Zugg Software :: View topic

Beginner Joined: 09 Nov 2006 Posts: 16

Hello. I have a problem with Cmud giving me extreme lag and sometimes just complete lockup. It may be 10 minutes or 1 hour into the session. It does happen every session. I have written one alias and one trigger and have even removed them completely. Other than that I am running in default as if I just bought the program. The game I'm playing is Achaea, which I've played for maybe 7 years now using Java, Nexus and zmud with no problems except for the normal small amounts of lag. I have checked my DSL connection during these events and I am able to browse with no problem.
This is again, an intermittent event that has caused me to use this product very little since I bought it and its discouraging, because 1. its intermittent with no noticable pattern and 2, I'm the last one anyone needs to try to troubleshoot software. I realize this is very little info to go on, but maybe someone can help me start to find out whats going on here.

thanks

Magician Joined: 17 Apr 2005 Posts: 496

What operating system? If you're using XP, are you using the "normal" theme or the "old skool" theme? What version of CMud? Do you have admin privileges on your system?

You are right that these things are hard to trouble shoot, especially since I know a lot of people here play Achaea and other IRE games without experiencing this at all.

Beginner Joined: 09 Nov 2006 Posts: 16

I'm using Cmud on an XP machine and a Vista machine. both do the same. I don't understand old school or normal theme. I do not know which version, (I have not been prompted to update) and I am the the owner/only user. Personal computer and Personal laptop at home. thanks for such a quick reply!

Beginner Joined: 09 Nov 2006 Posts: 16

I'm using version 2.37.

Posted: Mon Feb 02, 2009 6:33 pm

Also keep in mind that Telnet clients like zMUD/CMUD work completely differently than web browsers. Telnet requires a *persistent* network socket connection between the client and server. That is, a single socket connection that remains open for the entire duration of the session. With a web browser, the browser opens multiple sockets each time you load a page and then closes them.

You can get lag if there is packet loss on your network because Windows will try to resend the data packets and will "lag" until it gets a response. If any router between your computer and the MUD server drops a connection it can take a while for the router to reconnect the socket connection again. In extreme cases, you'll actually see your MUD session disconnect if Windows cannot re-establish the socket connection.

When this happens, testing with the web browser is meaningless because it just opens a *new* socket connection, which doesn't tell you if there is a problem with your existing MUD/telnet socket connection.

In any case, this probably has nothing to do with CMUD or with your computer. It's very likely to be an intermittent problem with your ISP, or with some router somewhere on the Internet between you and the server. These kind of network drop-outs are *very* hard to track down, since most network traffic (email, web browsing, etc) are not effected by this kind of drop out at all.

If you still think it's a CMUD problem, the way to debug it is to have the Script Debugger window (in the Window menu) open all of the time. Then, when you get the lag you can look in the debugger window to find out if some trigger was running to cause the lag, or see exactly what text the MUD just sent that might be causing the lag.

But in 99.9% of these kind of cases, the lag is on the network itself and not something you have much control over. You can try using the "ping" and "tracert" programs in the Windows command line to test various stages of your network connection to try and pin down where the packet loss is occurring, but many systems and routers have disabled the ping testing these days, making this more difficult.