Help:Troubleshooting/Netgaming

If you are having issues during netgaming, particularly connection issues, try the following steps:

Troubleshooting question	Explanation
1. Are you using the latest version of SRB2?	You're not going to be able to find anyone online with an outdated version of SRB2. Make sure you downloaded the latest version of the game (currently it's v2.2.11) from the official download page.
2. Do you have UDP port 5029 forwarded in your router?	If this port is not forwarded, no one will be able to connect to your netgame. If this website does not help you with opening this port, contact your router manufacturer for assistance.
3. Do you have too many players in your game?	The more players you have in your netgame, the less stable it will be. Lag and synchronization errors become more severe with higher numbers of players. While SRB2 theoretically supports up to 32 players in a netgame, it will often be unstable with far fewer players than that. You can set a player limit for your netgame with the maxplayers console variable.
4. Are players try to download large files from your server?	If you have custom files loaded, users who don't have one or more of these files will automatically try downloading them from your server when they connect. This adds an additional strain to your connection and can cause lag. You can set a maximum size for files that can be downloaded from the server with the console variable maxsend, and you can disable file downloading altogether with the console variable downloading. If file downloads are slowing down your server, try restricting downloading or don't host with large WAD files that other players may not have.
5. Are you using a dial-up or satellite internet service?	Dial-up connections are very slow, so they may cause significant lag in netgames, especially when you're hosting. While satellite connections can be sufficiently fast, they have a high latency, which will cause significant delay in netgames. It is recommended that you use faster and more reliable connections such as DSL or cable when playing SRB2 online.
6. Is the game being paused for resynchronization too often?	Whenever the data transmitted between the server and a player becomes out of sync, the game will be paused and the server will try to resynchronize the player. If this happens frequently, it can disrupt the game to the point where it becomes unplayable. The console variable resynchattempts controls how often the game will try to resynchronize the player before kicking them. If frequent resynchronizations are disrupting your game, you can try lowering this value, but bear in mind that this may lead to players being kicked for synch failures more often. If you enable blamecfail, you will be notified in the console whenever a player becomes desynchronized. You can use this to identify players who are causing synchronization problems and ask them to leave or ban them.
7. Are you timing out constantly?	The console variable nettimeout controls how long the game will wait between packets before timing out. The default value is 350 tics (10 seconds). Make sure this isn't set to an overly low value.

Still having problems? Ask for help on the SRB2 Message Board or try searching the SRB2 Wiki for more information regarding your problem.