PingPlotter clarification please......

[CrossFitKila717]

Hey all, 

i know this is probably beating a dead horse but was hoping to get the last bit of clarity........

1.  My laptop is wired straight to the Duma as is my Xbox. I have the original R1 firmware. With PingPlotter pulled up and running, I saturate the line by playing Netflix on the Xbox & run videos on my phone via WiFi (the WiFi router is wired to Duma As well). Is this the appropriate way to saturate the line?

2.  With all this running in the background, I adjust both the up & down CC sliders down 10% at a time, starting at 100 on both. I give each step about a minute or so to see how the PingPlotter graph looks (boring by the way, lol). Is this the best and/or only method?

3.  My graph always seems to look pretty jittery but when I’m looking at the AVG, MIN & CUR numbers......the AVG (average) & CUR (current) numbers are “usually” within 2ms of each other, other than the occasional spike. Are these the two numbers that matter most, or do I worry about the MIN number as well?

4.  Last question......how exactly does saturation of the line during the tests replicate  gameplay, since the gameplay uses very little bandwidth? During gameplay, no one else is streaming or using anything other than FB on their phone from WiFi. So are these results accurate & reflect gameplay or should setting be different?

 

Thanks so much for everyone’s help! Much appreciated.

 

[ColonicBoom]

1 hour ago, CrossFitKila717 said:

1.  My laptop is wired straight to the Duma as is my Xbox. I have the original R1 firmware. With PingPlotter pulled up and running, I saturate the line by playing Netflix on the Xbox & run videos on my phone via WiFi (the WiFi router is wired to Duma As well). Is this the appropriate way to saturate the line?

2.  With all this running in the background, I adjust both the up & down CC sliders down 10% at a time, starting at 100 on both. I give each step about a minute or so to see how the PingPlotter graph looks (boring by the way, lol). Is this the best and/or only method?

3.  My graph always seems to look pretty jittery but when I’m looking at the AVG, MIN & CUR numbers......the AVG (average) & CUR (current) numbers are “usually” within 2ms of each other, other than the occasional spike. Are these the two numbers that matter most, or do I worry about the MIN number as well?

4.  Last question......how exactly does saturation of the line during the tests replicate  gameplay, since the gameplay uses very little bandwidth? During gameplay, no one else is streaming or using anything other than FB on their phone from WiFi. So are these results accurate & reflect gameplay or should setting be different?

 

Thanks so much for everyone’s help! Much appreciated.

 

1. That depends how much bandwidth you have. If you have high bandwidth then no it won't saturate your line. A guaranteed way to saturate your line is by running a speed test, this will use all of your bandwidth.

2. Doing that will show you how your CC sliders affect things while someone is streaming Netflix, it will give you an idea of what it is doing but it's probably not saturating your line (apart from maybe a quick burst of saturation at the start) unless you have relatively low bandwidth to begin with.

3. 2ms is not a high level of jitter, the graphs just look a bit spiky. The 'taller' you make the graph, by dragging it up the page, the spikier it looks.

It's relative to your base ping too.

Take the following example:
a) I ping Twitter at 8ms (something like that), a 'spike' hitting 10ms (an increase of 2ms) looks big because it's 25% higher than the base 8ms but in reality it's barely a 'spike'.
b) Someone else has a base ping of 100ms to Twitter with spikes hitting 115ms (an increase of 15ms). Their graph looks smoother and their spikes are smaller than mine because it's only a 15% increase over their average. But really their spikes are much bigger.

4. It doesn't replicate gameplay, it's not supposed to. Ping Plotter results are pretty accurate but they don't 'reflect' gameplay, the graph just shows what your ping is doing and can be used to show what your CC is doing to suppress spikes caused by local congestion. CC exists only to stop someone else on your network from creating large amount of lag for you. My advice is to set them to 70/70.

[Netduma Jack]

The advice from Boom above is awesome, I hope it helps you

[CrossFitKila717]

1 hour ago, ColonicBoom said:

1. That depends how much bandwidth you have. If you have high bandwidth then no it won't saturate your line. A guaranteed way to saturate your line is by running a speed test, this will use all of your bandwidth.

2. Doing that will show you how your CC sliders affect things while someone is streaming Netflix, it will give you an idea of what it is doing but it's probably not saturating your line (apart from maybe a quick burst of saturation at the start) unless you have relatively low bandwidth to begin with.

3. 2ms is not a high level of jitter, the graphs just look a bit spiky. The 'taller' you make the graph, by dragging it up the page, the spikier it looks.

It's relative to your base ping too.

Take the following example:
a) I ping Twitter at 8ms (something like that), a 'spike' hitting 10ms (an increase of 2ms) looks big because it's 25% higher than the base 8ms but in reality it's barely a 'spike'.
b) Someone else has a base ping of 100ms to Twitter with spikes hitting 115ms (an increase of 15ms). Their graph looks smoother and their spikes are smaller than mine because it's only a 15% increase over their average. But really their spikes are much bigger.

4. It doesn't replicate gameplay, it's not supposed to. Ping Plotter results are pretty accurate but they don't 'reflect' gameplay, the graph just shows what your ping is doing and can be used to show what your CC is doing to suppress spikes caused by local congestion. CC exists only to stop someone else on your network from creating large amount of lag for you. My advice is to set them to 70/70.

Thanks for the awesome & quick response! I have 200/10 speeds. I’m in Texas & I’m pinging to Twitter.com & my ping is generally in the 34-38ms area. 

So, the way I should check then is to have PingPlotter running & watch the graph while running a speed test (using speedtest.net)?

Start with both sliders at 100, then reduce to 90, 80 & so on.....& run the test at every slider setting while looking for the “smoothest” plot?

What if no one is saturating my line while I play? Should I just leave sliders at 100? My wife may be scrolling FB off the WiFi connection at most. 

Move had them set at 70/70 & maybe it’s just me but lately I can’t tell a difference between this, 100/100 & even mismatched settings like 40/60 etc. even experimented with Preemptive with Turbo mode off & “most” gameplay feels the same. The majority of my gameplay feels great & like I’m one step ahead but then the tables can turn real quick.....regardless of what settings I use. 

I know that’s a lot but this seems tough to know when I’ve got it right. 

[ColonicBoom]

On 12/19/2018 at 6:11 PM, CrossFitKila717 said:

So, the way I should check then is to have PingPlotter running & watch the graph while running a speed test (using speedtest.net)?

Start with both sliders at 100, then reduce to 90, 80 & so on.....& run the test at every slider setting while looking for the “smoothest” plot?

What if no one is saturating my line while I play? Should I just leave sliders at 100? My wife may be scrolling FB off the WiFi connection at most. 

Move had them set at 70/70 & maybe it’s just me but lately I can’t tell a difference between this, 100/100 & even mismatched settings like 40/60 etc. even experimented with Preemptive with Turbo mode off & “most” gameplay feels the same. The majority of my gameplay feels great & like I’m one step ahead but then the tables can turn real quick.....regardless of what settings I use. 

I know that’s a lot but this seems tough to know when I’ve got it right. 

If you want to see what it's doing...

Set you Congestion Control to 100/100, open up Ping Plotter, ping something like Twitter, then run a speed test, you should see big spikes.

Then repeat the test with your Congestion Control set to 70/70, you should see drastically reduced spikes. You can try other numbers and repeat the test if you want.

I always leave my CC at 70/70 when I'm gaming, even if nobody is at home. Although saturation causes the massive spikes, any online activity from any devices connected to your network can create smaller spikes. I leave mine at 70/70 to make sure that I don't get any surprise spikes when my phone decides that it wants to communicate with my network for no reason.

[CrossFitKila717]

16 hours ago, ColonicBoom said:

If you want to see what it's doing...

Set you Congestion Control to 100/100, open up Ping Plotter, ping something like Twitter, then run a speed test, you should see big spikes.

Then repeat the test with your Congestion Control set to 70/70, you should see drastically reduced spikes. You can try other numbers and repeat the test if you want.

I always leave my CC at 70/70 when I'm gaming, even if nobody is at home. Although saturation causes the massive spikes, any online activity from any devices connected to your network can create smaller spikes. I leave mine at 70/70 to make sure that I don't get any surprise spikes when my phone decides that it wants to communicate with my network for no reason.

Perfect! Thanks for the info. I used 40/80 last night after pinging twitter while running speed test & it was a tad less spikey than 70/70 (at that time at least). Lol 😂. In-game, 70/70 worked great as well, so just left it there.