So far, we have found 3 members who can reliably host a fixed room in GT6 So I would like to ask those 3, @Bryan_F @its-benny-racer @Bluemoon How is your internet/router/PS3 setup to achieve this? & what amount of download/upload speed would you need to try it out? Maybe we can find other members who can become fixed room hosts in the future.
Firstly, it's not rocket science, but it does require a bit of luck and know-how to become a good fixed host. I'll outline my setup and experiences below. Type of connection. If you're using a 3G/4G connection, you can forget about hosting. It's all but impossible to open the requisite ports. As for ADSL, being close to the exchange will help with bandwidth. Cable and fiber are usually most suited due having the highest bandwidth. Note that "NBN" now includes a whole range of different technologies, so it doesn't automatically mean you have a solid connection, not to mention all the teething issues with it. Modem/router. Sometimes you may be lucky and your internet provider gives you a decent modem (Telstra gave me their top-of-the-line Netgear). But most of the time, you will need to upgrade your modem/router to something better than entry-level. A google search will give you a range to work with. Also I'd say a wired connection to your PlayStation is a must. Settings. This is critical to get the most out of your connection. In brief terms, use a fixed IP address on the PS and enable port forwarding or DMZ on your router. There are guides on this forum and elsewhere on how to do this. To go even further, turn off wi-fi when hosting. Internet speed/latency. On my HFC cable connection, I get around 35mbps download and 1.5mbps upload. If I pay Telstra an extra $20 a month, I could probably double those speeds. But just as important, my latency is usually under 15ms. High latency is probably the biggest contributor to lag.
They're technically not the same thing, but in this context, you can treat it as such. Another thing to add: GT6 room settings. It's a compromise between voice chat quality and room quality. For Sunday league, I'd set room quality to high and voice quality to very low. For other casual events, I'd set room quality to standard and voice to standard. You'll need to use trial-and-error to find the ideal settings for your connection.
To run fixed host, you really need either cable, fibre or vDSL. My new NBN connection is vDSL, connects at about 80mbps down and 30mbps up. In reality I see about 50-60 down on speedtest.net but importantly ping times (latency) are below 10ms. The achilles heal for me is the router as it is the standard one supplied by TPG, I do intend to upgrade it to one that will more easily cope with large numbers of concurrent connections. Luckily i only see problems if I dont reboot the router for a while. The PS3 is connected by ethernet to the router and uPNP is enabled which automatically sets up port forwarding. Port forwarding is critical for anyone wanting to host.
And to clarify, a 'ping' is a test used to measure latency. A ping response of 10ms means 100 (small) messages can be sent and recieved between 2 devices per second. Lag in GT6 is experienced when the response rate gets too low, causing a delay in data such as position information for other cars on the track.
Just to add to the mix my setup. It is not a setup that many can follow though. PS3 cabled to WAN PPPoE login NAT1 (ie, no NAT) no DMZ, no port forwarding, no UPNP, all ports open high room quality, very low voice quality I estimate about 20kbps for each connection for this setting, so only 300kbps uplink required for a full room. 50/20 FTTP (now) 15/2 ADSL (before season 5) As the others have stated, latency is important. Most games will be fine with latency up to about 20ms, though it is jitter that is more of the issue. Latency is the time it takes a piece of data to go from point A to point B, while jitter is how much that time changes. Games cope with latency by predicting where objects are before the data comes in, but jitter causes that data to arrive later or earlier than expected, resulting in sudden updates in the object's position. Jitter can be caused by a congested exchange (and that also reduces downloads/uploads), a queued uplink (due largely to torrenting; even a limited upload will cause a significant jitter), or just normal downloading traffic. The best you can do is to remove any traffic you can. I didn't put my hand up for hosting for a couple of seasons after moving to FTTP due to the bad state of the exchange.
I have hosted before. Running an old PC with pfSense software as the router/firewall on a cable connection (50mbps Download/5mbps Upload) and the ps3 on ethernet with it's own subnet. uPNP has been setup to only work with the ps3 IP address. Yet to play around with QoS to try get better results. So far fixed host hasn't worked on my connection most likely due to latency. Everyone else in the room being at least 4000km each way won't help one bit. Performance is comparable to running no router & NAT at all so far.
I'm willing to give it a go so far when running rooms I have no problems our set is used only for our racing we have the Telstra max router only months old can run up to twenty items we only use two. I'll post my settings if you are still looking. My rooms very rarely have problems and run 10-12 racers for hours without hiccups only situations we have had are the 3G 4G users. Tonight we ran 7 racers for about 2 1/2 hours with no probs.
