Netcode

This is purely speculation on your part though. Also, isn't the entire point of peer to peer that very little data is in fact reported back to the servers? I know people used to be able to hack themselves indestructible ships and whatnot purely because there was no server authentication of the values their client was reporting (though I don't know how much of that is still possible nowadays). This doesn't explain why you brought up playable area either.

It's worth pointing out that the issues with the "netcode" go beyond "I had lag and/or couldn't connect". There was an issue with wings for a while where certain events could cause the game to hardlock for everyone but the wing leader. It's still possible to get that old bug where having two wing members at a station causes one of them to see the low detail version of the station interior and prevents rotational correction from working. I've had a bug occur a few times in multicrew where the helm sees the NPCs in a signal source disappear in the middle of combat (accompanied by the high wake sound effect) but the gunner and fighter can still see them and kill them (though they'll see each other shooting at different locations while striking the same ship). It's not uncommon for multicrew sessions to desynch entirely and have the crew remain in supercruise while the helm drops to normal space or vice-versa but without a disconnection occuring. It's hard to see how any of these issues would be fixed by spending far too much money on a router, to be honest.

Guess that depends on your definition of "too much money" - and I did not say it was the be-all-end-all cure to every problem, only that it can be one of many problems.

And it's not as much speculation as you might think. Run Wireshark some time and read your packet captures. A fair bit of data does go back and forth between us and them. Sure, the individual size of the data itself is fairly small - 10,000 people each carry a penny and throw it into a fountain. There's still $1,000 in the fountain, as compared to 1000 people carrying a dime and throwing it into the same fountain.

Volume of traffic vs size of traffic, it's all traffic generated. The more traffic, the more impact it has. That's the basic concept behind things like ddos attacks.

And yes, I'm aware of all these issues, and have seen more than a few of them. Perhaps my favorite is trying to dock at a station, having the landing pad vanish, the interior turn grey, and being pushed against the left side of the station when around 20m above my pad. Exit the station, try again, it's fine. Do the same thing a million times not in a wing, never have a problem.

But is that a netcode issue? Or an issue with wings? Or a little of both?

Playable Area - 10,000 players, in 10,000 different locations, all in the same mode. Update tick rolls around, all that data has to go back to the server. Let's say they're all parked at different stations. Now they all want to see what missions they have available. 10,000 mission updates go out, each to a different location in the galaxy. Combine that with, and feel free to prove me wrong, updates to the position of planets in 10,000 systems at any given time, as planets do orbit stars, moons orbit planets, and Other Things happen throughout the galaxy. 400 billion systems. Even if each update moves only 1 byte of data, that's in the neighborhood of 400 GB of data, uncompressed.

Working with the Silent Falling Tree Theory, we can assume that all of this data is not updated until someone enters one of these systems. That will reduce the overhead. 20,000 system updating at the same time with 1 byte of data puts us in the neighborhood of 20 kb of overhead. More than reasonable. Of course, there are more than just one server as well - there is an entire pool of servers. So let's assume again.. one server per mode would give us three servers (Open, PG and Solo), we'll call this a cluster. One cluster per geographical region (Euro, US, Asia) that's 3 clusters, 9 servers. These would be the "Matchmaking servers" from which we regularly get disconnected from - not the database servers, which will send and receive data to and from these clusters. There's likely far more than just 3 servers per cluster - there's likely a load balancer in there as well - which may e server-based or appliance based (still basically a micro-server). And there's likely not one singular database server either - there's likely a cluster of database servers - which have to update each other, as well as all the regional clusters.

See how this gets pretty complex, pretty fast? Now we've got all these servers running, updating each other, so the server you connect to can provide you with game content to interact with - and that connection is dependent on a number of things:

1. The connection between your ISP and this server hive.
2. Your connection between you and your ISP.
3. The middleware and infrastructure of the server hive.
4. The net code of the game itself.

And when it comes to complexity - netcode is usually some of the simplest - you want it that way for the sake of performance. Your middleware, load balancing and let's not forget backups (including backup servers) are vastly more complex in comparison. And I'm trying to keep this all pretty simple.

Some other things that can impact network performance:
1. Your OS/OS Environment - Some are inherently better than others.
2. Drivers
3. Firmware
4. Cabling or gods help us, WiFi
I'll break here a minute. WiFi is terrible for gaming. It's innately slower than wired connections, and subject to all manner of interference from cordless phones to microwave ovens to the type of paint on your walls (High gloss enamel will bounce a wireless signal like mirror bounces light), RF interference from anything from a HAM radio at your neighbor's house to sunspot activity. Yeah, sunspot activity can mess with WiFi.
Most of the time, it's not that big of a deal, but it certainly can be.
And wired connections are not immune to issues as well - cross-talk from other cables in bundles, damaged shielding inside a shielded TP cable, the conduit around it (running CAT-5 though your duct work isn't that great an idea), EM interference, corrosion, oxidation - all can impact wired connections.

Ugh...

The bottom line is, since none of us are actually at the data center, nor have access to any of the actual code, hardware configurations, routing tables, and the lot, to simply say "Oh, there's a problem with the netcode" is almost as helpful as saying "the ocean is wet".

Is the netcode perfect? I doubt it.
Is the environment at the data center perfect? Probably not.
Is the internet itself perfect? Definitely not.
Is everybody's home network perfect? Not a chance.

And odds are none of it ever will be either. Things are going to happen. Frontier will do what they can to shore things up on their side. All we can do is our best to shore them up on ours.
The rest.. well, that falls on ISP's, Communications providers and even governments to maintain all the rest of the infrastructure.

And I haven't even really addressed infrastructure issues, as that's a whole other matter, for a whole other thread, in very different forums.
 
P2P has its pros and cons. However, you are dealing with a multitude of PC models (Dell, HP, Gateway, Alienware, custom builds etc.) with different (and sometimes dated) components, wrong or corrupt drivers, dll issues, heat profiles, power supplies, BIOS, RAM, overclocking, CPU, GPU, NIC, chipsets, OS issues ad nauseaum. On top of that you have people of varying degrees of IT knowledge ranging from server farm engineers down to Apple Geniuses, with malware and virus infections that divert their network traffic to servers in Romania, Albania and Nigeria. Then others with BitTorrent running, streaming video, seventy-five browser tabs open on Chrome.

In my career, I've had lots of folks complain their PC's were at fault.

- A woman, running out of disk space, deleted her Windows directory to get more room because "I didn't need it, Windows was already installed."
- Another person complained their home PC was unreliable and I found the side of her computer case covered in fridge magnets that were borking her hard drive.
- Visiting sales guy had a XXX banner ad pop up in the middle of a presentation to our Board of Directors.
- Another jammed a USB cable into a network jack on his work laptop then complained it wasn't printing.
- Guy at work complained his Home drive didn't have any space left. We found 1.2 TB of pirated movies and music on the file server.
- Friend bought a brand new Dell PC for his children and three days later, when it wouldn't boot, I found 2,200+ pieces of malware that his kids had downloaded and installed.
- An Apple SuperDrive was turned in to us and we found a DVD liberally covered in strawberry jam inside.

After those, and many more, experiences I take peoples complaints that their hardware isn't working with a grain of salt. PC's are remarkably resilient. It's the fat fingered "Hey, hold my beer and watch this" drivers who do dumb things and never, EVER take responsibility for their actions.

When I play Elite, I typically have good experiences. During CG's and other crowded systems, I seldom have issues. I had one drop last night while jumping between systems. That's the first issue I've had in weeks. My ISP sucks and I live on an island in the North Atlantic. So when I hear people complain about lag and ping near major urban centers, I really have to question whether it's their hardware or some other factor.
 
The bottom line is, since none of us are actually at the data center, nor have access to any of the actual code, hardware configurations, routing tables, and the lot, to simply say "Oh, there's a problem with the netcode" is almost as helpful as saying "the ocean is wet".
Or about as helpful as telling people they shouldn't expect their videogames to work on mere consumer electronics.

It seems to me that most of the stuff you rambled on about in that post would only apply to a server/client model anyway. Sure, stuff like delays in hyperspace or leaving supercruise or whatever else that depends on communicating with the backend would be affected by all of that but the actual positions of celestial bodies and the position/status of individual ships probably isn't being sent back and forth to the server in real time because that's not what peer to peer means.
 
Or about as helpful as telling people they shouldn't expect their videogames to work on mere consumer electronics.

It seems to me that most of the stuff you rambled on about in that post would only apply to a server/client model anyway. Sure, stuff like delays in hyperspace or leaving supercruise or whatever else that depends on communicating with the backend would be affected by all of that but the actual positions of celestial bodies and the position/status of individual ships probably isn't being sent back and forth to the server in real time because that's not what peer to peer means.

Well then.. let's try this - we'll write the servers completely out of this, ok?

Peer (you)
to
Peer (Someone else)

Where is the problem?
It's You, it To, Or it's Someone Else.

Could it be you? It could. Your OS or Environment might be less that optimal. Maybe you're running AVG, Norton, and McAfee all at the same time, behind a ZoneAlarm Firewall and Windows Firewall.
Maybe your NIC is a Broadcom NIC with the drivers Windows installed that were written in 1998 and are only 147 versions behind what's on their website, but because they won't pay Microsoft $2500 per driver to bestow their blessings upon them, they don't get included in Windows Updates.
Are you running Netfix, Spotify, downloading the latest Episode of whatever, all at the same time?
Do you have SpyHunter installed? You can't get rid of it fast enough.
Could it be your router? When was the last time you checked your router's firmware version? Does it have AMP or IDAP (Advanced Malware Protection or Intrusion Detection and Prevention)? Have you whitelisted Elite?
Are you running IPv6? Is it fully supported by your ISP?
Does your ISP cap your bandwidth usage?
Are you... using WiFi? Why?
Have you purged your ARP tables lately? Ever?
Are all your cables in good condition? No damaged shielding or insulation?
Have you run a ping test?
Is it storming outside?
Are there other users on your network generating traffic? This includes smart phones, smart TV's, DVR's, game consoles, security devices on the same VLAN, etc.

If this is not the problem.. then what about that other Peer? All the same questions apply.

If the other Peer is also not the issue, that just leaves To.

To:
Right outside your environment, from where the cable leaves your dwelling all the way to where it enters the dwelling of the other Peer.
The list of possible issues range from a loose connection causing signal bleed, to routing issues caused by someone digging without calling first, to police and government agencies installing monitoring equipment, to the weather, and yes, finally even the little bit of code that tells your game how to talk to their game.

And then there is this - Why is it that I can play in a wing, night after night, with the same group of people, and none of us have any issues, while someone else has nothing but issues all night long IF the problem is in the netcode? I mean, we all have the same netcode, so we SHOULD ALL have the same problem.

Finally, I didn't tell anyone "they shouldn't expect their videogames to work on mere consumer electronics", you said that. I said Consumer Grade electronics are not the same caliber as Business or Professional Grade electronics, and you will get BETTER performance, over all, from higher grade equipment.

By the way: https://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod...82&cm_re=cisco_routers-_-33-150-182-_-Product Price: $157
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod...cm_re=nighthawk_router-_-33-122-818-_-Product Price: $198

The Consumer version is more expensive than the Business Class device, which is better rated for high volume traffic.
 
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And as an example, from speedtest.net

pings from my place to Dallas < 15 ms
a host in NYC avg ping 45 ms
a host in Hawaii, 95 ms
a host in London, 114 ms

not because of NETCODE, because of the TO...
 
From a high level perspective, if the root cause were at the server, wouldn't it effect everyone more or less equally?

How many or what percentage of people consistently having zero problems would indicate that root cause could not reasonably lie with the servers?

Even if 100% of players over a large geographic area experience the same crappy performace issue, if other players are connecting to the same servers are having no problems, ever, it seems more likely that the problem is a little further upstream from the server.

I have only played in Open since 2.3 (well, except for a few hours of mining) for four to five hours a day and haven't seen any performance issues. Obviously there are other variables that would not rule out a server side problem, the biggested being location, time of day and platform (only affecting PC servers/connections?)

I'm not offering my experience as proof of anything. Just asking the question for those that are more knowledgable than me.
 
From a high level perspective, if the root cause were at the server, wouldn't it effect everyone more or less equally?

There is no server for the actual game entities in ED that would control and distribute anything between the players. You want to get an understanding of how P2P networking works.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer-to-peer

The only data that comes from a dedicated server in ED is pure data like the missions, system info and such.
 
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And then there is this - Why is it that I can play in a wing, night after night, with the same group of people, and none of us have any issues
Huh, that's odd. I could have sworn you're the same guy who said earlier:

I'm aware of all these issues, and have seen more than a few of them.
But I must have imagined it.

Finally, I didn't tell anyone "they shouldn't expect their videogames to work on mere consumer electronics"
You're not an idiot. Please don't act like you suddenly don't understand how basic language works because we both know a) what paraphrasing is and b) what you meant when you said "not everybody wants to shell out the money for a real router".
 
Anybody using the term "netcode" shows they are talking from a pure gamer perspective and is clueless about the professional aspects of actual software development.
/close thread

Well, I wouldn't go quite that far. However it is a little like going to a trained mechanic and saying "There's a problem with the engine"
 
- A woman, running out of disk space, deleted her Windows directory to get more room because "I didn't need it, Windows was already installed."
- Another person complained their home PC was unreliable and I found the side of her computer case covered in fridge magnets that were borking her hard drive.
- Visiting sales guy had a XXX banner ad pop up in the middle of a presentation to our Board of Directors.
- Another jammed a USB cable into a network jack on his work laptop then complained it wasn't printing.
- Guy at work complained his Home drive didn't have any space left. We found 1.2 TB of pirated movies and music on the file server.
- Friend bought a brand new Dell PC for his children and three days later, when it wouldn't boot, I found 2,200+ pieces of malware that his kids had downloaded and installed.
- An Apple SuperDrive was turned in to us and we found a DVD liberally covered in strawberry jam inside. .

Yeah, I've seen similar to all those as well - except for the DVD and strawberry jam. Given how many of the other "foreign objects" I've removed from media drives were clearly the handiwork of someones kids, not having encountered strawberry jam is actually quite surprising.
 
I love these "FD, you're not doing your job properly" threads.

Elite Dangerous as advertised on Steam: Single-player / Multi-player / MMO / Co-op

kind of a lie, it's not Massively Multiplayer - that would be a server with thousands (ie massive amounts) of players all sharing the same instance, Single player is generally meant to indicate offline play and co-op is where players get together to do missions and share in the rewards. ED can barely get 12 players together before the online component starts falling apart.

I know <expletive deleted> all about netcode or programming or creating online games, but I've played enough MMORPGs (inc. USA and Korean based servers) to know EDs online component is the worst I've ever come across, in fact, I'm kind'a surprised they brought Multicrew out with the state of their netplay.

(But fdev, thanks for the instant transition to glide, still loving it [up])
 
Anybody using the term "netcode" shows they are talking from a pure gamer perspective and is clueless about the professional aspects of actual software development.
/close thread

Not in the slightest. Part of being a good developer is being able to talk to the general public. If the general public use terms like "netcode" there is no reason not to use it in a reply to them. Jargon should be avoided at all costs when speaking to the public.

- - - Updated - - -

Elite Dangerous as advertised on Steam: Single-player / Multi-player / MMO / Co-op

kind of a lie, it's not Massively Multiplayer - that would be a server with thousands (ie massive amounts) of players all sharing the same instance, Single player is generally meant to indicate offline play and co-op is where players get together to do missions and share in the rewards. ED can barely get 12 players together before the online component starts falling apart.

I know <expletive deleted> all about netcode or programming or creating online games, but I've played enough MMORPGs (inc. USA and Korean based servers) to know EDs online component is the worst I've ever come across, in fact, I'm kind'a surprised they brought Multicrew out with the state of their netplay.

(But fdev, thanks for the instant transition to glide, still loving it [up])

not thoasands, but hundreds. And ED is capable of that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfa6ktnuEdo its an MMO.
 
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Lets all bury our heads in the sand and pretend the netcode for this game is great shall we?

OP a resident apologist will be with you soon to explain how this is all your fault as you haven't reprogrammed your router, like we all did in the 90s.

And how would you do that? I wasn't even in kindergarten in the 90s, so we ALL didn't reprogram a router in the 90s.
 
2. Add a setting in the options menu that sets a maximum ping and packet loss limit so the MM servers doesn't instance us with such players that cause a whole instance to stutter

Sounds good - but would inevitably result in people complaining that they can't get into an instance with their friends. Not everyone knows their (or their friends') latency

3. Keep instances laoded for a minute even though no player is in it. Especially in highly populated systems like CGs or HQs this could be useful to allow for smooth transitions and get rid of the perma-supercruise tunne lof doom.

Not sure I understand this. Aren't the instances peer-to-peer? If no player is in an instance, there's no one to host.

4. Allow for permanent loaded instances where players are located for a really long time (24 hours a day) for example at stations.

Not sure that's practical for every location; but I'd love to see the investigate the possibility of hosting a limited number of 'mega-instances'. So if a big CG is kicking off in a system, FD (or a cloud partner) could host one of more instances with a higher player limit. It might be impractical to have global coverage - a fast server in the US might not help much in Asia and vice versa - but it could help improve the experience.
 
If there were a few lines of code that could be changed to fix all the game's networking issues, don't you think that ONE PERSON among the four hundred or so programmers, game developers and CG artists with direct access to the game code would have figured it out, instead of relying on someone in a forum to point it out to them?
 
And how would you do that? I wasn't even in kindergarten in the 90s, so we ALL didn't reprogram a router in the 90s.

I was in kindergarten in the 60's, and I had to reprogram routers in the 90's... :)

- - - Updated - - -

If there were a few lines of code that could be changed to fix all the game's networking issues, don't you think that ONE PERSON among the four hundred or so programmers, game developers and CG artists with direct access to the game code would have figured it out, instead of relying on someone in a forum to point it out to them?

Yes. That one person is the boss who has to pay for things. :)
 
Huh, that's odd. I could have sworn you're the same guy who said earlier:


But I must have imagined it.


You're not an idiot. Please don't act like you suddenly don't understand how basic language works because we both know a) what paraphrasing is and b) what you meant when you said "not everybody wants to shell out the money for a real router".

So now you stoop to name-calling? I kind of figured out about eight posts back I wasting my time. But because I'm quite a nice person, I thought I'd give the benefit of the doubt, even more than once. But the kid gloves are off now.

Have I experienced issues? Yes.
All the time? No.
Half the time? No.
A quarter of the time? No.
An eighth? A sixteenth? A two-hundred fifty-sixth? Not that I recall.

In the past nine months I can count on one hand the number of times I have experienced issues and still have a finger or two left.

Just after, 24-96 hours after, the release of 2.2, I had some issues - stuck in supercruise, Wingmates vanishing, Connection to Matchmaking server lost (oh, that's right, the servers don't matter, this is P2P).
Then nothing, not a single thing, until a few weeks before the launch of 2.3 - running in CG's, I got hit by the Black Screen issue about three or four times. Only happened when in a Wing.
After 2.3, I knew better than to try messing with too much - so I spent two days buying, outfitting and Engineering a Dolphin. On the third day, I gave a go at Multi-pew. Got disconnected a few times. Completed a few sessions as well with no issues.

Been playing night after night ever since. Played in Wings, played out of wings, played a little multi-pew. Haven't had any problems.

So you tell me, since you clearly know a lot more than I - I'm guessing you have at least 2 PhD's and over 50 years experience, to vastly overshadow my mere 30 years as a network administrator for 5 Fortune 50 companies. I implore you, impart us all with your divine insight.

Or just walk away and leave it be. If you can.
 
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