It's easily the oldest battle on the Internet, one that has raged since the early days of Doom and still continues today on almost every server throughout the known world. Where there's an on-line game playing, there's usually somebody complaining about the unfairness of speed on each side of the boarder. Shouts of, "AHH LAG" and "JESUS LAG IS BAD!", while not forgetting the more popular "LAG!" are commonly heard of.

It's the constant war between 'High Ping Bast..[SNIP].. Bait' and 'Low Ping Bait'. Or in other words, the two sides that help to make up 90% of the most annoying chatter during on-line gaming EVER! So just what's it all about? The ISPr team puts its opinions across.

Ah.. the life of an LPB is a smooth one

Having played multiplayer since the early days of Doom on our clapped out 9600Modems, the ISPr team is well aware of the LPB/HPB situation. As such we are taking a more 'precautious' look because there are those that have nothing better to do than flame people for giving their honest opinions. However the whole point of this article is that we feel there is a great miss understanding between the two sides.

You see an LPB is somebody with a ping below say 150ms, this used to be below 250ms, since in the UK nothing has changed technology wise we can't work out why counting LPBs has changed? A HPB on the other hand is now apparently somebody above 250ms, although it used to be more like 350ms.

The difference is obvious, if you're going along at 350ms and you shoot somebody going at 150ms, then they are just ahead of you. Not in range but in time, in effect your time travelling in milliseconds. The problem being that bullets and animation are so fast that such a difference is technically huge when playing a game.

Just what kind of difference is that?

Put it this way, once you're below 250ms any game you play should be smooth and 'relatively' without lag. If you do still get strange pauses then it's likely the server doesn't have enough CPU power or RAM rather than bandwidth to cope with the number of players. That's why sometimes joining a server with a MAX of 16players and a ping of 160 can be better than joining that of 24 or 32players and a ping of 80.

Another reason for lag below the 250 mark could be induced by your system not having enough 3D or Processor power to cope with the instructions from the server. However this is unlikely to be a factor so long as you have at least a Voodoo2 (ancient) and a P2-300. Note that TCP/IP or MAXMTU tools that claim to kill LAG by reducing your input/output packet size can also produce strange effects; you see it's not always the ping that creates the lag, but it helps.

For example, we used to be able to play under Quake2 with a 56Kbps modem quite well at between 350 and 400ms. Which is why people that shout at LPBs who have 140ms pings, while they have 240ms always irritate us. They never seem to realise that lag is most often a global affair whether you have a LP or a HP.

The Reality

True once your ping is steady at or under 80ms then the game does physically change no matter what the situation. Note that having a STEADY ping is also a deciding factor in the 'LAG' effect. If you have a 100ms ping and it often goes between 100 and 20ms then the chances are a player with a steady 20ms ping is actually faster than you. The reason is because your network is highly unstable and that causes strange stoppages, which seem and act in a similar way to LAG. While on the other hand, he only has to worry about timing issues that aren't even noticeable.

Hopefully you have begun to see the picture we are painting, that so long as you have a ping below that of 300ms, you should be able to see the game just as fast as anybody else, up to 80ms and below that is. At below 80ms the game is PERFECTION because at such speeds most lag effects are gone due to packets moving so fast that they can't be affected.

If you look at all this information and mould it into a new and realistic picture, you suddenly see something very different. Our definitions are as follows:

LPB:
Somebody who has a ping below 250ms, that barely jumps. If it jumps more than 30ms and does it every few moments then he is as lagged as somebody on a 350ms connection with a stable ping (or thereabouts). Note that this doesn't apply (jumps or anything) if you are continually below 80ms.

At such a point the only thing likely to affect you is server RAM or CPU problems, or your own local systems.

HPB:
Essentially anybody just about on or above 300ms, it is a deciding point in any multiplayer game. Or somebody who is anywhere above 80ms and has a ping that jumps on a regular basis with above 40ms intervals. I personally often join servers with a ping of 110 and it jumps up to 300 frequently, as such my game is constantly like playing Quake in SoftwareGL mode, or 5 Frames Per Second.

Hopefully this has helped people understand a little about the realities of what LAG really is, I'm sure some people will want to put their own ideas and corrections over to us, leave them on the forum for discussion is our advice. Note that we avoided going into technical detail due to lack of space and time.