Latency and possible issue

#1

Last night when we had a game session and tried to use Syrinscape online, we had a issue where none of my players could hear the sounds… They show properly on the player list in the online player with me as the GM. So that should be okey, plus we’ve used Syrinscape plenty of times without any issues.

That got me checking the latencies and they were fairly high. Of the servers I could choose, the lowest was around 300 and highest somewhere around 600. We’re in Finland so higher latency is expected, but could this have caused the issue? I haven’t really paid attention to the latency before, since the application worked ok. We also use Discord for chat, but it has always worked without hitch with Syrinscape on, so I dont think that is the issue…

I remember reading that Syrinscape doesn’t have any servers in Europe right?
We’ll try again next week to see if the issue reoccurs, there haven’t been any general server issues yesterday, have there?

#2

There is always noticeable delay between the first time you issue a sound and when it starts playing. Later it seems to be cached or at least it is not that noticeably slower. I am also in Europe and I don’t like this delay (3-5 sec sometimes), but there is nothing much to do.

I don’t want to use the offline client, because there is no way to quickly search for ad-hoc sounds and the new search feature in the web interface, abeit super sluggish, is very useful.

#3

Yeah. If the player has to fetch a sample, it has to fetch a sample… and if internet providers provide slow service to Amazon S3 that doesn’t help.

I seem to vaguely recall you can trick ISPs with a VPN? Has anyone tried that?

#4

Note, this latency is not like a normal ping. It tracks the time from you via our servers to the Online Player and all the way back again. So it includes routing and allocation to your game and lots of things like that.

That said, a Europe specific server IS something that might speed things further… those spreading the servers across regions creates LOTs of complexities with game management… we’ll probably get more significant results from implementing precaching (which is something that has been on our list of TO DOs for a while).

#5

VPN won’t solve the problem with slow ISP or saturated links, in fact it can worsen the problem depending on the way VPN provider has the global network mesh arranged. I have tried with VPN and it does not matter much.

What will matter is if you use CDN for Europe. If you have things stored on S3, getting CDN for your content and adjusting the Players to fetch accordingly is not complicated initiative.

#6

Hmmm… I think the idea was to overcome the deliberate throttling of certain connections by ISP by hiding the destination of the request… but I might reconnect with the person who was doing this.

Do know, we are always working towards a better experience for our users. :slight_smile: And in fact, for us, since we use Syrinscape everyday, to both game with, and to build content with. I am in Sydney and the rest of the content creation team is in Europe. So we certainly feel your struggles with European access to US West Coast servers.

#7

I understand the rationale to put your content in US, especially if the sales distribution across the regions (AMER/EMEA/APAC) is in favor or AMER.

If you are using S3, that is great way to host tons of content for very acceptable price. Unfortunately, if it is in the regions, others suffer. This is solvable very easy with the CDN service that nicely integrates, or doing back end sync from your S3 in US to S3 in EMEA so you are not having the per GB charges that CDN will occur. Client update to ask the customer or automatically detect the physical location is also easy thing to implement IMO.

I hope you have some plans on that direction already in motion.

The delays are noticeable and during session where I have to quickly search something (the new search is awesome, but it is also slow) without pausing a game, it is not fun at all.

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