REVscene - Vancouver Automotive Forum

vl_86 · 05-08-2011, 11:13 PM

Hi guys,

I was wondering if there were any networking gurus that could chime in on this website, and if it actually works for decreasing gaming lag

http://www.fixmylag.com/

It costs about $10/month and from what i read, it re-routes internet traffic via VPN and reduces lag for games.

My problem is that I currently have shaw extreme, but due to multiple people using the internet at the same time, my gaming lag suffers significantly. So i was wondering if this would help at all or would this pretty much be a waste of money?

Jeremy617 · 05-08-2011, 11:41 PM

I HIGHLY doubt it works as advertised.

i suppose if they had a vpn gateway in vancouver, and that traffic was routed through an extensive mpls cloud or some huge network of leased lines it would be possible, but thats just not really feasible cost-wise.

i'm really tempted to try it now just to see... lol.

edit: this whole 3 layer crap they talk about in the FAQ is a load of garbage though.

bcrdukes · 05-09-2011, 12:10 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jeremy617

edit: this whole 3 layer crap they talk about in the FAQ is a load of garbage though.

+1

Sounds like real balogny is what it is.

Perhaps try playing with some QoS settings on your router?

strykn · 05-09-2011, 12:11 AM

lol...^ what he said. if anything 99% of VPNs will make you lag more LOL

lilaznviper · 05-09-2011, 12:23 AM

it wont work. VPNs don't work like that.

It will still depend on your internet connection. like what bcrdukes said use QoS

vl_86 · 05-09-2011, 12:33 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bcrdukes

+1

Sounds like real balogny is what it is.

Perhaps try playing with some QoS settings on your router?

Yeah i tried fiddling around with the QOS, it helped a bit, but if there are a bunch of people that are using the same internet it still lags alot..

bcrdukes · 05-09-2011, 01:55 AM

Time to screw with their QoS settings.

striderblade · 05-09-2011, 09:08 AM

maybe get a better router. I mean if you have ppl downloading crap loads of torrent with like 50 to 100 connection open. qos wont save you for shit. even router had it own processor and limit. I highly doubt a vpn like that will work. sharing connection with ppl who causes you high ping is a bit different than having high ping that cause by Shaw itself.
Posted via RS Mobile

Hehe · 05-09-2011, 04:38 PM

The only way that VPN would make a difference on ping is if the VPN is in the same DC as the game server with direct connection on local level but the two servers have different outbound connection.

Say if you use a colocation to host 2 1U servers. They are in the same DC with one on premium bandwidth (NTT, Level3, Global X) and the other on cheap (Cogent) to maximize cost/performance ratio. And then you wire those 2 servers up for their internal transfer. If that's the case and you have VPN on premium server and game host on the cheap server, then yes, theoretically speaking, you could have better ping by having a VPN.

The other possibility is if you connect to foreign servers. Say they locate their VPN at the very entry point of cross Atlantic/pacific DC with serious routing setup to all its local ISPs. Then yes, there's a possibility of reducing pings as well.

Nevertheless, I fail to see how much impact it could actually bring.

fixmylag · 05-10-2011, 02:16 AM

Hi guys,

I'd like to start by being upfront with you all... which is why I used the service name as the username here. And not pretend instead to be JohnDoe, who has used the service and had a great time, and then proceed to tell you all to go sign up! I came across this purely by accident. I was wondering about some traffic from this site and decided to take a peek out of curiosity.

Allow me to state upfront that I am not trying to sell anything here. (not quite the forum for it either) But rather, would like to just clarify things somewhat.

Our website may be a little confusing as it is and this is currently being worked on. The reason for this is that we're actually a hybrid service and the first on the market. We do provide VPN access but this is really only a small part of it as a backup measure. (the so called "third layer")

Our service really was developed for gamers. Our mainstay are our 15 proxies located over several regions. Current breakdown looks like this - 12 in the USA, 1 in Australia and 2 in Europe. Working on adding more soon!

Now, since everyone in the thread has mentioned VPNs, we thought we would clear the air on that.

1. VPNs ARE traditionally slower. There is no doubt about this. PPTP, L2TP-IPSEC, OpenVPN... whatever the platform or standard used, no matter what bitrate set for encryption from 64bit to 256 bit, they'll never be our recommended option for gamers. Like I said before, this is a backup option. They do work great for some gamers though... this really does require a bit of luck. They're also easy to use and many overseas gamers get to enjoy US-restricted services thanks to these.

2. Proxies. These are the lightweight platforms used by and recommended for the majority of our gamers. They are essentially SSH servers that have been configured to use the lightest quickest encryption algorithms and are secured for private use. Our own software will then be provided to re-route your game traffic so that they use our proxies instead of your default route.

Who does this work for?
Anyone who may have a sub-optimal internet connection.
If you're a victim of traffic shaping, congested gateways or simply have a connection that could be improved in a myriad of ways, then our service may help you.

When does this service not work?
If you already have an optimal connection with the best (or near best) latency you could possibly achieve, then the improvement you see may be marginal. It will also not help you if your ISP has a single congested gateway that you're locked to and have no means of bypassing.

So how does this actually work?
1A. Encrypted data stream - this defeats most traffic-shaping done by ISPs. What used to be regarded as junk UDP traffic may now bypass filters more easily and as such escape the lower priority flag on your game packets. ISPs frequently associate UDP traffic with P2P and cast a wide net which snags alot of game traffic.

It is also believed that encrypted traffic has a higher priority over the average everyday traffic. The VPNs everyone has mentioned are slow ARE INEED slow but this is mostly due to the fact that they tend to use complex, slow encryption routines which add delays on several levels. Encrypted traffic itself suffers no penalty. (See bypassing packet filtering above)

1B. Port switching - Let's say you play WOW and it uses port 3724 for its TCP traffic. You get an ISP who decided one day that they don't want WOW traffic on their network. They filter/block port 3724 and your WOW gaming is done for! Kaput! Our program can switch your WOW traffic to another port since it sends the traffic to our server first. And we allow a choice of up to 7 ports! Including port 53 which is typically used for DNS queries or port 80 that is used for web traffic. This helps bypass filters as well since your ISP might think you're really just using a web server or DNS server instead.

This actually happened for a game called RIFT during its early launch where lots of users were complaining of terrible 30,000ms pings due to their poor choice of ports that were commonly associated by ISPs with P2P. Those ports were throttled. Guess what service helped some gamers?

2. Alternative routes - put simply, by having proxies in various locations, you are often able to bypass that congested chokepoint which is causing "lag" or high latencies. The only other way to try and switch gateways is to "power-cycle" your modem and hope it picks up a new IP that might use another gateway. To do this, power off your modem for 3-5 minutes, then power back on and hope for the best. Remember to use a trace-route program to monitor if your route changes. Lots of free ones on the internet.

3. Location prioritization by game servers - several games already have this built into their network code. A good example is Aion, which gave overseas gamers in Australia a ping as high as 600-800ms. But when the same user used a proxy that showed a local USA IP, the ping dropped to between 200-250ms.

Let me touch on locations again.
Say you live on the West coast.
You have a crappy oversold ISP who has a congested gateway that sits between you and your game server.

User -----> Crappy gateway -----> Game server

Now, since we have 6 proxies all in different datacenters on the West Coast, you can try all of them to see if one gives you an alternate gateway which is not congested.

User -----> 3 Proxies in different LA datacenters -----> Game server
User -----> Proxy in Fremont -----> Game server
User -----> Proxy in Seattle -----> Game server

If the game server is in the East coast, you can even try all our other proxies in Dallas, Chicago,Washington DC, IA, NJ, etc...

Unless you have an ISP that is really cheap and that is locked to only one gateway and cheap bandwidth, it is 70% (percentage of customers who stay on for more than one month) likely that you will be able to find a better non-congested route for your traffic.

Couple this with the fact that encryption itself can help and all the other stuff, I think you will agree that we can help most guys who have less than optimal connections.

I hope this helps clarify what it is exactly we do and provide. We don't actually try and mislead nor make false promises. Which is why we provide a 3-day Money Back guarantee.

But having said that much... if anyone here is keen to give it a shot without putting up any dough upfront, this can be arranged. Contact us and we'll arrange a short trial. No obligations.

Whew.. that was a long post! Forgive the lengthy essay. Didn't plan on doing that but it just happened!

Josh
FixMyLag.com

Jeremy617 · 05-10-2011, 10:49 AM

It is also believed that encrypted traffic has a higher priority over the average everyday traffic.

....proof?

Makes sense for certain uses, but seems generally useless for canadians, as we don't really suffer from ISP congestion, and we don't have overly restrictive ISP's.

bcrdukes · 05-10-2011, 11:01 AM

+1

You read my mind.

fixmylag · 05-10-2011, 11:34 AM

Hi Jeremy,

Thanks for your response.
While I would like to furnish 100% concrete proof, this would be hard to do as most ISPs would never readily admit to messing around with user traffic. Yet, it is not really unheard of.

Many ISPs are commonly known to de-prioritize non-essential traffic. Especially in the case of torrent/P2P traffic. Various ports are also throttled by ISPs for similar purposes.

How difficult would it be to extend this to many other areas? It would be an easy extension, wouldn't it? And why wouldn't they? It makes perfectly good sense for many ISPs to do so. What better way to lower congestion than to filter the unimportant "junk"?

How about traffic filters that are used for a variety of purposes? The Chinese Great Firewall is a great example of things to come elsewhere. Think anti-terror countermeasures etc? Filters like these cause massive fluctuations in latencies.

Torrent clients like uTorrent came out with countermeasures like "protocol obfuscation", which is essentially basic encryption that aims to make it harder for filters to guess exactly what kind of traffic it is.

I've never said that services like ours help every single gamer out there. Nor does our site claim to. Which is why we have offered a money back guarantee and are the only one to do so. Because if we can't help you, you get your money back! Good old honest business at its best. Of course, we now offer the trial option. For that, simply email us. Address on site.

You guys have to understand that I'm not addressing Canadians directly, nor do I pretend to know Canadian ISPs like the back of my hand. We do have a few Canadian gamers but our main customer base is admittedly American. I was simply putting our side of the story here since there seem to be a number of guys who might think we sound like scammers! :-D

Thank you for your time! And I'm glad that you do agree on a basic level that it does make sense! Even if its not specifically beneficial for you.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jeremy617

It is also believed that encrypted traffic has a higher priority over the average everyday traffic.

....proof?

Makes sense for certain uses, but seems generally useless for canadians, as we don't really suffer from ISP congestion, and we don't have overly restrictive ISP's.

vl_86 · 05-10-2011, 05:26 PM

Hmm, I don't understand half the tech lingo thats going on here, but from what I've read it seems like this won't be dramatically changing my game lag, but hopefully it will help.. Since theres a free trial i might as well give it a shot and see for myself how it goes.

Also being able to use the VPN to watch hulu and listen to Pandora is always an added bonus

Thanks everyone!!

bcrdukes · 05-10-2011, 05:32 PM

Post up your results. Thanks!

xxWraithxx · 08-08-2014, 12:36 PM

Sadly, I had to be the one to find out. Their support is bogus and always comes up with "Mail Delivery Failed" every time you try to send them an E-mail. And of course, I was never sent the software that I ordered. It's already been 2 whole days since I ordered. Complete scam. Avoid the fixmylag website!