Game networking

[thetah]

I built a network between my two home computers with 10/100 netgear cards
and a 10/100 netgear switch between them.
I am running windows98 (not SE)
and i installed IPX, TCP-IP, and NetBOUI(spelling?) and the purpose of the network is for gaming.
Both computers have good sound cards and video cards and at least 256MB of RAM.
One is 700AMD Atholon and the other is a 600 Celleron.
But I am still having lag problems with the network in gaming.
Both cards are configured at auto sense
and are both set as desktop computers (not servers).
I need to know if there is any way the make the games run faster or at least normal game time speed.

it starts out perfectly with no problems for about five minutes
then it starts to progresively get worse, the lag gets worse and worse until my computer gives me the blue screen of death or it just exits the game without my control.
My professor Samuelson Said that it could be a windows problem with buffering and so forth.
Like it eats resources but never gives them back after it uses them.
For example i can play music and change pictures with photoexpress but when i close all the programs and look at the resources it is much lower then when i began. 86% availible to 52% availible resources. This is a problem in the games too. It eats up everything and then gives up(crashes the program and leaves the screen at the lowest settings (256 colors and 640 by 480 resolution))

I wish I knew what to do. I have been working on this problem for over three days straight with little sleep. It is very fustrating.
I have run it in every posible combonation of protocols and stuff I can think of and yet it still doesn't want to run. I can share files without a problem. I can access all network drives and see all shared files. And it runs at 100 all the time. But when I play an IPX game it starts out very fast and then starts to drift slowly until my computer the 700mhz AMD kindof crashes the game but the other computer stays normal. When I play a game that uses TCP/IP protocol it tells me that I can't join a game that is using a different protocol when we are using the same one.
i mismatch all the protocols and nothing works
i put the right ones first and still no difference
i took all unneeded adapters and protocols out and nothing
Please I need help very badly.
i think it might be something with the windows registry but i can't tell. I don't know how to get into it or change it, and windows won't let me reinstall itself, it always says that my setupx.dll file doesn't match.
i hate life


I have no clue!
But thank you so much!!

:mad:

[CBurcik]

What games are you trying to play?

I play Red Alert on my lan with 4 newer PC's and get the same
results.

Starts out fine. (fewer units on each screen) and gets worse as
the unit count increases.


Not much you can do about it.......

If both PC's were 1.7 Ghz Pentium 4's, it would be alot better
for you.



but back to the original question. What games are you trying to play?

[CAR-15]

Could it be that your video card over heats? or you might just need to update your video card drivers.

[YeOldeStonecat]

Well, for optimized performance, something you want for gaming, there are many areas to look at. For now, lets start with your network protocols, you can head on over to www.tweak3d.net for hours and hours of system tuning tips.

But for your network, the less traffic the better. Having all 3 protocols loading and traveling over your network is going to bog it down. You don't need all 3 protocols.

Games use TCP/IP....pretty much every game out there now. Others older games often used IPX in addition to TCP/IP.
No games that I know of use NetBEUI.

TCP/IP is lean, fast, but for peeps not used to working with it, semi-difficult to setup, as it requires some configuration. But you need it if you want internet access.

IPX is used mostly for Novell networks, and is quite noisy, chatty, creates a bit of traffic. Usually doesn't require configuration, yes you can use it in pure Microsoft Peer to Peer networks, but it's really for Novell networks, and the built in Microsoft IPX is crappy, most of us replace it with Novells real Client 32 IPX.

NetBEUI is used for smaller peer to peer networks (usually under 50 machines, more than that and it starts to create lots of traffic). Easy to setup, no configuration.

If you're on broad bandwidth, behind a router, the ideal setup is to load TCP/IP and NetBEUI. You go to the properties of TCP/IP for your NIC, click the "bindings" tab, and uncheck one or both boxes that bind it to Client for MS, and MS F&P sharing. You leave those on for NetBEUI.

Doing so creates quite a leaned out network, as TCP/IP is loading for internet access, and gaming if needed, but not loading other networking protocols....only NetBEUI is loading those protocols. NetBEUI is also not a routable protocol, so having it do your file and print sharing, that info wont make it past the router.