How to reduce the latency [might be old]

[Baaja]

Now, I've searched for this method and didn't seem to find this posted on the forums! But the same kind of thing was posted in this thread herethe thing is that an wow addon does this for you! But I would like to know what happens with my computer, so I would do it manually (I do believe it is the same type of method)

First of all, this is for Windows Users only
WARNING: With this method we are going to change one thing in the registry. If you feel unsafe with this, then I strongly suggest you don't try this (it isnt that hard, but if you play around you can f*** up your comp)

--Step 1--

1. Open Registry Editor (start->run->regedit)
2. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters\Interfaces
3. There may be multiple adapters in this list. Find the one that is being used to connect to your internet gateway by going through the list and finding the one that either has a static IP or is set to use DHCP.
4. Right-click in the right pane, and select "New DWORD Value"
5. Name it "TcpAckFrequency" (without the quotes) and set it to 1. (The default is 2, which means windows will wait for 2 packets always before sending an ACK back, we don't want this)
6. Close out of the registry editor, and reboot your computer.

Basically what happens is windows will wait for 2 packets before sending the acknowledgement that it has received data. If the server only sends 1 packet in this time, it will wait before sending another (it waits on the client's ACK), creating lag while it waits on that second packet. (maybe only 50-100ms but add a few together and it can add up). That removes the wait time and sends an ack for every packet received.

If you experience any sort of lowered performance or transfer speed slowdowns as a result of changing this setting, simply go back into regedit and either delete the value or set it to 2.

NEW --STEP 2--

I have done a bit homework! And have found a value that you can set aswell in the Registry. It is the same method as before...

1. Open Registry Editor (start->run->regedit)
2. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters\Interfaces
3. Right-click in the right pane, and select "New DWORD Value"
4. Name it "TCPNoDelay" (without the quotes) and set it to 1 (by default it is "0".
   
5. Close out of the registry editor, and reboot your computer.

This disables "nagling". Nagling is a TCP feature that combines several small packets into a single, larger packet for more efficient transmission. So it might briefly delay transmission of smaller packets (which is used by WoW).

REMEMBER: This will most likely slow down your internet connection, to prevent this just change the values back to 2 (Step 1) and 0 (Step 2) or remove the values entirely.

[Guybrush]

I was skeptical at first, so I read up on it. This might increase your ping, sure. Two things wrong with it though.

1) Games typically use UDP, not TCP, which doesn't have acknowledgments at all, to send the bulk of their data. In other words, this change does nothing. If your pings really did improve, I imagine it's because WoW maintains several open sockets, and the one that pings happens to use TCP.

2) By doing this you are effectively doubling the number of acknowledgments you send back, which would slow down file transfers like whoah.

I would trust that the default is set to 2 for a reason, and that it represents a happy medium between response time and bulk transfers.

<Borrowed from wow forums>

Oh and another thing, it does not work on 64 bit systems :S

Thanks for contributing though

[Unhumanje]

I Found this one helpful aswell:

Type "regedit" in windows "run.." dialog to bring up registry menu

Then find:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftMSMQParamet
ers

Right-click in the right hand pane and add a new DWORD value, name it TCPNoDelay, then right click the entry and click Modify and assign a value of 1.

Click Ok and close the registry editor, then reboot your PC.

If you lack the MSMQ reg. rapidshare.com/files/77255080/msmq.reg.html - can't post linkz(Personally I had the reg. by default.)

The OP's reg change+ this one decreased my ping with about 100~

[Baaja]

I was skeptical at first, so I read up on it. This might increase your ping, sure. Two things wrong with it though.

1) Games typically use UDP, not TCP, which doesn't have acknowledgments at all, to send the bulk of their data. In other words, this change does nothing. If your pings really did improve, I imagine it's because WoW maintains several open sockets, and the one that pings happens to use TCP.

2) By doing this you are effectively doubling the number of acknowledgments you send back, which would slow down file transfers like whoah.

I would trust that the default is set to 2 for a reason, and that it represents a happy medium between response time and bulk transfers.

<Borrowed from wow forums>

Oh and another thing, it does not work on 64 bit systems :S

Thanks for contributing though

Well I'm actually not that computers! It's just that I remember this trick from a long time ago when I saw that thread which I linked! You are surely right, but it reduced my ms quite a bit while playing

People can try it if they want...no harm, unless they do something very terribly wrong hmm, oh and you can always write it back when not playing..But I guess that's a bit overkill

Yeah, my goal from today is to flee from this leecher status I have had for a these YEARS:O! gaah..but thanks

[woffles]

heres one i found on mmo champion a while ago

Lag fix - Repost
I hesitated a lot before reposting it, but I didn't have any hate mail saying "omg you broke my computer !" the first time, so I'll assume it's fairly safe. (It's not like you'll be able to send a mail to complain if your computer isn't working anyway, right ?)

A few weeks ago I posted this fix from the ElitistJerks forums and it worked well for most of the people but it's not really safe and it was supposed to be fixed in 2.3.2, however it seems that the Nagle Algorythm fix in the 2.3.2 patch isn't as effective as expected for most of the players, and if you're in desperate need of a lower ping this is still the best way to go.

<><><> Read this first <><><>
1 - It might have side effects, like slowing down your download speed or affecting your performance on other softwares. (In most case, it doesn't change anything, but you've been warned)
2 - If you're not sure about what you're doing, just don't do it. I don't want to be responsible because you crashed your computer in some way because you made a huge error when editing the registry.
2.1 - Seriously, if you don't know what you're doing, don't do it.
3 - If you don't have the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\MSMQ\ directory, you can download and apply this file to your registry.
4 - Windows Vista users might want to check this post too.

Source - Elitistjerks.com

1 - TcpAckFrequency - NOTE if you are running Windows Vista this setting may not have any effect - a hotfix is needed which i'm tracking down. This works fine under Windows XP

Type "regedit" in windows "run.." dialog to bring up registry menu

Then find:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters\Interfaces \

There will be multiple NIC interfaces listed in there, find the one you use to connect to the internet, there will be several interfaces listed (they have long names like {7DBA6DCA-FFE8-4002-A28F-4D2B57AE8383}. Click each one, the right one will have lots of settings in it and you will see your machines IP address listed there somewhere. Right-click in the right hand pane and add a new DWORD value, name it TcpAckFrequency, then right click the entry and click Modify and assign a value of 1.

You can change it back to 2 (default) at a later stage if it affects your other TCP application performance. it tells windows how many TCP packets to wait before sending ACK. if the value is 1, windows will send ACK every time it receives a TCP package.

2 - TCPNoDelay
This one is pretty simple (Discussed here)

Type "regedit" in windows "run.." dialog to bring up registry menu

Then find:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\MSMQ\Parameters

Right-click in the right hand pane and add a new DWORD value, name it TCPNoDelay, then right click the entry and click Modify and assign a value of 1.

Click Ok and close the registry editor, then reboot your PC.

Once you're done with the technical stuff (it probably won't take more than 1 minute if you're not too bad at it), you can finally get your reward.

[img]http://www.************.com/images/news/2007/november/lagfix.jpg[/img]

Even if in this case, the fix was used to decrease a very high ping, it seems to work very well on low (~100ms) ping for some people (lowered to ~20 or ~30ms).



Credits to www.************.com

[karach]

this works my wow latency is minimal now

[1337-kage]

I have minor lantency now Usually under 10

[beebooga]

Thanks for this post, I've had super high latency, and you fixed it, thanks

[Baaja]

Oh, great dudes! Im glad I could finally contribute with something like this! Yay hmm, but remember if you feel that the internet connection is somewhat slow, do remove the edited value and restart the computer! Hope this helps a few more people

Thanks

[Flawz]

Thanks for that nice trick =)

+Rep

[Boydon80]

I will try this trick soon. Thank you.

[Baaja]

Has been bumped because of added information for decreasing the latency even further

[Mercurial]

I think I've seen this before. Nice anyway.

[Baaja]

I think I've seen this before. Nice anyway.

Yeah well sure, I mean that isn't totally impossible! Because I surely didn't come up with this, I remember reading it a long time ago and writing it down here! Oh and, and the 3rd poster posted the " TCPNoDelay" so I had to do a bit of homework! So I did, and added to my original post

Oh and if you haven't tried it...I recommend you do! It is some nice sh**

[sciibione]

thx for the .. fix my ping is much better