How to fix rubberbanding in Rust

Changes were made to Rust this past year that caused a large number of rubberbanding issues for players and servers. Here are some troubleshooting remedies that I've helped others fix their issues.

Game networking performance/troubleshooting is a complex issue, and so there's no guarantee that these suggestions will fix everyone's issue.

How to fix rubberbanding in Rust

Glad my tip was able to help some here (thanks for the points!). A few clarifications/tips:

• Original tip:

  They definitely borked some of Rust's net code a few months back. If you're having issues, open Rust's F1 console, type "find ping" -> Enter -> it will show console variables that can be changed -> look for one called "ping estimation" -> type it out in the console (press Tab to autocomplete it) -> then set it to "0" (aka "false", meaning it's off) -> press Enter. It should show confirmation that it was changed.
  
  This past year, Facepunch tried to make Rust smarter about server browsing and ping, however, it ended up causing massive ping issues for many players and servers across around the world.

  
  
• If my original tip didn't work for you (or it stopped working), there's an additional ping convar/setting you can experiment disabling:
  
  
  • ping.ping_estimation 0
    
  • ping.auto_refresh_region 0
  
  
• These ping convars are automatically re-enabled by Rust every time Rust is opened. Hence, if they work for you, you'll need to re-disable these each time Rust is opened. A quick keybind to do this:
  
  bind F4 ping.ping_estimation 0;ping.auto_refresh_region 0
  
  Now when you press F4 (or whatever key you chose), it'll disable both of these ping convars in a single press. You can verify if it worked by opening F1 console and checking if both were changed. They should both now show "0" (aka "false" or "off").
  
  
• If you're connecting through a router, as an experiment, disconnect your router's ethernet from the modem, and instead connect your computer's ethernet cord directly into the modem, bypassing the router (as a test). See if the problem goes away. If it does, it narrows down your problem being a local network/router config issue, which can be fixed separately.
  
  
• When you're getting rubber-banding, open Task Manager (Ctrl-Shift-Escape), switch to its "Performance" tab, then keep TM open on a second monitor. Switch back to Rust and continue playing, while keeping an eye on TM. Notice if any of the performance graphs on the left side of TM are close to maxing out (80-90%+).
  
  
• Another setting that can be experimented with -- go into Steam's settings -> switch to the "In Game" tab -> scroll down to bottom till you see "Server browser pings/minute" -> Set this temporarily to "250" (this is only as a temporary test)
  
  Now restart Rust and rejoin the server you were on . Heads-up, lowering this setting will lead to Rust's server browser taking longer to refresh the server list. This is perfectly normal and this change is only as a quick experiment to see if this could be part of what's impacting your rubberbanding. After this test, you can change the "Server browser pings/minute" back to its default "Automatic" setting.
  
  
• Google the "Waveform Bufferbloat test" -> run that test and see what score you get. It will report if your connection is having issues that may impact FPS multiplayer games.

[Theyo]

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