Isn't there any f****** way to prevent losing because of lag??? Man this p***** me off!

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"When you are learning, it is not so important whether you are right or wrong." - Bill Spight

Play longer byo-yomi periods? My connection is spiky so I don't like playing anything less than 20 sec byo-yomi. Which is good because I don't like playing shorter than 10 minute main time.

Also remember, what is important is not whether you win or lose, but whether you played a good game!

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Keep in mind, I am frequently wrong.

The obvious question... what is causing your lag? Location, internet provider, local network? KGS has little to do with it.

How am I supposed to know? Should I run some network thingamajigie to test the problem? Should I call my friendly ISP and ask them to beef up my connection when I'm in byo-yomi? It's not like I'm the only one this happens to. Go is the only time-critical thing I do on the internet. If KGS has little to do with causing lag, it also doesn't appear to do much to alleviate the problem.

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"When you are learning, it is not so important whether you are right or wrong." - Bill Spight

Try playing from China.

Thats nuts dude, but I do think that if you have longer periods it would help as long as the lag isn't that bad

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Communication is two ways. One must speak, then listen. ~Me

Compare: "Tennis is the only thing that I need eye-hand coordination for. If my tennis court has little to do with causing my clumsiness, it also doesn't appear to do much to alleviate the problem."

I don't think that this is a completely fair analogy. By experiencing lag, one is not exhibiting clumsiness.

I think it's more like, "Tennis is the only sport I sweat in. It'd be nice if the tennis court had towels for me to wipe my sweat with after I play. The tennis court isn't causing my sweat, but it also doesn't provide much to help me deal with the sweat that I have.".

That said, it's not the tennis court's fault that people sweat. It'd just be a nice convenience if towels were provided.

Likewise, it's not KGS's fault that people have lag. It might be nice if there were some mechanism with which we can make people's lag experiences more enjoyable. There's no obligation to have such a mechanism, but software is created to help people. Having more features is something that's sometimes more helpful.

So basically, lag is a problem. It'd be nice if software better alleviated this problem. It's not the software's fault that lag exists, but a better user experience makes for better software.

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By the way, I'm not saying that KGS does a bad job of handling lag. I'm simply saying that suggesting that the software provide a better user experience in certain situations is not an unreasonable dream.

Agreed. There are tools to tell you where the lag is coming from which is what I was trying to get to, but it seems like this is just complaining.

Maybe I don't understand the mechanics of "lag" well enough, but my understanding is that it has absolutely nothing to do with the software. If it had anything to do with the software or the server, then everyone playing on KGS would suffer from lag simultaneously and equally. Once in a while KGS screws up for everyone at once, but when that happens we all hear about it.

A better analogy might be ringtones and dropped calls. Wishing that the KGS software would prevent lag is a little bit like wishing that your ringtone would prevent dropped calls. Yes, a ringtone that could prevent dropped calls would be über-awesome, but it's the wireless network that drops your calls, and it's some aspect of your internet connection that prevents you from communicating with KGS every few seconds.

OK, I may have expressed myself poorly, and I don't doubt that KGS itself has little to do with it. It's just that while lag may just be a fact of life (on the net), it is a really bothersome fact when it happens in byo-yomi and an otherwise good game goes down the cyber-toilet. It would be really nice if something could be done to eliminate this recurring source of aggravation.


Well, yeah, I was just complaining. And you still haven't mentioned what tools there are and if they can eliminate the problem.

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"When you are learning, it is not so important whether you are right or wrong." - Bill Spight

This is true, but the server/client can measure unusual lag spikes and stop the time or adjust it. Most MMOs use a system of this kind so that the player isn't too much affected by the lag. However, the problem with this and a go server is that it could be exploited (for example by deliberately throttling the connection to provide more thinking time in a critical situation -- it's also something done in MMOs).

But I think this is all besides the point. Daal (who has the cutest kitten ever!) had a bad day, as we all do every once in a while, so poking him more just doesn't do any good. Lag sucks, and I think everyone can agree with this.

when I'm experiencing lag, its usually my wireless router. it drops my connection to my mac all the time, so I can rarely stay connected to my work on vpn. and I can hardly watch a complete Netflix movie on my Wii because my wireless router keeps dropping.

Usually, unpluging and restarting both my wireless router and my dsl router will clear up those issues for a while.

Other times when I notice lag on KGS when my laptop has been running for a while (like for weeks and months) without restarting. Because I usually never close my web browser windows or my KGS app (exploring several games offline) and many other apps. several of these apps seem to have memory leaks that eventually force me to either restart them or reboot my laptop.

What I mean is, while lag is something that happens independently of the software's control (like sweat happens independently of a tennis court's control), it may be possible for there to exist a software design which could help people deal with lag when it happens. However, I do not claim to know what this design exists - just that it might be OK to wish for it.

For example, if it were possible to pick up a lost game upon mutual agreement between the two players, lag problems might be alleviated. When you lose a game due to lag, you could talk with your opponent, explain the situation, and if he agreed, you could resume the game.

That's just an example, though, and I don't know if it's a good solution. It probably isn't. But the point remains that it might be possible to add to the software functionality that helps people to deal with the problem of lag, which, of course, happens independently of the software itself.

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I agree with this, too. Using such a tool would be a proactive approach to dealing with the problem.

I found this

http://www.wikihow.com/Test-Network-and ... ft-Windows

I've used ping and traceroute quite a bit but not from windows before.

You can fix it if it's local. If it's something upstream it's possible that your ISP is just bad. You may also want to ask your ISP to replace your modem.

Describe your setup. Are you wireless or wired? ADSL or cable modem? Do you have anything else on your network? How often does lag go high and come back?

I tried the test. Strangely, pinging microsoft.com -t timed out, but substituting google.com got a good result. When I pinged gokgs, I got a slower result- about 140 ms, but nothing like no response for 30 seconds. Unfortunately, aside from the above, nothing indicated lag on my side, and if it did, I would still be at a loss as to how to interpret the data. (This is not my field of expertise). The problem with lag is that it happens intermittently. A test of this sort won't tell me about the likelyhood of a dropout occurring at a certain point in time (like with 5 seconds left in the last byo-yomi), will it?

My setup is wireless, and it's dsl 2000.

The reason I am complaining, and the reason I suspect that it isn't just something on my side is that lag seems to occur disproportionately towards the end of a game. Maybe that's just the way it seems.

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"When you are learning, it is not so important whether you are right or wrong." - Bill Spight

I'm guessing it's the way it seems rather than reality.

I've had bad luck with DSL before. One thing you can do is check with your ISP web page if there's a new version of the software for it. You can also run a few games wired. If you still see the lag, you know it's an issue with the wireless.

You can also keep pinging for an hour while saving all the data. See if there are times it spikes up.

One thing that may be causing lag on wireless is other people using yours or people nearby on their routers on the same frequency.

Also, some isp's intentionally throttle continuous communication from your computer. They have some euphemism for it like "flow shaping", but the underlying project is to strangle off peer-to-peer file sharing. Last September I had an isp that simply throttled the connection if I had been using KGS for five minutes; then after a few minutes, a ton of moves would flow onto the screen, and then it would lag again.

How were you able to determine that your isp was the cause of the problem?

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"When you are learning, it is not so important whether you are right or wrong." - Bill Spight

When mine lags, I see the same sort of behavior.

However, its usually the memory and/or cpu of the java virtual machine on my own machine (or maybe even my wireless connection also).

Once, when I was running an online tournament, I was logged on with two separate accounts on two machines (my personal account on one machine, and the TD account on my other machine). One Mac, the other Windows.

While one machine was seriously lagging, the other was just fine. So it had nothing to do with my ISP.

Also, my Mac has a worse wireless connection than my PC. My previous wireless router worked much better with Macs than my current router.