Oz, in reply to your last post to the thread. Under my thoughts, the user would not ever be prompted to choose his/her internet settings, steam would connect to valve servers and determine this upon startup and this cvar would not be changed except upon connection to steam servers if bandwidth changed.
EG: I connect to steam during non peak hours and my bandwidth is blazing, no network congestion at all. It sets my rates to rate 25000, cl_updaterate 100, cl_cmdrate 100. I reconnect some hours later (during peak hours) with heavy network congestion and say my 3meg down 768k up dsl is not hitting max bandwidth (minus overhead). Valve servers notice this change from my previous bandwidth and adjust my rates to say...rate 15000, cl_updaterate 60, cl_cmdrate 30 to adjust for the network issues. Basically a discovery code that would determine the users rates for them automatically at steam startup with no user input as to connection type. Now I am no coder by any means, but I know this is in the realm of feasible. This would ensure that every user is using optimal settings for their connection at time of connection to the steam network, and lock out any chance of any rate hacking. This type of "discovery based on bandwidth detection results" would stop the rate hackers dead in their tracks. The question is, is Valve willing to invest the programming time and the resources necessary to scan some 1 million + clients at startup to ensure this issue goes away forever. 8) EG: Say the code does a ping with a packet size the avg size of a hlds/srcds server packet, does this say 10x, and uses the average to base its rates on. This script/code then takes the results calculates (based on tabled data) what the best rates were for the returned information, and sets these rates on the client. Basically 3 different tables would be needed, one for rate, one for cmdrate, one for updaterate, depending on ones up and down bandwidth. This form of detection could be taken a step further, and incorporated into the hlds/srcds engine itself, and say whatever server you connect to executes this test, then it sets your rates based on your connection to that particular server, and could update at map change, and if you left and went to a different server, that new server would set your rates best for that particular server. Guaranteeing an optimal rate setting no matter what server you connected to. Taking the ability away to abuse it. Least thats what idea is cooking in my mind. And yeah, this could easily be adapted into a server side plugin. But the rate hacking is cheating, and valve doesn't like cheating. So why not submit it to them and ask them to consider a fix for it on a global level instead of just a local one? StealthMode _______________________________________________ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlds
