What is packet loss, tweaking my online gaming...

[WOJODJC]

Ive been getting horrible packet loss in my online games, according to All Seeing Eye. I believe this is the cause for bad ping in my games. Currently I am playing DOD and I am getting an average of 400 ping. I installed cablenut, and imported the windows98 normal settings into it, but I dont think it helped much.

What I dont uinderstand, is that on a dial-up I would get better pings in all my games, yet recently on halflife mods specifically Ive been getting really bad ping. Im on a cable modem and Im not getting my $$$s worth. Like I said, I think its a packet loss problem, though I dont even know what that means...

Ive looked through past and recent posts for a solution, but I find so many conflicting answers, Id rather post my own message and pray one of you godlike techies can give me a hand.

Any help would be appreciated. Thank you.

dslreports speed test: download speed 928kbps, upload speed 99 kbps (my isp says it cant go over 128 kbps for upload)

TCP properties
(pcp02255372pcs.wanarb01.mi.comcast.net)
Browser/OS = Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows 98)

TCP options string = 020405b401010402

MTU = 1500
MTU is fully optimized for broadband.

MSS = 1460
Maximum useful data in each packet = 1460, which equals MSS.

Default Receive Window (RWIN) = 49640
RWIN Scaling (RFC1323) = 0 bits
Unscaled Receive Window = 49640
RWIN is a multiple of MSS
Other values for RWIN that might work well with your current MTU/MSS:
513920 (MSS x 44 * scale factor of 8)
256960 (MSS x 44 * scale factor of 4)
128480 (MSS x 44 * scale factor of 2)
64240 (MSS x 44)

bandwidth * delay product:
Your RcvWindow limits you to: 1985.6 kbps (248.2 KBytes/s) @ 200ms
Your RcvWindow limits you to: 794.24 kbps (99.28 KBytes/s) @ 500ms

MTU Discovery (RFC1191) = ON

Time to live left = 33 hops
TTL value is ok.

Timestamps (RFC1323) = OFF

Selective Acknowledgements (RFC2018) = ON

IP type of service field (RFC1349)= 00000000

Windows 98, 350 mhz k6-2, voodoo 3 2000, 192 mb ram (could hardware be a problem regarding cable modem connection? I get fine fps in the games I play, in fact they look great normally)

[WOJODJC]

ok I just tested for packet loss through dos and It came up with 0%. I guess PL is not the problem. Any ideas what it might be then? Thanks

[MadDoctor]

A good tweak doesn't fix a ping problem. It's your ISP most likely. Give them a call and see if they can fix the problem at their end.

[WOJODJC]

I appreciate any replies I get, but I refuse to believe it is my isp causing me to have a high ping in my games. My download and upload speeds are decent and consistent.

Can someone please verify wether my 350 mhz, voodoo 3, 192 mb ram system might be causing my ping problem in my games? The thing thats messed up is that I get worse ping now than I did when I had a dial-up modem. Perhaps my harddrive needs to be reformatted? Too much junk on it maybe? I dont know...

[MadDoctor]

I'm pretty sure that pings are not caused by a small CPU, lack of RAM or a slow or congested hard drive. Pings come from something related to your ISP.

Sorry about that.

[mnosteele52]

For Comcast & 98 use the following settings in CableNut:

BcastNameQueryCount - 1
BcastQueryTimeout - 100
BSDUrgent - 1
CacheTimeout - 600000
DefaultRecvWindow - 64240
DefaultTTL - 64
EnableDNS - 0
GlobalMaxTcpWindoSize - 64240
KeepAliveInterval - 500
KeepAliveTime - 14400000
Lanabase - 0
LocalCopyMade - 1
MaxConnections - 64
MaxConnectRetries - 5
MaxDataRetries - 64
NameTableSize - 255
NameSrvQueryTimeout - 100
PMTUBlackHoleDetect - 0
PMTUDiscovery - 1
RoutingBufSize - 146432
RoutingPackets - 100
SackOpts - 1
SessionKeepAlive - 7200
SessionTableSize - 255
Size/Small/Medium/Large - 3
Tcp1323Opts - 0
TcpTimedWaitDelay - 30
MaxDupAcks - 2
DefaultTOS - 92
IGMPLevel - 2
MaxConnectionsPer1_0Server - 20
MaxConnectionsPerServer - 10

VERY IMPORTANT TO DO THE FOLLOWING

1. Under your Configuration tab for your Network settings make sure you have only the needed protocols.

2. Install the vtcp 386 patch (http://www.speedguide.net/files/vtcp386/236926USA8.EXE) and the NDIS Update (http://dslnuts.com/patch/243199us8.exe).

3. Open IE and select tools - internet options - connections - LAN settings, make sure NOTHING there is checked.

4. Make sure you have the latest drivers for your NIC from the manufacturer. Set your NIC duplex mode to 10mb half duplex for Cable, for DSL it is ISP dependent unless you are using a router, if so then set it to 100mb full duplex for both Cable & DSL (the instructions are in my Help & Tips link (http://forums.speedguide.net/showthread.php?s=&postid=643301#post643301)). If you are using a router make sure you have the latest firmware.

5. Clear your temporary internet files.

6. Power cycle your modem, unplug it for atleast 15 seconds.

7. Download and update then do a scan with SpyBot (http://beam.to/spybotsd), anything checked in red is spyware and safe to remove.

8. Make sure you do the faster web page tweak in my Help & Tips link (http://forums.speedguide.net/showthread.php?s=&postid=643301#post643301).


As MadDoc said.... latency is usually an ISP issue, but if you have spyware or your NIC settings incorrect it could effect it.

:D ;)