Gaming Connections / Leicester

pallys · 06-10-2005, 22:12

Hi, wounderd if anybody can help. I play Quake 3 online and my connection has deteriated of late. My ping jumps up and down and onthe Quake 3 lagometer I get small yellow triangals and Red Spikes all the time no matter which server I play on whether UK or NL. I was on 300K and hoped upgrading to 2MB would get rid of the problem but it hasnt.

Any ideas on what I can do to get it back to how it used to be again ?

Regards.

EDIT: I've been doing pings and I'm getting packet loss, which is what the Red Spikes on the Quake 3 game lagometer signifies

AndrewJ · 06-10-2005, 22:19

Hiya

I am sure someone will be here to help you.

What spec's are you using, on your pc and have you run check for spyware and viruses?

If you are using a router or anything like that, it would help the more techy minded of us to help you quicker if you posted that.

pallys · 06-10-2005, 22:25

Quote:

Originally Posted by Saxodriver

Hiya

I am sure someone will be here to help you.

What spec's are you using, on your pc and have you run check for spyware and viruses?

If you are using a router or anything like that, it would help the more techy minded of us to help you quicker if you posted that.

Hi there

Its a AMD64 3000+
DFI NF4 Ultra-D
OCZ 1GB DUal channel mem
BFG 7800GT

I just figured out: I've been doing pings and I'm getting packet loss, which is what the Red Spikes on the Quake 3 game lagometer signifies

Ping statistics for 194.109.69.91:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 3, Lost = 1 (25% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 20ms, Maximum = 37ms, Average = 26ms
C:\Documents and Settings\paLLys>

When I play it has laggy intervals. This is reflected in my tracert as sometimes its 0 packet loss but if I keep doing it It gets packet loss. Its not making any difference If I use UK or Euro game server IP's

No Router just a direct connection to Ethernet. I've already tried the sypware route ran various utils to no avail. I will reinstall XP on another drive 2moro though because Im desparate to fix it

Schwong · 06-10-2005, 23:19

Ive also been getting the same problems as you with my internet connection, i am a 300k user who was upgraded to the 1mbit server recently. Getting a decent ping to the servers i play on (30-40, although it sometimes does get bad and goes up to 60), but the packetloss is the main problem, alot of red lines in the q3a lagometer for me also. There are also times when ill have a good ping and no packetloss, an example of this would be i was playing around 3-4pm and had no problems but on the same day playing at 9pm i would encouter these problems.
Did not have these problems until the upgrade was done, infact i noticed these problems on the day of the upgrade so i assume that was/is the problem.
Im in Nottingham.

V3n0m · 07-10-2005, 06:35

Yup i think lots of people are experiencing this problem...its not your system or how you are connected....its NTL

We have a clan consisting of 16 players and there is only two of us using NTL one is in scotland and the other is myself and both of us are experiencing lag/bad pings/packet losses,whilst the other guys are finding no problems at all on all servers

Last night i had a 3.65% packet loss and a rms of 977

about six months ago i had a nice rms of 30 and no packet loss,all speed test were spot on.....now its just pants

In the daytime connection is fine,but come around 5pm and it all goes haywire

pallys · 07-10-2005, 08:25

I used to able to VNC to control my pc from work. But now this drops too because of loss of packets.

I've already spent money upgrading from 300K to 2MB to try get rid of this problem because gaming is all I want it for.
Its not even recognised as a problem by NTL because I havent seen it on their server status pages

If this dont get better soon I think I will have to switch to ADSL :/

handyman · 07-10-2005, 09:08

Try calling tech support and explain the problem , It might just be a bit of ingress on your cable causing it easily solved by a new cable.

As for leicester being a problem for gaming we have one of ntls head end techs from leicester in the cf clan and he reports no issues that i'm aware of.

V3n0m · 07-10-2005, 09:42

Quote:

Originally Posted by handyman

Try calling tech support and explain the problem , It might just be a bit of ingress on your cable causing it easily solved by a new cable.

As for leicester being a problem for gaming we have one of ntls head end techs from leicester in the cf clan and he reports no issues that i'm aware of.

What part of the cable....inside or outside the house?

The problem does seem to be covering a large area as my friend in scotland is also experiencing huge packet loss/pings/lag....this has only been over the last month.

tweetiepooh · 07-10-2005, 10:39

I too have had problems with Halo. Seem a tad better now.

Ping times seem irrelevant since I had as many probs with UK servers (40ms) as US (168ms). Also as someone else has pointed out elsewhere, ping (ICMP) is lower priority than other traffic. I had disconnects and packet loss, jerky play etc.

It's very hard to nail down as everyone blames the other and the symptoms don't affect everything or everyone and tests run by CS seem to show no problems.

Cerberus · 07-10-2005, 11:42

Scotland (Glasgow) has been quite bad recently for online gaming, with the likes of CS:S and DOD:S also RTCW. I am not the only person having this issue, a lot of my colleagues at work are having bad ping problems when playing online games and they are with NTL. I just assumed it's NTL upgrading their network nationally with the 10mb on the horizon. I am just putting up with it at the moment, I am sure it will get better soon.

Chrysalis · 07-10-2005, 17:26

I am seeing ping spikes some nights creeping in, this suggests possible congestion and download speeds are going down to around 220 mark in the evenings which also could mean congestion. None of this is conclusive tho and since we can no longer read the ubr stats using robin walker tool its hard to see what's the cause. I would be surprised if it is ubr congestion tho since ignition has mentioned Leics has had a load of upgrades during the past year and I wouldnt expect the network to be congested at this stage prior to a higher speed rollout.

Cerberus · 07-10-2005, 17:47

I play a lot of DOD:S (Day Of Defeat Source) and very rarely have ping problems on UK or Euro servers. However when I play RTCW then I see quite a lot of lag. Maybe it's the master servers?

2||Para · 08-10-2005, 08:17

Does Quake have a cfg file still? It did years ago but havent played it since CS beta came out.

Try adjusting your rates if it has.

Cerberus · 08-10-2005, 16:03

Quote:

Originally Posted by 2||Para

Does Quake have a cfg file still? It did years ago but havent played it since CS beta came out.

Try adjusting your rates if it has.

Yes Quake still uses cfg files and I think the rate you're referring to is cg_maxrate/seta cg_maxrate in the cfg file? Not 100% sure about that but the cfg files are exactly the same as the cg files used in RTCW as it uses the Quake3 engine. Could also be worth checking your cg_hunkmegs which ideally should be set to 3/4 of your total ram in your machine, usually though I set it to half the ram in the machine.

Roll on Quake IV released 21st October \o/

pallys · 08-10-2005, 22:04

yes it still uses cfg and no it doesnt make a difference because i haent changed these settings for years...

ive carried out more testing with some packet loss data test to usa servers and it reports I am gtting packetloss.

If NTL thinks nothnigs wrong I wonder if it will ever get fixed ?
I wonder if the load is now too much to handle in the Leicester, Nottingham areas ?

Its getting difficult to sort this. I tried to get through to NTL for 45mins on the phone before I gave up.