This problem should give all the network gurus a workout

[itswhats4dinner]

I'm having some serious weirdness with losing my Internet connection whenver I try playing an online game. Initially I thought it was just lag but I set my system to ping -t a variety of sites and EVERY single time I try and run Counterstrike or Starcraft (both with latest patches) I will alt+tab over and notice ping time outs. They will only resume pinging normally AFTER I shutdown the online game completely.

My specs:

win98se
ecsk7s5a using onboard sis lan (also tried off board realtek nic - also after a clean install of win98se)
duron1ghz
256crucial pc133
sb64 5.1
geforce2gts-v w/ detonator 27.50 (have also tried previous versions)
dirextX8.1
SB4100 Motorola Cable Modem


Things I've tried:

rebinding tcp/ip
reapplying every known patch for the board, nic(s), video card, OS
reinstalled each and every game
formatted completely and reinstalled with nothing but OS, sound drivers, detonator drivers, Counterstrike
yelled at inanimate objects, sobbed without shame to strangers about my computer problems


Any help, suggestions, or ideas would be enormously appreciated. Thank you

 

[jdini76]

Sounds like it is with your isp. Try doing a trace route to the server you are trying to connect to . you may not have that command in win98 though. Usually its c:\>tracert 0.0.0.0.0. of course filling the zeros with ip numbers. If it stops at a certain IP (could be gateway or a switch) then you can call your isp and complain that this particular address is giving intermittent outages. (use big words, then they will think you know something and not brush you off.) of course if it reaches the ip then you will have to keep doing it untill you find it. Good luck

 

[itswhats4dinner]

A tracert doesn't seem to reveal anything out of the ordinary. I never realized an online game could kill your Net connection. I mean I can surf the Web no prob but the second I try getting onto a CS server all connectivity dies and will only be restored when I close CS entirely. So strange. Not sure if I should call my ISP, they might think I'm just crazy and blame the software packages.

 

[Idz21]

which ISP is it?

and it might be that the ISP is blocking online gameplay for you. Have you done LARGE mass transfers in the past takin up a LOT Of the ISPs bandwidth? If so, they might have gotten pissed at you, and capped ur bandwidth somewhere, and maybe disabled you from doin certain things.

Best thing to do, is to just call them up. They will probably ask you to try and connect to a server while they ping and diagnose your modem.

 

[itswhats4dinner]

Nope, All I've done so far with Charter Cable is play online games, suddenly I've lost that ability. I guess I have no choice but to suck it up and call their tech lines, sigh 2-3 hours wasted on a nice Sunday morning.

 

[DaiShan]

try the latest moterboard drivers?

 

[itswhats4dinner]

Yup, latest drivers off of ecs's site. Bios updated as well.

 

[GiGoLo]

if you do end up calling your isp tech support, remember to be patient with them and if they don't give you the answer you're looking for, call back a couple times to speak with different technicians.... why do i say this?? glad you asked

i have timewarner roadrunnercable modem. we were getting excellent ul/dl speeds, dl close to 3000kps. all of a sudden, we started falling to less than 800 and were getting alot of loss and choke in counter-strike, even on servers in the same city. tracer routes were showing terrible latency times even on local websites and servers. after troubleshooting as much as i could on my end, i ended up calling time warner. first guy said "we'll send a tech out to check your signal." tech came out and said the line was fine. called back and spoke to another guy... this is the bs he gave me "well, that's better than what i get. you have to understand that the more people that sign up, the slower its gonna get" true, but this was an instantaneous loss of speed, not gradual over time. third tech - "you might want to try reinstalling windows or using a different nic or cable" -- already told her that we have 3 computers doing the same thing and i've already reinstalled windows several times. 4th guy - "it might be electrical interference... is it near a microwave or anything like that?" ....... finally, i spoke with their level 2 tech support and immediately he knew what the problem was, and swapped our cable modem out with a newer docsis modem -- problem solved.

so if they give you a hard time or try to give you bs, make sure you escalate it to higher powers

 

[ianbergman]

I would be far more inclined to say the problem is somewhere in your setup... usually, if an ISP is doing any kind of filtering or limiting of network traffic, a) they won't shut everything down for you, just the game packets and b) they can't respond to the instant you start up and close a program.

of course, since you've already reformatted completely, I'm not quite sure where the problem could lie. I would try to replace the cable modem, as it might be having trouble with your game traffic... though dunno why. can you find a manual for your cable modem and make sure it handles and passes on higher-port network traffic? (CS, for example, is 27015, i think)

good luck...

 

[itswhats4dinner]

Thanks guys for all the suggestions. I've suspected my cable modem but couldn't be sure because of the weird nature of the problem. In either case I couldn't get through to tech support. I'll get in touch with them on Monday and see how it goes.

 

[Legendary]

The only thing unique about playing a game of CS or SC, is that it opens up a port or two to use (27005/27015 for CS). Do you have a router? Maybe when that port's open every other port gets closed? Or maybe that's just part of your set up in general. That's the only thing I can think of.