Slayer of Hippies

Let me preface this by saying first, thanks for your time, and second, I've got a virus scanner running, and last but not least, I've disabled all network equipment on my LAN and the problem persists.

When I play NS, it works fine until I'm in a room with any other players (more players = worse, and it may extend to entities as well as players), my ping spikes into the hundreds or thousands (highest is 4k+), and then immediately goes back down in empty rooms.

The ping spikes correlate with a ping google.com -t on the command prompt of my gaming computer, but no ping variance occurs on any other hosts on my network running a parallel ping at the same time.

Now it gets weird. When I'm in fullscreen mode or when the windowed NS game has focus, the ping problems occur. When I hit my windows key or alt+tab out of windowed mode, the ping problems stop, and the game runs perfectly (spectator mode) until I click on the window again, in which case, the ping problems occur again on the immediate host.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks again for your time.

Turbinator

ns is the only game it happens to?

if yes, have u reinstalled ns?

if no and other games experience same lag spikes, and same issue with dl'ing files from the net, the following possibilities of: nic drivers, isp modem, or isp is doing some upgrades in ur area.

Did the problem start all of a sudden, or after installing app/game MS update patch?

Also ur thread will get more views/possible solutions in hardware section of TG
forums .

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Wyzcrak

I feel too dumb to help here, but some ideas:

How's your memory usage during these times?

Hardware temperatures?

Seems like I had a problem like this once upon a time, but damn if I can remember what was causing it.

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Darkilla: In short, NS is pretty much really fast chess. With guns. Apophis: I haven't seen anyone say that SM's are better than non-SMs. Nordbomber: This is THE first server I've seen where either side can comeback from out of seemingly nowhere with the right teamwork. en4rcment: I have NEVER experienced the type of gameplay that I have found here. Nightly I am amazed at the personalities and gaming talent. Root: Welcome to TG. Feel free to punctuate your sentences correctly. Monkerz: Its gonna take all my skills to beat those boys off in the future.

Slayer of Hippies

Nope.

Reinstalled.

Rebooted.

Called. Sending help.

See bottom.

Didn't think this fit in hardware, since it feels softwareish. Moving it might be a moot point now though.

Haven't checked.

Installed motherboard monitor and aside from the third sensor reading 127 degrees celsius (and not going up or down during ns play) the other two were at 40some and 60some which should be okay iirc.

Well I disabled Sygate firewall and that seems to have fixed it (or the planets just aligned right when I happened to do it - take your pick) I haven't tested to see if it was what caused it, but I do remember having problems with sygate in the past after installing microsoft activesync 4.5 - this version of activesync was new and decided to install a hotfix so that i didn't have to hack my registry to change the default mtu size to get around sygate in order to sync (that was fun to figure out the first time). I think that hotfix probably borked sygate since they didn't play well together to begin with.

Can anyone reccomend a new software firewall?

Wyzcrak

Glad to see you've found what you think is a solution! I always get nervous when I think I've solved something, as I'm always afraid the problem's going to suddenly pop up again.

I can't recommend a software firewall, but I do recommend you hitting up your Hardware/Software forum:

http://www.tacticalgamer.com/hardwar...re-discussion/

Lots of knowledgeable people there who will know a LOT about software routers.

I /can/ talk about hardware consumer routers, all of which have firewalls built into them, if you ever decide you're ready to spend $100ish to make your PC firewall life much easier.

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Darkilla: In short, NS is pretty much really fast chess. With guns. Apophis: I haven't seen anyone say that SM's are better than non-SMs. Nordbomber: This is THE first server I've seen where either side can comeback from out of seemingly nowhere with the right teamwork. en4rcment: I have NEVER experienced the type of gameplay that I have found here. Nightly I am amazed at the personalities and gaming talent. Root: Welcome to TG. Feel free to punctuate your sentences correctly. Monkerz: Its gonna take all my skills to beat those boys off in the future.

micr0c0sm

Here's a slightly annoying solution that might be worth it: create a new user just for gaming. Logout of your normal user and relogin as the games user where you disable as much as possible (including services and such).

Another way to look at where the exact problem is would be to check out the system event log, somewhere in 'administrative tasks' or however its called.

Yoshi MCF

I use Computer Associates Personal Firewall because my ISP gives it out free, and I've never had a problem with it in NS. Starcraft over LAN is a different story.

Before that, I used ZoneAlarm -
http://www.zonealarm.com/store/conte...try=US&lang=en
which I also never had trouble with in NS.

Turbinator

norton, never had an issue, MS and norton go hand in hand, in a sense that pre patches post patches norton has not failed me. Used it since win2k.

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Yoshi MCF

I don't know about their firewall, but I've heard bad things about their virus scanner - it noticeably slows down your computer, it doesn't protect against many viruses (since it's so popular, everyone tests their viruses against it), and it's harder than most viruses to get rid of if your subscription runs out or you want to switch.

Dr. Pepper PhD.

I have actually found a good use in Nvidia ActiveArmor firewall... When used in junction with ms firewall it works extremely well for my purposes. It came with my motherboard but I am sure there is an available copy out there.(see bottom for only downside)

Also my comment on norton... I loved it with a subscription... or if you have a enterprise edition (WPAFB take home copy for families)... but without the subscription it is useless yet disabling it in the startup is actually easier than most people understand... msconfig>services tab>hide all microsoft services>disable all usually does it for me

As far as performance goes, I would recommend a smaller app than norton because it will from time to time do random scans that bork your comps resources when it doesnt recognize that you are actually using them

Another place you might look is video drivers... i know it sound unlikely as it is a network side ping but i recall hearing something about an nvidia driver borked pings a while back... a huge possibility is you are using about 3 different programs that when used in unison also bork your comp and its resources... see bittorrent/wmp/nvidia activearmor firewall

Slayer of Hippies

Really the only problem I had with it was after microsoft broke it (for the second time). I would rather banish the microsoft products off my computer, but that's not feasible right now.

Anybody heard anything about Kerio?

lush

The best software firewall is one that doesn't get installed. They are vicious resource hogs.

Any router running NAT is more than secure so long as you keep your system free of virus/spyware.

Sirusblk

Yes I've heard of Kerio, my 30 day trial was the best 30 days of my life in dealing with my PC. I like the fact that they'll stop ads from loading on web pages. No blocking it out, it's all automatic. This was just the icing on the cake. I really wish I had the money at the time to buy the full version. I might go back and buy it now

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ImAWuss

Software firewalls are horrible. The only time I would reccomend one on a home pc is if your plugged directly into your ISP's modem. Typicaly routers allow all outgoing connections, and block incoming. That is unless you've fowarded ports or configured yourself on the DMZ.

Sirusblk, as far as ads go, I use the Firefox plugin called Adblock Plus. It works great, and has a ad definition auto update. Works great.

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birdie_in_Texas:ok..i feel stupid here..what is "NS"..? Wyzcrak:Natural Selection. Don't feel at a loss for not knowing the acronym. Feel at a loss for not having experienced the game.

Sirusblk

My experience with Adblock Plus has been right clicking on an ad in a webpage and saying block ad. And as far as I know it doesn't result in the page loading any faster, with Kerio it was like night and day difference, it automatically blocked ads, no user input needed, and made the page load a lot faster. Basically I could load a web page in a matter of 2 seconds over Dial Up.

My experience with Adblock Plus was a long time ago though so please correct me if I'm wrong

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