Posted by dan on May 19, 2000 at 20:45:51:
In Reply to: What exactly causes lag? nt posted by John-boy Jr on May 19, 2000 at 20:36:03:
As you probably know, your piece of data jumps across ten or twenty different machines before it'll reach cf.
If one of these machines is doing some really intensive stuff (whether it be network intensive [downloading] or processor intensive [compiling a new kernel for unix]) your packet will take longer to pass through the machine.
If a few machines along the line are like this, then you've got a problem as your data is significantly delayed.
Take a look at how many times you "hop" to cf by loading the MS-DOS prompt and typing TRACERT carrionfields.org
In a tracert I did during this severe lag, that one piece of data didn't even make it, so your computer will recognise that and send it again, hopefully getting a different routing path. Sadly, each of these retries takes even longer.
The problem with this particular bout of lag seems to lie with Bell Southwestern as my tracert makes it all the way over there, then gives up.
I hope everything I've said here was correct, I think it is but I'd welcome any "proper" TCP professionals to correct me
dan