Fixing Lag issues/Connection Timeouts

[hercules1975]

It certainly has something to do with the game, but exactly what causes the lag isn't something anyone can say what it is in each case.

 

I think it is probably down to our internet connections and the match-making that puts us in the same lobbies (on the same servers).

 

I suspect if we were matched with people from the same part of the world only, it would reduce the problems with lag/disconnects.

 

Obviously I am not an IT/Network professional, but I have spent quite a while researching this - as I have had a few problems with it.

 

My best guess is there can be a conflict between people's connections that causes the problems.

 

As some players are closer to the servers, have faster pings - so their game is running a little bit quicker than others which causes bugs/glitches as the objects in one players game are a fraction of a second ahead of them in the others.

 

I am based in the UK, and haven't have any problems with freezing when playing with crew members who are also in the UK.

 

I think the R* servers are in the US, probably in New York and/or San Diego, but don't know this for a fact.

 

The freezes used to happen when playing in the same lobby with players from the US.

 

Now I get disconnects if there are mostly Americans in the lobby, which is better than than freezes, but still annoying!

[sultangris]

im in the usa have a few friends in the UK and Australia that i play with and it doesnt seem like they cause it as ive played with them with no issues even though my ping to Australia is like 300 or so i think. not sure what ping would start causing an issue but most games are fine under 100 ms, some games are fine up to 500ms but FPS need to be under 100, GTA really isnt a FPS so im not sure about it. I used to play RTS games like command an conquer on the PC and if you were under 500 ms you didnt notice anything, its only half of a second. im noticing lag like 10 seconds which would be 10000 ms and sometimes longer in GTA which isnt likely an internet issue, more likely a memory leak and hardware not able to process information correctly is my theory, likely due to their attempt to fix freezing which hasnt really happened since and there was no lag like this before. at any rate none of these problems existed before patch 1.13 so it pretty much has to be the game anyway.

[hercules1975]

Really, wow 10 seconds that is ridiculous - no wonder the system can't cope, is this in a full lobby with players firing RPGs/tank rounds, etc.?

[sultangris]

Really, wow 10 seconds that is ridiculous - no wonder the system can't cope, is this in a full lobby with players firing RPGs/tank rounds, etc.?

yea thats the worst, normally its only 2-4 seconds or so, sometimes its none and sometimes its worse, not really consistent so its hard to nail down the cause but ive ruled out my connection and my system as it happens on both systems no matter what connection they are on.

[hercules1975]

So it is the servers then do you think?

 

I was doing some DMs last night, the first one that came up was the infamous 'Prison Thugz Fight'.

 

The other players were mostly from Ireland, so pretty close geographically from me, so the lag in theory should have been not too bad.

 

There were some 4 on 1 or 4 on 2 mini battles, my character sometimes didn't react when I was spamming the R2 button, so I got beaten most times that happened.

 

I tried to go after 1 player at a time, and found that I needed to press R2 early so by the time the other player was in range the attack would connect/register!

 

I think there were about 200 kills in 15 minutes between the 8-10 players, I got 24 but also got killed 24 times!? lol

 

It would have a good test if straight after that DM if I could have played it with/against players from the US, because then I could have compared them to the other players and got an idea if it was a lot worse in terms of the lag.

 

The connection problems didn't happen at all last night, there were full lobbies in most of the races/DMs I played - which is unusual but it might just have been because of the players I was playing with and their friends being online and accepting the invites sent out!?

Edited July 18, 2014 by hercules1975

[sultangris]

Ya I'm not sure that this game has servers that host it exactly, it's probably peer 2 peer with one acting as host. I don't think if it was rockstars server it would lag and if it did they would fix it in an hour, more likely they created a memory leak and the old slow hardware of the ps3 host struggles.

[fulgore1973]

GTA Online has gone to bollocks. Instead of releasing new DLC, trying to stop players glitching money so they can sell their rip-off shark cards and seeing even more dollar signs in their eyes by programming for next gen and PC, maybe R* could spare a thought for the Xbox 360 and PS3 owners who have made R* hundreds upon hundreds of millions of dollars and get their f**cking heads out of their arses and tackle these problems. I know it may be drastic, but just take GTA Online, offline, for however long it takes and figure out what is wrong because these patches, especially patch 1.14, has f**ked everything up. R* needs to sort its sh*t out.

[sultangris]

hell a revert to patch 1.10 where it actually mostly worked and before the constant freezing would be awesome for me, lol

[hercules1975]

Ya I'm not sure that this game has servers that host it exactly, it's probably peer 2 peer with one acting as host. I don't think if it was rockstars server it would lag and if it did they would fix it in an hour, more likely they created a memory leak and the old slow hardware of the ps3 host struggles.

 

http://gtaforums.com/topic/574819-interview-with-leslie-The Benz-to-3djuegos-spain/?do=findComment&comment=1062996480

Interview with The Benz to 3DJuegos Spain.

Started by turkish1981, Aug 19 2013 03:55 PM

Snip:

3DJ: Is it difficult to move an entire online world like Los Santos? Are you going to use dedicated servers or any particular technology to achieve this?

L. B. We'll use the Rockstar Social Club servers to create our "cloud", which control everything. We have servers spread across several of our offices, like New York or San Diego, who are responsible for managing information generated persistent GTA Online. How driving is, however, different from other similar games, less problematic. But yes, it is a traditional server based on the "cloud".

http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/634491-grand-theft-auto-v/67357063

Peer based or dedicateds servers?

Snip:

iUnR3aLz posted...

GTA online uses cloud services not P2P. Wouldnt make sense in a persistent world. Imagine being mid heist and getting DC'd cause some little dbag has to go do his homework. Wouldnt work.

The cloud services they mention are the social club features (BAWSAQ and whatnot).

 

http://gtaforums.com/topic/709250-sowhos-really-causing-the-freeze-rockstar-or-hackers/

 

So?.....Who's really causing the freeze? Rockstar or Hackers?

Started by BLACK DYNAM1TE, May 15 2014 09:55 PM

AlexSniperBullet, on 15 May 2014 - 10:09 PM, said:

I have Fiberoptic internet using a gateway to connect directly with my console. 30mbps down & 15Mbps up. ping is less than 100ms

GTA Online uses Peer 2 Peer & host

https://support.rockstargames.com/hc/communities/public/questions/200266026-Lost-of-Character-or-instable-servers-advice-for-Rockstar-give-blizzard-a-call-

Lost of Character or instable servers advice for Rockstar give blizzard a call.

Snip:

Online is not played on servers in the way you guys seem to think it is.

Their servers are used for matchmaking and storing of statistics / saves only.

When you play GTA Online, you are playing using peer to peer and not dedicated servers.

As a further example:

BF3 = Dedicated Servers

COD = Peer 2 Peer (unless that changed)

http://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/1pg59e/detailed_gta_online_network_analysis_for_ps3/

Detailed GTA Online Network Analysis for PS3 (X-Post from /r/gtaonline)

tldr; From what I can work out, all the game data is UDP based, each player "streams" their activity to other consoles.

The lobby and game sessions are all controlled by STUN via the Rockstar servers.

In laymans terms, think of GTA Online as one big VOIP telephone system of conference calls (lobbies & missions, etc), except instead of voice data, its all GTA game data.

All of those earth view loading screens is the session (conference call) being established, basically ensuring that all the players streams with each other are established before letting you play.

STUN

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

STUN (Session Traversal Utilities for NAT) is a standardized set of methods and a network protocol to allow an end host to discover its public IP address if it is located behind a NAT. It is used to permit NAT traversal for applications of real-time voice, video, messaging, and other interactive IP communications. It is documented in RFC 5389.[1] The STUN URI scheme is documented in RFC 7064. STUN is intended to be a tool to be used by other protocols, such as ICE.

The STUN protocol allows applications operating behind a network address translator (NAT) to discover the presence of the network address translator and to obtain the mapped (public) IP address (NAT address) and port number that the NAT has allocated for the application's User Datagram Protocol (UDP) connections to remote hosts. The protocol requires assistance from a third-party network server (STUN server) located on the opposing (public) side of the NAT, usually the public Internet.

STUN is a lightweight client-server network protocol. Its purpose is to allow an application running on a host to determine whether or not it is located behind a network device which is performing address translation. The basic protocol operates essentially as follows: the client sends a message (known as a binding request) to a STUN server on the public Internet. The STUN server responds with a success response that contains in its payload the IP address and port of the client, as observed from the server's perspective. The result is XOR mapped to avoid translation of packet contents.

STUN messages are usually sent in User Datagram Protocol (UDP) packets. Since UDP does not provide reliable transport guarantees, reliability is achieved by application-controlled retransmissions of the STUN requests. STUN servers do not implement any reliability mechanism for their responses.[1] When reliability is mandatory, the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) may be used, but induces extra networking overhead. In security-sensitive applications, STUN may be transported and encrypted by Transport Layer Security (TLS).

An application may automatically determine a suitable STUN server for communications with a particular peer by querying the Domain Name System (DNS) for the stun (for UDP) or stuns (for TCP/TLS) server record (SRV) resource record, e.g., _stun._udp.example.com. The standard listening port number for a STUN server is 3478 for UDP and TCP, and 5349 for TLS. Alternatively, TLS may also be run on the TCP port if the server implementation can de-multiplex TLS and STUN packets. In case no STUN server is found using DNS lookups, the standard recommends that the destination domain name should be queried for address records (A or AAAA) which would be used with the default port numbers.

In addition to using protocol encryption via TLS, STUN also has built-in authentication and message-integrity mechanisms via specialized STUN packet types.

When a client has discovered its external address, it can use this as a candidate for communicating with peers by sharing the external NAT address rather than the private address (which is, by definition, not reachable from peers on the public network).

If both peers are located in different private networks behind a NAT, the peers must coordinate to determine the best communication path between them. Some NAT behavior may restrict peer connectivity even when the public binding is known. The Interactive Connectivity Establishment (ICE) protocol provides a structured mechanism to determine the optimal communication path between two peers. Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) extensions are defined to enable the use of ICE when setting up a call between two hosts.

Edited July 19, 2014 by hercules1975

[sultangris]

Ya that's unclear, lol. I'm thinking is peer to peer though.

[hercules1975]

Ya that's unclear, lol. I'm thinking is peer to peer though.

 

I think the last quote on the list is the most accurate one, which seems to say it is Peer to Peer - the players in a lobby are streaming their data to each other in a kind of tele-conference call type thing.

 

I am not exactly sure how it works, but from what I have read if you have an internet connection that loses packets - you will have problems with missing/delayed objects ('natives') such as other players charactes/vehicles/bullets/etc.

 

 

 

 

More than half of the calculations are done on a cloud server. The reason the game is lagging so much is because the cloud servers are lagging for some reason. it has nothing to do with our consoles or our internet connections. This has to do with the way cloud technology works with graphics intensive remote-access data processing.

 

That isn't true, once you are in a session the comms goes pier to pier. I know this cause my partner and I have xboxes and our main network connection is via satellite (Massive pings) and if stuff was going to the servers and back we would be lagging all over the place which we don't. What you may be seeing is lag on another player in the sessions connection, but this doesn't affect pop in, that is to do with loading the data from the disk.

 

 

And it's just not true.

 

No game relies on servers to calculate anything about the environment or other players. They're there to pass information to and from the clients.

 

Diablo 3 is one example. Dota 2, Sim City, the list could continue for quite some time. Many modern games offload game files to a cloud server, not only to reduce the load on the each system, but also to fight piracy, as a pirated copy of the game will not work unless it connects to the cloud server. GTA Online is clearly using peer-to-peer based communications, but I'm assuming there must be an element that is still tied to their cloud servers in some way or another, or else pirates would be able to play the game online with ease.

 

Edited July 19, 2014 by hercules1975

[marcelohcortez]

So, I have a char with lvl 53. I did the hooker glitch with him, and got 4m.

 

A day later, I tried to play and got stuck on the loading screen. Tried going directly online and going offline and then online in 'invite only session'. Nothing works.

 

Made a new char, and got in the game right away.

 

Still can't go with my older char, and keeps saying conection timmed out, or just stays on the loading screen.

 

When I try to swap characters, my older char is still there with the same stats, same money and everything. But I can't log with him.

 

Any ideas?

[sultangris]

So, I have a char with lvl 53. I did the hooker glitch with him, and got 4m.

 

A day later, I tried to play and got stuck on the loading screen. Tried going directly online and going offline and then online in 'invite only session'. Nothing works.

 

Made a new char, and got in the game right away.

 

Still can't go with my older char, and keeps saying conection timmed out, or just stays on the loading screen.

 

When I try to swap characters, my older char is still there with the same stats, same money and everything. But I can't log with him.

 

Any ideas?

Holds r1 and l1 while loading the game until you see the r logo and it says set brightness and also unlink and relink your social Club account of that don't work d delete and reinstall the patches Edited July 19, 2014 by sultangris

[hercules1975]

Ya that's unclear, lol. I'm thinking is peer to peer though.

 

Ha, I have found the definitive answer from R* Support:

 

https://support.rockstargames.com/hc/en-us/articles/200148936-Understanding-how-NAT-types-affect-online-connectivity

Understanding how NAT types affect online connectivity

Rockstar Games February 19, 2014 15:01

Question: What is NAT, or Network Address Translation, and why can't I play online because mine is 'strict'?

Answer:

NAT types and what they mean --

NAT Types:

Open

Moderate

Strict

Open NATs can connect to any of the three types. --> Probably the least common type

Moderate can only connect to open and moderate. --> Probably the most common type

Strict can ONLY connect to open.

Strict NATs are a difficult problem with peer-to-peer games. Since most people don't have open NATs, the player with a strict NAT won't be able to find many joinable games.

Also, if the player with a strict NAT does manage to join a game, if another player with a moderate NAT joins later, the player with the strict NAT gets kicked out.

The problem is even worse since it is sometimes difficult for software (i.e. Games for Windows Live) to detect which NAT type it is running behind, and can often report that the player has a moderate NAT when they actually have a strict NAT.

Another problem is that sometimes the ISP (Internet Service Provider) is also NAT'd which often means even if you have a direct connection to the internet (without a router/firewall), the ISP still acts as a strict NAT.

These are some recommendations for getting a better NAT type:

The following ports must be available to your PC:

TCP 80

UDP 88

TCP 3074

UDP 3074

TCP 53

UDP 53

Here are some additional tips that have helped many players improve their connectivity:

1. Make sure your router's firmware is upgraded the latest version (very important).

2. Unplug your router for 10 minutes and plug it back in. Some older routers degrade in performance over time until it is rebooted, similar to a PC.

3. Disable any firewall or other network filtering for the game.

4. Enable uPnP (universal plug and play) on your router.

5. If you don't care about security, enable DMZ (de-militarized zone) on your router for your PC's address. This turns off all of your router's firewall features for that specific PC.

6. Get a router that has the "Xbox LIVE compatible" or "Certified for Windows Vista" logo.

7. Contact your ISP and ask them what your DNS setting should be.

[marcelohcortez]

 

So, I have a char with lvl 53. I did the hooker glitch with him, and got 4m.

 

A day later, I tried to play and got stuck on the loading screen. Tried going directly online and going offline and then online in 'invite only session'. Nothing works.

 

Made a new char, and got in the game right away.

 

Still can't go with my older char, and keeps saying conection timmed out, or just stays on the loading screen.

 

When I try to swap characters, my older char is still there with the same stats, same money and everything. But I can't log with him.

 

Any ideas?

Holds r1 and l1 while loading the game until you see the r logo and it says set brightness and also unlink and relink your social Club account of that don't work d delete and reinstall the patches

 

 

The r1 and l1 thing didn't worked, nothing appeared. Went to Rockstar Social Club and unlinked my PSN account. Entered the game and logged with my lvl53 char. Then linked again the PSN account on Rockstar... And now I can't log again with my lvl53 char. Only with my lvl6.

 

Some crazy sh*t.

 

Ty

[hercules1975]

 

 

Snip:

 

 

The r1 and l1 thing didn't worked, nothing appeared. Went to Rockstar Social Club and unlinked my PSN account. Entered the game and logged with my lvl53 char. Then linked again the PSN account on Rockstar... And now I can't log again with my lvl53 char. Only with my lvl6.

 

Some crazy sh*t.

 

Ty

 

 

It might be worth unlinking your S.C. account again and play the game for a while with it unlinked.

 

Then leave the game, and go onto the S.C. and re-link you account.

 

Load the game again and see if this has fixed the issue.

Edited July 19, 2014 by hercules1975

[sultangris]

Ya id do that^^^

 

Also that is not definitive answer. I tried all that, doesn't work. It's game code that's messed up. Before patch 1.13 I ran wireless with upnp on which opens ports automatically and had zero issues. All of a sudden immediately after the patch it started lagging in lobbies and since then I've tried dmzing, opening ports, plugging directly into modem to achieve nat type 1 and hundreds of ping and packet loss speed tests and there's no change. My connection is prefect like it's always been, it can only be faulty sh*tty game code. I've formatted ps3 and deleted patch and redownloaded many times and while that fixes some problems temporarily such as unable to contact rockstar servers, it has no effect on the laggin lobby issue where menus and actions are slow

[hercules1975]

I think it could be to do with the characters data that is saved on the cloud server.

 

If the unlinking, playing the game and re-linking solution doesn't work there is another thing that he can do.

 

Create a new Social Club I.D. say add a number to the old one and link that to a different email account than the one used for the existing one.

 

Then just link the new S.C. I.D. to your PSN, and join any crews you are in and add any friends you have on there to it.

 

I had a problem with my original Social Club account that meant I couldn't play when my S.C. account was linked to my PSN I.D.

 

R* support told me to do this and after I did it, it started working again and has been fine ever since.

 

It was something to do with the S.C. account data, it might have got damaged after I did the 'alter your character's appearance' glitch...

Edited July 20, 2014 by hercules1975

[hercules1975]

Ya id do that^^^

 

Also that is not definitive answer. I tried all that, doesn't work. It's game code that's messed up. Before patch 1.13 I ran wireless with upnp on which opens ports automatically and had zero issues. All of a sudden immediately after the patch it started lagging in lobbies and since then I've tried dmzing, opening ports, plugging directly into modem to achieve nat type 1 and hundreds of ping and packet loss speed tests and there's no change. My connection is prefect like it's always been, it can only be faulty sh*tty game code. I've formatted ps3 and deleted patch and redownloaded many times and while that fixes some problems temporarily such as unable to contact rockstar servers, it has no effect on the laggin lobby issue where menus and actions are slow

 

It is annoying, and would be good to get some answers from R* themselves as to what causes the connection errors and lagging/freezing.

 

I posted on the Support Forum yesterday asking what the error message means 'disconnected due to an unknown network error':

 

https://support.rockstargames.com/hc/communities/public/questions/202816646-Disconnected-due-to-an-unknown-network-error

 

Disconnected due to an unknown network error

What does this mean exactly, what are the possible network errors that could be causing this to happen?

hercules_1975 Yesterday at 18:18

Normally it happens when some of the information that is being send and received do not match up or a sufficient amount is not gathered.

If you are still getting that error, we would suggest that you try the steps here.

Rockstar Reply

Mike M. 18 hours ago

Thanks, so it is to do with packet loss then maybe?

hercules_1975 18 hours ago

It can some times be caused by that, it is why we recommend using an Ethernet cable to connect your console to a router.

Rockstar Reply

Mike M. 18 hours ago

Edited July 20, 2014 by hercules1975

[sultangris]

yea im rocking a new social club account and it seemed to help at first but it works best not linked at all though still sometimes happens even unlinked. ive not bookmarked any jobs on the new one and only joined one crew as i figured maybe having 300 bookmarked jobs might affect it, but my psn friend list is maxed out with gta players so im always getting notifications that they beat my score at this or set a world record or did all the under the bridge or whatever and maybe having 40 friends online sharing that data around is whats doing it , just thought of that actually,but it never really happened till the content creator was released, maybe i should try a new psn with no friends but i really dont wanna have to start over, i got two characters around lvl 240 each, been playing since release and i dont wanna start over, ill suffer till pc release, that should fix it.

 

also their tech support are a buncha morons, i sent two requests and the responses i got on one wasnt even relevant to my issue and the other was just basic troubleshooting steps that didnt do anything. i dont think they have a clue and im 100 percent certain its not a connection issue, it never happened till a patch, game code changed, then it started, that means its the game code doing it, its the only thing that changed.

Edited July 20, 2014 by sultangris

[hercules1975]

It does seem to work better with a different PSN, like you say without any friends/crew.

 

That isn't ideal though, like you said you don't want to have to start over!

 

I am not sure anyone knows exactly why each error happens everytime.

 

I don't know if it is the game code (do you mean the update files?) or not.

 

If it was the update files that are causing the problems, wouldn't everyone be complaining about the same thing?

[sultangris]

It does seem to work better with a different PSN, like you say without any friends/crew.

 

That isn't ideal though, like you said you don't want to have to start over!

 

I am not sure anyone knows exactly why each error happens everytime.

 

I don't know if it is the game code (do you mean the update files?) or not.

 

If it was the update files that are causing the problems, wouldn't everyone be complaining about the same thing?

Us the update, and yes lots are. However this game very complex and many play it differently so not all experience same problems all the time and that makes it harder to find and fix. I've done enough troubleshooting to know that there isn't anything wrong with my connection or ps3 as i have 2 ps3s and I've tested my connection extensively and my ps3s on other connections and same problems. Problems start and change exactly after patch, it can only be the game code causing it somehow or it wouldn't behave different in every version.

[hercules1975]

Well I guess all that you can do for now is wait for the next update, which will probably be coming out on Tuesday 5th August?

[sultangris]

I may have been a tad hasty in my conclusion, I ran some ip traceroute tests and found some random spikes of up to 223ms and one time reaching 402ms between one of the hops that may be be responsible for my lag. It's not affecting my browsing or streaming hd video,a only gta. I thought the connection errors and lag were all the same problem but they might not be. Many share connection error issues but only a few share the lag. Not sure why the spike doesn't show on other ping tests and only traceroute, no one at my isp today, should know more tomorrow.

[hercules1975]

Well that would explain the 'connection lost due to an unknown connection error' message.

 

I got this last night, after just about 10 minutes in a public lobby - I ended up playing some more story-mode after that! lol

[hercules1975]

http://www.reddit.com/r/gtaonline/comments/21yqew/gta_online_servers_explained/

GTA Online "Servers" Explained (i.imgur.com)

submitted 3 months ago by Gawdor allMightyNetworkingMaster

What happens when someone's internet connection has a spike or slows down for whatever reason - is that some of the data doesn't get sent/received in time.

The player then leaves the lobby as their connection with the other players has been lost, or if the problem is worse they get timed-out of Online (and sent back to story-mode).

Edited July 24, 2014 by hercules1975

[Yours_Truly_85]

My Internet is fine I've checked everything and I've found a trend that might help some of you with timeouts loading online. I've noticed (on ps3) that if I'm in story mode and load online using the start menu, join online, go... it almost always times out. But if I hold down on the D pad and select my online character it almost never times out. Also, when selecting find new session while already online it usually always times out. I only use the D pad method of joining online now and haven't had a time out in a few days now. So my conclusion. ... yes, some of you probably have something wrong with your Internet connection and some of you play on wifi which inherently sucks. For the rest of us who know our connections are fine it's on R*'s end. I have no problem playing online on any other game, I'm hardlined directly into my splitter, used default settings as recommended by R*, my packets are fine ect. And this was the only semi foolproof way I could find to not timeout loading online sessions. also, invite only sessions always work perfectly for me. I'm sure it's not all R* fault I'm sure alot of it has to do with modders/hackers/glitchers. I'm sure everytime sum1 glitches or hacks it fux up a little coding somewhere. To me though, they could've polished the game out a bit more before release, alot of these issues should have been easily found by testers imho. Anyways, gl I hope the D pad trick works 4 sum of yall, keep posted lemme knw if it works for you too I wanna know if it's just me lol.

[-Jacking-]

Thank you very much OP

Edited July 30, 2014 by Agent-Sanchez

[ElSaxo]

I can freely suppose that if I'm suddenly disconnected from Xbox Live, I can blame the chimps working at my ISP, instead of Rockstar??

[hercules1975]

I can freely suppose that if I'm suddenly disconnected from Xbox Live, I can blame the chimps working at my ISP, instead of Rockstar??

 

I would say that is likely.

 

If you are in a lobby, race, mission, etc. with other players - does everyone get disconnected at the same time?

 

If they did, then it would be likely that there was a problem with the game, rather than just yourself or another player who suddenly 'leaves'.

 

I don't know why R* do not tell people more about the way that online works, rather than just sending an email saying check this that and the other!

 

If they explained to people that the connection problems are nothing to do with their servers, and spelt out what the server actually do - they would probably have fewer people blaming them for the problems they have connecting to online/lobbies/jobs!

 

It took quite a while for me to learn how the servers work, where they are and what they actually do - so maybe they should tell people so then they can stop blaming it being 'on their end' and look at their own connection/internet set-up/etc. instead.

 

It is more productive to do this rather than pointing the finger at R* as that isn't going to help anyone with their connection problems!