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I tried GeForce Now with a high speed internet connection (Comcast) with Counter-Strike and I found the game to be unplayable from the lag. I double checked my

I tried GeForce Now with a high speed internet connection (Comcast) with Counter-Strike and I found the game to be unplayable from the lag. I double checked my speed test and router settings, it should’ve been fine. Ultimately I believe these services represent the future of gaming, but without net neutrality or alternative ISPs it’s going to be awhile before that future is realized.

filleokus 6y ago
Did you use wifi or wired ethernet? I have a super stable 1 Gb/s fiber connection with like 5-7 ms to a close by AWS data center where I ran Parsec on a VM. I got ≈ 400 Mb/s to the VM, with < 10 ms ping over my 5 Ghz wifi. But I could still never get a stable setup. As soon as I went wired everything worked great. I think jitter is a big problem. With a wired setup I could also move to further away DC's (like 20 ms) without any issue.
- randmeerkat 6y ago
  It was wifi, my connection speed with speedtest over wifi was 100Mb down and 30Mb up. I should probably note I was also sitting next to my wifi router, so I’m not sure that a wired connection would’ve made a noticeable difference.
  - nitrogen 6y ago
    Even right next to the antenna, wires will have less latency and packet loss than wireless.
    - randmeerkat 6y ago
      Sure but it shouldn’t be noticeable. For example, I can play Counter-Strike on my computer itself just fine over wireless without the latency issues.
      - filleokus 6y ago
        From my experience, I think it is. A non-small part of multiplayer game engineering is to handle latency. With streaming you have none of that, and even if the connection just stutters for a few 10's of ms you will get a horrible playback experience. Game streaming is most comparable to live video streaming with a frighteningly small buffer (< 10 ms).
        randmeerkat 6y ago
        The GeForce Now client itself told me my connection was good enough for gaming... I’m not arguing that wired cables aren’t faster, but these streaming services aren’t advertising based off of that and their own clients aren’t requiring that level of performance either.
        filleokus 6y ago
        I've tried GeForce Now also, the client told me everything was fine over Wifi (but it wasn't). Switched to wired, and again everything worked perfectly. I'm in the same room as my router. I'm just saying that my guess is that this probably has nothing to do with your ISP or net neutrality, and more with technical limits of wireless connections. But I could of course be wrong... Try it with ethernet and see how it goes, I just have a long cable I temporarily run through the room when I wanna play :-) (And yeah, I think it's kinda fishy that they don't make it clearer if/that wired connections can make big improvements. Look around the subreddits about these services, or their support pages and you'll see that people recommend ethernet, and the vendors first recommendation when having trouble is to use wired ethernet [0], [1]) [0]: https://support.google.com/stadia/answer/9595943?hl=en&ref_topic=9495216 https://support.google.com/stadia/answer/9595943?hl=en&ref_t... [1]: https://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/4504/ https://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/4504/
        croon 6y ago
        I have Ubiquiti home networking, and sometimes play GFN or Steamlink over wifi a few feet from an AP, but just trust me that wired is always better than wifi, regardless of what a rudimentary connection test tells you. If you have the option of trying wired, just do it and see for yourself.
fishtacos 6y ago
My experience with GFN has been MUCH better than I expected. I've also come across similar sentiments as yours, which leads me to think it's a proximity to the DC issue. E.g., my RTT to my ISP's gateway, on average, fluctuates between 8-11 ms (currently ~14 according to pfSense) and a ping to google's closest response is usually about the same. I'm sure others have it better, but I am quite impressed, given a little bit of this latency would probably be eliminated by not having a virtualized router as is the case with my setup. Twitchy MP shooters and twitchy platformers are the 2 subgenres that aren't suited for this arrangement. Most everything else is perfectly fine (under the aforementioned ideal conditions).

filleokus 6y ago

Did you use wifi or wired ethernet? I have a super stable 1 Gb/s fiber connection with like 5-7 ms to a close by AWS data center where I ran Parsec on a VM. I got ≈ 400 Mb/s to the VM, with < 10 ms ping over my 5 Ghz wifi. But I could still never get a stable setup. As soon as I went wired everything worked great. I think jitter is a big problem. With a wired setup I could also move to further away DC's (like 20 ms) without any issue.

randmeerkat 6y ago
It was wifi, my connection speed with speedtest over wifi was 100Mb down and 30Mb up. I should probably note I was also sitting next to my wifi router, so I’m not sure that a wired connection would’ve made a noticeable difference.
- nitrogen 6y ago
  Even right next to the antenna, wires will have less latency and packet loss than wireless.
  - randmeerkat 6y ago
    Sure but it shouldn’t be noticeable. For example, I can play Counter-Strike on my computer itself just fine over wireless without the latency issues.
    - filleokus 6y ago
      From my experience, I think it is. A non-small part of multiplayer game engineering is to handle latency. With streaming you have none of that, and even if the connection just stutters for a few 10's of ms you will get a horrible playback experience. Game streaming is most comparable to live video streaming with a frighteningly small buffer (< 10 ms).
      - randmeerkat 6y ago
        The GeForce Now client itself told me my connection was good enough for gaming... I’m not arguing that wired cables aren’t faster, but these streaming services aren’t advertising based off of that and their own clients aren’t requiring that level of performance either.
        filleokus 6y ago
        I've tried GeForce Now also, the client told me everything was fine over Wifi (but it wasn't). Switched to wired, and again everything worked perfectly. I'm in the same room as my router. I'm just saying that my guess is that this probably has nothing to do with your ISP or net neutrality, and more with technical limits of wireless connections. But I could of course be wrong... Try it with ethernet and see how it goes, I just have a long cable I temporarily run through the room when I wanna play :-) (And yeah, I think it's kinda fishy that they don't make it clearer if/that wired connections can make big improvements. Look around the subreddits about these services, or their support pages and you'll see that people recommend ethernet, and the vendors first recommendation when having trouble is to use wired ethernet [0], [1]) [0]: https://support.google.com/stadia/answer/9595943?hl=en&ref_topic=9495216 https://support.google.com/stadia/answer/9595943?hl=en&ref_t... [1]: https://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/4504/ https://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/4504/
        croon 6y ago
        I have Ubiquiti home networking, and sometimes play GFN or Steamlink over wifi a few feet from an AP, but just trust me that wired is always better than wifi, regardless of what a rudimentary connection test tells you. If you have the option of trying wired, just do it and see for yourself.

fishtacos 6y ago

My experience with GFN has been MUCH better than I expected. I've also come across similar sentiments as yours, which leads me to think it's a proximity to the DC issue. E.g., my RTT to my ISP's gateway, on average, fluctuates between 8-11 ms (currently ~14 according to pfSense) and a ping to google's closest response is usually about the same. I'm sure others have it better, but I am quite impressed, given a little bit of this latency would probably be eliminated by not having a virtualized router as is the case with my setup. Twitchy MP shooters and twitchy platformers are the 2 subgenres that aren't suited for this arrangement. Most everything else is perfectly fine (under the aforementioned ideal conditions).