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Shibblet
Stadia Player
Stadia Player

Latency has climbed too far up the ladder.

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When I first started using Stadia, my latency was round 40ms.  Some people may think this is too high... but It worked great for me.

Now, my latency is in the 120ms area, and if it goes down to 90ms, I have to consider myself lucky.

This just started in the past two weeks, and I have tested it every day to see if it is just an accidental "issue" on the internet.  But, at this point it doesn't feel like it is going away.

90ms - 120ms makes games unplayable, and forces my computer to use 1280x720p instead of 1920x1080p...  

I really don't know what to do at this point.  What can be done to fix this issue?

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Best Response
JohnZoidberg
Gold Stadia Guide
Gold Stadia Guide

Hello @Shibblet 

This kind of thing can be really challenging to diagnose. What does your home network look like? How is your computer connected to that network? Is it via Ethernet or WiFi? If it's WiFi, is it 2.4GHz or 5GHz? What's the signal quality your computer is reporting? Have you started using any new wireless equipment (like surround sound speakers or a wireless gaming headset)? You might try running a ping test just over your local network just to get a feel for how much impact it may be having on the the end-to-end experience.

If you can rule out your local network being the issue, then the next step is to investigate the internet connection. If the quality of that connection has degraded, it could cause problems. For example, if you have a cable modem, but there's an unterminated coaxial cable run you stopped using, or even just a loose connector, it could cause a poor connection to the internet service provider. Other things could have gone wrong further out, so you may need to work with your ISP to investigate this angle.

It is less likely, but not impossible, that your ISP has a congested connection to Google's network. Lots of ISPs have placed Google "Edge Nodes" inside their networks, which lets the traffic bypass much of that internet service provider's network. But, not all ISPs have done that, so they are more sensitive to congestion.

I know this makes it sound like a lot of things could go wrong, but the most likely culprit is something in your home environment – either your local network, or your internet connection equipment.

Why not Zoidberg?

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6 Replies
JohnZoidberg
Gold Stadia Guide
Gold Stadia Guide

Hello @Shibblet 

This kind of thing can be really challenging to diagnose. What does your home network look like? How is your computer connected to that network? Is it via Ethernet or WiFi? If it's WiFi, is it 2.4GHz or 5GHz? What's the signal quality your computer is reporting? Have you started using any new wireless equipment (like surround sound speakers or a wireless gaming headset)? You might try running a ping test just over your local network just to get a feel for how much impact it may be having on the the end-to-end experience.

If you can rule out your local network being the issue, then the next step is to investigate the internet connection. If the quality of that connection has degraded, it could cause problems. For example, if you have a cable modem, but there's an unterminated coaxial cable run you stopped using, or even just a loose connector, it could cause a poor connection to the internet service provider. Other things could have gone wrong further out, so you may need to work with your ISP to investigate this angle.

It is less likely, but not impossible, that your ISP has a congested connection to Google's network. Lots of ISPs have placed Google "Edge Nodes" inside their networks, which lets the traffic bypass much of that internet service provider's network. But, not all ISPs have done that, so they are more sensitive to congestion.

I know this makes it sound like a lot of things could go wrong, but the most likely culprit is something in your home environment – either your local network, or your internet connection equipment.

Why not Zoidberg?
2 Kudos
Shibblet
Stadia Player
Stadia Player

As much as I appreciate the information Dr. Z... I have been able to try this out on Windows instead of Linux, and these problems go away.

This is entirely a Linux issue.  Google does not have hardware support for Linux browsers.  Even their own Google Chrome browser.

And, at this point, it seems as no one even cares to address it.  Google, doesn't seem to want to fix this problem in Linux, and instead would like to blame it on Nvidia, AMD, and Intel.

At this point, it's been about 3 months since I posted this question, and there hasn't been even a glimpse of an answer.

So, ignore it, and it will go away.  That statement is very true.  Ignore your customer, and they will go away, and not be a customer anymore.

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JohnZoidberg
Gold Stadia Guide
Gold Stadia Guide

I do wish I'd known you were trying to use a Linux client – that is a known and ongoing challenge. Without hardware decoding of VP9, software decoding can end up taking enough time to start looking like latency, which makes it seem like a networking problem rather than a software problem. I do wish there was better support for this on Linux, but I don't personally have a lot of suggestions on that angle (I use Linux for a whole lot of things, but Stadia isn't one of them – I have a Windows PC and a Mac mini I use for Stadia gaming). You may be able to find some useful tips for this with a Google search for something like "stadia hardware vp9 linux chrome". I just tried that and found some older articles, but I am hesitant to link to any of them (since I don't have any way to know which are still relevant).

I wonder if Google's CloudReady distribution (from neverware, which Google bought some time ago) might work? That's a build of ChromeOS that can be installed on most PC hardware. I don't know whether it has the right drivers installed to enable hardware VP9 decoding or not, but it may be more likely than typical distributions, since Chromebooks tend to run Stadia well if the underlying hardware is capable of it. You can download a USB image and just try booting from that to try it out without installing it. I know that's not a solution to making it work properly on Linux, but at least it would let you avoid having to install Windows just to make it work.

Why not Zoidberg?
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Shibblet
Stadia Player
Stadia Player

I actually own an Asus Chromebook C425 - It runs Stadia wonderfully, along with Hardware VP9 (and H264) decoding.
Chrome OS is a Linux based OS, so it's not the fault of the hardware manufacturers.  This computer runs an Intel Core m3 Processor.


Why doesn't the Chrome Browser for Desktop Linux have Hardware Based Decoding?

This is my only "legitimate" question.

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JohnZoidberg
Gold Stadia Guide
Gold Stadia Guide

That is a very good question. But, it is a question for the Chrome browser team, since it's not a Stadia-specific issue.

Why not Zoidberg?
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Shibblet
Stadia Player
Stadia Player

It is Stadia specific.

I can get YouTube to work with Hardware Acceleration.  Following these directions:  https://www.linuxuprising.com/2021/01/how-to-enable-hardware-accelerated.html

But, it will not work with Stadia.

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