Strcraft 2 on campus

[Tranq]

Hi guys, I just joined the forums and am hoping to get some help with SC2 on the WCU campus.

 

It has been running incredibly slow, with something like a 3 second delay between me inputting a command and the game actually doing it, so I called campus IT and they basically said "tough luck, SC2 has been having problems with the school's network and we aren't opening any ports...... get a hold of the gaming club, maybe they can help."

 

He said something about re-routing through the club server because it's not regulated by standard campus policy, but I honestly don't know what he was talking about. Nevertheless, I've come here to see if anyone else has found a solution to this problem other than just not playing SC2

[Bitey]

Hey man, thanks for registering on the forums and welcome, we have heard about the issue with SC2 lagging when trying to play multiplayer, we haven't found a resolution to this quite yet either but some other people may have something else to, this is the first time I have seen a suggestion like this.

 

MasterP your input please.

[MasterP]

Welcome to the forums! I just wish your registration and first post were under better circumstances.

 

Unfortunately there's not a whole lot you can do to fix that right now. The people at the IT help desk don't typically know what they're talking about with non-standard issues like this but they did get one thing right there: we've informed them about the problem and they've pretty much completely ignored it.

 

The main problem is that their brand new, $225,000 filter isn't working like they thought it would and rather than unplug it from the network and try to fix the problems it's causing they're just chugging along and hoping it either fixes itself or the complaints go away. I can't say I blame them, it'd be a hard pill to feed to the CIO that all that money was spent on something that fixes problems at the expense of hurting the end-users.

 

Our server is under the same campus policies that the rest of campus has and right now we don't have the capability to forward gaming traffic through it. To be honest, I don't know if doing that would even fix the latency problems that Starcraft2 has right now as our server traffic still goes through the same webfilter. If ITS doesn't get their act together on this in the next week or so we may very well look into setting up a proxy server to try to fix this for the on-campus students.

 

Since you're in one of the newer dorms you should have the lowest pings on campus, the wiring in the Balsam and Blue Ridge network closets is a work of art. Hopefully once this is resolved you can start enjoying the sexy fast internet. Trust me, it's the first thing you miss after graduating.

 

TLDR: Hang loose. If ITS doesn't fix it soon we'll try to fix it for them.

[Tranq]

Thanks a lot for the fast replies guys

[MasterP]

If anything on this changes I'll shoot you a PM and let you know. Hopefully this won't be a problem much longer.

 

Also, meeting this Thursday in the UC. You should come.

[Fascist Flakes (Jagr)]

Hey there, much like everyone else has said, welcome to the forums! I too have had LOTS of troubles playing SC2 but lately have had little to no problems playing ladder matches. It may just depend on when you are trying to play it in conjunction with the school's new filtering software. I've also noticed that after a few games of Nexus Wars, etc where it lags like *edited* I can go into a 1v1 and it will be absolutely fine. Are you mainly trying to play team-based modes?

[MasterP]

I've also noticed that after a few games of Nexus Wars, etc where it lags like *edited* I can go into a 1v1 and it will be absolutely fine.

That makes no sense. At all. Wtf is going on with the internet there?

 

You shouldn't be able to bank lag and cash it in for a stable 1v1 match. That's not how the internet is supposed to work.

 

Btw, this whole thing reminds me of my freshmen year when I used dialup in Reynolds to play Mechwarrior because the schools packetshaper gave me a 2000ms ping. It's sad when I was getting much better pings on dialup than the school's fiber connection <_>

[Tallgeese]

I TOTALLY agree, we need to figure out a fix for this if at all possible. Regardless of my love for SC2, we gotta be able to play online for LAN's sake. I'm fairly certain this game will get voted in tonight, simply for sheer awesomeness, but without a LAN function within the actual game we will have to resort to a hopefully fixed B.NET

 

That said, I will warn evryone tonight the game may be laggy as hell, and if it does get voted in I will go test the connection in there before the LAN, and set up a contingency plan.

[MasterP]

I would strongly advise that it be made EXTREMELY clear that if it doesn't work correctly on gameday the tournament will likely be switched to freeplay only.

 

I know it's extremely popular but in all likelyhood it won't be fixed in time.

[Shingi]

IT saying that they won't open any ports is kind of silly. Main reason being is that I have gotten them to open ports before. What they won't do is open a large range of ports (which in itself is completely stupid because their reasoning behind it is a lie) say like ports 1000-4000. I suggest that Tallgeese or Freezer go down to IT (systems) and talk with Stephen or Patrick about it. Get the exact ports that are needed, which is easy to find, and see what they say.

 

When doing this you should through in that it is hindering the efforts of the gaming club to not only bring together students on-campus but it would be very hard to convince prospective students to come here for the gaming club when our internet is bogged down like this.

[Tranq]

Hey there, much like everyone else has said, welcome to the forums! I too have had LOTS of troubles playing SC2 but lately have had little to no problems playing ladder matches. It may just depend on when you are trying to play it in conjunction with the school's new filtering software. I've also noticed that after a few games of Nexus Wars, etc where it lags like *edited* I can go into a 1v1 and it will be absolutely fine. Are you mainly trying to play team-based modes?

 

Maybe you are just getting used to the 5 second delay in team matches, which makes the 3 second delay in ladder seem like nothing

 

BTW, it seems like ports 1119, 1120, 3724, 6112, 6113, 6114, and 4000 for both TCP and UDP are the ones that need to be opened according to the SC2 tech support boards

Edited September 2, 2010 by Tranq

[MasterP]

I don't think it's ports. The SC2 beta worked fine last semester and ITS generally doesn't re-close ports. I think it's the way SC2 packets are assembled, maybe they're a false positive in the filter or something. It could also be that UDP traffic is being flagged as low priority, generally UDP traffic isn't harmed by delay.

 

I'll look into it and shoot Stephen a text to see if he can check the ports.

[Fascist Flakes (Jagr)]

Yeah I just played a ladder match at like, 4:45 or so and had 0 lag. I got conned into a couple of custom games with a friend and lagged a little bit, then started playing another ladder game at like 5:30-5:45 and lagged the entire way through it, absolutely killed my micro and macro.. couldn't do *edited*. I don't know if that's due to the custom games I was in that then lagged me or if it was due to the time or something, but this is getting *edited*ing stupid. Wtb lagless game =/

[Fascist Flakes (Jagr)]

Just lost, again, because of Western's *edited*ty *edited*ing packet filter. I was absolutely dominating a guy, wiped out his main and everything, but because he transported to a *edited*ing corner and I hadn't tech switched to air yet, he was able to sit there and wait/turtle up with about 6 void rays, and counting, until the timeout finally ticked to 0 and he kicked me and won. *edited*ing most bull*edited* ever, I hate this god *edited* internet and this *edited*ty *edited*ing college's packet filter that they can't even *edited*ing configure correctly.

[Tranq]

ouch

[Fascist Flakes (Jagr)]

What's your player/real id? Blasphemer.363 if you want to add non-realid or jagrpuck@ec.rr.com is my realid. We can play some 1v1s or something, test out builds, etc if you want.. see how bad it lags us when we're not even a mile apart, lol.

[Tranq]

Request sent

 

Keep in mind that I do suck though, only in silver like a newb

[Fascist Flakes (Jagr)]

I'm only in silver, I never played the original SC or BW much so I wasnt very good to begin with. I've always been a competitive RTS player though so I'm picking it up quick, etc .

[Lemm]

I wanna say it too: Welcome to the forums...

 

I don't actually play SC2... but I have friends who do and also..

 

Possible solution: come play css instead?

[Tranq]

Im more of a TF2 player..... I suck at that too though lol

Edited September 3, 2010 by Tranq

[Liam]

We could *possibly* setup a proxy but it would require an install on every single computer to hook the ports and forward them elsewhere. <. large pain in the rear.>

[MasterP]

The problem is that when faced with 3000ms pings, the hassle becomes almost worth it <_>

[Bitey]

It wouldn't be too hard to setup a download for the install on our servers would it? And hey it would require every student on campus to come to us to fix the ITS shenanigans, makes us look like saviors and gets some good word out about us.

[MasterP]

We could probably write a script to do it.

 

I've gotten the ball rolling with ITS on this. Hopefully we'll either have it fixed or know that it for sure can't be fixed early next week.

[melatonin]

The lag on SC2 online seems to vary drastically for me. I've had zero lag, 7 second lag, and everywhere in between. If we can't get this fixed by the LAN, I would rather play SC:BW than deal with this.