disposable58
06-20-08, 05:58 AM
I'm having a rather mysterious symptom on my computer lately.
I have a high speed (~10mbits) connection running XP SP2. Speedtests done at speakeasy show that overall bandwidth is fine. Streaming video works fine as well, ping times are fine.
That said, lately I've been finding that my network connections will "pause", as if waiting for something. So, for example, I'm watching a streaming video in one window, browsing in another. Then I decide to load a chat client-- the chat client loads quickly, but then takes forever to try to connect, sometimes timing out.
The chat client is just an example-- sometimes is a browser request that is slow or timesout, sometimes other programs. During this "blackout" periods, the computer seems unable to open new tcpip connections-- all applications pause simultaneously. But during these blackouts, pre-existing connections work fine, even if they are high bandwidth (like streaming video).
I mostly encounter this when I have many tabs open on an graphics-intensive site like myspace, or browsing netflix, where large numbers of files seem to be involved.
Is there some sort of global limit to total tcp/ip connections that needs to be increased?
----
here is what it's not:
antivirus has been run, reported clean.
Spybot and Ad-Aware report clean.
It's not a processor slow-down-- processor-intensive applications still work fine during blackouts.
It's not a hard drive space problem-- plenty to go around.
It's not confined to any one application, but simultaneously trying to view four or five complex myspace profiles will inevitably trigger a 'pause/blackout'.
It's not limited to just one website-- all websites are affected during blackouts, and blackouts aren't tied to viewing any single site.
It's not the tcp/ip half open limit-- I've patched it to increase it to 100, and my logs don't show any 4226 events.
I'm a bit at a loss to figure out what the problem is. Maybe the problem was always there and I just never noticed it. Maybe the problem was tied to software updates-- Orbit downloader was installed about the time the problem presented, but has since been uninstalled. Firefox 3 RC2 was installed about the time problem presented, since been upgraded to Firefox 3.0 . But I didn't notice any direct connection between the two.
So help me, oh networking gurus! you're my only hope.
------------------
« SpeedGuide.net TCP Analyzer Results »
Tested on: 06.20.2008 07:03
TCP options string: 020405b40103030201010402
MSS: 1460
MTU: 1500
TCP Window: 256960 (multiple of MSS)
RWIN Scaling: 2
Unscaled RWIN : 64240
Reccomended RWINs: 64240, 128480, 256960, 513920
BDP limit (200ms): 10278kbps (1285KBytes/s)
BDP limit (500ms): 4111kbps (514KBytes/s)
MTU Discovery: ON
TTL: 52
Timestamps: OFF
SACKs: ON
IP ToS: 00000000 (0)
I have a high speed (~10mbits) connection running XP SP2. Speedtests done at speakeasy show that overall bandwidth is fine. Streaming video works fine as well, ping times are fine.
That said, lately I've been finding that my network connections will "pause", as if waiting for something. So, for example, I'm watching a streaming video in one window, browsing in another. Then I decide to load a chat client-- the chat client loads quickly, but then takes forever to try to connect, sometimes timing out.
The chat client is just an example-- sometimes is a browser request that is slow or timesout, sometimes other programs. During this "blackout" periods, the computer seems unable to open new tcpip connections-- all applications pause simultaneously. But during these blackouts, pre-existing connections work fine, even if they are high bandwidth (like streaming video).
I mostly encounter this when I have many tabs open on an graphics-intensive site like myspace, or browsing netflix, where large numbers of files seem to be involved.
Is there some sort of global limit to total tcp/ip connections that needs to be increased?
----
here is what it's not:
antivirus has been run, reported clean.
Spybot and Ad-Aware report clean.
It's not a processor slow-down-- processor-intensive applications still work fine during blackouts.
It's not a hard drive space problem-- plenty to go around.
It's not confined to any one application, but simultaneously trying to view four or five complex myspace profiles will inevitably trigger a 'pause/blackout'.
It's not limited to just one website-- all websites are affected during blackouts, and blackouts aren't tied to viewing any single site.
It's not the tcp/ip half open limit-- I've patched it to increase it to 100, and my logs don't show any 4226 events.
I'm a bit at a loss to figure out what the problem is. Maybe the problem was always there and I just never noticed it. Maybe the problem was tied to software updates-- Orbit downloader was installed about the time the problem presented, but has since been uninstalled. Firefox 3 RC2 was installed about the time problem presented, since been upgraded to Firefox 3.0 . But I didn't notice any direct connection between the two.
So help me, oh networking gurus! you're my only hope.
------------------
« SpeedGuide.net TCP Analyzer Results »
Tested on: 06.20.2008 07:03
TCP options string: 020405b40103030201010402
MSS: 1460
MTU: 1500
TCP Window: 256960 (multiple of MSS)
RWIN Scaling: 2
Unscaled RWIN : 64240
Reccomended RWINs: 64240, 128480, 256960, 513920
BDP limit (200ms): 10278kbps (1285KBytes/s)
BDP limit (500ms): 4111kbps (514KBytes/s)
MTU Discovery: ON
TTL: 52
Timestamps: OFF
SACKs: ON
IP ToS: 00000000 (0)