[Dumb Ideas] Server Logic

Rew711·Oct 15, 2014·1 votes·308 views

I don't know if servers do or do not know what your PING is or not so just to let you know so I don't get comments later saying either "it knows" or "this is a stupid post".

Why can't we have a server that nows when we lag out or leave? Like if my PING were very high, and I lagged out, it would know the difference rather than someone just leaving. It might work if we have the server to detect Ping and see if it has a large spike before you disappear from the game. That way, the LeaverBuster system only has to detect those that leave without spikes. This can even go as far to tell you before starting a game that your PING is strangely very high and you might want to do something about it before playing.

6 Comments

Rew711Oct 15, 20141 votes

... no one wants to look at it.

JubbinautOct 15, 20141 votes

Before I address your question, let me ask: do you know what ping actually represents to the computer?

Rew711Oct 15, 20141 votes

Like I said, I have no idea. But I have this strong feeling I'm on the right track.

JubbinautOct 15, 20141 votes

Alright, let's start there, then. Ping is a measurement of response time. Specifically, the number you see as ping is the amount of time it takes to receive a response from whatever it is your computer is "pinging," measured in milliseconds.

What this means is that the large spike you see before you disconnect is actually nothing more than the system displaying the increasingly-long time that it's taking for a response to be received. That spike is, in other words, the first stage of disconnect. And the reason the server can't recognize that as a prelude to a disconnection is that what it really represents to the server (and your computer) is the first few seconds of a long stretch of silence between the two computers.

Think of it like a dropped call. You're busy talking to whoever's on the phone, and at some point, you realize that not only are you talking to dead air, but you have been for a while. Using that extended silence to determine whether whoever you're talking to hung up on you, or the call just dropped is effectively impossible.

Rew711Oct 15, 20141 votes

Ok. But don't you think there might be way that can help? Servers on LoL are upgradable, right? And as technology advances, it might be able to do this someday, don't you think?

We should have a few programmers looking into this.

JubbinautOct 15, 20141 votes

Not really. That number only shows as growing because there's an increasingly longer time since the last response.

Say you talk to your friend every day for a month. At some point, he stops calling you. He doesn't respond to your calls. You start counting the days since the last time you heard from your friend, as you continue to not hear from him. Eventually, you give up on getting a response, and stop trying to call.

Does that number of days by itself tell you anything about why he stopped talking to you?

It's the same with using ping to try to determine the cause of a disconnection. That ping spike is simply your computer counting the time since the last response from the server. What you see as the disconnection is the moment your computer gives up on ever hearing anything back. But by that point, it's actually already been disconnected for some time (and trying to reestablish that connection).

Ping is helpful in determining how consistent or stable a connection may be, and is a pretty flat display of how quickly data passes back and forth between two particular machines, but that's all.