Cable spiking, fixable ???

[InfectedVoice]

Howdy,

AS of recent, whenever I connect to a server at night via Cable connection (predominately CounterStrike) I get frequent lag spikes lasting literally seconds. It renders the game unplayable.

I have been doing some research on the subject and have found some possible solutions.

1. I was thinking about editing my client-side HL with commands. BUT, I dont want to mess something up and have to do a complete re-install of the game.

2. Trying patches/registry edits from various sites, specifically www.speedguide.net. Again, I am weary about trying these, and would like to receive an opinion from preofessionals before attempting this solution.

So, These look like my only two options. Im assuming the "lag" Im receiving is due to the amount of people sharing my particular cable.

Any help would be greatly appreciated

 

[erikiksaz]

i'd say there's the "little problem" and the "big problem" here. the latter isn't all too fixable on your end. well, you can always tweak your connection, such as rwin's, maxmtu's and stuff like that. but the "big problem" may lie with your isp. either that or it's that cs server you're playing on. the "little problem" can be fixed by editing your config.cfg file in the half life folder, but it may not help your problem. just back up config.cfg before you edit it. you will not have to reinstall half life if you fux0red something up.

 

[Snoop]

first you need to figure out what the problem is, next time it starts lagging in a server badly, write down the ip of the server and exit. Go to a dos/command prompt and type : tracert xxx.xxx.xx.x
xxx.xx- being the ip of the server.
Copy the results of the tracert and post them in here so we can help you determine your problem

BTW, the patches will help download and upload speeds but will not have a large effect on your ping since the cable is plenty capable of delivering all the bandwidth a game needs.

 

[InfectedVoice]

Thx for the advice.

I applied a patch from speedguide.net entitled @Home Speed Patch. This patch "claims to make registry changes in order to increase Cable modem performance.". And so far I must say it has smoothed out my latency. I no longer receive mass spikning, but I have yet to test it at "peak" times. If this quick fix doesnt work, I guess I will go into the registry and edit some values. The only problem is that Im on WinXP and didnt see some of the key's, like; TCPWindowSize, EnablePMTUDiscovery, and DefualtTTL in HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters\

Oh well, Ill keep whomever is interested up to date.


BTW- My ping is fine, always has been. Just the fact that I spike is the problem. Its weird cuz my ping wont fluctuate much, it stays at its constant rate while still receiving these mass spikes (packet loss).

And, its not the server. Im the admin on it and have played on it for a long time, and all my friends play on it as well with no such bandwidth problems.

I will run the tracert program in DOS, do I necessarily have to do it while it is at a peak time ??

 

[InfectedVoice]

I ran tracert and here is what was displayed onscreen:

Tracing route to RAMPAGE [160.79.1.124]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 329 ms 29 ms 30 ms 24.76.20.1
2 58 ms 30 ms 29 ms rd1bb-ge3-0.vc.shawcable.net [24.69.253.130]
3 145 ms 29 ms 29 ms home1-atm.vc.shawcable.net [204.209.214.230]
4 35 ms 29 ms 30 ms c1-pos8-2.sttlwa1.home.net [24.7.74.113]
5 103 ms 59 ms 226 ms c1-pos3-0.lnmtco1.home.net [24.7.64.6]
6 224 ms 77 ms 77 ms c1-pos1-0.chcgil1.home.net [24.7.65.149]
7 90 ms 83 ms 82 ms c1-pos3-0.clevoh1.home.net [24.7.64.174]
8 91 ms 110 ms 96 ms c1-pos2-0.cmdnnj1.home.net [24.7.65.237]
9 98 ms 85 ms * c1-pos1-0.nwrknj1.home.net [24.7.65.234]
10 94 ms 138 ms 95 ms c1-pos4-0.nycmny1.home.net [24.7.69.6]
11 170 ms 94 ms 95 ms wbb1-pos2-0.pop1.ny.home.net [24.7.74.190]
12 107 ms 171 ms 105 ms 10.252.156.34
13 180 ms 106 ms 107 ms RAMPAGE [160.79.1.124]

Trace complete.

BTW- Can you explain to me how to decypher this "code". Im rather interested on how to interrupt it.

Thx

 

[stevel114]

Looking at the "CODE" I know you live somewhere in Canada, Near Montreal. All you see here is ping time (time to send a signal to and back from a certain connection). The IP address can be fingered to see who has them registered and that gives you semi close location. My evaluation of the ping times is you are on a very busy network. I pinged you and never got any higher than 18MS.

SL

 

[Snoop]

Infected voice: Your initial hop looks like it may be the problem, this is probably due to an overloaded router. You should expect your initial 2-3 hops to maintain sub-30ms pings in order to game.
Here is a tracert to one of my favorite UT servers, to illustrate my point.
C:\WINDOWS>tracert unreal.cfl.rr.com
Tracing route to unreal.cfl.rr.com [24.95.227.74]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 10 ms 9 ms 11 ms 10.195.2xx.x
2 10 ms 12 ms 11 ms 653210hfc146.tampabay.rr.com [65.32.10.146]
3 16 ms 13 ms 9 ms gsrc-srp00.tampabay.rr.com [65.32.8.227]
4 14 ms 14 ms 18 ms 24.94.158.73
5 15 ms 14 ms 14 ms 24.95.224.11
6 17 ms 14 ms 14 ms 24.95.224.14
7 14 ms 13 ms 18 ms unreal.cfl.rr.com [24.95.227.74]
Trace complete.

Ok, now that you have an idea of what the problem is, do another tracert next time you are having the problem. Then take the IP address of your initial router (it was 24.76.20.1 but your on cable it changes periodically) and type at the command promt.. ping 24.76.20.1 -n 14
The ip should be whatever your first hop onto your network, if this looks bad (post it and we can tell ya) then you should consider writing an email or calling your cable service provider to find out what can be done about the problem.

 

[Helznicht]

Yup, I agree, The first hop is high. Its so high you really cant trust the other readings for the hops. I think you should call, I would.

 

[InfectedVoice]

Ok, I ran the tracert again, and this is what I got...

Tracing route to RAMPAGE [160.79.1.124]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 27 ms 29 ms 30 ms 24.76.20.1
2 47 ms 30 ms 30 ms rd1bb-ge3-0.vc.shawcable.net [24.69.253.130]
3 29 ms 29 ms 30 ms home1-atm.vc.shawcable.net [204.209.214.230]
4 67 ms 30 ms 29 ms c1-pos8-2.sttlwa1.home.net [24.7.74.113]
5 58 ms 58 ms 60 ms c1-pos3-0.lnmtco1.home.net [24.7.64.6]
6 100 ms 78 ms 77 ms c1-pos1-0.chcgil1.home.net [24.7.65.149]
7 87 ms 84 ms 84 ms c1-pos3-0.clevoh1.home.net [24.7.64.174]
8 116 ms 96 ms 95 ms c1-pos2-0.cmdnnj1.home.net [24.7.65.237]
9 99 ms 95 ms 96 ms c1-pos1-0.nwrknj1.home.net [24.7.65.234]
10 130 ms 94 ms 96 ms c1-pos4-0.nycmny1.home.net [24.7.69.6]
11 99 ms 95 ms 96 ms wbb1-pos2-0.pop1.ny.home.net [24.7.74.190]
12 97 ms 95 ms 96 ms 10.252.156.34
13 128 ms 109 ms 102 ms RAMPAGE [160.79.1.124]

Trace complete.

and then I did the command ping 24.76.20.1 -n 14 and heres what I got.

Pinging 24.76.20.1 with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 24.76.20.1: bytes=32 time=46ms TTL=64
Reply from 24.76.20.1: bytes=32 time=23ms TTL=64
Reply from 24.76.20.1: bytes=32 time=53ms TTL=64
Reply from 24.76.20.1: bytes=32 time=43ms TTL=64
Reply from 24.76.20.1: bytes=32 time=43ms TTL=64
Reply from 24.76.20.1: bytes=32 time=38ms TTL=64
Reply from 24.76.20.1: bytes=32 time=56ms TTL=64
Reply from 24.76.20.1: bytes=32 time=20ms TTL=64
Reply from 24.76.20.1: bytes=32 time=40ms TTL=64
Reply from 24.76.20.1: bytes=32 time=21ms TTL=64
Reply from 24.76.20.1: bytes=32 time=52ms TTL=64
Reply from 24.76.20.1: bytes=32 time=23ms TTL=64
Reply from 24.76.20.1: bytes=32 time=48ms TTL=64
Reply from 24.76.20.1: bytes=32 time=19ms TTL=64

Ping statistics for 24.76.20.1:
Packets: Sent = 14, Received = 14, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 19ms, Maximum = 56ms, Average = 37ms

This is after I installed the patch from speedguide.net

Is this looking good or bad ???

Thx

 

[Kill_Phil]

I would call tech support and have them check your TX and RX levels on the modem, im guessing they may be off. you could also be having grounding issues, the lag "spikes" you talk about are useually from a fluxuating signal on the coax cable leaving the modem. check for any extra splitters, or loose connections. unscrew the coax and touch the lead wire (grounds it out) and place it back in, also make sure its not broken. from expirence things like this require a technition to hook a device up to your cable modem and check the signal levels. you may also notice static on the lower channels of your television while having these lag "spikes". or you may not, entirely case dependant.

hope this helps.

 

[Kill_Phil]

just remembered, i had the same problem long ago playing any game, it turned out to be a bad length of coax going from the main splitter in my house to the modem, i moved the modem downstairs and used a different cable, problems suddenly vanished, had like 3 tech out to my house and said "i dont know whats wrong" and left, imagine that! lol.

 

[Kill_Phil]

oh, and out of curiosity, what kind of modem do you have, hehe

 

[InfectedVoice]

The cable modem I have is a TeraPro, Model Number TCM200. Its manufactured by Terayon Communication Systems. My ISP is Shaw @Home

Do you think applying the patch helped me ? It seems to have smoothed out all the jitters, but I still get an occasional few.

 

[Snoop]

IV: that second tracert and subsequint ping of your gateway router looks decent. You need to rerun these tests when your sure you are having the problem. If you call tech support with those tracerts and pings numbers and tell them you are having ping problems they are most likely going to laugh.

So, rerun the tests when you are sure the problem is happening then try calling them with your bad pings and tracerts in hand.

 

[Kill_Phil]

hmm, i dont laugh at people when they tell me things are slow, i try to find out why.. but yea, most techs probably would deny that anything is wrong. most the shaw techs ive spoken with are useless wastes of skin, terayon makes good modems too.