Cable users → What could be the cause? please help.

First of all i'm writing from work but this is a problem that I've been having with my home PC for quite some time and it involves packetloss and intermittent disconnects/disruption.

Although I am not 100% sure that it has anything to do with my isp because when I contacted them they said the connection was all good on ping tests they did. I ran one test »/speed ··· /1622172 and as you can see I failed on the bottom test however I'm not at all sure if this is the problem i've been facing nor do I know if this is fixable or not.

The root of the problem is that when I join an online gaming server to play Enemy Territory, or any online game for that matter, I get a 3-4 second "lag" or gap in my lagometer which usually indicats packetloss. This also happens periodically during gameplay where I get this "skipping" action thus resulting in a large gap in the lagometer again indicating packetloss. I should mention that when this occurs mid-game it sometimes causes complete "connection interuption" and locks up all online programs I'm running i.e. ventrilo, xfire, mIRC but when I unplug and replug my modem in it then comes back on and reconnects. This sometimes causes the gaming server to kick me with the notice "losing key packets"

So my question is how do I know whether or not my PC is causing a "bottleneck" somewhere or if it's my cable thats causing these problems. Again this is so random that when a single ping test get done often times this wont be seen but when I play an online game it's a huge problem.

btw: I've ran Spybot, Adaware, malware tool, defragged and ran Norton antivirus recently cleaning up any problems and this still didn't help the problem.

PLease help and thank you in advance for your time.

Your Line Quality test shows things are excellent on the east coast side. The West Coast test shows packet loss right at the start, off Cox's network and nothing to do specifically with your issue.

Packet Loss can occur anywhere. You can really only try to address packet loss at your location, which it doesn't appear you have.

Do you have another computer you can run some tests on when you're connected in playing the game? If so, it would mean you have a router, and what you can do is open 3 command prompts on the other machine, ping the router in 1, ping your default gateway (the 1st device you talk to owned by your ISP) and in the 3rd window ping the game server.

When your game shows packet loss, look and see what is shown in the 3 windows on the other machine. If you've got packet loss to your default gateway, we can debug that. If things look good to the router and to the default gateway and you see packet loss to the game server, then we'd need to try and narrow down further where the loss is.

At least that's how I would approach it.

Also, you want to make sure your RWIN (TCP Receive Window) isn't too high since a high RWIN will cause worse response if you do have packet loss. Run a tweak test at »/tweaks and post the URL of the results page here.

Unfortunately I don't have another PC to help determine the problem the way you had suggested. I will however run the tweak test once I get home and I'll post the results and take it from there.

If your machine is capable and the game permits, you can run the 3 ping windows in the background and tab to them when the lag is noticed in the game.

»members.cox.net/coxengr/ ··· ols.html is a great source of info on how to interpret these results and for explaining how ping, tracert, and W2K/XP's pathping work.

I will try opening them in the background and tabbing to the prompts when the lag occurs. I suppose if i run the game in windowed mode it'll allow me to check those prompts. Since I'm not to savy with these sorts of things is it possible for you to tell me what I need to type in each prompt or is it just /ping (insert ip here)

Nova- i'll also look at that link to see if that helps me thanks for posting it.

In each window it would be:

ping -t aaa.bbb.ccc.ddd

where aaa.bbb.ccc.ddd is the IP address or the server name of whatever you want to ping.

You press Ctrl-C in each window to stop the ping. When you do press Ctrl-C it will show the summary results such as # sent, # received, # lost and the min/avg/max times for pinging the given target device.

heres the tweak test. »ttester.broadbandreports ··· a=normal

What speed connection do you have with your provider?

Well I dunno. I put in Cable/300k/normal

»/speed ··· 05658248

Does that help any?

I'd guess you're about 3000, not 300. I'd suggest lowering your RWIN to 49640 or 32120. It shouldn't lower your speed and should be a smidgen better if there's any retransmissions.

can you tell me how to lower my RWIN?

new test result using 3000 »ttester.broadbandreports ··· a=normal

Download DrTCP021.exe from »/drtcp and save it to your desktop. Launch it (no install needed) and set the TCP Receive Window (RWIN) to 32120. Save, exit and reboot your computer.

Re-run the tweak test at »/tweaks and post the new results page URL here.

Run a speed test at the closest site to you listed at »Tweaking FAQ »Where are the Speakeasy Speed Test Sites? and post the URL of that results page here.

Lets see how that works.

new settings tweak test »ttester.broadbandreports ··· a=normal

Speed test »/speed ··· 05673023

Looks good. See what happens in the game. It won't eliminate packet loss... that's occurring someplace on the Internet between you and the server, but it should make the impact of it a little less drastic on your connection.

You'll still need to run those tests if you see the problem.

Thanks alot for all your help man. I really appreciate it. I'll run those command prompt tests soon and post up what happened.