Nice post, br. Many thanks for keeping us up to date.

Ok, so I thought this would bring peace to many peoples minds, so I will do this for all of OZ and regulars and random forum trolls who don’t even play et… 🙂

Ill keep adding to this when we make further progress. And this post will be made stickied soon. Tried to simplify it as much as possible. Many many hours have been put in to solve this issue by the dev team and testers and we thankyou to all on the server who have the lag real bad. It has allowed us to pinpoint the issue 🙂

Note: Read from bottom to top

Timeline (First most recent)

– Current – Trying to write a program to limit the local bandwith of pnkbstrB.exe service to 10 Bytes upstream and downstream, this when used another app fixed the “LAG” and this is the solution, just would be easier a small single .exe patch that all users can download and run quickly. – Looking for people who could write an application like this.
– Also seen this affect may be increased with the lovelies of ETPUB but either way, trying to look into making a bandwith limiter patch for the PB service on all local ports from 127.0.0.1 so win 32 bit users can run the patch and it fixes the PB lag for good, lag is caused from PnkbstrB.exe.
– PB determined NOT be a server side issue.
– Heavy analysis into client side UDP/TCP bandwith of punkbuster service and the et service during these “lag spikes/stuttering” (This is the problem, during the lag PB is requesting a LARGER amount of data from ET then usual and its at this time after many tests that 32 bit users are experiencing lag).
– Found out this problem is only with windows 32 bit users, linux users and 64 bit win and mac are unaffected.
– Wishing one of the dev team members experienced the lag as it makes it hard for us to diagnose the problem….
– Trying to test whether users linked to ISP/Telcoms/Exchanges in commen are experiencing the same problems, Tracerrouts conducted and packet loss also checked (Too many alterations and with the data results too inconsistent people with the lag had no packet loss at times so it can’t be this, ruled out).
– Completely reinstalled Punkbuster on the server (Failed also)
– Completed remade the punkbuster config and even tried it in a zombie mode where nothing was running to test if it was a SPECIFIC FEATURE (didn’t work)
– Contacted the server providers – had the server changed Hard Disks, also had server dedicated 512 MB of ram.

I took the time to write this so please read it as I hope it removed 3/4 of the questions from the server. Kind Regards, BR

Windows 64 bit editions were affected BR,I have updated system (not O/S yet) & lag has significantly reduced to only being an issue at start of maps or at initial connection to server most of the time.
First post in following thread detailed most of it.

http://www.etozclan.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=96&t=3433

Is it possible to allow PB to transfer via UDP instead of TCP?? My friend has suggested this would limit repetition of same transmissions (ie accepting a best effort vs TCP’s same data,over & over continuously until it is satisfied you have recieved all data) reducing PB lag on clients.(at least,that’s how I understood it to mean).

But maybe “best effort is not acceptable for hacker checking & 100% of data confirmation is required?” Networking protocols is beyond my level of knowledge & this was explained to me,don’t know if it’s confirmed as accurate.

But thanks BR for bringing PB issue a hell of a lot closer to resolution. 🙂

Cheers

i0n

Currently I am unaware of being able to change the protocol from TCP to UDP I would assume that would only be possible with source code editing. I am not sufficient enough in networking protocols/network layers to be able to get really specific however.

Cheers, BR

as per topic title – ETA – NEVER.