Why am I lagging?

Welcome to the Internet!

You may be lagging!

One of the single most common questions we get from players on Loka is "Why am I lagging?". Due to the very international population we have on Loka, and the fact that (as of the time of writing this article), Loka has only one US East Coast Survival Server, many players around the world have a long way to go to get to connect to and play Loka. So let's break down why you might be lagging, and what you can do about it.

How Do My Internets Get to Loka?

Connecting to anything on the internet requires packets from your computer traveling to the destination by routing through different hops to get to the final destination. It is not a guarantee that your packets will necessarily go in the shortest, or most efficient possible route to get to a destination. Most of the internet is not built with low-latency FPS games in mind, so it's the priority is often cheaper, not better/faster.

What Is Lag?

For the purposes of this article, we are considering lag to be your ping/latency being poor. Poor FPS is not lag, so we're only talking about your ping/latency to the server. Any time packets take longer or get lost in transit on the way to Loka, you lag. And this looks like your ping going up.

Why Am I Lagging?

There are several reasons this could be:

• You are on Wifi. First thing you can do to help your ping is be plugged in to your network via ethernet cable. Wifi is instable, and causes lagspikes
• You are far away from Loka (Virginia, USA). The further you are from Loka, the worse and potentially more unstable your connection to to the server will be
• Somewhere along the way to Loka, your traffic goes through a bad switch in Some Datacenter Somewhere
• Alternatively, the route your traffic is taking could be overwhelmed and quite literally can't keep up with the traffic flowing through this. In many places throughout the world, players will complain that their ping is worse during areas of peak internet usage (at night when everybody starts watching tv, playing games, streaming, etc)
• The route your traffic takes is simply poor
  • As an example, some Central Canadian players' routes take their traffic west, to Seattle, before then going east all the way to Loka. This can add up to 60+ms to their ping for, unfortunately, no good reason
• Lastly, Loka could actually be lagging (see Hopper Burnout for one known cause of server-side lag). If this is the case, it is very obvious because every single player on the server will suffer from latency loss

Why Did My Ping Change Suddenly?

The routes that your traffic takes to get to Loka is entirely subject to change. As stated in the above section, there are many reasons your typical route to a server may change. The internet is an extremely dynamic place, and routes, peering, agreements between ISPs are changing all the time. It is possible you may wake up one morning with a higher, or a lower ping due to to changing routes.

What Can I Do About It?

1. Switch from Wifi to a Wired connection
2. For 99% of players, that's all you can do. Neither you, nor Loka controls the internet or how things route
   • What about the 1% of players?
   • It is sometimes possible to call your ISP, provide them a traceroute (see below), and very rarely they have the power to fix or report it

What Does My Routing Look Like?

Time to learn how to run and read a traceroute. By running one of these you can see the exact "hops" that your traffic takes to Loka. This not only tells you where your traffic goes, but helps you identify where you might be experience packet loss (the "bad datacenter switch" problem).

But I Don't Have This Problem on X Server

We are not X server. We are Loka. That server may not be hosted near Loka at all.

The only reason this comment is relevant is if X Server is located in the exact same datacenter that Loka is, and even so they may be using a service like TCPShield or Cosmic Guard, or even more expensive solutions. Those services provide the potential for better routing, however you must first connect to their Nearest Point of Presence to get on "their routing". You can think of it like a private highway they run, except you must first drive all the way to the nearest on-ramp to use it, and that might require you to drive the wrong direction for a long time before you can use it. But then hey, maybe there's less traffic and it's a nicer ride, but you gained 10, 20, 30+ms just to get there.

What most real games do is not run 1 server that everybody in the whole world connects to. They have regional servers so that everybody is connecting to the closest server for them. There is only (at the moment) 1 Loka, in once place :(

Final Thoughts

Hopefully this helps explain why every staff member on Loka ignores players or instructs them to "run a traceroute". Despite trying TCPS or CG (mentioned above), there is next to nothing we can do about why your connection to Loka is poor. Further, this page doesn't mention VPNs due to our stance against them. They absolutely can help with lag, but unfortunately they are overwhelmingly used to ban evade.

Good luck! May your ping be low and your crits be many!

FAQ

Q: Why can't I use ExitLag?

A: ExitLag is a VPN. While they do not call it that on their server, the result is that you don't connect to Loka with your original IP.