aboyd3
05-26-01, 09:13 PM
Dropping packets with cable? Me too! Below I will explain what I have tried as to hopefully save others some time. I still don't have the answer and I am open to suggestions. It may very well be there is nothing I can do on my end, but until I know that for sure I will keep trying. I don't have access to dsl or wireless, or else I would have already jumped the cable ship.
My Cable is not Roadrunner nor is it @Home. But rather it's a small town cable company that decided to wonder into the cable internet access business about 3 years ago. That company was simply known as Online South. I have had cable with them problem free since January of 1999 up until a few weeks ago. Since that time the cable company was bought out in late '99 by Benchmark. Benchmark discontinued the availability of cable access but arranged for the current customers to remain in place. Needless to say this was great for me. No new customers meant my connections would not be shared with even more people. So I really had it good up until a few weeks ago. However unlike most cable intenet operations of today, I had to buy my modem ($450) AND pay $50 a month! But I had concluded it was well worth it. I had wanted the cable for my online gaming(Nascar4....and previous titles Nascar 1,2, and 3). It was awesome too.....never lost connections.....never warped......was rock solid. About 3-4 months ago Adelphia bought out the cable company from Benchmark and once again they simply just allowed us existing customers to stay in place. I know Adelphia is well known to have their own cable internet operations, but I as of yet haven't heard any plans on that. Now on to the problem.....
About 3 weeks ago their whole cable internet deal went down. This lasted for about a solid week. After numerous calls and visits to their office, I never did get a CLEAR explanation of what the problem was. I know that in the beginning they said they replaced some routers and rebooted the server host. They then said the problem had to be with AT&T's equipment or lines. Well after a week or so they got it fixed. All seemed well.....that is with normal internet browsing and emailing. But I noticed my racing online was horrible. My connections were horrible and I kept getting disconnected. I fired up my the tracert software program that I like to use(pingplotter). To my dismay, not only was I dropping packtets to the race servers I use.......I am dropping them to ANY site I go to. And to make matters worse, I don't just have problems at one hop....like close to my end. No.....I lose packets at EVERY hop down the line. If I let it trace 100 times.....I will see lots of dropped packets on each and every hop. If you only used the cable for surfing or email you would never notice it. That's probably why they haven't had any complaints except from me. I started inquiring what they had done? I still haven't gotten a clear explanation on that. They say if they can ping me then that's all that is important. They say they offer no guarantees on how my online gaming will be. I understand that, but BEFORE this outage all was fine. This led me to believe that almost certainly the problem was on their end. But just to make sure I did all I could think of on my end.
For starters I tried several tcp/ip programs and tweaks. I even learned how to manually tweak the various parameters of the registry that affect connections. I have tried tweaking on the Rwin, MSS, MaxMTU, and TTL. None of which helped. I went back to the Win98 default.....with no luck. I tried the Speedguide patch for Win98 on this site....no luck. I tried the @Home patch and the Vtcp.386 patch....no luck. I am convinced the problem does not lie with my registry settings. I realize that tweaking these settings can help, but in my case it does not provide a solution to the dropped packets.
I next went out and bought a new Ethernet card. The new card seemed if anything.....to lose MORE packets?! The old card was an ISA 3com 3c509b. The new card is a PCI Linksys Etherfast. Like I said.....for whatever reason the packet loss seems even worse with the new card.
Next.....just today I convinced the ISP to allow me to trade in my modem for the weekend for a new one. They had to program one for me and then a guy from tech support met me this morning at a local restaurant. Well just as I figured that wasn't the problem.....the dropped packets are still there. But at least through the process of elimination I now know the problem is not on my end. Or could it be? Any ideas?
My system is a PII 450/ 128 mb. The modem is a Zenith and much bigger than what you guys with Roadrunner are used to. This thing is 11" long, 8" wide, and 3" tall. The front of it reads " Zenith HomeWorks Universal." The model # is LANHWU-4M.
I am about 1-2 months away from my next pc project which is way overdue. I have never reinstalled Win98 on this machine and it does act a little buggy every now and then. I know after 2 years the registry settings can get screwed up. But what I can't get past......is how great things were before the outage......and bad they are now. I thought maybe I could tweak my registry setting to be more favorable to whatever changes they made on their end........but I have had no luck....only frustration. Thanks in advance for any input or ideas.
My Cable is not Roadrunner nor is it @Home. But rather it's a small town cable company that decided to wonder into the cable internet access business about 3 years ago. That company was simply known as Online South. I have had cable with them problem free since January of 1999 up until a few weeks ago. Since that time the cable company was bought out in late '99 by Benchmark. Benchmark discontinued the availability of cable access but arranged for the current customers to remain in place. Needless to say this was great for me. No new customers meant my connections would not be shared with even more people. So I really had it good up until a few weeks ago. However unlike most cable intenet operations of today, I had to buy my modem ($450) AND pay $50 a month! But I had concluded it was well worth it. I had wanted the cable for my online gaming(Nascar4....and previous titles Nascar 1,2, and 3). It was awesome too.....never lost connections.....never warped......was rock solid. About 3-4 months ago Adelphia bought out the cable company from Benchmark and once again they simply just allowed us existing customers to stay in place. I know Adelphia is well known to have their own cable internet operations, but I as of yet haven't heard any plans on that. Now on to the problem.....
About 3 weeks ago their whole cable internet deal went down. This lasted for about a solid week. After numerous calls and visits to their office, I never did get a CLEAR explanation of what the problem was. I know that in the beginning they said they replaced some routers and rebooted the server host. They then said the problem had to be with AT&T's equipment or lines. Well after a week or so they got it fixed. All seemed well.....that is with normal internet browsing and emailing. But I noticed my racing online was horrible. My connections were horrible and I kept getting disconnected. I fired up my the tracert software program that I like to use(pingplotter). To my dismay, not only was I dropping packtets to the race servers I use.......I am dropping them to ANY site I go to. And to make matters worse, I don't just have problems at one hop....like close to my end. No.....I lose packets at EVERY hop down the line. If I let it trace 100 times.....I will see lots of dropped packets on each and every hop. If you only used the cable for surfing or email you would never notice it. That's probably why they haven't had any complaints except from me. I started inquiring what they had done? I still haven't gotten a clear explanation on that. They say if they can ping me then that's all that is important. They say they offer no guarantees on how my online gaming will be. I understand that, but BEFORE this outage all was fine. This led me to believe that almost certainly the problem was on their end. But just to make sure I did all I could think of on my end.
For starters I tried several tcp/ip programs and tweaks. I even learned how to manually tweak the various parameters of the registry that affect connections. I have tried tweaking on the Rwin, MSS, MaxMTU, and TTL. None of which helped. I went back to the Win98 default.....with no luck. I tried the Speedguide patch for Win98 on this site....no luck. I tried the @Home patch and the Vtcp.386 patch....no luck. I am convinced the problem does not lie with my registry settings. I realize that tweaking these settings can help, but in my case it does not provide a solution to the dropped packets.
I next went out and bought a new Ethernet card. The new card seemed if anything.....to lose MORE packets?! The old card was an ISA 3com 3c509b. The new card is a PCI Linksys Etherfast. Like I said.....for whatever reason the packet loss seems even worse with the new card.
Next.....just today I convinced the ISP to allow me to trade in my modem for the weekend for a new one. They had to program one for me and then a guy from tech support met me this morning at a local restaurant. Well just as I figured that wasn't the problem.....the dropped packets are still there. But at least through the process of elimination I now know the problem is not on my end. Or could it be? Any ideas?
My system is a PII 450/ 128 mb. The modem is a Zenith and much bigger than what you guys with Roadrunner are used to. This thing is 11" long, 8" wide, and 3" tall. The front of it reads " Zenith HomeWorks Universal." The model # is LANHWU-4M.
I am about 1-2 months away from my next pc project which is way overdue. I have never reinstalled Win98 on this machine and it does act a little buggy every now and then. I know after 2 years the registry settings can get screwed up. But what I can't get past......is how great things were before the outage......and bad they are now. I thought maybe I could tweak my registry setting to be more favorable to whatever changes they made on their end........but I have had no luck....only frustration. Thanks in advance for any input or ideas.