Any way to improve connection to Pangaea?

[Elsabet]

Here's my situation. I live in sunny southern California in the beautiful United States of America, near the resort town of Palm Springs. I am NOT a Canadian

I have a 100 mbps fiber optic connection on an up to date modem and keep a clean/well maintained PC which is a high end Dell Studio with a killer graphics card, memory, etc. My computer can run any MMORPG on the market without any latency whatsoever and renders graphics really nice.

I ran a tracert to Pangaea and I have hops of 7 ms in the United States...but when I hit the European backbone the next hops time out in France, and increase into the 200 ms and beyond range into Germany, Copenhagen, etc. By the time my pings and packets get back to lovely Palm Springs, they have died of old age...

So what I want to know is...there anyway I can keep the damn French from lagging me up so I can have a good connection to Pangaea? Right now I don't think there is anything I can do about this and I will be role-playing or crafting instead of adventuring because I cannot outrun any monster on this server...and everyone else runs circles around my sorry butt. Getting cured on time (hard), healing and kiting monsters (almost impossible). PVP so never going to happen....

[Vaux27]

I believe there were discussions of some Americans trying to forward their ports, that's the only way to decrease the ping really. I'm over in Alabama and I seem to run well enough, but sadly we'll never see clear speed no matter how good our specs or ISP are in the end.

Ares or Boris mentioned something about forwarding the ports, can't remember where.

[Thoran]

I cant say that I'd be an expert on this, since I have really tried it. But I wonder if the amount of hops needed to get from 'Murica, would decrease if you would use a vpn when playing on pang.

The way I could see this working is that the amount of hops needed to get to Europe from there variates with different isps , so by using a vpn you could possibly cut a few of those hops. The next thing though would be actually finding a suitable vpn server and trying it.

(If someone there has access to vpn used by an university, you could try this out. Usually the connections between large continents are working surprisingly fast if you use the same network as some university does. The Funet isp on Finland for example is magically fast when it hops to European and American "university isps" and from there to that country's "normal" network.)

[Iktomi]

I used to live in Vancouver, Canada and my connection was pretty brutal. I found though, that moving to Istanbul, Turkey substantially increased my ping.

In seriousness though, I would be curious about the VPN option... although I wonder if having to route through another server like that would add extra latency?

[Boris]

If players find a server that fits our needs and pay for the trial, we'll try it out.

Finding 1 month contract's is the real hassle. Generally all contracts are either 12 or 24 months. Nevertheless...

• 1) Find a server.
  2) Donate.
  3) We try it out.

And everyone's happy.

- Boris

[Elsabet]

Be happy to try to find you a server, question though. Is it possible to find one that would meet the needs of both European and American players? What sort of specs would the server need?

[Tyrion]

If players find a server that fits our needs and pay for the trial, we'll try it out.

Finding 1 month contract's is the real hassle. Generally all contracts are either 12 or 24 months. Nevertheless...

• 1) Find a server.
  2) Donate.
  3) We try it out.

And everyone's happy.

- Boris

Not too be harsh Boris but this is a server that you run. If your attitude represents a lack of motivation too find a solution for connectivity problems, than why would the players care too? This topic comes up at least 1x every quarter of the year and your response is always the same. At the very least, could you provide some links on where to start the search?

Be happy to try to find you a server, question though. Is it possible to find one that would meet the needs of both European and American players? What sort of specs would the server need?

Again, Boris has stated his position on hosting in the US. The middle ground would be Iceland / Greenland or even UK, tbqh.

[Boris]

There's no lack of motivation. Simply pointing out that money doesn't grow in trees. If players pay for the test run, we'll be happy to try it out. Switching to another host is just a matter of hours.

But basically, around 50€ a month with Windows (usually Windows by itself is around +20-25€ extra) so realistically the cost without OS is around 25-30€. Also as mentioned earlier, the real problem is finding those 1 month contracts.

The current setup is the following:

• Personal dedicated Hardware, no virtualization
  AMD X2 4850e with 2 x 2,5 GHz
  2 x 500 GB SATA II HDDs
  4 GB DDR2 RAM
  100 mbps Flatrate

Otherwise I don't have any other help / links to share. Google for success.

- Boris

[Boris]

From what I recall from a few years back, Wille was all in for Germany as they have a superior network structure. Besides Germany, I think he recommended the Netherlands and Sweden. No props for England nor France. No clue about Greenland. It's also good to keep in mind, that geographically the closest option most likely is not the best option. Greenland works as a fine example. When players from US connect, their hops might (and most likely will) go through England or France - before they hit Greenland - which means even more lag than now. These things are risky business... so that's why a 1 month trial is mandatory.

- Boris

[Tyrion]

Alright, thanks for the input. I can look into it some and message you guys on Icq for further feedback.