433. Video is an Nvidia 8600gt w/512mb on board (now that I think about it I don't think I'm currently overclocking the card so I can probably squeeze a bit more out of that as well). I'm running fairly modest settings with 2xani filtering and low ground object density although I do have the new trees enabled also on low density (52,1 i think). I also have multiskin enabled. I would certainly love to get something with a bit more spirit but things are still enjoyable as they currently stand.

Cheers,

Dante

Thanks much for the feedback/info on your specs Dante.

It is good to know that players who aren't running monster level PC's can join in a MP session.

FYI, I've got a couple of other items to wrap up. However, I should be back at my desk between 1500 - 1600 hours EDT this afternoon. If possible, monitor Skype &/or TeamSpeak & I'll give you a shout if I see you on-line. Of course, if anyone else would like to join in the fun, as always, all are welcome.