"Gaming Connections"??

[Redstar]

Hi folks, ok check this out, I am an Everquest diehard (online adventure/RPG). I was using AOL for the longest time (too long) until I 'upgraded' to Verizon DSL service. I simply wanted a more stable connection with Everquest.

Now I have a major problem with Verizon's DSL- too often I log in to Everquest and I am nearly immediately disconnected. I sit and watch my packet loss shoot up to 80%, then 90%, hovering in the 90s, and sooner or later I'm disconnected. This doesn't happen all the time, just every now and then (particularly on a nice Sunday morning, when I've got nothing planned for the day except Everquest).

Verizon insists that since I can initially 'connect' to the internet, that after that it's not their problem. Everquest insists that the routers Verizon is using make it Verizon's problem. When my problem occurs, I CAN log on to the game with my AOL account (on another home PC) and have the same relatively stable connection that I always had with AOL on Everquest.

Now I'm stuck with a year of Verizon. Their tech support has been no help, having me do trace routes, pings, etc.. for which the response is always the same "sorry Mr. Greene, this is not our problem". Verizon also insists that they do not support "gaming connections". Well, I could be wrong, but this isn't an issue of "gaming connections" is it? I'm simply logging on to a server, in which a game is being played. It IS Verizon's problem because their service doesn't seem to be able to handle all the information being sent back and forth, thus the packet loss. Am I right or wrong on that?

My question, why can AOL handle the traffic of Everquest, and DSL cannot? I don't run a firewall when playing Everquest, and I don't have a 3rd party router. My DSL install is clean as can be. Any suggestions/advice I would greatly appreciate!

Thanks
Eric Greene

[Tech-Nick]

Hi,

Well I am an avid player of Everquest also. I already got that problem couple times. Most of the time it happens at peak hours. It can be on Everquest side too. Server drop happens quite often. But this can be by your provider also. I would suggest to try a MTU patch to change the packet size of your computer. In my case, it helped a lot.

And after couple weeks, I changed to Cable and never got the problem!.

:)

Tech-Nick (AKA Lodar on Seventh Hammer server :) )

[Lobo]

Also might want to check out online gaming forum:) :) :)

[Redstar]

Thanks for the tips guys, and hey I've suddenly encountered some strange problems on both of my PCs, giving me reason to believe that someone is attacking me through Everquest. I'll call EQ tech tomorrow on this, but it could possibly explain this and my other new problems.

I logged on to AOL tonight so that my wife and I could play EQ together. Well as soon as I log on to AOL, my hard drive got wiped. Yeah, it got attacked pretty bad- boot sector was shredded. The only protection I had on that PC was the ZoneAlarm firewall you can DL off Cnet's download.com. After messing around with it some I ended up using an extra HD to reboot that 2nd PC, and eventually got logged back in to EQ. So my wife and I are about to set out in the game, (her on the Verizon using PC, me on the AOL using PC), well she had this funny waving hand on her screen the whole time. Like the hand you can make your mouse pointer into. It would stay in one spot, and do the grab animation every 10 seconds or so. Also, her movements were very jerky, kind of like if I were attempting to play Half Life on a 2MB vid card. The her movements froze up, and she had to sit and camp out of the game.

On the PC I was using, I was getting spammed with consider messages (In Everquest, you can "consider" a monster or other players, for which a message will appear describing them). So every 10 seconds or so, whatever my targeted person was, I would get a message saying "Kelethen regards you indifferently, looks like an even fight". For those who don't know Everquest, this is a type of message you only get when right-clicking the target. Well I wasn't right-clicking anything, and still getting the message.

So, to sum up, in the past 2 weeks, I've had occurrences of the packet loss, a crashed hard drive, and strange things happening within the game of Everquest. Nothing like this has ever happened when I used America Online, but perhaps if I've been 'hacked', it's just easier to be a victim when using a DSL service as opposed to AOL. Am I wrong on my assumptions here?

If I'm correct, my eyes have been opened to the world of hackers, they've done a number on me that is for sure. Anyone got more input for me? Thanks.