So on my home network, I have a DirectTV box; using DirectTV's Direct2PC software, I'm able to watch things I have recorded from DirectTV on my computer.
Recently, I hooked my computer up to a 2nd monitor, with the idea that I could watch some recorded shows on one monitor while playing World of Warcraft on the 2nd. I got it all set up, and things work beautifully playing the show - however, whenever I'm watching a recorded show, WoW will disconnect erratically.
Basically, the game will be running fine for 5 minutes, then all of a sudden my ping spikes to 2000+ and I'm disconnected. Sometimes the ping spikes, but recovers before disconnecting me. Then it goes back to normal.
This ONLY happens while the DirectTV software is running/playing a show. If it's not, I never have disconnects.
My computer is not a slouch - Intel i7 920 with 10 GB of RAM, and a GTX 460 video card. I have no slowdown either in the game or the show while both are running.
My suspicion is that the NIC might be the cause of these disconnects, because I'm using the Realtek motherboard on-board NIC. I know it takes a good connection to steam the HD recordings - I've tried streaming over wireless on my laptop using the same software, and I get major stuttering that goes away if I plug my laptop into the gigabit.
What points away from this, is that my gigabit network doesn't report heavy use while I'm running the show. Task Manager is only reporting using around 1% on the network interface.
I've heard that Realtek and other "built in" network cards are using Windows for a lot of the networking, while Intel NICs do the processing on the NIC. I've theorized to myself that getting an Intel NIC might solve this issue; maybe the software networking is having issues when it's running a local stream and trying to keep the constant packets to the internet alive.
Does anyone have any other suggestions or opinions about if a new 'hardware' NIC could solve this?
Recently, I hooked my computer up to a 2nd monitor, with the idea that I could watch some recorded shows on one monitor while playing World of Warcraft on the 2nd. I got it all set up, and things work beautifully playing the show - however, whenever I'm watching a recorded show, WoW will disconnect erratically.
Basically, the game will be running fine for 5 minutes, then all of a sudden my ping spikes to 2000+ and I'm disconnected. Sometimes the ping spikes, but recovers before disconnecting me. Then it goes back to normal.
This ONLY happens while the DirectTV software is running/playing a show. If it's not, I never have disconnects.
My computer is not a slouch - Intel i7 920 with 10 GB of RAM, and a GTX 460 video card. I have no slowdown either in the game or the show while both are running.
My suspicion is that the NIC might be the cause of these disconnects, because I'm using the Realtek motherboard on-board NIC. I know it takes a good connection to steam the HD recordings - I've tried streaming over wireless on my laptop using the same software, and I get major stuttering that goes away if I plug my laptop into the gigabit.
What points away from this, is that my gigabit network doesn't report heavy use while I'm running the show. Task Manager is only reporting using around 1% on the network interface.
I've heard that Realtek and other "built in" network cards are using Windows for a lot of the networking, while Intel NICs do the processing on the NIC. I've theorized to myself that getting an Intel NIC might solve this issue; maybe the software networking is having issues when it's running a local stream and trying to keep the constant packets to the internet alive.
Does anyone have any other suggestions or opinions about if a new 'hardware' NIC could solve this?
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