Issues with NTL & WOW

Shougeki

I was thinking of putting this in the Comms section, but reckon this is the more relevant place to put it.

When im playing warcaft on NTL, i get these weird disconnects. It isnt consistent, and i can go days without it happening, and then sometimes it happens multiple times a day. here are the symptops:

Hardware - Dell D630, 4Gb RAM, Broadcom NIC, Intel 3945ABG Wireless. Connected to a WRT54G. Tried two of these, one running stock the other running ddwrt.

1. The network breaks. Either wired or wirelessly, in the docking station or not. ipconfig doesnt work. Releasing and renewing doesnt work. Repairing doesnt work. Stopping one (eg Wireless) and trying to use LAN doesnt work.

2. I have reinstalled the machine 3 times in the last 9 months.

3. I have changed a lot of parts with other spares at work. Even changed the board at one point.

4. All this points at the NTL connection.

However when this started happening i had been using a Dell D410 or D420, and that worked fine, so i assumed it has hardware related. Now im not too sure.

Another thing i notice is i see audio stuttering before it DCs. Sometimes a couple of times, and then the connection will go down.


Anyone seen anything remotely like it, or have any comments?

Nehaxak

Fair few people have had problems similar to this with UPC/NTL recently enough, myself included.

Use OpenDNS for your DNS servers and open a free account with them so you can log if there's any malware activity or similar coming to/from your IP at all, just to be sure.

I've not had any problems with the UPC connection at all since changing to the OpenDNS DNS servers, other than when it goes totally down, which is rare.

Shougeki

Thing is this has been happening for months. But i have other machines on the network that are not affected at all. They keep running, for example if im streaming sport....

Still think OpenDNS may resolve it?

m5ex9oqjawdg2i

UPC are rubbish, 15mb my arse... The downloads are fine, but everything else sucks monkey balls. Web browsing shouldn't be this slow on a 15mb line. Constant DC's from online games... Their service is a joke. Broadband in Ireland is a joke.

BostonB

Same issue here with NTL and COD4.

Noxin

No problems at all here with my UPC line.

If you can, try installing wow on another laptop hooked up to your network and see if it gets the disconnects. If both are getting it you can pin it down to the UPC line or Router.

Silly question but have you updated the laptops drivers? Not just from dell but from the makers own site?

Shougeki

I forgot to add that i have to reset my computer to get it to work again on the network.

BostonB - do you have to reboot also to restore network connectivity?

Iamxavier - I have a pretty stable line. I stream sports etc, while playing wow, and that machine stays live. And my webpages are never slow.

Noxin - Im gonna possibly have access to another laptop that can actually play wow over the weekend and will give it a try. however this is my second D630 this is happening on.

I have tried various drivers for both Wireless and wired, both dell and Intel / Broadcom.

I have even set the MTU settings on my router to 1650 (I think - At work now). Ive just seen a post on the wow forums about setting the MTU to 1400, so maybe i have it set to that...

BostonB

I've a bunch of different laptops, phones, ipods all connected to it, sometimes wired, usually wireless makes no difference. With router or direct to modem. No difference. It disconnects for about 2~3 mins then reconnects itself. Does it every few hours, sometimes it might keep doing it for an hour or so. So you give up on using the net. But usually its very random. Its annoying because sometimes when you need to do something like book at ticket it doesn't work. Or your almost at the end of a hour game and you get a disconnect and lose your score.

The other problems I've had are the pings can vary enormously, and even when you get good ping, you some times get slowdown in online games for no reason I can see. Obviously that makes VOIP unusable to as like games it requires a predictable response time. None of this is reflected in most of the online speed test. So I don't know what is going on. The problems are worse at peak times, so I probably have high contention in my area, and perhaps some line quality problems specific to my house or area.

I gave up a long time ago trying to get NTL to look into it. I've haven't tried with UPC. Well I emailed them but got no response. I've been dithering about dropping it altogether for ages.

Shougeki

Well all my devices except the machine playing WOW stay connected, and working. Even the machine playing wow will stay connected fine, if im not playing, and sometimes i leave wow connected for hours when i decide to go to sleep without logging off and its fine.

Its only *sometimes* this happens. Very sporadic. Different times of day, different places in wow, different ping times etc.

BostonB

Thats a different problem to me so. It doesnt sound like NTL related.

Shougeki

Ye thats what i was convinced. So i swapped my laptop a while back with one of the spares we had at work, same model.

Same issue.

Its not as bad as it could be. DCs happen a couple of times. What really wrecks my head is having to reboot the laptop....

Nehaxak

Yeah, reading a bit more from what you posted now it doesn't sound like a UPC problem at all, more likely something to do with that PC or it's network card.
Have you a spare network card you can throw in that computer to use, and see if it helps ?

In fairness to UPC, even though I have been getting the full 30Mb speed since I signed up with them, they sent me a letter today saying they were giving me half price broadband for the next 2 months due to problems I was having, which I haven't been having at all, suits me fine though, won't complain about that

Shougeki

Nehaxak wrote: »

Yeah, reading a bit more from what you posted now it doesn't sound like a UPC problem at all, more likely something to do with that PC or it's network card.
Have you a spare network card you can throw in that computer to use, and see if it helps ?

Two different versions of the same model laptop - D630. Going to try a D620 this weekend hopefully.

Nehaxak wrote: »

In fairness to UPC, even though I have been getting the full 30Mb speed since I signed up with them, they sent me a letter today saying they were giving me half price broadband for the next 2 months due to problems I was having, which I haven't been having at all, suits me fine though, won't complain about that

I complained i never a got a wireless modem and they knocked 20€ a month off my bill for 4 or 5 months so i could go buy one myself.... :P

I might not be getting full 30, but def 24+ most of the time, even 6-9pm in the evenings....


TBH i really need to go buy a laptop for gaming, with a proper graphics card anyways....

Nehaxak

Just a thought, it's not some crappy advanced power saving setting kicking in at all and knocking you offline is it ?

Shougeki

Pretty sure everything is OFF when its plugged in or what ever the equivalent is.

Its a weird on tbh and has been going on since last year sometime. I posted on the wow forums, but was ignored at the time. as usual.

Nehaxak

Just double check to be sure, go to the advanced power saving settings and make sure your network card (wired and wireless) are set for maximum performance.

If they are and it's still happening, look around at the other power saving setting for other peripherals on your computer, like USB an stuff, set all them to max performance, no power savings at all. Basically just make sure no power savings at all are active and see then if that helps at all.

Kiith

UPC 10meg here in the city center and i've never had any trouble with it.

copeyhagen

im the same, 20meg ntl. downloads / uploads are fantastic but every other day i get disconnects, could be one, could happen over and over.

tanking in wow was always a bit touch and go!!

aligator_am

Shougeki wrote: »

Ye thats what i was convinced. So i swapped my laptop a while back with one of the spares we had at work, same model.

Same issue.

Its not as bad as it could be. DCs happen a couple of times. What really wrecks my head is having to reboot the laptop....

When you say ipconfig doesn't work, what's the exact message that appears onscreen? I sometimes get random DCs with my ISP (BT / Vodafone) and generally through WoW, the rest of the web will be working fine, it's incredibly annoying as it can happen in raids and I'm usually assigned as raid healer (resto druid) =/

settings

im using UPC and i have to say its very smooth, i think its the 10mbps (the mid range) and apart from the rare spike im happy with it.

Shougeki

aligator_am wrote: »

When you say ipconfig doesn't work, what's the exact message that appears onscreen? I sometimes get random DCs with my ISP (BT / Vodafone) and generally through WoW, the rest of the web will be working fine, it's incredibly annoying as it can happen in raids and I'm usually assigned as raid healer (resto druid) =/

Ben a while since i checked. Ill wait till next time it happens and then ill update this.

BTW the MTU setting was set to 1450. I set it to 1500, and still getting DCs. The more i think about this im figuring it must be either the laptop, the AV or VPN software. [It is a work laptop after all :P]

CamomileCurt

"Dell D630, 4Gb RAM" - that seems a reasonable work spec to me; any jobs going there?!

Shougeki

CamomileCurt wrote: »

"Dell D630, 4Gb RAM" - that seems a reasonable work spec to me; any jobs going there?!

Would you believe its not actually good enough. Our developers need to run WAS/DB2/Oracle/WLS/Eclipse/RSM and more, but we havent validated our software vs 64bit win7 yet. Then they should be coming with 8GB :P

But being the lowly unix admin, i dont really using anything except outlook, ssh, firefox and winamp!


Anyways i got a Dell620 with win7 installed im gonna try over the weekend. Hopefully migrating to a new machine wont f**k up my addons

Nehaxak

Shougeki wrote: »

Hopefully migrating to a new machine wont f**k up my addons

It shouldn't, just copy across the whole Wow folder and that's it, everything should be fine with addons/settings etc., all intact and working as normal.

Shougeki

Nehaxak wrote: »

It shouldn't, just copy across the whole Wow folder and that's it, everything should be fine with addons/settings etc., all intact and working as normal.

worked a charm./ then I HS'd to dalaran and it repeatedly crashed with wow errors. Deleeted cahce and WTF and it go in fine, but ALL my addons were screwed. copied back the original two folders and all is working.

So where in cache or WTF does it keep the addons settings?

--

The machine i have moved to is a D620 running Win7 [thought id try it out] and it seems to be working much smoother (no DCs last night but then again ive had days before when there were no DCs). However now im getting screen flickers randomly which are distracting, but that looks like a whole different issue.

I really just got to bite the bullet soon and buy a gaming laptop. :P

Nehaxak

It's just the WTF folder, the cache you can empty every now and again if you wish. It just holds, er, a cache of stuff rather than it requesting it from the server all the time.

In the WTF folder, there's settings for your account, on each server, for every toon. Just keep a backup of that whole folder somewhere and you'll be fine if things go wrong again.

The main thing for me with addons is the button/shortcut assignments between toons or when updating addons (or a new patch comes out that fecks them all up). I get around this mess by setting assignments via the keymap in wow rather than through any addon itself. This means the button assignments/shortcuts work across all my characters and even if I remove or use new addons, they'll still work, regardless of any other settings.
Bags, recount, omen and other stuff are easily setup again if things go wrong, it's just the keymaps that can be an absolute arse to go through everytime.

Oh and macro's, there's a file in your WTF folder that holds all your macro's.

Anti

are you getting more then 3fps on that new laptop

Shougeki

Anti wrote: »

are you getting more then 3fps on that new laptop

It was 0.9 - 2 in ICC last week, and i was still doing way more damage than you, even on non-FOK fights. So shut it :P

I only have really low frame rates in raids, but it feels better already. Tonights raid will tell.

Anti

Pft yeah. Just because you outgear me. But hey atleast your not mort who seems to die from everything.

Shougeki

Stayed up all last night on a D620 with win7. Was even getting 8-15 FPS in ICC10. Dont think its usually that high. however still getting the screen flashes which are quite annoying, but then again didnt have time to much about with graphics settings before raiding.

the more im thinking about it now, the more im realising every time i was getting DC'd on the D630 (winXP), it was proceeded by sound issues. I have a feeling its the soundcard/driver. gonna try this later in the week.

Anti

The d620's and d630's are fairly decent machine for reliability. I used to deal with them alot when working in microsoft. We did have some issues with them on windows7 way back when. Try updating every single driver, including wifi, bluetooth and all the other little niggly things you wouldn't expect to cause issues. Also, drop me a PM with your maximum budget you could spend on a cheap gaming pc and ill price one up here for you.