ISP/Internet Woes

[BCarey1981]

I am having the weirdest issue with my Charter cable internet the past 3-4 weeks. Basically my connection to the web seems fine, webpages are fine, downloads are at FULL speed. When I ping servers, ping times seem to be fine.

My problem is with online gaming. No matter what game I play or what server I play on, I am getting terrible lag. My ping times jump all over and get constant "Connection Interupted" messages and lag meters such as that in Quake3 go nuts. Up until 3-4 weeks ago, things were great.

So basically the web is great, downloads are great, ALL online games are totally unplayable. But this is only true for peak hours. Games become somewhat playable in off peak hours, though not perfect.

I've tried a direct connect to two difference PCs (one 98 and one XP) and neither of them can tracert to any internet IP. I've even disabled firewalls.

I had some high level tech support on the phone and the fact that I cannot perform a tracert baffled them. They said my area is under a "slow speed" alert while they are reworking the local network. That in itself seems like that may be the problem, but why can I still hit full 3mb speeds yet my gaming is garbage?

I've even tried a second cable modem, no difference. I thought maybe UDP was screwed up (most games use UDP and i imagine tracert may too).

Do you all think it's probably my cable companies network or could it be something else? The tech support guys were really confused how everything is working so good except for gaming. My signals are great, it just didn't add up. There were even three supervisors helping him with my situation.

I'm ready to cancel and go with another provider.

Oh yea, one of the local tech guys said there is an issue with a fiber link up near Viriginia (I am in central North Carolina). It should have been fixed last weekend. I wonder if that is the cause of my pain, but I have a hard time imaging that it would have been broke for almost 4 weeks now.

GAHHH I'm frustrated! I don't really want to change since DSL is my only other option and they want a dumb one year verbal agreement but I plan on moving before a year and I don't plan on having a landline at my new place (ie. no DSL).

What ya'll think? Thanks.

 

[hubbardt]

When you say you can't run tracert .... what do you mean exactly ?
Do you get an error message or no results ?

Gaming is ery sensitive to latency (lag) so you can happily download and broswe without noticing any problems. Only when gaming will you notice the lag.

You are correct tot attempt a tracert.
Did you try in Safemode with networking ?

Regards,

Tim

 

[BCarey1981]

Sorry I was a little vague on the tracert thing.

When I perform a tracert to any server, my first hope returns a ping time (my pc), 10.127.112.1 or what ever, every hop after that times out (*'s).

So basically it looks something like (going from memory here):

1 8 7 9 10.127.112.1 (not sure if this is the exact ip)
2 * * * Request timed out.
3 * * * Request timed out.
4 * * * Request timed out.
etc.

I simply cannot get a response from any internet ip. Pings work fine.

I have not tried the safemode with networking. I can give that a try, but I have my doubts since both my PCs are acting the same way. I even direct connected to both of them one at a time (bypassing my router).

Gaming is ery sensitive to latency (lag) so you can happily download and broswe without noticing any problems. Only when gaming will you notice the lag.

I agree 100% with that. That is why I have been struggling with their tech support the past few weeks. They think that just because my web browsing and internet test speeds are fine, everything must be working as intended. They also try to pull this crap that they don't support gaming or that it's out of their hands since I am reaching the advertised 3mb downloads. Funny that I am not reaching "Online gaming at real time speeds" that they advertise.

Thanks for your reply.

 

[hubbardt]

Hmmmm .... can you post the result of a IPCONFIG /ALL here ?

 

[BCarey1981]

Windows IP Configuration

Host Name . . . . . . . . . . . . : BCAREY
Primary Dns Suffix . . . . . . . :
Node Type . . . . . . . . . . . . : Unknown
IP Routing Enabled. . . . . . . . : No
WINS Proxy Enabled. . . . . . . . : No

Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection:

Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :
Description . . . . . . . . . . . : NVIDIA nForce MCP Networking Controller
Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : (removed)
Dhcp Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : Yes
Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes
IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : 24.181.242.91
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.252.0
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 24.181.240.1
DHCP Server . . . . . . . . . . . : 68.119.176.5
DNS Servers . . . . . . . . . . . : 68.119.176.4
68.119.176.5
24.197.96.16
Lease Obtained. . . . . . . . . . : Friday, March 10, 2006 9:56:43 PM
Lease Expires . . . . . . . . . . : Friday, March 10, 2006 11:26:56 PM

 

[hubbardt]

Hmmmm .. it all looks ok. :?

I did notice that your node type is unknown.
Take a look at this article

... and try then following steps:

1- Press 'Start' button > Run... > In the box type regedit. This opens your system's registry.
2- Navigate the tree to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SYSTEM/CurrentControlSet/Services/NetBT/Parameters
3- Rt. mouse click and select New > DWORD Value
4- Name it 'NodeType' (without the quotes)
5- Rt. mouse click on it and select Modify
6- Set Value Data to '8' (no quotes)
7- Leave Base alone. 'Hexadecimal' should be selected
8- Press 'ok'
9- Close regedit and reboot. (Your done!)
10- Open dos prompt and type ipconfig -all
For node type it should now say 'Hybrid'


The above changes relate more to LAN rather than Internet issues but definitely worth a try ...

Good Luck !

 

[BCarey1981]

Will do when I get home, thanks.