Massive packet loss in 1 specific game

Hi guys,

Recently I've been having massive amounts of lag & packet loss playing 1 particular game (lotro). Here are some results from pingplotter:

1) No games running (fine)

http://i172.photobucket.com/albums/w2/philjglass/not...

2) Black Ops Running (fine)

http://i172.photobucket.com/albums/w2/philjglass/bla...

3) Lotro Running (awful)

http://i172.photobucket.com/albums/w2/philjglass/lot...

The thing that strikes me most is an average 200ms ping (& high packet loss) to 192.168.2.1, my own router, when playing lotro. I would say that maybe indicates some kind of issue with my wireless connection & lotro, though I have no idea what I can do about it, or why it would affect only that game? Any ideas greatly appreciated.

-Phil

Wireless card: Linksys WMP600N (using windows built in drivers)

OS: Windows 7 64 bit.

I don't know the game in question but if I was to make an initial guess (that could be wrong by all means!), what could be happening is the router or wireless card is buckling under too many concurrent sessions which some games can tend to do, bit like what occurs on bittorrent.

What I would do first of all is connect to your router with an ethernet cable, bypass the wireless, and see what happens then. If the issue goes away, you have narrowed it down to the wireless part of the router or your wireless card on the laptop - then I'd try temporarlily disabling wireless security and see if any change happens.

If the issue remains, first of all I'd see if you can disable anything on the router which might add to additional overload on it, SPI firewalls, firewall rules, QoS, etc...

In reply to a post by Anonymous:

Wireless card: Linksys WMP600N (using windows built in drivers)

If linksys drivers are available i'd definately try them as an easy troubleshooting step.

Thanks for the reply!

I can't find an ethernet cablet at the moment, I'll try and get hold of one tomorrow.
Disabling all firewalls (router & software), QoS, no encryption etc. makes no difference as far as I can tell.
I updated the drivers to the Linksys ones, still no change.

This has only started happening in the last 3 or so days though. Last Tuesday I upgraded some parts of my PC and installed windows 7 x64. It was working fine on that for a couple of days, now it's been unusable for that particular game for ~3 days. It had been working fine with 32 bit w7 for 2weeks before that, too (I've recently moved house). I initially thought it was a problem with my ISP, but a 200ms ping to my own router seems to imply that is not the case...

-Phil

Managed to borrow an ethernet cable from a friend. Connection is fine, 0-0.5% loss, minimal ping, I'll monitor it a bit more (since it has worked fine for a few 2hr~ periods with the wireless, too), but that seems to point clearly to the wireless connection being the issue.

I have a different router I could try (the one that came from the ISP), I could give that a try I suppose. I'm thinking it's probably more to do with the adapter than the router though, if it works wired?

In reply to a post by Anonymous:

I have a different router I could try (the one that came from the ISP), I could give that a try I suppose. I'm thinking it's probably more to do with the adapter than the router though, if it works wired?

You would hope it is to do with the adapter on your computer (or maybe not if you are on a wireless laptop with built in wireless) but it could just as easily be the wireless part of the router... At least we know something related wireless causing it. If you have a spare router to hand you may as well try swapping that first and see what happens -- Before that though perhaps try changing the wireless channel on the off chance that fixes it.

You may also like to try reducing the wireless security to none to see if that has any effect, say you have WPA2 on right now you may find you can get to WPA1 until problems occur so that would be a reasonable compromise in my view.

In addition see if there are any settings in Device Manager > right click the wireless adapter > Properties > Advanced tab on Windows which can be tinkered with.

LOTRO has had the EU servers shut down and we have all been migrated to US based ones which I think are in California which means that a general an overall degredation of playability.

(This is the OP after having registered an account)

Seeing some unexplainable behaviour this evening.. Whilst I had the PC next to the router I decided to try disabling the wired connection and re-enabling the wireless. It worked fine for around 3 hours. Moved the PC back to it's original position and it again seems to be working fine. I did not change any settings on either the router or my PC. Time will tell whether it lasts or it begins to degrade again, but it's looking alright at the moment.

@ Anonymous
Yes, I know, but not to this extent. I've had ~120-130 ping since the migration which is expected since it's a transatlantic connection (servers are in Boston I think). Recently I've been getting 2k-15k pings and 40% packet loss, which is clearly something different and not due to the distance.

Edited by Redeemer (Sun 17-Jul-11 00:11:31)