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I do alot of online gaming. About 3 or 4 weeks ago I started getting intermmitent packetloss in all my games. Basically I'm get blocks of missing packets at random intervals. I use, and have been using the speedguide patch since I first had my cable modem installed almost a year ago and have had no problems at all of this sort until now. Here is a few screenshots of my netgraph in Quake 2 that I combined to show how the PL is manifesting. As you can see everything is great (low green graph) and then there's a block of missing packets (at which point my game hangs naturally).
Green = packets recieved
Yellow = packets delayed
Red = packets lost
height of graph corresponds to ping
The PL comes at completely random intervals, but I always see it at least every 5 to 10 minutes (most of the time more like every 2 minutes). This happens in all my online games on all servers (not isolated to servers in a particular area- i've tried East Coast, West Coast and overseas, no matter what the ping the PL manifests in the same way)
There wasn't anything I changed on my system when this started happening and I have been around and around with @home support but they are unsympathetic with my plight (standard answer is "lag in gaming is normally caused by the server").
I just got done reformatting and installing everything with only the newest drivers and the problem is still there, so I thought I'd see if someone here can help me out.
Thanks in advance.
Nat
[This message has been edited by NPortman (edited 01-01-2001).]
[This message has been edited by NPortman (edited 01-01-2001).]
You are not alone I have been having a lot of trouble for the pasted few weeks. I have just thought that the weather may have been the problem lots of snow and ice so I've just have been setting back and will see what
happens.I know from the past it does no good to call @home. If it does not clear up I'll call my local people always have had good luck with them.
Had Cable for over 2 yrs not real trouble.
I have the same prob with @home. I had the service added about 3 weeks ago, and noticed the lag freeze immediately. When I called @home tech support, I actually got a sympathetic techie who played online games himself. From talking to him, I got the impression that the problem was unusual and could be fixed. But reading this thread, and another in the gaming section, I'm beginning to wonder if my @home connection will always be like this.
It has to be a problem somewhere in our area of DFW. What NPORTMAN describes is the exact issue I've been having, which started almost a month ago.
I've reinstalled TF.15, and Half-Life just to verify that it wasn't something I did, but I still receive the same problem.
Also, about a week after this started, my local dispatch somehow transferred my account from one node to another, and that knocked me offline for 2 weeks while they tried to figure out why I had a pretty cable light flashing on my modem. I told them to check the node, and voila, it was fixed. They even changed out my modem to a Cybersurfer Wave, but this timeout problem continues. And since I've been able to track the problem using 2 different modems and 2 different NIC cards, it can only be the result of some bad router in @home's network here in DFW.
On my Cybersurfer Wave modem, I have 2 lights designated RD and TD, which must be Receive Data and Transmit Data. When one of these timeouts hits, TD light continues to work, showing that I'm sending. But the RD light goes out for the duration that my net_graph in TFC shows as missing packets.
There are suspicision amongst other people in the Richardson/Garland area that it's 24.4.48.1 that's causing these problems. I ran a traceroute to that router for 20 hours and amassed quite a log of these timeouts.
It's very frustrating. I've got stuff to do; surf, waste time, play TFC clan matches...etc. Important things!
I just ran a traceroute to that router and polled it 3000 times. Again not showing any appreciable packet loss but I was getting a TON of those pauses. My 2 lights are labeled RD and TD on my Cybersurfr Wave modem and they both go out during the pauses in my traceroute and during my lag in games. It's odd that the traceroute pauses but then goes on showing normal ping and 0-1% packetloss on all hops. What is this?
Traceroute paused probably 30-40 times in the 5 or 6 minutes it took me to run this.
Btw, those 300-400 "worst" ping times you see do not coorespond with the pausing at all...
[This message has been edited by NPortman (edited 01-09-2001).]
Well I had an idea and thought I'd back up the chain and ping all the routers to see if I could isolate somewhere that the problem went away but I still get this pausing when just pinging my gateway (24.14.66.1).... anyone know what that means?
Just like Ibis my problems started out of the blue around the beginning of December. Before that time I never had this pausing/PL issue. Since that time I have done a complete reformat. I tried to be very meticulous in backing up and restoring all my system settings to how they were before. I guess it could still be a configuration issue though *shrug*
It's odd but the problem doesn't show up in a traceroute. I've even kept my traceroute program polling and hopped in a game and then exited as soon as the PL hit to see if it showed anything on the traceroute and it doesn't. One peculiar thing i did notice was that while polling my traceroute program would "pause" for a short time (about as long as the packetloss hits i experience in game) and then keep going but it wouldn't show any ping or packetloss increase. Anyway here are some screenshots of a few traceroutes I ran...they all look pretty normal to me.
Also here's some shots of my IRQ settings...I noticed windows had a bunch of stuff set to 10 which looks like my sound also so I tried running a few games with sound disabled but the problem was just the same.
[This message has been edited by NPortman (edited 01-09-2001).]
Hey. I'm In Richardson also. the only thing I get is that the whole area is having problems. I have 9 tons of info on this. The affected Laser group / node group is " rchdsn1-8 " This problem has been going on since Nov.15 2000, and @Home has it listed on there outtage board as such if you call them ( mention the above laser group ) If they say you are Not part of the affected laser group, or you are not on that laser group you still may be affected! They have been giving me credit since Nov. so my @home is free till it is fixed; Of course I have to call them at the end of the mth to get credit for that mth.
Now for the Fix!! there is none, they say our problem will go away when we get upgraded to DOSCIC, Garland and Allen uses DOSCIC, we were supposed to get upgraeded last mth but for some reason we got pushed back. <---- this is assuming you have the same prob I do.) Packett loss, I can Onle see this loss using " neotrace " select the Timing tad, and click/highkight each Node after neotrace have run for a while, 100+ pings. you will see the affected node/router and it's specific PL. Also www.dslreports.com Tool's section " online Line test/Pl test " show's the prob (you may have to run this test a few times) I'd say get credit, you should be able to get credit since Nov 15, cuz that's when @Home admits we have a problem and they know we're still having problems. tell them you connect is next to useless becauce all you need's are online gaming other packet important uses!
Get credit... I guess we have to wait for a Modem swap.
Ps, I emailed this and more info you the 2 Richardson ppl.
<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">
You might check and see that the following entries in WINIPCFG are blank:
Netbios scope id
ip routing enabled
wins proxy enabled
netbios resolution uses DNS
Primary WINS server
Secondary WINS server
Try removing the TCP/IP from the dialup modem.
</font>
The only WINIPCFG I know of is the one you can execute from Start> Run that shows your IP, Subnet Mask, and Gateway. In Start> Settings> Control Panel> Network I see the the last "Netbios Resolution uses DNS" setting but it's checked and greyed out. The other settings i can't find anywhere. (Running Win98).
Oh wow ok thanks Richard. I have called @home probably 5 or 6 seperate times about this issue and I just get the same song and dance everytime for the most part. Guess I don't know what questions to ask heh. Thanks ALOT for the info. Even though it's not fixed atm it's good to know what the hell is going on so I can stop fretting about it And good call on the credit...I'm sure I can find something to do with $120.
I got your email Richard and sent you a reply. Thanks!
My Netbios is checked and greyed out as well. When I go into winipcfg and more info, it's checked, and I'm unable to find a way to disable it. Stupid user!
I just tried to paste my DSL link here but it show's my ip#.
r2-fe2-0.grlnd1.tx.home.net hop#11 is where the trouble starts for me as well, that's the same Node/ router that's giving me problem's. Look's like our packet's are getting dropped coming into us, not so much as going out, that's why a tracert and pinging other ip#'s don't show much if anything. BTW the Nodes that start w/ the #10, 10.2.247.1 are cisco nodes/routers which are new/DOSCIC (so i've been told, for us anyhow) we have 1 in our route to the backbone, need more!
[This message has been edited by Richard (edited 01-11-2001).]
[This message has been edited by Richard (edited 01-11-2001).]
NPortman: thanks for your thanks, but I really didn't do much good.
Richard: The routers with an address of 10.x.x.x are just routers that have non-routable addresses, much like an inside telephone extension - you can't address them from the outside world, that is, from outside of their subnet. The DOCSIS CMTS that they are/will be installing will show up as the last router on the way into you if you trace from some remote location.
The problem could be oone of two things.
- One, your ISP could be screwing you out of bandwidth, and ISP's are notorious for this. I know someone who was only hitting a 12k per second upload with @home, and when he called his ISP, his bandwidth magically went up to 40k per second.
- The other reason for this could also be your node is congested. @home puts out ads all the time for people to join, and they dont have enough bandwidth for everyone. This causes downtime, packet loss, and slow speeds. I used to get decent bandwidth, and now that more people joined in my area, i get barely ANY bandwidth, lots of downtime, and packet loss. Its been a really crappy service lately. Bottom line, you're better off ditchng @home and getting DSL.
Sorry it took me so long to reply to this thread, but I have been out of town and just got back. I am in Garland and I am experiencing the EXACT same thing. It's funny...some of these replies look like I submitted them because I, too, thought it was something wrong with my computer. I went as far as reformatting my hard drive, etc. etc. It is definitely something wrong with the network. I have a friend in Rowlette (right next to Garland) and he is having the same trouble. I have another friend in Plano (not too far from Garland) and he is fine. Here's what we need to do. Email Crain.Mike@tci.com and let him know!!! He's the local 'ATT Internet Manager' for this area. We gotta get these people on the ball, cause my gaming SUX!
Mega Dittos in St. Louis region (Illinois Side).
Heres my "weekly e-complaint to AT&T"!
Hello,
Here is another example of my AT&T connection!
Here is a Trace Route to an outside server that I used to troubleshoot my connection.
This example happened Sunday, 12/25/00. THIS IS AN ONGOING PROBLEM!!!!!!
Notice the path. I usually get good connection to the first Three hops (up to [10.83.192.25]). the next hop is the following address:
c1-se6-0.kscymo1.home.net [24.7.73.173]. This is where I get troubles. When I have
someone else outside my area test, they report problems at an address in "Overland MO".
( bb1-se5-0.ovrlnd1.mo.home.net )
I then set up a test that pings [10.83.192.25] Ten times, then pings [24.7.73.173]
Ten times, then repeat the same again. The results are below.
Here is my path:
Tracing route to blackbox.intxxnet.com [216.70.195.245]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 8 ms 7 ms 8 ms
2 8 ms 10 ms 9 ms r1-fe1-0-100bt.belvil1.il.home.net [24.14.191.161]
3 43 ms 11 ms 12 ms 10.83.192.25
4 2417 ms 659 ms 545 ms c1-se6-0.kscymo1.home.net [24.7.73.173] <--------- This is where I loose it
5 460 ms 441 ms 462 ms c1-pos2-0.tulsok1.home.net [24.7.64.154]
6 448 ms 439 ms 450 ms c1-pos1-0.dllstx1.home.net [24.7.64.162]
7 411 ms 403 ms 598 ms home-gw.dlstx.ip.att.net [192.205.32.49]
8 480 ms 410 ms 430 ms gbr2-p10.dlstx.ip.att.net [12.123.16.182]
9 406 ms 419 ms 422 ms gbr3-p00.dlstx.ip.att.net [12.122.5.230]
10 417 ms 438 ms 441 ms gbr2-p30.kszmo.ip.att.net [12.122.2.114]
11 415 ms 409 ms 411 ms gbr1-p60.kszmo.ip.att.net [12.122.1.93]
12 433 ms 443 ms 476 ms gbr4-p40.sl9mo.ip.att.net [12.122.2.42]
13 445 ms 418 ms 425 ms gbr3-p40.cgcil.ip.att.net [12.122.2.205]
14 407 ms 591 ms 585 ms gbr1-p100.cgcil.ip.att.net [12.122.1.154]
15 399 ms 423 ms 407 ms ar1-p310.mlwwi.ip.att.net [12.123.193.34]
16 413 ms 416 ms 426 ms 12.125.124.222
17 587 ms 399 ms 401 ms blackbox.intxxnet.com [216.70.195.245]
Ping statistics for 24.7.73.173:
Packets: Sent = 10, Received = 0, Lost = 10 (100% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 0ms, Maximum = 0ms, Average = 0ms
Pinging 10.83.192.25 with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 10.83.192.25: bytes=32 time=9ms TTL=253
Reply from 10.83.192.25: bytes=32 time=8ms TTL=253
Reply from 10.83.192.25: bytes=32 time=9ms TTL=253
Reply from 10.83.192.25: bytes=32 time=9ms TTL=253
Reply from 10.83.192.25: bytes=32 time=8ms TTL=253
Reply from 10.83.192.25: bytes=32 time=9ms TTL=253
Reply from 10.83.192.25: bytes=32 time=7ms TTL=253
Reply from 10.83.192.25: bytes=32 time=9ms TTL=253
Reply from 10.83.192.25: bytes=32 time=8ms TTL=253
Reply from 10.83.192.25: bytes=32 time=9ms TTL=253
Ping statistics for 10.83.192.25:
Packets: Sent = 10, Received = 10, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 7ms, Maximum = 9ms, Average = 8ms
Ping statistics for 24.7.73.173:
Packets: Sent = 10, Received = 1, Lost = 9 (90% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 0ms, Maximum = 0ms, Average = 0ms
I too have the exact same problem as NPortman has. In fact my Quake 2 netgraph looks exactly the same. I also used a program called pingplotter to find out how often the Packet-Loss occured and It happens almost exactly once a minute and ranging anywhere from 1/2 second to 3 seconds of dead time. I too play online games like q2 cs and q3 and although I do ping good 20-70s the packet-loss really takes the fun out of the game. I have @home I've had it for about 6 months now and I've only had this problem the last 3 months. I too have formatted/called @home/ and downloaded evey freaking cablemodem tweak out there: no luck.
I'm in Des Moines, IA.
I would switch to dsl but its not in my area yet.
