Bigfoot Networks | Killer NIC and LLR Technology

Lag has no formal definition, which in the past has made Lag very difficult to quantify. Hardcore gamers consider Lag to be anything bad that happens in an online game that is out of their control. This could be anything from their CPU was overloaded to the game server that had too many gamers playing on it.

As part of its ongoing crusade against Lag, Bigfoot Networks has developed and released a way to measure Lag. Bigfoot Networks is proud to announce its metric, Lags Per Minute. Lag can be caused by the gamer’s computer, the internet itself, or by the gaming server. Each of these places that lag can occur has its own type of measurement rules, which are defined as follows:

Lag Source	Description
Client Lag	Any time the FPS (frames-per-second) value of a graphical application is below 45 FPS, or, (when that measurement is inapplicable or unavailable) when CPU utilization of a client machine is 95% or greater on average for 100ms.
Network Lag	Whenever the “PING” result for a network connection is greater than 100ms, a Network Lag occurs for each 50ms above the 100ms. A result of less than 100ms means Network (PING) is not causing Lag. Packet Loss is also detected and adds to the Network Lag Figure.
Server Lag	Any time the back-to-back reception of packets within a connection exceeds 100ms after subtracting the PING time, or response data from a connection as a result of sending data to the server takes longer than 100ms after subtracting PING times.

These settings are expected to change over time as they are adjusted heuristically, and will always be kept up to date here in this section of Bigfoot Network’s website. The statistical results of our research has shown a high degree of correlation with observed Lag in actual gameplay. We do not expect every “Lag Event” measured by LagMeter™ to be observed by the gamer (many such events are smoothed, etc.) but this benchmark allows us to begin characterizing games and comparing them against one another.

In addition, Bigfoot Networks has developed and released a powerful software application, called LagMeter, that finally gives you the ability to measure Lag yourself. Finally, the causes of your Lag will not be a mystery because LagMeter will tell you your Lags Per Minute and you’ll understand where the problems exist. Get LagMeter here.