Broadband prob.

[Shirkin]

Posted this on 'computer games' too but thought I'd stick it here to for a tad more exposure.

Everytime I try and log into a server on games such as BF2 and FEAR my internet seems to go down. FEAR also crashes just as its loading up a map. Can't work out what the problem is for the life of me. And I'm pretty sure it's not a firewall issue.

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

[Plotloss]

Do you have a broadband package that disallows gaming?

[Shirkin]

Nope, dont think so. The games worked fine until last week. Can't figure it out.

>> Edited by Shirkin on Tuesday 1st November 09:44

[Plotloss]

Any change immediately before they stopped working?

Driver update, windows update?

[Shirkin]

Cheers for the replies Plotloss, but nope and nope.

[Plotloss]

Checked for viruses recently?

Does it happen just when connecting to the games server or connecting to the web in general?

[Shirkin]

Checked for viruses and nothing. Happens sometimes when I connect to the web and it says it can't find the server.


By the way it's a Belkin wireless ADSL modem. the ISP is plus.net on the £15 a month 2 meg package, Zone Alarm, norton with the firewall disables and a MESH 3500 AMD 6600 GT SLI system. Also got microsoft antispyware installed and AVG anti virus.

Off topic, love the VX in black.

[d-man]

I've heard of some games doing this when using a USB modem, but not with routers. The game would use so much CPU time (and was set at a high priority) that the modem never got serviced and you got disconnected, oops. Are you really getting disconnected from the internet or just from the game server?

If its just from the game server I can think of a couple of things, first is that ZoneAlarm has had a fit and forgotten its settings and is asking you if you want to allow the game to connect to the internet in the background and the other is that the Windows XP firewall has been turned back on (dunno why, but this seems to happen from time to time).

[Plotloss]

Google for setting the MTU size on your router, that could be it, raise it up a little, say about 20% more.

O/T - Ta!

[Shirkin]

cheers chaps,

D-man. The internet seems to work fine until I try to access a game server, then once that crashes, kicks me out whatever, I can't even access google until I reboot.

Plotloss, what does the M thing mebob thing do?

[Plotloss]

MTU - Max Transmission Unit

Its effectively the packet size.

I sorted a mates out the other day, similar ish problem and that was the solution.

[Shirkin]

Cheers mate. will try that later.

[Shirkin]

Plotloss, to ask a stupid question, as I'm a bit of a luddite sometimes with PCs, how do I actually change the MTU size? Do I go into the router settings and do it there, or is it something in the PCs operating system?

Ta

[Plotloss]

Should be in the router, though it will be in the registry if you have a locally connected modem.

[Plotloss]

Or I may have got confused...

www.winguides.com/registry/display.php/280/

Try that first.

[Shirkin]

All sorted. Thanks for your help. Zone Alarm was buggering things up.