Severe lag on slave machine

[Darren]

I know it's been asked before, and while I've searched through and read most of the posts about this issue, I'm still having problems with slave lag. I'm hoping I can get some help/guidance on the issue.

I installed ID around the beginning of July when I got a new Win10 laptop for work. Due to the limited space on my desk, I'm using my standard dual monitors for both my Master and Slave, so I'm manually switching them between analog (slave) and digital (master) input devices. After some initial headaches with IP address on my network, I got everything up and running, and things were working great between the two machines. I'd notice occasional slowdown issues on the slave if the master had too much memory being used (*coughfirefoxcough*), but if I closed the memory hogging app on the master things were fine again on the slave.

Fast forward a month, and I end up having a BSOD on my master. The BSOD more or less causes my master to get caught in a boot loop, and Irealize that I need to replace my RAM. I replace the old dimm's (8GB total) with two new ones (16GB total), and things pretty much get back to normal on my master. As a precaution (due to the specific BSOD error I had), I upgrading all of the drivers on my master. This is the point where I start to notice the lag issues perpetually occurring on the slave. My work team uses Slack for communication, and there were numerous reports of the Windows app having a memory leak, so I started troubleshooting the slave lag based on that. I'm not entirely sure that is the issue anymore, as I've directly plugged a USB mouse and keyboard into the slave system, and they operate without any lag under the same conditions.

Steps I've taken on the slave system:

• Removed Slack

• Added tab-suspend to my browsers to help memory leaks

• Changed ID settings to not use cached IP addresses

• Tried using reliable communications

• Tried removing reliable communications

• Removed water ripple effect

• Disabled enhanced pointer precision (I've since re-enabled it)

Steps I've taken on the master system:

• Added tab-suspend to my browsers to help memory leaks

• Changed ID settings to not use cached IP addresses

• Tried using reliable communications

• Tried removing reliable communications

• Removed water ripple effect

• Rolled back to an older mouse driver (it was updated when I did my system-wide updates after the BSOD)

• Disabled enhanced pointer precision (I've since re-enabled it)

I've also updated my router firmware, and performed a full reboot cycle on both my modem and router for good measure.

Additionally, I've run a multitude of speed tests from various providers on both the master and the slave systems.

**Both master and slave systems are connected to my network wirelessly, as a wired connection for both machines isn't really an option.

Master speed tests:

• Speedtest.net (Ookla)

  Ping: 16 ms
  Download: 28.01 Mbps
  Upload: 11.85 Mbps

• Xfinity

  Ping: 14 ms
  Download: 29.7 Mbps
  Upload: 13.4 Mbps

• Speakeasy.net

  Download: 21.1 Mbps
  Upload: 10.5 Mbps

Slave speed tests:

• Speedtest.net (Ookla)

  Ping: 12 ms
  Download: 38.63 Mbps
  Upload: 10.61 Mbps

• Xfinity

  Ping: 14 ms
  Download: 41.3 Mbps
  Upload: 12.1 Mbps

• Speakeasy.net

  Download: 29.2 Mbps
  Upload: 11.2 Mbps

As someone previously recommended, I ran a long ping test from my master to my slave:

I get a HUGE spike in time every time I move the mouse around on the slave, and the lost packets seem to line up to when I was actively performing an action on the slave.

As one final test, I downloaded MS Mouse Without Borders and installed it on both systems, and I get the same sort of lag issues on the slave when using it.

I'm at a loss as to where to go from here. I don't necessarily believe the issue is with ID, as it seems like it's more with the network than anything, but I don't seem to have issues anywhere else on my network, or on other devices. At the current moment, I've resigned myself to using two separate keyboard/mouse combos to control each system independently, but it's a headache to deal with.

Is there any advise or suggestions that can be offered here, or am I better off getting a traditional KVM switch for my situation?

Thanks in advance.

[Chris Lee]

Bumping this because I am dealing with the exact same thing. I went through almost all of the same steps, down to trying Mouse Without Borders, and have no luck.

I have a Netgear Orbi RBK50 router with satellite and AT&T Fiber internet, so I highly doubt it's my network unless there's some hidden option to configure somewhere.

The lag gets unbearable, particularly when it gets stuck as if I'm holing down the space or the backspace key. Typing is almost impossible on the slaves.

Any advice here would be great.

[Kevin Young]

Just curious, how many slaves are you running?  Also, are they on Ethernet or Wifi?

[Chris Lee]

One slave over Wifi on my RBK50 lan

Master: Dell XPS 15, i7, 16GB RAM, Windows 10, Killer Wireless-n/a/ac 1535 Wireless Network Adapter. 

Speedtest results from speedtest.net

download: 269.73

upload: 203.14

Slave: Microsoft Surface Book 2, i7, 16GB RAM, Windows 10, Marvell AVASTAR Wireless-AC Network Controller.

Speedtest results from speedtest.net

download: 71.50

upload: 68.40

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[Thomas Donino]

I have 4 slaves on 2 different pc’s plus the master, all are Windows 10 Dell workstations with Ethernet connection

Sent from my iPad

[Hard Wired]

Ok, I'm in a rush but here is what I did a while back to fix my similar issue. I tried all the same things you did, but the problem for me was using a wireless laptop/tablet device as the slave. In many laptops/tablets, the Device Manager wireless settings are typically defaulted to aggressively save you battery life by sacrificing a little performance. Depending on the wireless controller chip set and drivers you have installed, the setting names can be called wildly different things depending on the manufacturer or the class (G/N/AC/etc) of the chip set. Dig into your Device Manager, find the wireless device under "Network adapters" and see if there is an "Advanced" tab (you may need to log in as Admin to see it). Look for battery or performance settings and try changing them.

My problem was solved by not allowing the wireless controller to go in to a low power mode. Note, this can also be true for wired Ethernet adapters, especially on laptops/tablets.

[Darren Suppes]

Hard Wired,

Thanks for the tips and suggestions. I took a look into mine, as my slave is a laptop, and I saw a handful of different settings like this, but it looked like all of them were already disabled, or where I would realistically want them to be to prevent low power mode. Additionally, my slave laptop pretty much sits on a dock almost permanently, so there's really no reason that it would ever get to a low power mode like this.

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[Clifton Sleger]

I would suggest you try an Ethernet connection. WIFI systems work very differently across networks than wired connections.

[Hard Wired]

If you are stuck using wi-fi, then maybe check your router to see if you can prioritize the traffic between the two machines. Another thing to try is to set your firewall settings for Input/Output for the InputDirector.exe on each machine so they can ONLY talk to each other via IP address... be sure each machine has a fixed IP address first (i.e. reserved DHCP via router or manually assigned IP address on each machine). It is overkill, but it should limit any unwanted traffic/noise that Input Director is trying to process and makes it a little more secure.

[Joaquin Rodriguez]

Just as others have mentioned, the ethernet connection takes care of the lag. I used to be on WiFi, then I moved my modem to the first level of the home (where my PCs are) and I connected both of them (Master and Slave) to the router via ethernet - and Boom, lag is gone.

Unfortunately this was the only solution I could find - a wired connection.

[Sergio]

Hi, I had already tried everything you wrote here, and after many tests, I saw that it was another problem, and i wrote a post about it: My solution to a huge lag in slave (Polling Rate - mouse at master)

Regards,

Sergio

[Andy Owen]

I have noticed that I get lag when logged in with my regular user, but not with my Admin user...

Any ideas?

Andy