My Internet keeps Spiking

[Nab]

I'm at Georgia Tech and it seems that my internet spikes a lot. It is most noticeable when I play counterstrike and it starts lagging like crazy. It is just my computer because when I spike I can see that my roommates internet is going fine. Is there anything I can do about this problem? Thank you.

-Nab

 

[n0cmonkey]

What is spiking specifically? Have you done virus scans and spyware scans recently?

 

[Nab]

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
What is spiking specifically? Have you done virus scans and spyware scans recently?

When i'm playing CS (counterstrike) my ping spikes a lot. I just reformatted my computer because I thought that may be the problem.

If this helps i'm running:

2.4ghz
radeon 9600
1 gig ram

edit: your "basic unix commands" site didn't work for me

 

[spidey07]

my guess is they are having congestion from large peer-2-peer transfers. Not much you can do about it really.

-edit- when you say your roommate is fine, does that mean he is playing a game and not seeing the same symptoms or just browsing, because the two are very different traffic patterns.

 

[Nab]

Originally posted by: spidey07
my guess is they are having congestion from large peer-2-peer transfers. Not much you can do about it really.

-edit- when you say your roommate is fine, does that mean he is playing a game and not seeing the same symptoms or just browsing, because the two are very different traffic patterns.

when i say my roomate is fine, i'm saying that we'll both be playing the same game, in the same server, and i'll spike and lag while he'll be fine.

edit: spelling mistake

 

[spidey07]

Hmm, that means it is either your computer, your port or your cabling.

play a game with your roomie as the server and see if you get the same symptoms.

 

[Nab]

Originally posted by: spidey07
Hmm, that means it is either your computer, your port or your cabling.

play a game with your roomie as the server and see if you get the same symptoms.

i just played CS with my roommate making the server and i didn't lag. that would be LAN.

what does that mean?

 

[spidey07]

Originally posted by: Nab

Originally posted by: spidey07
Hmm, that means it is either your computer, your port or your cabling.

play a game with your roomie as the server and see if you get the same symptoms.

i just played CS with my roommate making the server and i didn't lag. that would be LAN.

what does that mean?

1) how often do you lag?

If you can play on his box when he is server that means your lan/cable/port should be good. If you and your roomie are on the same internet server and you lag constantly and he doesn't something is definately "strange"

 

[Nab]

Originally posted by: spidey07

Originally posted by: Nab

Originally posted by: spidey07
Hmm, that means it is either your computer, your port or your cabling.

play a game with your roomie as the server and see if you get the same symptoms.

i just played CS with my roommate making the server and i didn't lag. that would be LAN.

what does that mean?

1) how often do you lag?

If you can play on his box when he is server that means your lan/cable/port should be good. If you and your roomie are on the same internet server and you lag constantly and he doesn't something is definately "strange"

i probably get a spike once every 10 seconds or so.

edit: i just ran ad-aware and anti-vir and still no luck

 

[Nab]

bump, anyone know how i can stop the spikes? does the cpu/ram/video card have anything to do wtth it?

 

[Zelmo3]

It's possible that your video card is accessing AGP memory or the pagefile is getting used. I had the pagefile problem when playing Desert Combat until I moved up to 1GB RAM.
How does your video card (including memory size) and system memory compare to his?

 

[Nab]

Originally posted by: Zelmo3
It's possible that your video card is accessing AGP memory or the pagefile is getting used. I had the pagefile problem when playing Desert Combat until I moved up to 1GB RAM.
How does your video card (including memory size) and system memory compare to his?

I have a radeon 9600 256mb 128bit. I have 1 GB ram (two different companies though and at different speeds one is samsung pc2700 and the other is mushkin pc3200). I'm not quite sure what pagefile is, can you elaborate on that? thanks.

oh yeah, does different ram company/speed make a difference?

-nab

 

[rmrf]

the pagefile, as I understand it, is unused memory that is written to the hard drive. every once in a while, your computer will need to access the data in the memory and digs into the pagefile. this can slow down whatever you are doing, because obviously, reading from RAM is much faster than reading from the hard drive. there was a big discussion over in operating systems about virtual memory and pagefile stuff, maybe someone from that conversation can butt in here.

just for kicks, have you run memtest on your computer lately or ever? the reason I ask is, I was having some problems with intermittent crashes, so I ran memtest and found that my first dimm was bad. this may or may not be the case for you. here is the link:

http://www.memtest.org/

 

[bersl2]

Originally posted by: Nab
I'm at Georgia Tech and it seems that my internet spikes a lot. It is most noticeable when I play counterstrike and it starts lagging like crazy. It is just my computer because when I spike I can see that my roommates internet is going fine. Is there anything I can do about this problem? Thank you.

-Nab

Please don't tell me you're the loser next door to me who's always yelling "Dude!" while he and his roommate play CS...

 

[Nab]

Originally posted by: bersl2

Originally posted by: Nab
I'm at Georgia Tech and it seems that my internet spikes a lot. It is most noticeable when I play counterstrike and it starts lagging like crazy. It is just my computer because when I spike I can see that my roommates internet is going fine. Is there anything I can do about this problem? Thank you.

-Nab

Please don't tell me you're the loser next door to me who's always yelling "Dude!" while he and his roommate play CS...

i dunno, where do you live??

 

[Nab]

Originally posted by: rmrf
the pagefile, as I understand it, is unused memory that is written to the hard drive. every once in a while, your computer will need to access the data in the memory and digs into the pagefile. this can slow down whatever you are doing, because obviously, reading from RAM is much faster than reading from the hard drive. there was a big discussion over in operating systems about virtual memory and pagefile stuff, maybe someone from that conversation can butt in here.

just for kicks, have you run memtest on your computer lately or ever? the reason I ask is, I was having some problems with intermittent crashes, so I ran memtest and found that my first dimm was bad. this may or may not be the case for you. here is the link:

http://www.memtest.org/

i can memtest86 for 13 hours and there were no errors, do i need to run it longer?

edit: i also ran prime95 under torture test "Small FFT's" over night with no error. Then I ran "In-place" and i got an error after 7 hours. Then I ran "blend" overnight without an error. Does that have anything to do with it? Thanks.

 

[Nab]

Originally posted by: Nab

Originally posted by: rmrf
the pagefile, as I understand it, is unused memory that is written to the hard drive. every once in a while, your computer will need to access the data in the memory and digs into the pagefile. this can slow down whatever you are doing, because obviously, reading from RAM is much faster than reading from the hard drive. there was a big discussion over in operating systems about virtual memory and pagefile stuff, maybe someone from that conversation can butt in here.

just for kicks, have you run memtest on your computer lately or ever? the reason I ask is, I was having some problems with intermittent crashes, so I ran memtest and found that my first dimm was bad. this may or may not be the case for you. here is the link:

http://www.memtest.org/

i can memtest86 for 13 hours and there were no errors, do i need to run it longer?

edit: i also ran prime95 under torture test "Small FFT's" over night with no error. Then I ran "In-place" and i got an error after 7 hours. Then I ran "blend" overnight without an error. Does that have anything to do with it? Thanks.

bump for one more try

 

[bersl2]

Originally posted by: Nab

Originally posted by: bersl2

Originally posted by: Nab
I'm at Georgia Tech and it seems that my internet spikes a lot. It is most noticeable when I play counterstrike and it starts lagging like crazy. It is just my computer because when I spike I can see that my roommates internet is going fine. Is there anything I can do about this problem? Thank you.

-Nab

Please don't tell me you're the loser next door to me who's always yelling "Dude!" while he and his roommate play CS...

i dunno, where do you live??

Towers

If you ran memtest86 for that long, I think your RAM is OK from an integrity point of view.

I'm going to take a shot in the dark about this one, but could it be that you don't have QoS enabled for your network connection?

 

[gutharius]

Originally posted by: Nab

Originally posted by: spidey07
Hmm, that means it is either your computer, your port or your cabling.

play a game with your roomie as the server and see if you get the same symptoms.

i just played CS with my roommate making the server and i didn't lag. that would be LAN.

what does that mean?

Ok, so:

1. You lag when you connect to the server via the internet.
2. Your roomie does not lag when connected to the server via the internet
3. When you and your roomie play on you local network NON-INTERNET you don't lag.

Is this correct?

If so are you both connected to a router in your dorm room? Or do you both have your own enet patch outlets for each of you to plug into?

Edit: My point here is that if you are using a cosumer brand router to share the enet connection your issue may be related to DMZ settings on the router. It's a possibility and something to consider. If this a college router you are conneted to then this point is moot.

Out side the consumer based router. It sounds as if somthing on your computer is polling an internet resource. Check you DHCP settings to see what the lease is on your IP addy. It may be that you are getting a temporary lease that is set to renew every few seconds.

Either way this is strange behavior but still possibly network related.