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Question

Significant latency issues that I can't figure out.

S
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Hey folks - I’ll be submitting an official support ticket as well, but thought I’d start here in case there’s something obvious I’m missing. Here’s my environment:

  • I’m running Shadow PC Power out of the Montreal datacenter.
  • I live in London Ontario, only about ~675-700km away from the datacenter… very close.
  • I’m running it from a Macbook Pro M1, using the stable Shadow PC app - though I’ve tried the beta channel as well to no avail.
  • I’ve got location services turned off (as suggested).
  • I have a 300/20 internet connection.
  • I’m connected directly via ethernet to my router.
  • I’ve tried varying bandwidths in Shadow’s settings to no avail (currently set to around ~25 seems to give me the most consistent results, even though I should be able to max it out to 70 no problem).
  • I’ve run it under 25mbps with h.265 enabled, with no real difference.
  • Games that have to send and receive lots of data frequently (like an MMO) seem to struggle the most. But even just using the shadow on my desktop is questionable most nights.

Everything about that, to me, suggests that I should have a stellar experience using my Shadow, but it’s more often than not pretty bad. Latency on a good day is ~30-40ms, on a bad day 50-80ms. I feel like I should be consistently below 30ms. Packet loss varies wildly from 0% to 20%, but it’s not something I’ve tracked intentionally. Even when a game “feels” smooth briefly, it still has artifact breathing or whatever it’s called, where it pulses to pixelated and back to sharp periodically, or when I move the game camera around.

I’ve researched as much as I can, and I’m not quite sure where to go from here. Any thoughts?

Thanks in advance!

 

 

5 replies

Jonathan from Shadow
Userlevel 4
Badge +4

Please try disabling "Location Services", "Find my Mac", VPN, firewall, or any anti-virus on your local Mac when using Shadow as we've seen these to cause latency issues in the past. You can also try following the tips listed here: https://support.shadow.tech/hc/en-us/articles/360016101259-How-to-troubleshoot-your-internet-connection

 

Should that not work, please go ahead and contact our support team from your account page and they will be happy to look into this further and provide any other tips and advice that they can.

S
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Thanks Jonathan,

 

I did mention in my post that I’ve already disabled location services…

 

I’ve gone through the tips on the page you linked already - as stated I have found the most success with the bandwidth set to 25, but I have a 300 down connection so I *should* have no trouble maxing it out at 70.

 

I don’t connect with a VPN active, and I don’t run antivirus on my Mac. I won’t be disabling any firewalls just to play a game, but I have ensured that all shadow traffic is allowed on my network.

 

I’ve got a ticket open already, so I guess we’ll see what they can do.

Jim29er
Userlevel 5
Badge +4

@Slaphappy  One aspect of cloud gaming that you don’t seem to understand, is that network quality issues can be caused by problems “in the middle” between your ISP and Shadow’s. Regional ISP congestion can cause increased latency and packet loss like you are describing, but it can be challenging to isolate where that is occurring.

One thing worth trying when latency is high and packet loss present, is using the free Cloudflare WARP VPN on your local computer (there is a macOS version). WARP is a high-speed WireGuard VPN, which can potentially route your streaming traffic around problem areas (depending on where those problems are).

Since Shadow is a virtual computer which you have full control over, you have options to test UDP network throughput between it and other endpoints on the Internet...using tools such as iPerf2. This is activity that would require some networking knowledge and access [to different endpoints to test with]...not something that we could give you step-by-step instructions for, but worth mentioning for those who are willing/able to pursue it.

Cloud gaming providers such as Shadow are only responsible for the connectivity provided by their own ISP(s), making the pursuit of issues happening “beyond” challenging at times.

S
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Yes… I understand that issues can occur anywhere along the pipeline between me and the Shadow PC, but thanks for the assumptive opener there. I’m certainly not a network admin, but I am trying to isolate where the issue is occurring; that’s why I am here.

I have in the past tried VPNs to see if they would help with routing / packet loss, but all they’ve done is significantly increase latency. I tried Cloudflare’s VPN a couple weeks ago (because I’m using their DNS already), but it didn’t help, either. Increased my latency by ~15-20ms and while it seemed to flatten the packet loss a bit and slightly reduce the spikes, it brought my “base” packet loss up from 0% to a consistent 2-3% according to Shadow’s stats.

I’ve got an ongoing conversation with support, so we’ll see what they say. Thanks.

Jim29er
Userlevel 5
Badge +4

@Slaphappy  My apologies, I was not intending to be condescending. Please let us know if your conversations with support bear fruit; isolating network issues is kinda the “holy grail” of troubleshooting when it comes to cloud gaming.

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