Intermittent freeze/pause while gaming over wireless network

[AKJ]

I have a 54Mb/s wireless network at home. However, whenever i have a LAN game going, i notice that there would be a slight pause that occurs quite often throughout the LAN game. Also, if someone watches a movie over the network, the movie would also have random "freezes". What causes this??

I monitor the network usage, and it never exceeds 40% usage while gaming, and only reaches about 14-15% usage when watching a movie.

I have a Linksys Wireless G ADSL Home Gateway router...

 

[scootch]

I have the same problem. I haven't been able to find the problem yet.
I've tried 2 different usb wireless dongle, 1 pci card. no luck
tried Vista 64-bit, 32-bit and XP.
This is a new problem for me. my old xp comp didn't have this problem.

system:
evga 680i
c2d
2gig ram patriot
so on and so forth.

I'm using a linksys wireless router, wrt54g. I've never had this problem before. no idea whats going on. only the computer is new. I've had the router forever.
I posted my problem in microsoft vista usergroup and various other forums... so far the only suggestion I have was turning down the rate on my wirless network card.. which I have no idea how to do...

 

[AKJ]

Im still scratching my head with this issue. However, when i changed my wireless authentication to WPA2 with AES encryption, the problem is not as bad as when i was using WPA with TKIP enryption. Also, most wireless routers and cards (adapters) use an adaptive rate feature (i dont know why though). Basically, this feature drops the transfer speeds now and then to "improve network stability". But if i hard set my router to always use 54Mb/s transfer rates, i still get those 1 second freezes/pauses while gaming over the wireless network... Anyone have a solution??

 

[scootch]

I don't really want to put more money in this, but I think I'll go try a new router and let you know the results.

but before I do that, I'm going to try running game over unprotected wireless.. hope encryption isn't the problem.. that would be awful.

what os are you running?

 

[AKJ]

Im running Windows XP SP2... And i also have the very latest firmware for my router.

I dont think its the encryption causing the freezes. I tried playing/watching movies over the network without encryption and it still did the same thing.

While gaming, i left a network traffic monitor open in the background. Then when i was done playing, i could see how "busy" the network was. I didnt even hit 40% throughput! So this finding also rules out that the network simply cant cope with the games...

Aaaah, what an irritating issue!

 

[scootch]

do you have any source engine games that you can hit up online?
couter-strike: source?

I've check my net_graph in CS:S and I'm getting packet loss up to 32% when I lag.
runs at 0% for a while and bam 32%... and back to 0%.


I've searched around and found one solution for XP that might work.. give it a try:
"XP, jsut turn off the wireless zero config, under services. (Start, Run, services.msc, wireless zero then disable it). Do that after you are connected to your network. "

 

[AKJ]

No i dont have source engine games.. I only "LAN" strategy games.. I read an article where some dude says you must disable a service in windows called "Wireless Zero Configuration" while playing, then enable it again.. Can you try it? Im at work now, so i cant test this...

 

[scootch]

vista doesn't have that option unfortunately.

 

[AKJ]

Shite... Guess we're never gona sort this out...

 

[rockbala]

It sure sounds interesting with all the things you have done so far.... I am not a gaming expert however you can try stopping "WLAN auto config" and starting it back on from services.msc in windows Vista or WZC in case of Windows xp. This service (WLNA Auto...) is as good as Wireless Zero configuration (WZC). Otherwise try WEP encryption to check if there are no hindrances during the game.

You can also allow the game through the router under Applications & gaming, Port Triggering... Allow both TCP/UDP if possible if not TCP should be good enough.

If there are some services causing high CPU or memory usage make a note of the file name in check on it in google regarding that software.

If there are software firewalls on the computer ensure you have set the Trusted IPs correctly to your LAN IP address. And further if possible ensure that no Gaming related/network related applications/files are blocked by firewall.

Regards
RockBala

 

[scootch]

I did try the wlan and port triggering... no luck.. but, I've played some game with friends tonight and the lag is dimishing.. I mean it doesn't last as long.
so instead of waiting 3 seconds every minute, it's now 1 second every minute.

 

[AKJ]

... lag is diminishing.. I mean it doesn't last as long.
so instead of waiting 3 seconds every minute, it's now 1 second every minute.

I noticed this when i switched to AES encryption

 

[Jason Zhang]

i'm no expert but whenever i experience lag while gaming i check for upload traffic of my network. i have a 25mb/s down but only 2mb/s up so whenever my house mates are uploading stuff i notice significant increase in ping and decreased upload speeds which translates into really bad lag in game. check your router and see if it shows you which computer on the network has the highest number of connections and limit the upload speed of that computer and see if it helps.