Rocket League Ping Spikes and packet loss

RGK1

Im in the UK and only the amsterdam server is available to me (there is only one europe online server and fails to push 24 streams - i can only get 16) - this means i have to resort to further servers, however, on both tests i ran i manually selected these servers, but strangely also the amsterdam server which you say doesnt seem to appear, so im not sure why the PfSense test is showing more servers than the other.

Ryan

tman222

Hi @RGK1 - one thing you might try is running fewer parallel streams to see if that helps reduce some of the bufferbloat induced latency you are seeing without compromising on the speed (in particular on the upload). Even though you have Cable, you might try the DSL test option which defaults to 8 streams down and 8 streams up I believe. Otherwise, if you have an account over at DSLReports, you can also customize your test settings further once you login.

One other question I had: What cable modem (brand and model) are you using? Thanks in advance.

RGK1

Hi @tman222 ,

Its a virgin super hub 3 (Arris TG2492), i ran the test with 8 streams: pfsense - http://www.dslreports.com/speedtest/64769252 and stock - http://www.dslreports.com/speedtest/64769085 again similar but the idle again higher on the pfsense box. However, whats more interesting (or maybe expected), but when i dont use hi-res bufferbloat the results show that the bufferbloat is ideal however it doesnt represent what the graph shows during the test and the results of the non hi-res bufferbloat test are completely on another level (in a good way). HERE

Ryan

tman222

Hi @RGK1 - I'm glad I asked about your modem. Unless I'm mistaking, your cable modem uses the Intel Puma 6 chipset, which is well-known to have latency related issues:

https://www.speedguide.net/routers/arris-touchstone-tg2492-24x8-eurodocsis-voip-gateway-3940

https://www.theregister.com/2016/12/03/intel_puma_chipset_firmware_fix/
https://approvedmodemlist.com/intel-puma-6-modem-list-chipset-defects/

I would first try to see if there's a firmware update available that fixes these issues. If not, I would recommend purchasing or renting another modem that's also supported by Virgin but doesn't have the Intel Puma 6 chipset. That should help clear up your latency issues.

RGK1

hi @tman222 ,

they have released a pacth that 'claims' to fix bufferbloat so take it with a grain of salt however, virgin media strictly wont allow you to use your own modem with there services even with mac spoofing, they do have the newer hub 4 with puma 7 (facepalm) available that is supposed to available for those with issues with speed, so it may be possible for an upgrade but the verdict is that there is no real improvement. This was the reason behind pfsense for me, putting the hub into modem mode and then using ubiquiti aps, but im trialling the pfsense part of this first.

tman222

@RGK1 - I'm not sure that setting up pfSense with traffic shaping (e.g. fq-codel) will be able to provide any relief since sounds like that the latency spikes with the Puma 6 chipset can also occur when the connection is just lightly used.

RGK1

@tman222 ,

Okay. Well and that aside im now experiencing issues with pfsense where its not applying my limter settings for the download and now is reset to deefaults and cant be changed. So i restarted and then im now left with this an no internet access, on the separate subnet of course.

Limiters:
00001: 13.000 Mbit/s 0 ms burst 0
q131073 50 sl. 0 flows (1 buckets) sched 65537 weight 0 lmax 0 pri 0 droptail
sched 65537 type FIFO flags 0x0 4000 buckets 0 active

Schedulers:
00001: 13.000 Mbit/s 0 ms burst 0
q65537 50 sl. 0 flows (1 buckets) sched 1 weight 0 lmax 0 pri 0 droptail
sched 1 type FQ_CODEL flags 0x0 0 buckets 0 active
FQ_CODEL target 5ms interval 100ms quantum 1 limit 650 flows 1024 NoECN

Are there any other alternatives or anything anybody reccommends running instead of pfsense for running in a VM also i find OPNSense doesnt have the features and customizability that pfsense does - i.e not the same customisable options for schedulers and aqms - no tail drop or cake - not that i need it but its good to try different things. Not to mention when i change subnet on my pc (my vm is on a separate machiene) the whole pfsense box crashes which is completely over my head as to why it will do that.

Many Thanks

Ryan

bobbenheim

@RGK1 tried IPFire, Opnsense and fq-cake in openwrt but return to PFsense everytime as i get the best performance with fq-codel in it, when testing with flent. Probably could tweak it somewhere in some of the other distributions but tweaking just isn't as user friendly in them in my opinion.
Might just have gotten used to PFsense over the years :)
For testing your modem if it is affected by the PUMA bug you can use pingplotter and set it to ping e.g. google.com in intervals of 0.05-0.02 seconds, always nice with a graph to look at and it should be quite obvious if you are affected.

RGK1

@bobbenheim

How much deviation in the ping are we talking about, because after the initial spike, the ping seems okay, however personally i have to say i dont have much experience with ping plotter so couldnt say.

Ryan

Edit: Okay scrap that after a rerun for some reason it got completely worse.

But apparently putting the router into modem mode helps this issue as i mentioned before allowing pfsense to have the external ip address and handle all the routing etc - making the virgin hub a bridge between the ethernet and docsis. However, when i try to set this up with both pfsense and opnsense i can ping from both lan and wan interfaces - however i cannot ping or connect to the internet with any clients on the lan interface with rules on the firewall allowing traffic both in and out from any source. I'd really like to try this and get this to work to shift the work to the pfsense box but it just wont budge. Also when changing back to router mode (re-enabling wifi and dhcp etc) the pfsense and opnsense both work fine once they gain the correct ip, and no other changes made.

Ryan

bobbenheim

@RGK1 tman222 posted https://www.theregister.com/2016/12/03/intel_puma_chipset_firmware_fix/ where there is a comparison in ping plotter of a working modem and an Intel PUMA modem you can compare your own results to.
I would keep the comparison to the endpoint as intermittent hops isn't prioritizing ICMP traffic, and there can be large deviations in response time, and is only really useful if the endpoint has the same deviations which your plot doesn't.
So if i understood you correctly you can ping hosts on the internet and on LAN from Pfsense but you can not connect to the internet from anything connected to LAN when your modem is in bridge mode?
If that is the case have you made any changes to Pfsense?

RGK1

@bobbenheim

Pretty much correct, ive tried but when the router is in modem mode the pfsense box becomes the router gaining the correct external ip address on the wan ip (directing traffic and assigns the routes to external and internal ips) even after resetting to defaults it can get the external ip and can ping external networks (1.1.1.1) but my client a pc directly attatched can ping the local gateway (lan ip) 192.168.1.1 and the wan ip address (beggining with 86) however it cannot ping the external gateway nor any other networks. And when resetting to defaults and having the router in router mode the system works fine first time. Also when directly attatching only my pc to the rouuter in modem mode i can gain the correct external ip address and browse the internet just fine - i also did a dslreports test too - http://www.dslreports.com/speedtest/64771697

I guess from the comparison to the ping plotter graph from the article linked the patch that they applied may have actually done something?

Hope this helps

tman222

Hi @RGK1 - after doing a little bit more research, it looks like Virgin did address the Puma 6 issue, although some people are still reporting problems:

https://www.reddit.com/r/VirginMedia/comments/emz4w2/did_virgin_media_ever_fix_the_faulty_puma_latency/

Do you mind sharing with us the specs of your pfSense box as well, including brand and type of network interfaces you are using?

Thanks again.

RGK1

Hi @tman222

I was looking at that post this morning in fact - I have a amd a8 7600 4 core cpu 3.1ghz 16gb of ram with 1 intel gb nic and 1 realtek gigabit nic with all hardware offloading disabled

bobbenheim

Have you done any manual IP settings, on the host that can't connect to the internet, when using Pfsense with your Super Hub in bridge mode?
Also, when your trying to ping outside your LAN from the host are you pinging an FQDN address or an IP address?

RGK1

@bobbenheim

Yes - is manually set the ip and turned of dhcp on the server so the other clients are affected. The lan ip on the server is 192.168.1.1 and the client directly attached to the lan port was 192.168.1.2 subnet 24 and gateway 192.168.1.1 and dns 1.1.1.1. For either the pc and pfsense as the 'host' i used 1.1.1.1 to ping to and to make sure dns look ups were working on the pfsense box i pinged google.co.uk - only on pfsense box because again no connectivity on pc.

Many Thanks Again :)

Ryan

tman222

Hi @RGK1 - One thing to doublecheck is to make sure you are using the right default gateway under System > Routing > Gateways. Hope this helps.

RGK1

@tman222

I did check this and its basically as it should be (external ip but drop last 2 digits for a 1) :).

Thanks

tman222

@RGK1 - how did you setup fq-codel? Did you use floating rules on your WAN interface or limiters on an outbound traffic rule on your LAN interface(s)? Do you mind showing a screenshot of the relevant firewall rules to us? Perhaps we can see if something misconfigured from there. Thanks again.

RGK1

@tman222

Just as a note, but when i reset to defaults it works for having the router in router mode straight out of the box after automatic assigning of interfaces however if i again reset to defaults and put the router to modem mode i can get the external ip but cant get a connection.

I will try and get a screeshot o the firewalls but i think this may be irrelevant as everything should be stock (in theory).

RGK1

@tman222

Hi so i was able to get it working - after a couple days break and restart it seemed to work, but my problem is im getting quite varied results this is with modem mode enabled. With the same settings i get varying results. Im currently getting and A-B from C originally however even with fq codel im experiencing ping spikes in rocket league again with over 900ms and packet loss. These are my settings.

Top is download at 140mbits on a 200mbit connection but mainly stays around 220 and upload 12mbit on 20mbit normally 22 mbit

Is there anything that i should change or am missing here causing these sudden ping spikes?

Edit: according to the in-game stats im mainly loosing packets on the outbound roughly 3-9 but sometime this goes upto 71 the servers are 60hz tickrate.

Edit2:may have found my problem set the limit too low and quantum too high possibly explaining the packet loss as it won't be prioritising the smaller packets :D
I'll test this tommorow.

Ryan