On Wed, 8 Sep 1999, Jim Mattson wrote:

>
> Last night, I was having really horrible packet loss. It was
> typically 4% to 12%, with spikes over 60%. I found that this made it

Have others been experiencing terrible packet loss? I've been
at around 20%-30% from 7pm to 10pm Eastern for the last week.

> practically impossible to stay invisible with Shauri's. (I am level
> 31 and have a wind skill of 158 or better, so under normal conditions,
> it's not a problem.) However, although I often saw the blue "You have
> become visible" message, it rarely--if ever--followed the red "You
> feel yourself starting to appear" message.
>
> I'm speculating that the client is trying to get a packet through that
> says "Hey! I'm still singing Shauri's." However, if this packet
> keeps disappearing into the ether, then the song interval times out on
> the server, and the server figures I've stopped singing, so I become
> visible. Eventually, the client manages to get the packet through,
> and a soft mist surrounds me again.

I think it's worse. I think if the server doesn't get a
message from the client saying "Hey, I'm still singing" in
time for the next *pulse*, it thinks you've stopped singing,
and when the client finally does get a "Hey, I'm still
singing" packet through, the server considers that to be you
*starting* a song, and starting a song will make you visible.
If you ever watch someone suffering from packet loss, they
will often blink in and out of view (prelude to going
linkdead) and sometimes show up as linkdead. Your songs stop
when you're linkdead, so if you're blinking due to PL, the
server probably thinks you've stopped your song even if it's
only for a fraction of a second.

--
John H. Kim
kim@...