[Tuqofiw]

Maybe I've just been looking at this the wrong way, but I've always thought of lag being related to latency. Though now it seems that numerous amounts of people use lag to refer to poor performance. As far as I’m concerned lag =\= performance. I’m not sure why, but I find it quite annoying when people refer to their performance problems as ‘lag.’ Maybe I’d feel better if there was a clear distinction between internet latency and local computer performance. Has usage just overwritten the meaning, or was it always used this way? I can see the use of lag in terms of the timely response to user inputs, but not general performance. Perhaps that is how we define performance now.

[Garry Richardson]

Most people use the term lag to refer to a jump in latency in on-line gaming, slow mouse response *input lag*, or when your computer suddenly starts chugging. Its a catch all term.

If you open too many apps on your computer, or windows update kicks in, it wouldn't be uncommon to say your PC is lagging. Your PC doesn't normally act that way, but its suddenly in the crapper.

If you're dealing solely with ping I would use latency. Heck, we even have Jet Lag.

Personal Example: If I'm playing WoW and my PC starts acting funny I might say "hold up guys, my PC's lagging". If my ping goes up to 1k I'll probably say either "I'm in the red" or "My ping just skyrocketed".

[slima]

also, poor performance usually results in input lag

[jPNy2BP5]

I heard it used as a blanket term for all kinds of PC slowdowns. Personally, I just use it as Internet latency.

Btw, love the sig! Dr. Strangelove is a great movie. That quote is classic.

[Tuqofiw]

I heard it used as a blanket term for all kinds of PC slowdowns. Personally, I just use it as Internet latency.

Btw, love the sig! Dr. Strangelove is a great movie. That quote is classic.

Thanks, Peter Dellers did such an awesome job in that movie.

Jet lag seems well defined. Lag was a word before all this so this is really just how it's being used now. I guess what actually ticks me off is when people complain of lag but don't understand whether it's their computer or latency.

[Pasy]

I’m not sure why, but I find it quite annoying when people refer to their performance problems as ‘lag.’ Maybe I’d feel better if there was a clear distinction between internet latency and local computer performance..

Lag is too general a term to start with

As you know any delay in normal operation is considered lagging / falling behind, whether this is due to imperfect software or latent data transfer. lag in telecoms is considered any hit to expected bandwidth performance (which could be due to a number of issues) Latency actually lags bandwidth, even low latency. lag in a computer system can also be down to a number of different issues (like having to wait for something may not just simply be about how fast an interconnect is, the cpu may be waiting on the memory to return its value).
Distance effects latency and contention and latency effect actual total bandwidth, which is true for both local data lines associated with your computer system and telecommunication systems and lines

A computer system and the internet are both prone to contention and latency in the same way. Now For those reading this that dont understand latency and contention here's about the simplest way i can explain both.

Latency: is simply a delay between action and reaction. for the internet latency is nearly always described as the time delay for a round trip packet, for example playing an online game the latency would be the time it takes for your requests to talk with and negotiate with the game server and then for that request to return back to you in the form of an action (simply you move forward in-game and you and everyone else percieves that you move forward, some people will see this faster than other due to latency)

Contention: for want of a better word would be the max potential load on a system
for example trying to stuff a 10GB file down a 1Mbit line, you would have contention, you can probably notice this effect when transferring larger files from hard disk to hard disk, for example transferring a 1MB file from hard disk to hard disk for arguments sake takes 0.5 seconds. theoretically a 1000MB file should take 500 seconds, but due to latency and contention its never practically that, its why SATA II harddrives dont actually have a consistent 300MB/s data transfer rate. The more efficient the system the less you have to worry about contention and overhead allowance though

If your computer is noticably lagging when it shouldnt be its easy diagnose. you dont have enough processing power/ or available memory to do many things at once or maybe your running windows and a program hangs and screws up normal function buy not releasing or tying up a shared resource, (thankfully vista isnt badly plagued). If your internet is lagging when it shouldnt be, its either a problem with termination; someone else's computer/server. switching hubs, your ISP's services (which includes theyre swtiches, server load, distance etc,) etc. etc.

Lag is lag no matter what your referencing

[Soassesaisp]

What I can never understand is:

"Why do I still have to shoot the same distance infront of my target on my 8mb broadband that I had to do when I was playing Counterstrike on my 56k modem running at full speed?"

Hasnt networking or network code in gaming advanced at all?

[Tuqofiw]

Fair enough, good explanation