Lagging while gaming ... any ideas?

[pabscars]

would just like to say hi guys and gals, i,m new to this site and just wanted to introduce myself properly, i,m not a very tecky person but i,m the sort that likes to get to the root of the problem regardless of effort and lack of knowledge. (a dog with a bone kind a thing)


ive recently had virgin media'a 20 meg Broadband (BB) installed and i have just a few questions you may be able to help me with.

i spend quite a lot of my evenings playing online on my xbox 360, (yes i am a big kid at heart) and quite frequently suffer some hosting and lagging issues, this has got a bit better since i changed over to virgin from bt, i had loads of issues originally settings up my BB account and was told i was in virgins (walled garden), a technical term for something like prison. a week later and i was back online. the first thing i did was a speed test at www.speedtest.com i think and it returned reasonable results, approx 11.5 meg DL and 700 plus UPLoad.

when i first got onto xbox live and entered a game of call of duty 4, my lagging was horrendous most of the time.
so i decided to tweak the port settings (3074 and 88) on the newly supplied netgear wgr614 v9 router, and things improved enough to have a reasonable connection not brilliant most of the time. is there any other tweaks i could possibly make, to make things smoother and quicker for want of a technical expression.

everything from a connection point of view is kept as short a poss, ive got the router behind my xbox with homemade ethernet cables about 6 inches in length, as previously i had cable running round the house. ive done several speed test at various points throughout the day and night and best is around 11 meg but it has dropped to 5.5 before, and that was at 1 oclock in the morning, i thought of putting the xbox in a DMZ but ive heard some stories of them being hacked so i think i will leave that alone. any simple tricks of the trade a layman like me could possibly employ ? regards Paul

[Chris]

:welcome: to the forum. I've moved your topic to a more general area of the forum as we don't quite know what the issue is.

I have also re-named it, as our members are more likely to spot and contribute to a thread asking for help if its title contains some information about the problem.

:)

[Stabhappy]

Try DMZ, just temporarily, also disconnect any PC's connected to your router in order to be assured that it's not a certain piece of software causing conflicts.

[pabscars]

thanks Chris apologies for any confusion

---------- Post added at 15:46 ---------- Previous post was at 15:41 ----------

will try DMZ tonight thanks, just to let you know i always make sure nothing else on my network is running. regards Paul

[pabscars]

Hi Stabhappy, tried placing the xbox in a dmz last night and to be honest things didnt seem any different, but what i did notice was when i started having lagging issues, i turned off the xbox and fired up the laptop, i then ran a few speed tests and my speed had dropped to 5 meg, from a maximum of 11 ish. Still had a decent upload of over 700, and my ping was approx 130. i then turned everthing on my network off, rebooted the modem then the router. but the wireless light on the router was still flashing as if someone was using my network, strange.

i recently changed the factory security password and username to prevent some one from stealing my bandwidth so i would have thought this shouldnt be possible. Do you know or does anyone else know how to check to see if someone is trying to hack my router. i did do another reboot of just the router and again the wireless light continued to blink, how odd.
i ran another couple of speed tests which returned about 7 meg, so i then put an ethernet cable directly from the laptop to the router and it shot up to 10 meg. has anyone any thought on the issues mentioned, i would appreciate any feedback.
thanks Paul

[chickendippers]

Wireless is not good for gaming, even my wireless n connection with the computer and router in the same room has occasional lag spikes. I'd strongly recommend using a wired connection.

You mention that the connection speed improves when connected directly to the modem, you should also try the recommendations on this page: http://www.virginmedia.com/help/20mb-broadband-optimisation.php

[Dai]

Log in to the control panel on the router, there should be a page that shows current connections so you can check for extra freeloaders. There may be a log also so you can look back.

But I've found wireless flaky for gaming. I'd rather hook up a temp cable even if it means a bit of extra trouble to stop the missus falling over it..

[southwell]

I used www.portforward.com (http://www.portforward.com) to setup my Xbox and PS3 so they have as open a connection as possible. This would require giving your Xbox a static IP, but i have no problems at all with lag and iam on the 10mb.

One thing i found was my wireless channel had a lot of interference, one way to check this is to:
Start - run - cmd, enter

ping 192.168.1.1 -t (if 1.1 is your gateway)
ping www.google.com (http://www.google.com/) -t

Im not sure which one i did, probably to the router.

This will loop a ping to google or your router and you should stay below <5 most of the time, mine was spiking to over 400 until i changed channel. Once i changed it i was <1ms 99% of the time, never over <10ms.

HTH

[pabscars]

sorry i may have misled you inadvertantly, my xbox is connected via ethernet, but my laptop is wireless, i did try wireless but the connection was terrible. so when i had virgin services fitted, i had the router and modem located just inches away from my xbox, and i connected ultra short ethernet cables.
thanks though

[southwell]

Ok, well the portforward site will still help you. My consoles are all directly connected now and setup with static ip's and i very rarely have any problems.

[Uncle Peter]

@pabscars - how's your general connectivity?

There are a few simple checks you could run through

1. Check your power levels: login to your cable modem via browser at 192.169.100.1 as root/root then paste your upstream and downstream information into here and I'm sure that some kind soul will say yay or nay you need an engineer visit to make some adjustments.

2. throw a few pings at bbc.net.uk and see if there's any unusually high results. If there are, could possibly be related to above

3. commence download of a large file from:

http://gamefiles.virginmedia.com/blueyondergames/

If you're getting a really naff transfer speed then it could be that you either have a problem with your power levels or it may just be that you're in a heavily utilised area.

[pabscars]

I used www.portforward.com (http://www.portforward.com) to setup my Xbox and PS3 so they have as open a connection as possible. This would require giving your Xbox a static IP, but i have no problems at all with lag and iam on the 10mb.

One thing i found was my wireless channel had a lot of interference, one way to check this is to:
Start - run - cmd, enter

ping 192.168.1.1 -t (if 1.1 is your gateway)
ping www.google.com (http://www.google.com/) -t

Im not sure which one i did, probably to the router.

This will loop a ping to google or your router and you should stay below <5 most of the time, mine was spiking to over 400 until i changed channel. Once i changed it i was <1ms 99% of the time, never over <10ms.

HTH

Now this sounds interesting, bearing in mind i,m not that hot on routers, or much else to do with computers to be honest,
i have in the past (BT) managed to set up my xbox to a static ip but i found the router didnt always allocate the same IP address. Apologies if my terminology isnt so good. i will have to do a bit more research on how to assign a static IP on the router, can you explain what exactly it does when you assign a static IP in laymans terms if poss, its friday and my brain is in shutdown mode already. My new router is a netgear WGR614 v9, just thought i should mention it.
not too sure about this pinging lark either, sorry for being a tard.
Big thanks

[lowei]

hello
Is your router Compatible with xbox live,and has it got the right firmware???????

---------- Post added at 12:52 ---------- Previous post was at 12:51 ----------

try this.. http://www.xbox.com/en-US/support/connecttolive/xbox360/homenetworking/equipment.htm#Routers

[southwell]

http://www.portforward.com/english/routers/port_forwarding/Netgear/WGR614v9/Xbox_Live_360.htm

Put in an IP at the top, i use 19 for the Xbox so it's away from the DHCP devices.
Then follow the steps.

http://portforward.com/networking/staticip-xbox360.htm

So your IP would be

192.168.1.19
Subnet: 255.255.255.0
DNS: 192.168.1.1
Gateway: 192.168.1.1

Note: 192.168.1.1 if that is the IP you use to connect to your router in IE.

[pabscars]

ive found their list to be out of date in the past, i think it is but not too sure on the firmware version as mine is v9 which might be the latest.

[lowei]

shadowmanuk who runs this site will sort it for you..http://www.xboxlivetheguide.co.uk/

[pabscars]

Wow thanks guys for all your info, unfortunately the wife insists we go to our caravan this weekend, so i wont get a chance to try things out untill i get back home on sunday evening, but i will give it a go, i do appreciate all your replies, and i will let you know how it works out.
severley under the thumb Paul lol

[southwell]

It's much easier when someone practically tells you the settings to use otherwise you will spend ages searching for the answers ;) Let me know if you need any more help.

[pabscars]

i couldnt agree more, thanks again. i will definately be back on letting you all know how i got on.

[Stabhappy]

It's not a port forward issue. There seems to be a problem with ping on your end. Please:

Start - Run - cmd

in the black cmd window, type "ping bbc.co.uk -n 50", without quotes, post back here if there's any packet loss or ping greater than 80ish. It should be closer to 20, though.

[pabscars]

good morning gents, i tried to have a play last night but i couldnt find the link on my home pc to open up this page onced i,d logged on, as i currently have all the replies sent to my work address, ive now printed off all your recommendations and will attempt to F"£$ things up tonight when i get home lol. i was online last night and all in all gameplay wasnt too bad, still lagged a bit though and sometimes couldnt get in matches with my friends or hear them speak from time to time.
May i just ask another question before i proceed tonight, and please forgive me if i come across as a little retarded, once ive manually assigned an ip address on my xbox 360 console, do i have to then assign the same ip address on the router to the xbox.

[mrmistoffelees]

Lets make sure it's the router and not the connection first. (If you have not done this already !)

Power of the SACM

Disconnect the router and all cables.

Connect the Xbox directly to the cable modem

Power on the SACM (Wait a couple of minutes)

Power on the Xbox.

Try a game, do you still get horrific lag ?

[pabscars]

i didnt realise you could do this, i thought you had to have a router as well as a modem, well it sounds easy enough, do i just leave my xbox 360 console on automatic and let it find the ip address etc then.
regards

[southwell]

Yes, resetting the modem while it's plugged into the Xbox will DHCP the Xbox. It's a good way to check if it's the router or your actual connection.

[pabscars]

great stuff, thanks for that, if it does work, whats to stop me leaving the xbox hooked up to the modem all the time and then splitting the ethernet into the router for my computers

[mrmistoffelees]

great stuff, thanks for that, if it does work, whats to stop me leaving the xbox hooked up to the modem all the time and then splitting the ethernet into the router for my computers

Because there is only one ethernet port on the cable modem and one DHCP address issued.

Hook up the XBOX and test it. If it performs better then it's a issue on your router that needs looking at. If not it's an issue with your connection again, people on here will be able to help with.

[southwell]

I don't understand what you mean? The ethernet would already been taken up on the xbox? If it did work i would try the port forward settings first as it would be a router problem.

[mrmistoffelees]

Two other things

1) Responding to Ping on Internet WAN Port
If you want the router to respond to a 'ping' from the Internet, click the ‘Respond to Ping on
Internet WAN Port’ check box. This should only be used as a diagnostic tool, since it allows your
router to be discovered. Don't check this box unless you have a specific reason to do so.

2) Enable UPnP

edit: from another post

http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/87/33618995-netgear-router-issues.html

[pabscars]

sorry,, what i meant was, can the ethernet cable coming from the modem to the xbox be split into 2 cables, so that one still connects directly to the xbox and the other goes to the router, effectively bypassing the router as far as the xbox is concerned.
hope this makes sense,

[mrmistoffelees]

sorry,, what i meant was, can the ethernet cable coming from the modem to the xbox be split into 2 cables, so that one still connects directly to the xbox and the other goes to the router, effectively bypassing the router as far as the xbox is concerned.
hope this makes sense,

Yes, but you would only be able to have either the router on or the xbox on individually NOT at the same time, you would also have to reboot the cable modem each time you want to change.

So in theory yes, In practice, no

[southwell]

No you can't, thats essentially what a router does anyway. Try it directly connected, if it's fine then try the settings i posted on the other page and try again.

[pabscars]

Ah right i think me understands now, fair enough. i might nip home at lunch time to give it a go
thanks gents

[pabscars]

good morning gents, i tried a few things last night, none of which seemed to make any difference to be honest, first i tried connecting my xbox directly through the modem, and then i played a couple of games on call of duty 4, the wierd thing was my connection didnt improve and if anything seemed to be slightly worse (2 to 3 bars) if this is possible. normally i can get 4 green bars even when i lag.
i ran a quick test on my xbox console, by going into network settings and testing connection to xbox live, which gave the following results

connection through modem and router
W 0000-000B
X 0000-F001
Y 20A8-4840
Z 0000-0000

then ran the same test after connecting just through the modem and got

W 0000-000B
X 0000-F001
Y 20A8-48E0 (this is the only value that changed slightly, think it refers to up/d load
Z 0000-0000

this might mean something to someone in the know

i also did a few ping tests as requested and when i pinged 192.168.1.1 -t i was getting mostly 1ms with occasional spikes up to 24ms
When i pinged www.google.com i was getting constant fluctuation from between 30ms to 77ms, to be honest i dont know if this is good or bad, but it was done wirelessly through my laptop,
finally at 2pm this morning i might add, i assigned a static ip address on my xbox 360 and used as recommended 192.168.1.19 and made a slight tweak to the port triggering as i,d not quite done it correctly.
i then tried tried port forwarding the same ip ending in 19 to the correct ports required for xbox live, namely 88 udp and 3074 tdp+udp, but when i ran another connect to xbox live test on my xbox it came back with a strict NAT instead of open, so i gave up at that point i unchecked the boxes for port forwarding and it went back to an OPEN NAT.
apologies for a long post, i will try a few more things tonight mentioned in this thread and let you all know the outcome.
any info would be appreciated
Cheers Paul

[mrmistoffelees]

I'd be contacting XBOX Live customer support with those results and ask them to explain whats what

Contact details below

Phone

Assistance by phone:
0800 587 1102

or +44 20 7365 9792 from a mobile phone

Hearing Impaired (TTY device):
0800 587 1103

Hours of operation:
Monday-Friday: 09:00-22:00
Saturday: 09:00-20:00
Sunday: 09:00-17:00

[pabscars]

thanks for that, just been with speaking to them for about 15 minutes while they checked out my account, they said everything seems fine, but they did tell me to open up the ports on my router, so i said ive already done this with udp88 and udp/tcp3074, but he went on to tell me another couple of ports to open that ive never come accross before
UDP88
UDP53
UDP3330
UDP3074
TCP3074

So i,l give these a try later tonight, i did ask about the status codes W,X,Y and Z but they seemed uninterested, i get the impression they dont like to give out too info about the status codes, probably because it helps hackers etc.

thanks again Paul

[pabscars]

GOOD morning gents, just to let those interested know, last night i tried triggering the ports on my router to mimic the ones above and then preceeded to play on COD4 as usual, again didnt notice much of a difference to be honest, i still got booted from the odd game, even though i was in a lobby with firends. connection at best can only be described as not bad as was getting 3 bars out of a possible 4. One thing i did try after i had been playing for nearly 2 hours, was to download a demo from xbox live, the file size was 835.53MB and it took approx 45 mins to download it. I,m not quite sure what that equates to in terms of speed, but unless my maths are wrong it works out at just over 3 meg download speed, and considering i,m on 20 meg BB its a pretty poor show, and that was at 1 am in the morning, hardly peak time.

Has anyone had chance to look at my ping times mentioned a couple of messages ago, i would appreciate any feedback,

[lowei]

GOOD morning gents, just to let those interested know, last night i tried triggering the ports on my router to mimic the ones above and then preceeded to play on COD4 as usual, again didnt notice much of a difference to be honest, i still got booted from the odd game, even though i was in a lobby with firends. connection at best can only be described as not bad as was getting 3 bars out of a possible 4. One thing i did try after i had been playing for nearly 2 hours, was to download a demo from xbox live, the file size was 835.53MB and it took approx 45 mins to download it. I,m not quite sure what that equates to in terms of speed, but unless my maths are wrong it works out at just over 3 meg download speed, and considering i,m on 20 meg BB its a pretty poor show, and that was at 1 am in the morning, hardly peak time.

Has anyone had chance to look at my ping times mentioned a couple of messages ago, i would appreciate any feedback,

On cod4 on xbox360 it depends who is hosting to what the ping will be. Try hosting your own game and see if it works.

[pabscars]

Hi Lowei
i have hosted games a few times and its normally pretty good if i,m the host, especially a private match, there has been a few times when ive been the host on a team deathmatch, only for it to lag out after a few seconds, and comes up with host ended game even though i have'nt. its wierd.

on a seperate note, ive just downloaded the beta version of call of duty 5 and it downloaded an 890MB file at luchtime in 8 minutes, which is pretty damn quick. So i can only pressume Virgin are heavily penalising me for playing online most evenings which sucks. is there anything i can do about this or is it a case of you get what your given.

[Scribe]

Are you finding your ping issue to happen in lag spikes?

As my brother has had this issue and it's related to a flaw in the router software, however we can't get virgin media to do anything about it because their tech support sucks.

[pabscars]

not quite sure what you mean, i,m not a techy person hence the reason for my post originally, but what i can say is that, if your speaking to tech support overseas, you can be left very frustrated due to the language barrier.

i managed to get hold of some really decent guys in the uk who restored my faith in virgin. if your unhappy with the responce from tech support i would recommend filing a customer complaint, i did and i had a reply within 24 hours and established a contact in this country, he gave me his extension number and said if i have any problems call him back. this in my opinion is key to getting your issues sorted. but also the guys on this forum seem very knowledgable also, apart from myself. if you need any numbers let me know

[lowei]

Check this post out,Iam now on 10 meg and cant host on cod4...But when i was on 4 meg i used to be able to host...WTF HEADS UP http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/12/33634283-my-virgin-media-20mb-connection-problems.html

---------- Post added at 20:52 ---------- Previous post was at 20:27 ----------

I hope whydoIneedatech can comment on this ????Because speaking to virgin media myself and lots off emails to them no 1 can fix it..I just think virgin don't like you hosting

[pabscars]

Wow, there certainly appears to be a pattern forming, makes you wonder doesnt it.
i think gamers are pretty much screwed, because you soon go over your download limit and then get throttled right back. have you tried to host earlier in the day, i noticed a huge difference in download speeds at peak and non peak times
eg yesterday lunchtime downloaded a demo from xbl in 8 mins
yet the night before at 1.30am it took over 45 mins, and it was a smaller file,
so unless my maths are wrong its gone from an18meg to 3meg within a few hours.
So in theory once youve gone over your download limit your connection could be dropping off a cliff, and be well below your previous 4 meg.

[southwell]

Once you get STM'd the connection is pretty much useless if you are downloading and want to surf or even playing a game it isn't good. If i want to game i just make sure i haven't been STM'd beforehand. I have a feeling STM doesn't just cut your connection or doesn't cut it properly as i used to game fine on a 600k/12k line with pings of <20ms.

[pabscars]

to be honest i never normally down load and rarely surf the net, i only downloaded demo's to see the true through put of my connection, for this very reason. Connection on cod 4 still laggy and the beta version of cod 5 is worse, bearing in mind i,m not that clued up, its like i,m loosing packets or something. it was previously mentioned about checking the power
went home at lunch time and played a couple of games on cod 5 and was shooting people in the distance and just couldnt hit them
one thing i would like to ask is, on my router i can port trigger and port forward, at the moment i have just triggered the ports for xbox live, and assigned a static ip on my xbox only and not forwarded yet, would there be any benefit to forwarding over triggering,?
and if i do forward the ports for xbox live do i need there ip address?

[Scribe]

to be honest i never normally down load and rarely surf the net, i only downloaded demo's to see the true through put of my connection, for this very reason. Connection on cod 4 still laggy and the beta version of cod 5 is worse, bearing in mind i,m not that clued up, its like i,m loosing packets or something. it was previously mentioned about checking the power
went home at lunch time and played a couple of games on cod 5 and was shooting people in the distance and just couldnt hit them
one thing i would like to ask is, on my router i can port trigger and port forward, at the moment i have just triggered the ports for xbox live, and assigned a static ip on my xbox only and not forwarded yet, would there be any benefit to forwarding over triggering,?
and if i do forward the ports for xbox live do i need there ip address?

Have you tried bypassing your router? We confirmed this is our issue and it IS throwing away packets in a fairly robotic manner such as (estimate) okok for 5seconds dropdropdrop for 2 second and okok again for another 5 seconds quite like clockwork. It seems only to be triggered by lots of packets being received at once. I proved this by pinging slowly with high timeouts no problem, however rapid pinging with a smaller timeout caused this drop pattern. I have tried switching off the NAT and SPI thinking this could be malfunctioning but it has not helped at all.

There is no benefit to forwarding over triggering BTW. The way to completely discount ports is to disable your NAT and/or activate DMZ to your computer.

[General Angel]

Sorry to hijack the thread but is it possible to play online games relatively lag free when being STMd?

[Noggo]

I've only ever tried it once when STM was introduced and it made on difference to my connection at the time, which was pee poor at the time of the test. Basically it should make on difference and whatever latency / packet loss issues you have before STM is activated will be present afterwards. Plus most on-line games only use a small amount of data transfer approx 10–20 Kbytes/s, which isn’t a lot even for a STM’d 2 Mbits/s connection.

[Scribe]

It shouldn't make a difference with most games, however your upload speed gets throttled to very low levels. I've found that when sharing my connection with other users such as my brother this saturates the upload, which in cable networking protocols adversely affects your effective download rate, generally making the connection useless. Once you run out of bandwidth this way, your effective latency is no longer based on the speed your connection reaches the server but on how many packets it has to send out to do the same job as sending fewer larger packets.

[AlbionDaz]

I also suffer playing online games using VM Cable,but its its a poor service for using the internet for me full stop.I have numerous disconnects and very low connections speeds,seems more common in the evenings.
I have tried phoning tech support for help,but I can't believe how useless the person is I have dealt with,I either can't hear them very well,or there asian accents or pronunciations are difficult for me to understand cleary,then there is the can you ring us back comments,if the problem persists etc,I have never once been helped when I have rung tech support,its a complete joke.

[alijay036]

The issue is not with Vm, the issue is with Xbox live, if you connect to a lobby that is being hosted in certain european or in the states you will suffer from lag, the effect will be dependant on the time of day you are playing. Also with the new Call of Duty game being beta tested (for network stress test) most of the CoD4 bandwith has been transferred to Call of Duty World at War. Also take into consideration that there was some downtime recently on Live and whatever was down has resulted in Live slowing down.

[General Angel]

The issue is not with Vm, the issue is with Xbox live, if you connect to a lobby that is being hosted in certain european or in the states you will suffer from lag, the effect will be dependant on the time of day you are playing. Also with the new Call of Duty game being beta tested (for network stress test) most of the CoD4 bandwith has been transferred to Call of Duty World at War. Also take into consideration that there was some downtime recently on Live and whatever was down has resulted in Live slowing down.

Xbox LIVE games are played over the P2P system, meaning one Xbox is host and the other players connect to the host Xbox, this means that if you live in the UK and the host is in America you will have higher ping because it takes longer to transfer data, contrary to popular belief xbox LIVE isnt played on servers, so your theory on COD4 cant be right.

[whydoIneedatech]

Do please remember that Virgin only support the connection and do not support online gaming consoles in any shape or form.

[General Angel]

Do please remember that Virgin only support the connection and do not support online gaming consoles in any shape or form.
WIll pretty much any modem supplied by VM work with xbox LIVE and in particular the MTU settings, LIVE needs a minimum MTU of 1364 to connect.

[alijay036]

Xbox LIVE games are played over the P2P system, meaning one Xbox is host and the other players connect to the host Xbox, this means that if you live in the UK and the host is in America you will have higher ping because it takes longer to transfer data, contrary to popular belief xbox LIVE isnt played on servers, so your theory on COD4 cant be right.
Therefore higher ping more chance of getting lag? I fail to see your point at attempted disproval of something that is fact not theory. Also if you have a lot of players on a hosted game from the States or certain euro countries, you will also get lag to some degree.

[General Angel]

Therefore higher ping more chance of getting lag? I fail to see your point at attempted disproval of something that is fact not theory. Also if you have a lot of players on a hosted game from the States or certain euro countries, you will also get lag to some degree.

i was disproving the fact that bandwidth being taken from COD4 is strictly not true.

[mrmistoffelees]

Xbox LIVE games are played over the P2P system, meaning one Xbox is host and the other players connect to the host Xbox, this means that if you live in the UK and the host is in America you will have higher ping because it takes longer to transfer data, contrary to popular belief xbox LIVE isnt played on servers, so your theory on COD4 cant be right.


Erm, One xbox acting as the host and all others connecting to it would mean the host is a server. or are you referring to MS dedicated servers ?

If xbox live work on a P2P basis then it would mean every xbox looking at every other xbox for data that it needed and therefore huge amounts of requests for data being made across the network hence why it's known as s 'Swarm'

Personally never had an issue with live (20mb connection) the odd game gets a small amount of lag but nothing major guess im lucky

[General Angel]

Erm, One xbox acting as the host and all others connecting to it would mean the host is a server. or are you referring to MS dedicated servers ?

If xbox live work on a P2P basis then it would mean every xbox looking at every other xbox for data that it needed and therefore huge amounts of requests for data being made across the network hence why it's known as s 'Swarm'

Personally never had an issue with live (20mb connection) the odd game gets a small amount of lag but nothing major guess im lucky

What i meant is that Xbox LIVE isnt the server they play on, the server pick the player with the best connection and allocates him host, then the other players connect to the host and he provides the players location etc.
Only a few games use dedicated servers such as Frontlines.

[AlbionDaz]

I wasn't on my xbox,I was using my PC and playing Warhammer,well trying too anyway :/

[pabscars]

Well guys what a frustrating weekend, suffering from terrible broadband speeds, i tried everything previously mentioned, dissabled nat helped a bit but i couldnt be sure, tried forwarding ports instead of triggering, running speed tests showed my connection had dropped to 2000Kbps down and under 300 upload, i was constantly being kicked from games in call of duty 4, to the point i nearly took my router outside and shot it.
the final straw on Sunday morning was when the wife couldnt even retrieve her emails on the laptop.
So i decided to ring Virgin broadband support and ask them were they aware of any issues affecting my area, they said they had been suffering with lots of issues in lots of areas but nothing specific to me, but what they did was tell me is that my account was still in the (WALLED GARDEN), dont ask me what this is but it was the original problem that prevented me from having a tinter web connection when virgin first installed all services. i have apparently now been removed from the walled garden and speed tests would indicate an improvement.
after the phone call i decided to test the speed and it had jumped from 2 meg to just over 10, quite an improvement within the space of 5 minutes.
Last night i played for a few hours on Cod4 and 5 and had some of the best games ever. Can i ask one final question before i sign off on this issue, my ping is still quite i think, even after things improved, speed tests at www.speedtest.net showed average ping was approx 130 with it fluctuating up to 300 at one point and then settleing back down again, any feedback on this

[southwell]

Start from scratch, direct connect to the modem and try it.

[pabscars]

and then do more ping tests?,

[southwell]

Yeah, presuming the machine you are doing ping tests from is wired? If wireless it could be a wireless channel issue.

[pabscars]

ok will do,
Re; Channel,
i noticed in the router settings last night it was set to number 6, so i changed it to auto, just to try it, in the hopes it will automatically find the best channel. is this ok

[southwell]

I always set mine to a specific channel. Channels 1, 6 and 11 are the best to use imo.

[pabscars]

just read a thread on another forum and it recommended installing netstumbler.com to find out what channels are being used in your area, so you can pick one as far away as possible. it was quite an old thread so may no longer be valid but just thought it was worth a mention, but if i search for all wireless connections in range wont that tell me what channels other routers are broadcasting on.

[southwell]

Yes, i use it at work for checking wireless problems. This will deactivate your wireless zero config so you will need to either restart the service, or your machine to get your wifi connection back.

[pabscars]

I used www.portforward.com (http://www.portforward.com) to setup my Xbox and PS3 so they have as open a connection as possible. This would require giving your Xbox a static IP, but i have no problems at all with lag and iam on the 10mb.

One thing i found was my wireless channel had a lot of interference, one way to check this is to:
Start - run - cmd, enter

ping 192.168.1.1 -t (if 1.1 is your gateway)
ping www.google.com (http://www.google.com/) -t

Im not sure which one i did, probably to the router.

This will loop a ping to google or your router and you should stay below <5 most of the time, mine was spiking to over 400 until i changed channel. Once i changed it i was <1ms 99% of the time, never over <10ms.

HTH

hi southwell, finally got round to doing ping to bbc.co.uk -n50, it took me a few times till i got it to work, as i had types it in without spaces. please peruse the results and leave any feedback
results
Packets sent 50, recieved 49, lost 1 (2% loss),
min=16ms, max=24ms, average=17ms

also it was mentioned about checking the power levels of my modem i think, by going route/route or something, could someone please explain in laymans terms exactly what i need to do, i did try to log onto 192.169.100.1 but it wouldnt let me for some reason,

i did try changing the wireless setting rf channel that i had previously put on auto, and found channel 1 to be the best when i did a quick speed test.

---------- Post added at 14:59 ---------- Previous post was at 14:45 ----------

also forgot to mention, when i did a speed test on www.speedtest.com, the download speed on channel 1 of the wireless router was 9065 Kbps, up was 714Kbps, and ms ping was 132, whatever that means.
would you say this is acceptable considering i,m on 20 meg XL package, i,m not blaming virgin media speeds, because at the moment i dont know if i have a problem or not, but if all turns out to be fine at my end, would it be worth complaining to anyone???

[southwell]

I wouldn't expect there to be a loss, try a different channel. The MS looks fine though. Why cant you login to your modem? Can you get to the main page? The username and PW are root.

[pabscars]

it just didnt load the page at all, i will try again later on, it maybe a bug or something on my laptop because sometimes it doesnt load the virgin media homepage untill ive tried two or three times,

regarding username/pw, i didnt realise what was meant by root/root, so what your saying is when i do finally open, 192.169.100.1, i will be prompted for a password and a username, type these in and then access to do a ping test. ive never had to do this before so i,m a little hesitant.

[southwell]

Yeah, you clikc login and enter the user and pw. You will get access to your modems configs and signal levels, that will help diagnosis.

[Dai]

regarding username/pw, i didnt realise what was meant by root/root, so what your saying is when i do finally open, 192.169.100.1, i will be prompted for a password and a username, type these in and then access to do a ping test. ive never had to do this before so i,m a little hesitant.

Dunno if that's a typo or not.. anyway click this:

http://192.168.100.1/

that should go to your cable modem where you will be asble to log in with the root/root combo.

[pabscars]

@pabscars - how's your general connectivity?

There are a few simple checks you could run through

1. Check your power levels: login to your cable modem via browser at 192.169.100.1 as root/root then paste your upstream and downstream information into here and I'm sure that some kind soul will say yay or nay you need an engineer visit to make some adjustments.

2. throw a few pings at bbc.net.uk and see if there's any unusually high results. If there are, could possibly be related to above

3. commence download of a large file from:

http://gamefiles.virginmedia.com/blueyondergames/

If you're getting a really naff transfer speed then it could be that you either have a problem with your power levels or it may just be that you're in a heavily utilised area.

This is what was originally qouted, that would explain a few things, much appreciated

[Noggo]

Re: item #3. commence download of a large file from:
http://gamefiles.virginmedia.com/blueyondergames/

It is recommended to download two files at the same time and add the totals together. Although the tests I've done it only adds about 100KB/s to the overall download speed.

Attached:
Test 1 shows single download at 2.3 MB/s
Test 2 shows two file download at a total of 2.4 MB/s
17095

17096

[pabscars]

Ok Noggo, will give that a go cheers,

---------- Post added at 08:21 ---------- Previous post was at 07:57 ----------

ive also managed to login to the modem once i understood what i was doing to find my upstream/downstream info, not sure if this will help but if some kind soul could have a look that would be much appreciated.

upstream transmit power level 51.5 dBmv
downstream recieved power level minus -1.5dBmv
downstream SNR 37.7dB.

i have all the other info as well but not sure as that is required, as it mentioned posting power levels only.

i have also posted the following info just in case its required,

Cable modem Oper configuration
network access ........ Allowed
max downstream data rate 20480000
max up data rate 768000
max up channel burst 1600
max number of CPE,s 1

Modem capability concatenation enabled, fragmenta enabled, PHS disabled.

i also had a quick look in the modem,s log and found this at the top of the list, again not sure if its relevant but what the heck.
CABLE MODEM EVENT LOG
Priority warning 5, description DHCP renew warning, field invalid in responce.

Finally i pinged the modem and got mostly 2 to 3ms, with a little spike to 11 and then 25, but it was mostly 90% of the time, 2 to 3ms.

[pabscars]

last night was the final straw, trying to play on call of duty 4 was beyond rediculous, and i was getting close to the point of no return,
i couldnt even hold a conversation properly with friends in a lobby as they were breaking up constantly.
so i decided to reboot everything, and start again, but sure enough my gameplay returned to a frustrating laggy pace.
i returned to my xbox dashboard and ran a test to connect to xbox live, and sure enough there was a problem, my NAT status had now gone from OPEN to STRICT, which means i will have connectivity issues and problems connecting with friends etc etc. i checked my router settings just in case they had returned to default for some reason, but no everything was A ok.
So as a last resort i rang VM tech support, and was connected to a nice english guy, i told him the issues i was having with xbox live and that i had checked my router settings, and he quickly defended VM buy saying we dont really support modifications outside the default settings of the router and issues with xbox would have to be taken up with them. i told him i was aware of this but could he check my UBR to see if there were any capacity issues.
before we did that, he told me to try the download from "blueyondergames" which showed my download speed drop from approx 7 meg and kept dropping like a stone untill it settled i think at just under 6 ish, but it was very unstable.
the guy from tech support was concerned this was a little slow for a 20 meg connection, and decided to check my UBR, well at first all went quiet, i then i heard him say "Oh that would explain it", what i asked, and he replied " your UBR is running over capacity approx 40% of the time" which would explain for the less than pristine connection.

when i asked what would happen next, i was told that this would be escellated, but in all honesty would be unlikely to get resolved untill jan or feb 2009, (at least he was honest).

in a wierd way i was pleased, because that would explain all my problems with fluctuating speeds and poor laggy gameplay.

the guy from tech sopport agreed to reduce the ammount i pay for the next couple of months, and said if it is not sorted within the next couple of months to get back in touch.

So there you have it, the root problem, an over subscribed network. ( what a camels toe!!!!!)

i am just glad i phoned in the evening, when demand would have been at its peak, otherwise this issue may have gone un noticed by tech support, as my speeds may have been higher at the time of the phone call.

So is this issue likely to get resolved in the suggested time frame or was i just being fed a line ???

Maybe some one

---------- Post added at 08:39 ---------- Previous post was at 08:35 ----------

would like to give there 2 penneth....

[southwell]

Well at least thats something. If i were you i would downgrade for the moment, unless your paying less than 10mb speeds.

[pabscars]

i am paying for a 20 meg, but not sure how much my account will get credited, untill the bill comes through, and given the fact that all i use my connection for is a little surfing, but mostly gaming i dont want to reduce my upload speed even further as this normally stays pretty consistent.

[pabscars]

anyone else noticed last night, played on cod 5 for half a dozen games last night, i played free for all, and managed to come first in 5 consequetive matches, then went immedietely onto cod4 and lagged pretty much all evening, i thought at one point it was because i,d been possibly STM,d but when id finished at approx 1;00 am, i did a speed test which showed i hadnt.
Maybe its a problem with the cod 4 servers and not VM?

Also noticed that i got a full 4 green bars on Cod5 but only 3 green on Cod4

anyone else experienced the same

[Uncle Peter]

Also noticed that i got a full 4 green bars on Cod5 but only 3 green on Cod4

anyone else experienced the same

That will be your ping to the game host so maybe the COD5 servers do a better job of matchmaking you with people who are closer to you (in terms of latency). That's the problem with peer-to-peer gaming though, it generates more problems than it solves.

[pabscars]

well if this is the case, i,m glad its better on Cod5 than Cod4, because no doubt i will be playing it most evening for the next 12 months.

i love cod4, and still think its a fantastic game after nearly 12 months of playing it, almost non stop, but its starting to get to so old now because of the lag, that i might just use it for target practice once cod5 is out on Friday, (BRING IT ON).

what about starting a thread on what best weapons combo to use on cod5 anyone

[smeagoly1]

one thing i noticed about the lag on cod4 on my adsl account...the lower the line connection speed the higher the ping! when i was on a constang 6meg it was brilliant to UK servers even for adsl. Then the line connection gets dropped to 2meg an latency goes up by an unplayable margin.

[lowei]

On cod 5 if you press the blue button on xbox 360,you can pick to search for local games;)

[pabscars]

yes i noticed that and what a good idea that is, dont know about anyone else, but i get a bit fed up with some of the american comments made towards the brits, anyway getting back on topic, last again for me was initially rediculous, as soon as i see 3 green bars i know gameplay will be ltd, so i fired up the laptop, logged onto router, and started having a play around just for the sake of it, given that everything on the router that could be opened was, namely port forwarding and triggering, xbox ip in a dmz, upnp enabled, firewall off, etc etc. my console still returned a Nat status of moderate, this is something that seems to happen regularly these days, and seemes to change to Open when it feels like it, so i took of all port forwarding/triggering, removed xbox from dmz, and rebooted the router.

i then ran the same test on the xbox to find out what the Nat status was, and it had indeed changed to Open, (what it should be).

this is something i dont understand, i put the router back into a more secure mode and it improved my Nat status ??????, i dont suppose anyone can shed any light onto it.

Also given as my router is V9, can it be flashed with an xbox live compatible firmware, if available, i have no clue how to do this myself, but i,m fast running out of ideas.

---------- Post added at 07:57 ---------- Previous post was at 07:55 ----------

apologies, where it says, LAST AGAIN FOR ME, it should read LAST NIGHT FOR ME,

[pabscars]

well finally i have some good news regarding my connection, but as yet dont know if it was a one off,

Last night and all night my connection on cod 5 via xbox was fantastic, good signal strength and even when it dropped to 2 red bars my gameplay didnt seem overly affected, it made for a pleasant evening rather than a frustrating one, i,m hoping VM's 50 meg trials in warrington (i,m on ubr 06 warr) have impacted on the quality of my 20 meg connection permanantly because if i continue to get the speeds i was getting last night and more importantly a good stable connection then i will be a very happy chap indeed,

i dont know if this is significant, but when i came off my xbox last night, i ran a few speed tests from numerous sites and each one showed my upload dropping from over 700 at the start of the test to just over 500 by the end, is this normal management or would it suggest i had hit the upload STM, or could it be limited due to the 50 meg trials ?

At the end of the day i dont give a monkeys as long as my connection stays as good as it did last night, so finally a thumbs up to VM from me, :)

fingers crossed this is the shape of things to come for other areas experiencing lag issues online

[pabscars]

after reading a previous thread on MTU values and reducing it to make certain applications run smoother, i thought i would nip home at lunchtime and have a play.

i booted up the pc, typed in the usual 192.168.1.1 and changed my mtu value from 1500 to 1400 on the vm supplied netgear router, just to see how my xbox performed on call of duty 5, now i dont know if this is a pure fluke or whether its connected, but the one match i played, i got 67 kills and 38 deaths ( i run around A LOT). which for me is the most kills ive ever got in my life.

has anyone had any similar experiences regarding changing MTU values,

Just to add as well, in the last 2 weeks my 20 meg line seems to have changed, and by changed i mean improved somewhat and does appear more consistent, but still gave me lag.
Ive also noticed that now when i do a speed test from speedtest.net, my location as its shown on the map has changed, and it says i,m 50 miles from London, when in fact its more like 200+ miles.
a few weeks ago before things changed it would always say i was 150 miles away, wierd. its almost as if i had moved my computer nearer to London....

i would be interested in any comments regarding this,

ps i still get the same down and upload speed even though ive reduced my MTU to 1400

[Noggo]

now i dont know if this is a pure fluke or whether its connected, but the one match i played, i got 67 kills and 38 deaths ( i run around A LOT). which for me is the most kills ive ever got in my life.

Fluke :D, must have been a lot of newbies playing!!

Ive also noticed that now when i do a speed test from speedtest.net, my location as its shown on the map has changed, and it says i,m 50 miles from London, when in fact its more like 200+ miles.
a few weeks ago before things changed it would always say i was 150 miles away, wierd. its almost as if i had moved my computer nearer to London....

i would be interested in any comments regarding this,

Has your VM IP address changed?

[pabscars]

Fluke :D, must have been a lot of newbies playing!!

you might be right :D, but i did have a match last night and got 69 kills, the whole night was laggy though, for me and my friends, so i,m just gonna have a play with different mtu values to see if i can find a sweet spot, the last mtu i tried was 1492, and not played online with that value yet, but when i went on Youtube it seemed to be streaming much better than normal.

Has your VM IP address changed?

to be honest noggo, ive not checked.... and i didnt take note of it before so i dont have anything to compare to, but since things have changed ive noticed the green send light on my ambit 256 is now flashing every 4 or 5 seconds consistenly, thats with nothing running on my network at all. I can only think that ive been re routed if this is possible.

where as before it used to flash every 30 seconds approx.

[Noggo]

As you use speedtest.net and look at your history (as long as you're been using it for a while). You lose your all tests done under your old IP address, that’s if it has changed.

Re: Send light consistently flashing every 4 or 5 seconds without anything knowingly running on the network. I done think it should be doing that. Mine doesn’t and has ever done any thing like before that, except on start up when XP goes through its updating.

[pabscars]

ok thanks noggo will check history on speedtest.net as ive used it for the past 3 months, to determine the condition of my line, before booting my xbox up

Re the send light flashing: is there a likelihood of it being logged in the modem log or is that just for updates and the such and is there anything i can actually alter from the modem pages apart from rebooting the modem, as thats all ive noticed so far

[Noggo]

Re: speedtest.net, what I meant by checking your result history is:


If you have all of your 3 month history is displayed, then your IP address hasn't recently changed.
If you find your history has vanished and only a few recent tests remain, then your IP address has changed (which would tie into the fact that speedtest has your location much closer to London than you actually are. I moved further away from London when my IP address changed).

[pabscars]

i nipped home at lunch and checked speedtest.net and sure enough it showed 5 different ip address's, all the previous 4 showed a connection via a server at maidenhead with a distance of 150 miles, but the latest ip address (the one i,m currently on) is via a server at London and a distance of 50 miles, and i can asure you i havent moved house :) not unless theres been a big land slide that i dont know about :) :)

i also had a quick look at the log on my modem page and there was nothing on there since 10.12.08

i dont know what all this means though,

much abliged for your help noggo