Game pings gone crazy

fozz

Hi all.
First up lemme tell ya my setup.
Have a PC with 2k server and connected to I-Stream (Basic package) and this connection is shared out to 3 other PC's via ICS. (This setup has worked fine for over a year).
From a few weeks back I've been experiencing this problem.
Basically, when I ping a lot of servers in, say, All Seeing Eye, the pings I am gettimng back are at best 1000+ and a huge amount just time out altogether.
They are also suffering massive packet loss (>50% and up).

Now, if the connection is mostly idle, my pings to webcache.eircom.net from my own PC are as follows:

C:\>ping webcache.eircom.net

Pinging webcache.indigo.ie [194.125.133.245] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 194.125.133.245: bytes=32 time=29ms TTL=251
Reply from 194.125.133.245: bytes=32 time=20ms TTL=251
Reply from 194.125.133.245: bytes=32 time=19ms TTL=251
Reply from 194.125.133.245: bytes=32 time=20ms TTL=251

Ping statistics for 194.125.133.245:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 19ms, Maximum = 29ms, Average = 22ms

This is all great
However, if I refresh a website page or, more dramaically, refresh a game server list in All Seeing Eye, the pings to the same address look like this:

C:\>ping webcache.eircom.net

Pinging webcache.indigo.ie [194.125.133.245] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 194.125.133.245: bytes=32 time=752ms TTL=251
Reply from 194.125.133.245: bytes=32 time=1159ms TTL=251
Reply from 194.125.133.245: bytes=32 time=1585ms TTL=251
Reply from 194.125.133.245: bytes=32 time=2196ms TTL=251

Ping statistics for 194.125.133.245:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 752ms, Maximum = 2196ms, Average = 1423ms

This is crazy!
That ping was run while I was pinging a load of game server and, as you can imagine, the pings to the game servers are around the same values at best!

I dunno what is going on here but it just seems that whenever there is ANY traffic on the I-Stream connection, it just loses packets all over the place.
Web browsing causes the occasional "request timed out" in the pings to the eircom proxy also and web browsing can be very slow.

Does anyone have any insight into what may be wrong here?

Note that my throughput is fine...i can download at 50+k/sec once a download starts!

Any and all info appreciated!

Cheers.:cool:

GUI

webcache.eircom.net
bad example to ping..

ping boards and jolt.co.uk

Gavin

Originally posted by GUI_XP
webcache.eircom.net
bad example to ping..

ping boards and jolt.co.uk

not really.. It shows that his problem is with the eircom network, and nothing external..

Gav

fozz

Ok, pinging out even further than the Eircom proxy is actually pointless as it brings in more variables but here you go anyway!

Pinging while the connection is idle:
C:\>ping www.boards.ie

Pinging www.boards.ie [217.114.166.147] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 217.114.166.147: bytes=32 time=23ms TTL=54
Reply from 217.114.166.147: bytes=32 time=26ms TTL=54
Reply from 217.114.166.147: bytes=32 time=179ms TTL=54
Reply from 217.114.166.147: bytes=32 time=22ms TTL=54

Ping statistics for 217.114.166.147:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 22ms, Maximum = 179ms, Average = 62ms

Pinging while refreshing lotsa game servers:
C:\>ping www.boards.ie

Pinging www.boards.ie [217.114.166.147] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 217.114.166.147: bytes=32 time=739ms TTL=54
Reply from 217.114.166.147: bytes=32 time=1177ms TTL=54
Reply from 217.114.166.147: bytes=32 time=1620ms TTL=54
Reply from 217.114.166.147: bytes=32 time=2360ms TTL=54

Ping statistics for 217.114.166.147:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 739ms, Maximum = 2360ms, Average = 1474ms

So, as expected, the results are the same.

The reason why I was pinging webcache.eircom.net is to demonstrate that the problem is indeed with either my local setup or with the I-Stream connection.

Clearly if the pings to Eircom are this bad the pings out beyond Eircom will be as bad or worse...

So anyone got any ideas?

bricks

Then we can see exactly where the 1000ms is being added on.

fozz

Ok, sorry yea, good idea!

Here they are:
Tracert to www.boards.ie with no load on the network:
C:\>tracert www.boards.ie

Tracing route to www.boards.ie [217.114.166.147]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.0.1
2 18 ms 16 ms 16 ms k100-1.bas1.dbn.dublin.eircom.net [159.134.100.1]
3 16 ms 18 ms 17 ms fe0-1.edge1.dbn.dublin.eircom.net [159.134.155.89]
4 35 ms 20 ms 19 ms atm4-0-39.peering1.inex.dublin.eircom.net [159.134.191.126]
5 19 ms 18 ms 116 ms fe0-0-brian.DUB.router.COLT.NET [193.1.208.204]
6 112 ms 23 ms 22 ms s1-0-0-acc-2.IE.COLT.NET [212.74.64.170]
7 39 ms 22 ms 22 ms 217.173.97.170
8 23 ms 22 ms 19 ms 217.114.160.43
9 24 ms 22 ms 22 ms www.boards.ie [217.114.166.147]

Trace complete.

Now, when I am pinging load of HalfLife servers at the same time, the tracert looks like this:
C:\>tracert www.boards.ie

Tracing route to www.boards.ie [217.114.166.147]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.0.1
2 845 ms 1296 ms 1744 ms k100-1.bas1.dbn.dublin.eircom.net [159.134.100.1]
3 2509 ms 3777 ms * fe0-1.edge1.dbn.dublin.eircom.net [159.134.155.89]
4 * * * Request timed out.
5 * * * Request timed out.
6 * * * Request timed out.
7 ^C

So the latency is being added well early....1st hop really.

I'm thinking there may be an issue with the PC that the ADSL box is connected to or with the ADSL box itself.

What ya reckon?

Kevok

You have to remember that when pinging game servers your computer is sending packets to several servers at once.

There should be a setting in ASE that lets you ping less servers at once, I have pathfinder set to use ISDN settings, this lets you get a better idea of the actual ping servers.

If you ping say 40 servers at once, you may find that the ping values are higher than they actually are.

And correct me if I'm mistaken but AFAIK the ping command uses the one port in and out. So it doesn't matter how much bandwidth you have, pinging in DOS and with a server query program will result in greater latency.

How is your ping in game?

fozz

The thing is, nothing has changed (famous words!) recently in our setup yet this problem just arose.
And in all my time with dialup and for over a year with ADSL I have never sen this issue....before I could refresh the whole HalfLife server list (thousands of servers) and the pings would come back starting at about 60ms and rising from there...now the "fastest" servers are over 1000ms!
This is just not right.

as for in game, I can play fine for a while (ping <100) but then all of a sudden I just timeout.

Actually, what has changed is that recently we switched I-stream packages (from I-Stream Solo to I-Stream Starter).
We were part of the trial and were on the €110 per month deal but now we aew on the €56 per month deal.
I can't say for sure if this issue correlated with this contract change with Eircom, but it's not far off......
Could that be an explanation?
If so then would not all people on the basic package with Eircom have the same issue?

No, there has to be something wrong with either our PC, ADSL box or the link to the Exchange...

Keep the ideas coming!

fozz

Hey all, just a post to ley ya know that the problem is now fixed!

I simply cleaned up the cabling around the server PC and ADSL box and (probably more significantly!) installed RASPPPoE (http://www.raspppoe.com/).

Am using this now to "dial-up" Eircom and the problem is solved....my All Seeing Eye pings now are back down starting in the 40's and going up from there.

Thanks to those who responded to this thread and I hope other poeple get help from this.

Take care all. :cool: