Question about hubs and lag
This is a discussion about Question about hubs and lag in the Windows Networking category; Does someone know what is the additional lag produced by a good or a bad hub when playing on-line through it? TIA
Does someone know what is the additional lag produced by a good or a bad hub when playing on-line through it?
TIA
TIA
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Well if there is no other traffic on the hub, then the only increase in time would be for the time it takes for the signal to travel through the cable and through the hub, or like 3 or 4ms.
But if there is other traffic on the hub (somebody else playing a game too) then the lag will increase greatly as the packets will collide and have to be resent (only 1 person can send or receive at a time using a hub) and so you can get like 30-40ms lag or more depending on how many packets need to be resent.
Keep in mind that when using ANY hub it is NOT POSSIBLE AT ALL to use full-duplexing, as that could cause an infinite number of collisions, so your network cards are operating in single-duplex mode which also will increase lag a bit.
So if you have a lot of computers that need to be playing games at the same time it is best to use a switch as they eliminate most of the problems involved with hubs, and allow full-duplexing.
But if there is other traffic on the hub (somebody else playing a game too) then the lag will increase greatly as the packets will collide and have to be resent (only 1 person can send or receive at a time using a hub) and so you can get like 30-40ms lag or more depending on how many packets need to be resent.
Keep in mind that when using ANY hub it is NOT POSSIBLE AT ALL to use full-duplexing, as that could cause an infinite number of collisions, so your network cards are operating in single-duplex mode which also will increase lag a bit.
So if you have a lot of computers that need to be playing games at the same time it is best to use a switch as they eliminate most of the problems involved with hubs, and allow full-duplexing.
OP
THX alot.
That's exactly what I suspected.
It seems I get a lot of packet collisions (the hub's collide led flashes quite a lot).
A switch would be the solution but such harware is still rather expensive for home use.
In the meantime would a barebone W2K dedicated PC (I have a spare one) with several nics do the same full-duplex job or only add further lag and collisions?
That's exactly what I suspected.
It seems I get a lot of packet collisions (the hub's collide led flashes quite a lot).
A switch would be the solution but such harware is still rather expensive for home use.
In the meantime would a barebone W2K dedicated PC (I have a spare one) with several nics do the same full-duplex job or only add further lag and collisions?
Use a router versus a hub. We can play HL/CS with up 8 people on cable with little problems. Each player will have to adjust thier rate once in the game. Thats is.
