Fox McCloud
Ron Paul Enthusiast
join:2006-07-23
 ·Sprint Mobile Broa..
·Verizon BroadbandA..
|  Evil Traffic Shaping Methods?
Ok, this has been something I've noticed that's very very suspicious (at least to me).
Anyway, I'm not a big fan of FPS games, but I really like TF2 (probably because of how cartoony it is and also for the humor...plus there's actually some strategy involved, to a certain degree).
But anyway, I can start playing and it'll be fine, then all of a sudden I'll experience a lot of packet loss and my ping will skyrocket up to 300 and even 800ms...not only that but sometimes my service will just out and out cut off completely.
I did a ping while playing and there was packet loss--I ran it for a long time after I exited the game; no packet loss and no ultra-high latency...I go back to playing the game and I experience packet loss and high latency (periodically) again...not to mention my service will just completely drop at times.
My service will sometimes drop while I'm just surfing the 'net, but it happens significantly more frequently when I am playing an online game.
Could it be that Sprint has some packet-sniffer in place that detects online-gaming related packets then disrupts my connection periodically to make the game unplayable (or at least highly discourage me)?
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"True Patriotism is more closely linked with dissent than it is to conformity and a blind desire for safety and security...I accept the definition of patriotism as that effort to resist abusive state power." -Ron Paul |
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rawgerz
In Debt we trust
Premium
join:2004-10-03
Grove City, PA
·Sprint Mobile Broa..
| Sounds more like to me that you have an outdated computer that can't handle the combination of the game and the CPU cycles of the card at the same time.
I tried that game many months ago and had no issues.
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You can't make all the people happy all of the time. But it should be common sense to shoot for the majority. |
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Fox McCloud
Ron Paul Enthusiast
join:2006-07-23
·Sprint Mobile Broa..
·Verizon BroadbandA..
| I've had similar issues with BF2142--don't tell me it's my PC for that one; I've played it in the past and had 0 issues.
PC States:
AMD Opteron 185 2.6GHz, 4GB of DDR-400 RAM, NVidia GeForce 7900GT 256MB graphics card.
I really don't think it's a performance issue.
I might also add that this doesn't happen 100% of the time, just very VERY frequently.
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"True Patriotism is more closely linked with dissent than it is to conformity and a blind desire for safety and security...I accept the definition of patriotism as that effort to resist abusive state power." -Ron Paul |
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CMoore2004
i r teh smarts
Premium
join:2003-02-06
Jonesville, MI
·Sprint Mobile Broa..
 ·HughesNet Satellit..
| Have you ever considered the fact that maybe the speed of the connection fluctuates over time? Sending more data than the connection can handle means issues like you're having. The ICMP packet loss test means absolutely nothing. A lot of ISPs will give ICMP a very low priority and drop them when there is heavy network traffic (and no, it doesn't have to be on your tower). |
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ebb0ts
Premium
join:2008-01-14
Tucson, AZ
·Sprint Mobile Broa..
| reply to Fox McCloud
I'm gonna whisper this so dont spread it around.....
I play Unrealtournament online with no issues..
If there are 20 or more on the server ..yes we all lag.
But on servers that host games with 16 or fewer it just flys.
See if the problem is related to a specific time of day..
or specific server..
Can't imagine a game more demanding of equipment and connection than UT 3... good luck, hope it works out |
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Fox McCloud
Ron Paul Enthusiast
join:2006-07-23
·Sprint Mobile Broa..
·Verizon BroadbandA..
| said by ebb0ts  : I'm gonna whisper this so dont spread it around..... I play Unrealtournament online with no issues.. If there are 20 or more on the server ..yes we all lag. But on servers that host games with 16 or fewer it just flys. See if the problem is related to a specific time of day.. or specific server.. Can't imagine a game more demanding of equipment and connection than UT 3... good luck, hope it works out It happens no matter what time of the day I play TF2.
Either way, I doubt the problem will ever be solved--anyone who connects to my tower can only get 800 kilobits, and there's been a number of times EVDO drops out completely or goes down--many calls to Sprint and the problem still isn't resolved.
Let's just Embarq pulls through this fall as the tech said they would.
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"True Patriotism is more closely linked with dissent than it is to conformity and a blind desire for safety and security...I accept the definition of patriotism as that effort to resist abusive state power." -Ron Paul |
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rawgerz
In Debt we trust
Premium
join:2004-10-03
Grove City, PA
·Sprint Mobile Broa..
| Well I said it was probably your PC because when I used to play CSS, I did so over dialup. Only 2KBps both directions, so I imagine that game is no different.
Either way, I sometimes play BF2 for a few hours a day. And it uses about 10-15KBps at any given time. I really have no trouble at all beyond the higher transmission times..
Oh and make sure Steam isn't being stupid and downloading a huge update while you're playing.
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You can't make all the people happy all of the time. But it should be common sense to shoot for the majority. |
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netwire
Premium
join:2001-04-27
Mooresboro, NC
·Millenicom
·Sprint Mobile Broa..
 ·Vonage
·WildBlue
| reply to Fox McCloud
Have you considered that perhaps there is a router between you and the game server that's experiencing issues? I play World of Warcraft and have not seen this specific issue you are talking about, and seeing others are not complaining it sounds more like the server than something sprint is doing.
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World of Warcraft - My anti-drug.
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Fox McCloud
Ron Paul Enthusiast
join:2006-07-23
·Sprint Mobile Broa..
·Verizon BroadbandA..
| reply to Fox McCloud
The only thing I have installed on Steam is TF2, so it shouldn't download an update while I'm playing (and all the times I've quite because it was acting up, it wasn't downloading an update...nor was anything else).
It's possible that it's a server in-between, yes, but the real question is if it belongs to Sprint or not--as I said, I've experienced this with BF2142 and TF2.
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"True Patriotism is more closely linked with dissent than it is to conformity and a blind desire for safety and security...I accept the definition of patriotism as that effort to resist abusive state power." -Ron Paul |
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aSic
Slutpuppy
Premium
join:2001-05-17
Wakulla, FL
clubs: | reply to Fox McCloud
Slightly off topic... but TF2 = ? |
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res0kkw
join:2008-05-09
Corydon, IN | Get a antenna if you dont already have one it helped wonders for me.
I had the same problem be4 i got a decent antenna.Now everything plays great on pc and xbox live. |
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Fox McCloud
Ron Paul Enthusiast
join:2006-07-23
·Sprint Mobile Broa..
·Verizon BroadbandA..
| said by res0kkw :Get a antenna if you dont already have one it helped wonders for me. I had the same problem be4 i got a decent antenna.Now everything plays great on pc and xbox live. Considering that I'll likely be canceling on July 10th (or at least switching to month-to-month with no contract and terminating later in the fall), I'd rather not make any large investments in EVDO anymore; I'll work with what I've got, but that's about it.
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"True Patriotism is more closely linked with dissent than it is to conformity and a blind desire for safety and security...I accept the definition of patriotism as that effort to resist abusive state power." -Ron Paul |
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JGZinv
join:2006-09-26
Borden, IN
edit:
June 25th, @01:41PM
| reply to Fox McCloud
Fox - from what I've read in different gaming circles, TF2 has had a history of problems with lag and causing connection problems. Supposedly Valve tried to fix it with their patches, but not all users have been experiencing improved performance.
Rule of thumb in the computing world, process of elimination solves most if not all problems.
I'd look into the problems/patches with TF2 and seeing what the gaming community has come up with.
Maybe test with a different computer?
Tried resetting your network adapters?
Updated the Sprint software lately? |
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T_Flight
join:2007-12-30
·Millenicom
| reply to Fox McCloud
There is nothing more demanding or dynamic than a flight sim. I used to game and game and game. I no longer game becasue it got boring. I now sim. I have had very little issues. I did have an issue awhile back and attributed it to the HA I was using. A quick HA change rectified the issue.
Remember that the middle part of the country is flooded. It has created havoc with routing. Infrastructure has been damaged and destroyed and there will be losses as a result.
It's a connection issue obvuiously right? So what you have to do is ask yourself all the posible causes and systematically eliminate them. It's not easy and takes awhile sometimes. Tracert's through the CMD prompt can help, ping tests directly to the server multiple times (maybe even hundreds to get an accurate sample of what is going on over time), pings to different servers, speedtests using different types of tests from different servers and to different locations around the country. These are things that may point you to one direction or another.
I also see another iossue with your system. 4GB of RAM on that system is way overkill. On top fo that unless you are using Vista you cannot take full advanatage of it. The best you can get is 3GB with XP and you have to subtract your GPU RAM from that. With that particular CPU you will also be IMC bottlenecked. That does not relate to your cureent issue, but is another issue I saw.
If you cannot find a way around the issue on your end, then the next thing to do is to get a service call in. They might have lightning damage to a Tower, a large pipe may have been taken out becasue of digging and hodgepodged back together, they could've lost a fiber cable and had to tem,p fix it with a T1, a Tower could be offline and you may be connecting through another tower a farther distance off. There could be rooting issues from your location to the gaming server due to Infrastructure damage from flooding and Tornado's.
It's one of those things where you have to look at the entire picture from beginning to end and eliminate each step along the way.
I have no issue at all with Sprint's Service. I am a Millenicom Customer. I have been flying online for months with maybe 2-3 times I can remember where I had minor glitches, and those were rectified quickly on my end throufgh HA changes, or reboots, or simply disconnecting and reconnecting, or reloading the software. |
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rawgerz
In Debt we trust
Premium
join:2004-10-03
Grove City, PA
·Sprint Mobile Broa..
| RAM is cheap these days, I have 3GB because of it. He could have XP 64bit and be using all 4GB.
And uh he has a dedicated graphics card, not onboard. So there is no RAM sharing
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You can't make all the people happy all of the time. But it should be common sense to shoot for the majority. |
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ydoucare
join:2003-03-12
Rensselaer, IN
·Millenicom
·Sprint Mobile Broa..
edit:
July 2nd, @01:45PM
| reply to T_Flight
said by T_Flight :I also see another iossue with your system. 4GB of RAM on that system is way overkill. On top fo that unless you are using Vista you cannot take full advanatage of it. The best you can get is 3GB with XP and you have to subtract your GPU RAM from that. With that particular CPU you will also be IMC bottlenecked. That does not relate to your cureent issue, but is another issue I saw. That has nothing to do with Windows, but the fact that a 32-bit CPU can only address to 4 GB of memory. Vista 32-bit has the same limitation, as does any 32-bit OS (unless running PAE, which is just a workaround more than anything).
said by rawgerz :And uh he has a dedicated graphics card, not onboard. So there is no RAM sharing
You misunderstood. Most devices use a technique called memory-mapped I/O, where the device takes a chunk of address space on the system bus, so the CPU can address to it directly. This is why the video card, regardless if it's onboard or AGP/PCIe, will eat a chunk of address space relative to it's amount of video memory. This is done because it is significantly faster than using another bus for specialized I/O. |
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T_Flight
join:2007-12-30
·Millenicom
| reply to Fox McCloud
Exactly. I assumed he was using a 32bit OS as that is the norm for most users right now. There are some who use the 64 bit OS's, but not many. In mnay ways the 64bit OS is better now, but they still have mnay bugs to get rid of. I have some apps that could take advantage of it, but the bugs make it prohibitive for me right now. I will be setting up a drive specifficly for Vista 64 at years end for a couple apps.
That is also totally correct about the graphics memory. It doesn't matter of it is onboard or not. All tjhat matters is total system RAM plus the Graphics. It actually comes out to be a bit less than that that you can use for reasons that get to long to write about. |
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