Connection (or something) problem. Mayday Mayday Mayday!

[Funky]

Hi and Merry Christmas to all,

I’ve been experiencing some problem with my connection (or something that I dont know what it is), even after I upgraded to the new 4 Mb cable internet. Well, before I get this connection, I used to have a 768KB DSL connection that was not nearly enough for this purpose, simply because of high pings and lack of stability. Now that I have a 4Mbps line, I have some new but sort of familiar problems. Anytime I try to host, or join a server in Lomac, everything goes fine and we connect, then get in the airplane and fly… smooth, real smooth in fact. The ping stays fairly low also, for example 40 when I play with next door buddy of mine and 130 when I play with guys in Canada. Regardless of distance or ping, the first 10-15 minutes everything is real nice, but after that, it starts to get jumpy, and more jumpy, and more jumpy… and we all end up all over the sky. Even then when I check the ping it shows the same low pings! I’ve also double checked my connection when this is happening, and it seems to not change at all. When I host, everybody except me goes all over the sky, and when I join, they see me going all over the sky, as they fly smooth together and I see them all shaky and messed up. Just to let you know, I use verizon’s speed checker at http://infospeed.verizon.net to check my speed.
Until today, I used to have a router in my way of connection, and I used to blame everything on it, but tonight I removed the router and went directly to modem, but I experienced the exact same problem when playing. Seriously I’ve got no idea what’s wrong with this at this point. Again, some people tell me that I’m sharing the line with others since its cable, but my speed is nicely at 4000Kb which sometimes decreases to 3500Kb, so I know others are not slowing my connection down. I also know that the problem is something that takes its time to get worse, and progresses as I play the game. I’ve checked the temperature on the modem when I was hosting/playing and it was pretty cool. My computer runs pretty cool also. I have an AMD 4200+ X2 CPU, a 7800GTX OC graphics card, a 480W PSU, an Audigy 2 sound card, Abit AN8 Fatal1ty SLI mobo with Nforce 4 chipset, and a Tsunami case that cools great. My CPU temp does not go any more than 53 deg C when I’m playing and there are no noticeable FPS drops. It’s just that others become very unstable and shaky and impossible to form on. FYI, I connect my computer to modem or router using cable and not wireless.
Please let me know if there’s anything that’s unclear to you to identify this problem, and I’ll be VERY VERY glad, happy, and jolly if this issue finally gets fixed .
The only other game that I have on this PC is BF2, and although I don’t play BF2 often, I’ve not seen such thing happen to that game.

Thanks everyone and all inputs are appreciated.

Funky

[STRIKER]

Really dont know exactly what it might be but since you are running a cable connection I would double check all your lines going to house/outlet. I had a similiar problem whereas for me about every 5-15 minutes I would actually lose the net for a few seconds or high pings, then it would settle down and start all over again. After a new cable modem and 3 comcast cable techinician visits later the guy found that my cable line going from the pole to my house had a huge foot and a half cut on it and the inside of the shield and even the stinger (center dialiectric) was severely corroded...how my internet even worked period is beyond me. So these days I make sure they check all lines to and from the box and through the house. One of the things you can do is monitor you ping on ventrillo for 15-20 min and see if you get any erratic spikes...thats how I eventually got my tech out here after the 2nd time they said nothing was wrong. Good luck!


5's clear,

[Burner]

How are your frames when this is happening, is it related to any particular view change. Basically I had the same problem and it was related to the PC being over taxed due to a graphics bug, but I'd imagine any bug would yield similar results.

[Funky]

Rogr Striker, I'll check my ping on vent today for 20 minutes to see if anything is changing.

Burner, regarding FPS, honestly, if I try hard I can feel a bit of difference from beginning of flight and 15 minutes later. It could be there, but it’s not anything noticeable. I've seen what happens when people or I change views etc., but this is like having that constantly, and even if I sit still in the cockpit, everything will still go shaky no matter what. It feels like something overheats or similar to that. The reason I'm saying this is that even if I stop from playing, I have to wait a while to get that initial smoothness for another round. So far none of in home equipments seems to be noticeably overheating. The only thing I can’t really check is the modem, unless I buy another one and go through the whole process of installing it and letting the ISP know about it etc.

I'll post later today about the results that I get in ventrilo. Now that I think, I remember some 90+ pings on ventrilo right when I get out of the game, even thought it usually idles at 40 range.

Also, again now that I think about it I remember people sometimes cutting off on vent or skype (not disconnecting)... hmm... this is all very strange to me.

Tonight me and Toast are planning on meeting on vent at 2200 hours EST, and you, Burner and striker, are welcome to join us if you'd like to discuss this, and fly for a bit if you feel like it.

Thanks again for your comments,

Funky

[Funky]

Problem solved !!! I went on my computer and disabled all the different unnecessary stuff that I didnt need to, including the anti-virus and firewall, and now everything looks really good! Tonight I flew formation with poor Toast who was suffering from some ping problems (about 5000 ping) due to his router, and then went up with another two buddies of mine to fly formation for a while, and everything went great for as long as we were flying. I've got the cable guy coming here tomorrow, but I'll have him check some other stuff that I would like to have checked...


Thanks for your kind replies guys,

Funky

[SilverOne]

lol you felt on that

don't use firewall if you have an router

dont use anti virus too, cuz that just lags your pc....

[Funky]

oh man the problem is back again ! I'm seriously really tired of this. The problem went away for only one night, and then came back again. Tonight, Striker suggested that its my connection, so I'm considering bringing a friend's computer here to test my connection. If the connection was good, then my HDD's gonna have to get ready for a format .

I'm still up for suggestions from everyone around here,

Funky

[Lawndart]

1: Try your friends puter at your connection.
2: Try your puter at his connection.
3: Eliminate the router (connect directly to the cable line).
4: Disable any software and hardware firewall (Zone Alarm, Internet Security, Anti-Virus, even the built in MS ones).
5: Have your cable company do a signal strength test as well as look for "micro connectivity" where the signal drops out and instantaneously resumes.
6: Check page file settings (or other memory related usage, Lock-On hogs lots of memory).
7: Disable all non-required processes in Task Manager (Alt-Ctrl-Del) and eliminate them one by one.

When you've determined with certainty that the problem still exists, I'd look at different service or have the cable company come out AGAIN! If you friends computer works well, but yours doesn't a re-format could possibly fix it by resetting the internet values to default in Windows. You could also try a search for registry tweaks concerning internet settings and connection and see if your string values for some reason are out of whack.

LD

[SilverOne]

i dunnno if u done this but : Scan with anti virus , scan with adware. ( if you don't have it you know where to find me ).

I suggest you to call a tecnichian, becouse i doubt we can solve things this way .