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After thoughts/review on Cod aw using netduma in the US


Spediegunz

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* I want to preface that what I'm about to say is based on my own experience, and not in any way meant to take a shot at netduma or to discourage people from buying their product, as your results may differ from mine because of so many factors like location, isp, gaming system ect. I'm here just to share and get feedback in hope of a better understanding or solution to the problems of match making in cod aw. If I say anything wrong please correct me but its all based on my own theory*

 
Before I started using host filtering I wanted to set a baseline to observe what was happening, and after playing in about 25 different lobbies I took note of a few things.
 
          -98% of the time I was connected to a dedicated server in the US
          -dedicated servers host many games at once I found this by leaving a lobby after a game was done and entering a new lobby with new players but
            seeing I was still connected to the same server 
          -I usually connect to the Seattle Dedicated server even though I live in NYC on a few occasions maybe 3/10 I get some east cost servers 
          -lobbies consisted of mostly US players spread throughout the country with the exception of 2-3 who might have been in Canada Mexico or the UK 
          -I usually pinged to these servers at about 20-30ms never higher than 50
 
With those things in mind of how match making was working for me without any filtering from the netduma. I spent the last 4 days of my netduma owner ship doing extensive testing of the host filtering and I formed an opinion. Having the router has made no difference for me. My experience no where near resembles the opinions of so many who have reviewed the product before me. But I have come to the conclusion that it is through no fault of the netduma router which does its job effectively, however because of how call of duties match making seems to work for me, I find using the netduma to be pointless let me explain why.
 
The geo filtering works in one of 2 ways  original method and using ping assist, I will break down the problems I encountered in both methods 
 
ORIGINAL METHOD - just geo filtering by location/range proximity (ping assist off set to 0)

As I mentioned before, when using the netduma you realize the way the match making code is written the game tries to connect you to a dedicated server a lot. Almost as if it is its main priority when you start searching for a match. You can tell you are connected to dedicated servers because you cannot update or block them.
 
Problem with this is no matter how good your ping might look, on a dedicated server there's no way to tell if your going to have a smooth game or not because they are over crowded and their processors can be bogged down at times. I've had better games with higher ping on p2p servers then those with low ping on a dedicated server. The netduma support staff response to this problem as I've read on other threads are as follows
 
        -Move home location 
        -reduce size of geofilter to avoid that server 
        -enable ping assist
 
I've tried moving my home location to various parts of the country no matter where it is I usually am within the range of a dedicated server so trying to avoid playing on one is very difficult. 
 
When i shrink the geo filters range so that I'm not within coverage of a dedicated server It can take painfully long periods to find a game I've experienced 20 minutes waits searching for games with the original method out of range of a dedicated server. What happens is while searching for a game you will see host/players popping up and filling the area within your set range and the game appears to put you in a full lobby (sometimes names will appear other times all 12 slots will say matched player) then within a few seconds it pulls you back out of that lobby and tries to connect you to another one and the process repeats over and over until the all the circumstances are right and you finally land in a p2p lobby. 
 
I saw a thread about dedicated servers where someone had a theory which makes sense as to why this happens...... He said, that when playing in a dedicated server in between matches he would notice the server being changed to a host he can rate and update and then when the game would start he would notice the host changed back to the dedicated server. While playing I observed the same exact behavior. he thinks how match making works is before a game starts a p2p host is selected to whom which everyone else connects too then when the game is about to start everyone is ported together to a dedicated server.  This would explain why filtering within a range with the purpose of avoiding dedicated server keeps booting me out of the games because it ports me to a server outside of my filters distance setting. 
 
My experience when being finally put in a p2p lobby on the rare occasion it occurs varies. first off you might land in a lobby where not all players have yet joined so it may also take a very long time for this game to start because as I said before for many people playing aw the matchmaking tries to purposely put them in a dedicated server room first, because of this the room won't fill up immediately and also because with strict mode enabled the netduma prevents anyone outside of the Geo filter from joining. Supposing you enter a lobby with 6 players you need to have 5 other people join who want to play that particular game mode, located within that area, join at that same exact time as you, which can take a while. Besides those 2 difficult factors to over come you also have to worry about losing the players who have already joined and got impatient from waiting and backed out.
 
This is why playing on p2p is extremely rare. When I did play on a p2p the first time the experience was unbelievable and felt amazing and the other time it was horrible even with great ping to the host everyone else was extremely laggy I found it was strange considering everyone was within proximity.
 
So my impression of using just geo filtering, is same as if you didn't have the netduma or unusable. Because either you play on a dedicated server where many factors can cause lag besides distance or avoid dedicated servers and wait forever to get in a game where the results might not be so great when you finally do start the game. 
 
PLAYING WITH PING ASSIST ON
 
I also feel like playing with ping assist on is also the same as not having a netduma. In my case which may not be the same for others like users in Europe, because cod aw is always inclined to put you in a dedicated server and I ping well to these dedicated servers, when ping assist is on I'm always being connected to the same dedicated servers as if I weren't even filtering. 
 
I usually keep my ping setting to between 30-50ms as per netduma instruction. Anything lower would be impossible to find games and higher defeats the purpose of trying to play smoother games with low ping.
 
The only difference is when ping assist is on, although ping assist takes priority over the geo filter range I notice it generally tries to group the players in the lobby with in the geo filter location and there might be 1-4 players outside of it added because they meet ping criteria. Then we would all connect to a dedicated server either in or out of range. Whereas without the host filtering on players would be scattered everywhere and all connected to the same dedicated server. But for me it made no difference being grouped together with people or being scattered so long as we all connected to the same dedicated server the feel of game was hit or miss.
 
In conclusion the routers attempt to defeat lag by matching you with players near your location or matching you with players within your ping setting is all pointless in my opinion because the real problem lies within the way everyone is being mapped into dedicated servers which have bigger issues causing lag besides ping. As I said before it's no fault of the netduma just the stupid way the game was designed to work. 
 
I'd love to hear everyone's thoughts and reactions to what I'm saying. Maybe someone can enlighten me to settings they have tried which shows them better results.

 

Also Id like to take the time to thank Beast hunter for making this video for me he kinda takes some time to explain how to find yourself the right server in cod aw in this video.

 

https://youtu.be/VcVqmww7lo4

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Its hard to communicate tone, so I'll just preface by saying I'm just stating my opinion.

 

I understand you and a few others have mentioned that dedicated servers are an issue, if that is indeed so its no fault of our own. Furthermore on the same logic a server that is far away will be even worse as on top of the speculated causes you're adding high latency(the top cause of lag) in the mix.

 

Also our router has many features and supports numerous games. 

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Honest post.  I'm a HEAVY COD AW player and all I can is this, "If you had the R1 when it first came out, you probably would have experienced the best game play EVER.  Most games were P2P and the games you did connect to that were P2P and played bad (do to lag) you could block!  Ones that played great, you could allow.  That was the beauty of the "allow & deny" feature.  But then COD AW games were pretty much switched to dedi servers (beacuse we all creid for this) thinking it would make gameplay better...boy were we wrong!  My thinking is this, if there was a dedi server in very state, maybe things would be good.  But with the R1, we all see that's not the case.  People jumping on the R1 bandwagon now, is only seeing half of the true potential of the router.  Maybe with Black Ops 3, things will be different.  Crossing fingers!  But for now, we COD players just gotta ride out the storm.  In time, as more players get bored of the game, dedi servers will slowly decrease and more P2P play will rise.   

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Zero tbf quite a few people like AW and also many people like odler games. I understand you have an issue with dedis & I wish we could help but its not universal.  Hopefully frequent cloud updates will help. 

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Zero tbf quite a few people like AW and also many people like odler games. I understand you have an issue with dedis & I wish we could help but its not universal.  Hopefully frequent cloud updates will help. 

I'm not complaining about anything, I'm defending the R1!  Ever since I had the R1, it made my game-play so much better.  What I am complaining about is yes, the dedi servers and where I'm being connected to.  My comment is to the OP in regards to how it was before and how it is now.  You said this before, when we first experienced the R1, game play was awesome, players weren't used to that, but when you start getting comfortable with game play (with the R1) you tend to get spoiled.  Well, I've reached that point where I am spoiled....and I want it to go back to how it was before.  I know it's not Netdumas fault (and I never blamed you folks for anything). 

 

In fact, only Hawaii people has a legitimate complaint, we live in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.  The R1 has been battled test here in the islands, and its doing a wonderful job.  We play with 80+ms ping and we still kick ass!  We wish we could experience 20+ms pings!  Then we would be really spoiled!  LMAO

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Tone over text is very hard to judge i remember when me and a friend nearly had a puncy up when we first got MSN messenger because we were new to it and did not use lol, lmao or smileys when we joked and it got heated lol

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Its hard to communicate tone, so I'll just preface by saying I'm just stating my opinion.

 

I understand you and a few others have mentioned that dedicated servers are an issue, if that is indeed so its no fault of our own. Furthermore on the same logic a server that is far away will be even worse as on top of the speculated causes you're adding high latency(the top cause of lag) in the mix.

 

Also our router has many features and supports numerous games.

 

Thanks for responding I hope no offense is being taken by my post I know over all the netduma is a router first which has many different features besides host filtering and it supports a number of games. I'm not pointing any blame at you guys and I tried to make it fully clear that not everyone would have the same experience. I really interested in just started an open honest discussion so that cod aw players like myself can pool together knowledge. Because as you know knowledge is power. Hopefully the outcome is our feedback as user could give you guys ideas on new features to add on future builds that might give player even better experience.

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I understand completely what you are saying Spediegunz.

 

I live in Pennsylvania and I always connect to the Seattle servers because that is where most Xbox dedis are.

 

CoD AW matches people in the lobby P2P  then hosts the game from dedis most of the time. 

 

CoD AW on Xbox One is just garbage for me. 

 

I have great pings (15-20ms) but there are always players in the same game with pings hitting 100ms. 

 

The players with the relatively high pings just absolutely destroy me. 

 

I have a 300mi geofilter around Pennsylvania with Ping Assist of 25ms and Strict mode ON. 

 

I love this router just for the fact that I can at least see what is going on with the lag.

 

Don't give up on the geo-filter or the R1. 

 

You might want to pull out your Xbox 360 and play some older CoD's just see what this router

can do. 

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Tone over text is very hard to judge i remember when me and a friend nearly had a puncy up when we first got MSN messenger because we were new to it and did not use lol, lmao or smileys when we joked and it got heated lol

:lol:...oh so true

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Speeidegunz you are right in your analysis but as Zero has said the dedicated server problem in AW is a relatively new thing.  Those of us lucky enough to experience the R1 in the pre dedi days can attest to the fact that it was absolutely the best gaming experience ever.

 

The router is much more than just host filtering, congestion control and device prioritisation is as big a feature to me as the host filtering and I would pay the full price of the router just for those features.

 

Remember it's only AW that the host filtering doesn't seem to provide as much of a benefit for recently.  There are lots more games it works for and more being added all the time, many guys have gone back to BLOPs 2 and are having a blast on it.

 

And just to convey tone have a few smilies :) :P

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Thanks for responding I hope no offense is being taken by my post I know over all the netduma is a router first which has many different features besides host filtering and it supports a number of games. I'm not pointing any blame at you guys and I tried to make it fully clear that not everyone would have the same experience. I really interested in just started an open honest discussion so that cod aw players like myself can pool together knowledge. Because as you know knowledge is power. Hopefully the outcome is our feedback as user could give you guys ideas on new features to add on future builds that might give player even better experience.

 

It's fine we tend to not moderate here unless things get out of hand. It may impact sales, but we hope potential customers would rather see this and see that we believe in the product rather than disallowing any criticism. 

 

Also I think its helped our duma community grow which is nothing but a good thing. 

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It's fine we tend to not moderate here unless things get out of hand. It may impact sales, but we hope potential customers would rather see this and see that we believe in the product rather than disallowing any criticism. 

 

Also I think its helped our duma community grow which is nothing but a good thing. 

Let's just put it this way...."I believe in this product so much that I bought a spare R1 just in case my original one goes down"  I could have bought $200 worth of advanced supply drops instead!  Wait!  I did that too!  :D :D :D

 

DAMMIT!  I need help

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Honest post.  I'm a HEAVY COD AW player and all I can is this, "If you had the R1 when it first came out, you probably would have experienced the best game play EVER.  Most games were P2P and the games you did connect to that were P2P and played bad (do to lag) you could block!  Ones that played great, you could allow.  That was the beauty of the "allow & deny" feature.  But then COD AW games were pretty much switched to dedi servers (beacuse we all creid for this) thinking it would make gameplay better...boy were we wrong!  

 

thanks for chiming in, Ive had some of those great games you speak of, once in a while i still get them my problem is on the dedicated server you never know what you're gonna get.  I wish I was an early adopter of the netduma like you it would of been nice to experience good gameplay for a prolonged period of time.

 

I understand completely what you are saying Spediegunz.

I love this router just for the fact that I can at least see what is going on with the lag.

Don't give up on the geo-filter or the R1. 

 

 

you're absolutely right Its a good router, infact my night hawk and my asus both cost more and this adds the host filtering, and the ability to monitor everything thats going so if it stopped at that it already a good enough investment.

 

Speeidegunz you are right in your analysis but as Zero has said the dedicated server problem in AW is a relatively new thing.  Those of us lucky enough to experience the R1 in the pre dedi days can attest to the fact that it was absolutely the best gaming experience ever.

And just to convey tone have a few smilies :) :P

 

Yeah its a new problem.... Im kicking myself for not have purchasing the netduma sooner before all this dedicated server nonsense was added.  I hope someone figures out something to re introduce more p2p play again so I can make another post raving about how I love my netduma and as far as tone and smilies go   :angry:  :angry:  :angry:  :angry:  haha just kidding  ;)

It may impact sales, but we hope potential customers would rather see this and see that we believe in the product rather than disallowing any criticism. 

Also I think its helped our duma community grow which is nothing but a good thing. 

 

Brother man with a good ideals like this and continued dedication to your customers like you have shown you can never go wrong some people just look at the bottom line and glad to see you are open to criticism and you even host these forums to allow us to have an opinion.... that being said my criticism wasn't towards your product in fact i stated it does its job well. ;)

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I'm willing to bet that player count (which is most likely low) has a lot to do with running into more dedicated server issues. If there are only 10,000 playing on xbox one now (just an example) there were probably 100k or more before. To be honest the game has been playing very well for me lately. I recently put my pin over the closest dedi I could find and "snapped" (above strict mode with down arrow and lines). That gave me about an 800 mile radius. Raddy suggested this the other day and it seems to work.

 

If you need to know my exact setup or screenshot tell me. Or look up my content. Most are already in there somewhere.

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I barely had time to witness the great gameplay from p2p since a couple of days after getting my r1, we started playing on dedicated servers more. Now i rarely play p2p. Ive tried everything in the book but cant avoid them. Its nice to play on lower pings but tbh it doesn't matter if we are constantly playing SH terrible servers. I still have hope for the r1 but kinda frustrating shelling out 200 to only see a difference for the couple of days i played p2p. Hopefully blacks ops 3 is more focused on p2p.

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I barely had time to witness the great gameplay from p2p since a couple of days after getting my r1, we started playing on dedicated servers more. Now i rarely play p2p. Ive tried everything in the book but cant avoid them. Its nice to play on lower pings but tbh it doesn't matter if we are constantly playing SH terrible servers. I still have hope for the r1 but kinda frustrating shelling out 200 to only see a difference for the couple of days i played p2p. Hopefully blacks ops 3 is more focused on p2p.

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It's fine we tend to not moderate here unless things get out of hand. It may impact sales, but we hope potential customers would rather see this and see that we believe in the product rather than disallowing any criticism. 

 

Also I think its helped our duma community grow which is nothing but a good thing. 

 

This is why I like Netduma and why I'm confident that they will do everything in their power to give us the best product.  No hype or BS here

 

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I can attest to the fact that when i first got my duma the gameplay was absolutely fantastic.Myself and one of the guys i 

game with played pretty hard over the weekend and neither of us had a game where we both weren't in the 40's if not 50's for kills.

 

Which made him order one the following Monday,with good reason.But again those were mostly P2P games but a few were still on dedi's.I still stand behind the duma and if i had it to do all over again,knowing what i know now i would do the exact same thing.Gaming with the duma is still a whole lot better than not.And i would know as i try it a lot,along with moving my home location all over the US.Most of the lobbies i end up in without the duma are in South America and i live in Michigan,so less than ideal connections.

 

The duma can only fix so much and always preforms as advertised.Many people forget there are other features of the duma than just the GF.Lots of people bought the duma for the congestion control also,which IMO is a hugely understated feature of the duma.What good does it do to be in a great lobby if you're family is taking all your bandwidth and you're gaming console is last on the priority list.

 

And to my knowledge the duma team has never gotten upset about an honest review of their product.I think reviews (good and bad) are great as a business tool to learn and grow from.And it does open up some interesting discussions on the forum.

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And to my knowledge the duma team has never gotten upset about an honest review of their product.I think reviews (good and bad) are great as a business tool to learn and grow from.And it does open up some interesting discussions on the forum.

 

This. We agreed a long time before we launched that there would be nothing more important than user feedback and that's still the case now. It's why Iain has coded about 10 updates since we launched in December - because you guys know best.

 

Any feedback is really valuable which is why I'm always  grateful when people take the time to write a review, whether it's positive or not. Fortunately for us it has been pretty much unanimously positive :)

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@ Luke that's such a good way to run a business,listening to the customers,what an interesting concept.

 

Keep on doing what you guys are doing

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