There are a lot of possible reasons for lag
1. Your connection to "the Internet" might be slow.
2. One of the clients might have a slow connection, and so
it might be sending updates late.
3. You could have a similar problem on "either" side
concerning graphics settings that are too high.
4. You might have background tasks that are interfering
with your game serving.
Troubleshooting steps:
Look at some of the "My machine runs slow" messages on the
boards to get hints about how to get rid of unnecessary
background tasks. If you are an advanced user, you can
edit the Run and RunOnce settings in the Registry and
similar tweaks.
You might try setting "Start-Settings-Control Panel-
Advanced-Performance Options" to background tasks. This
would slow your machine down, but might be worth a shot.
Switch it back if this doesn't help or if it makes it
worse.
Switch to lower graphics settings, and have others that
are joining do the same if possible. If this doesn't
help, then at least you eliminated one possible slowdown.
Is the lag time better for the same people if someone else
serves? This would help you figure out if it is your
machine/config/connection or if you should look elsewhere
for the solution.
I don't know about this particular game, but some have
memory leaks over time. For some of them I have to log
out and reboot every couple hours or I get some fierce lag.
If one of you is using a modem, and it's worth the money
to you for the entertainment value, then upgrading to
Cable or DSL should fix the problem IF the bottleneck is
your communication link. As you probably know, they are
MUCH faster and some of the newer games almost require
them to get all the data across consistently. I would try
the other solutions first though, before investing money
in it.
