Switch causing game drop-outs

[stevebakh]

Hi

Up until recently I have been running a small network consisting of 3 machines, all running at 10mbit through a small 5 port hub, connected to a LinkSys Befsr11 router and on one machine I run a public Quake3 server and connect over LAN with the other machine. This has been perfect for quite a while until I recently decided to upgrade to a 100mbit switch so I could transfer files faster.

The problem now is that when I connect to my own game server, as soon as someone else connect (traffic) or even if nobody connects, after a minute or two, I'm booted from Quake3 with an error message: usually along the lines of cl_parsepacketentities. After a small amount of research, one source stated it was a network issue but I don't see where I'm going wrong when everything worked with the hub.

I know the switch isn't the problem because I have tried 2 different switches, both 8 port. One Netgear and the other, the current one, a Dlink.

Both machines are running linux and are set for 100mbit Full duplex speeds. The server machine has an nforce2 onboard NIC and the client has a Realtek81xx onboard NIC. Diagnostics on both machines show now collisions and no errors.

If anyone has seen this kind of error message from Quake3 before and has any kind of fix I would really appreciate it.

Short of that, I would replace the NIC but I'm not sure which machine has the issue. I presume it's the client but I'm not 100% sure.

[YeOldeStonecat]

The other item left in question would be the patch cables. Have you tried brand new CAT5 cables? Perhaps the one(s) you have are older, or home made, can handle 10 megs, but can't properly handle running at 100 meg full duplex.

Try kicking all NICs down step by step until the error goes away...100 full duplex to 100 half duplex...then down to 10 full duplex, the last...10 half duplex.

[stevebakh]

All the cables are CAT 5 and when I tried the Netgear 8 port switch, I tried dropping both cards to 10mbit Full duplex and even tried half duplex. No joy.

Strangely enough, when I tried a 5 port switch I had the same issue but I upgraded the system kernel and NIC drivers on both machines and it seemed to fix the problem (the switch wasn't mine though). But since then, all I did was replace the switch and they still have the latest drivers / kernel... I'm running out of ideas :(

[YeOldeStonecat]

People connecting to your Q 3 server from the WAN side complain of problems too?

Did you try a fresh virgin patch cable from the LAN port of router to your switch?

[stevebakh]

Nobody else has any problems at all. Just that I get thrown from the game and they don't notice any change in gameplay at all. I haven't tried any fresh cables yet (student here) :D

It shouldn't really make any difference at all but I can try recompiling the kernel on both machines again and see if that changes anything.

Was hoping someone would have experienced that Q3 error before :(

Thanks for the reply

[YeOldeStonecat]

Originally posted by stevebakh

Was hoping someone would have experienced that Q3 error before :(



No, just sure sounds like a network data corruption problem. And the fact that it happened when you went from a 10 base hub to a switch....kinda points right to network hardware problems.

[stevebakh]

Yeah... all common sense tells me the same. Looks like it might be a new couple of NICs I guess :rolleyes:

Thanks for trying :)