Curse

Principa Discordia · Jun 11, 2005, 11:10 PM // 23:10

Hi there guys and girls. It seems that, for once, I am the one with a computer problem and I'm turning to you for some help.

When I'm playing games, be it Guild Wars or any other game, I tend to have music or something downloading in the background. Recently, however, I've noticed that while doing so I get absolutely terrible performance in Guild Wars.

When this happens I mainly experience lots of good old-fashioned warping coupled with slow load-rendering at viewing distance, and I'm pretty sure these are related as I'm guessing the client actually streams all the stuff rather than storing it locally.

Now, what's really weird about this is that it happens when my filesharing applications (Bittorrent in particular) download at over 60Kb/s. "Well it could just be that you're out of bandwidth", I hear you say, but unfortunately I'm on a cable line with twice that throughput. I'm pretty sure Guild Wars doesn't need 60Kb/s all to itself, as it's playable on a dial-up connection.

Other than my connection, I can think of absolutely nothing else wrong. I've performed all the usual drama involving my processor, RAM, graphics card, motherboard, BIOS, cables, firewalls etc. I'm also not currently using a router, so that's also not an issue here.

I'm going to call my ISP on Monday, but the only thing I can think of is that somehow my Guild Wars has suddenly become very bandwidth-hungry. If anyone has any other ideas, I'd be very happy to hear them.

Thanks in advance.

cannonfodder · Jun 12, 2005, 08:44 AM // 08:44

Try and use something like netlimiter, do a google for it, it enables you to share bandwidth between programs..

But i've not used it myself though i have heard it is a pretty good utility

Principa Discordia · Jun 12, 2005, 09:47 AM // 09:47

I don't think that will help because I already limit my download speed in Bittorrent and SoulSeek to 60Kb/s, that's half of my bandwidth.

It seriously seems like Guild Wars, at least for me, suddenly needs 60Kb/s all to itself (the other half of my bandwidth), and that shouldn't be happening because Guild Wars is supposedly playable on dial-up which would mean it only needs 3-6Kb/s.

I'm planning to submit a ticket to Arenanet via the Guild Wars support page, but I'm going to call my ISP tomorrow before I do that.

Any more ideas though? Anybody? (Serafita?

)

Edit: I should also note that I have no trouble downloading two files at 60Kb/s each, it's seemingly only Guild Wars that has a problem sharing bandwidth.

cannonfodder · Jun 12, 2005, 10:55 AM // 10:55

Good point, I also have had problems, but never really thought that much about it till now, It has to be GW using all the bandwidth, I have 4meg broadband and have noticed lag and jerkiness when using bit tornado, It could also be the bit torrent....

If you find the answer could you let me know, the same applies if I find a solution

EDIT - just thinking back to last night when I was online with GW, near the top of screen with the minimize, maximize, close buttons there sometimes is an indicator like a lightning bolt that give a connection speed, IIRC it was at 256kbs or there abouts, but that was on a 4meg line, if you can check, but it only appears briefly

Principa Discordia · Jun 12, 2005, 11:04 AM // 11:04

Quote:

Originally Posted by cannonfodder

Good point, I also have had problems, but never really thought that much about it till now, It has to be GW using all the bandwidth, I have 4meg broadband and have noticed lag and jerkiness when using bit tornado, It could also be the bit torrent....

You know what's funny? I'm using Bittornado as my BT client too.

I'd easily make the connection here between two Bittornado clients having the same problem, but mine is literally using only 60Kb/s bandwidth. You can hard-cap it in the software options, which I usually do so that I can go and download something else without hassle if the mood takes me.

Just doesn't seem to like Guild Wars though, or Guild Wars doesn't like it. I'll try a different BT client today and see if there's any performance increase.

cannonfodder · Jun 12, 2005, 11:08 AM // 11:08

Quote:

Originally Posted by Principa Discordia

You know what's funny? I'm using Bittornado as my BT client too.

I'd easily make the connection here between two Bittornado clients having the same problem, but mine is literally using only 60Kb/s bandwidth. You can hard-cap it in the software options, which I usually do so that I can go and download something else without hassle if the mood takes me.

Just doesn't seem to like Guild Wars though, or Guild Wars doesn't like it. I'll try a different BT client today and see if there's any performance increase.

Cool, let me know mate, I have more than enough bandwidth to share, but GW doesn't seem to like to share....We could have a conspiracy at work here

Ellestar · Jun 12, 2005, 12:34 PM // 12:34

Solution is simple: never download anything when you're playing ANY online games. I thought that it's a common knowledge...

Games don't need a lot of bandwidth, but if their packets will be significantly delayed (when your channel is busy with downloading), you'll experience a serious lags.
I'm not sure how close this test is to reality, but try to ping some site with "ping -t -l 1000 <site url>" when you download something and when you don't. You'll see a huge difference in both average and maximum ping.

Try to set a download limit to 20% of the channel speed.

Lazarus · Jun 12, 2005, 12:46 PM // 12:46

Principa Discordia,

I am willing to bet my bottom dollar that the lag you are having is caused by the uploading of data from BT. As I am sure you know, almost all broadband connections have a greater down speed that up speed. The more seeds and peers you connect to, the more of your limited UL speed is used to maintain a TCP/IP connection. This is standard overhead for any connection, and it adds up fast. I would suggest that you try limiting the number of connections you maintain in BT, as well as the amount of UL bandwidth they use, and see if that helps.

Lazarus

Principa Discordia · Jun 12, 2005, 01:07 PM // 13:07

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ellestar

Solution is simple: never download anything when you're playing ANY online games. I thought that it's a common knowledge...

It is, hence why I limit my download speed with Bittornado to 60Kb/s. That leaves me with a more than comfortable 60Kb/s downstream left-over for gaming or for other downloads when not gaming. I should also add that this is the first time I've ever had performance hits in any online game while downloading at half my bandwidth allowance, and I regularly play FPSs and MMOs alike.

Also, I just tried setting BT at lower speeds while playing for an hour or so, and it seems that the actual speed at which it interferes with Guild Wars is around 45Kb/s, not 60Kb/s as I originally estimated.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ellestar

I'm not sure how close this test is to reality, but try to ping some site with "ping -t -l 1000 <site url>" when you download something and when you don't. You'll see a huge difference in both average and maximum ping.

According to Guild Wars (-perf operator) my ping is around 900 at the moment. That's wether I am downloading on BT or not. 900 is a very high ping for me, as I'm used to between 20 and 60 when gaming online (yes even in MMOs), but it's still not enough to cause this massive performance hit.

Edit: Heh, I actually read the thing incorrectly as it measures in seconds and not miliseconds. Seems my ping in Guild Wars is actually steady between 90 and 110 and that's when in a city, seems to be between 30 and 40 when in the instanced wilderness.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lazarus

I am willing to bet my bottom dollar that the lag you are having is caused by the uploading of data from BT. As I am sure you know, almost all broadband connections have a greater down speed that up speed. The more seeds and peers you connect to, the more of your limited UL speed is used to maintain a TCP/IP connection. This is standard overhead for any connection, and it adds up fast. I would suggest that you try limiting the number of connections you maintain in BT, as well as the amount of UL bandwidth they use, and see if that helps.

Actually, I already thought of this and I am guilty as charged as being a leecher on BT.

With the Bittornado client I always limit my maximum upload speed to 3Kb/s shared by two outgoing connections.

Thanks for the input guys, but I've thought through ping, packet loss, and upload speed already and I came up trumps. There's either something I'm missing, or it's a problem with my ISP (which wouldn't surprise me, to be honest.)

Principa Discordia · Jun 12, 2005, 04:58 PM // 16:58

Update: It seems that Guild Wars is not the only program suffering anymore when I'm downloading, Internet Explorer is now doing the same thing despite me only being at 50% bandwidth capacity. I'm going to call my ISP tomorrow, I'm pretty convinced now that the problem lies there.

Eluril · Jun 12, 2005, 05:36 PM // 17:36

Part of it will be that people will be trying to connect to your BT client even if you are already at your cap.

If I'm running Azureus and have download/upload capped at 5kb/sec (I have a 2Mb down, 758kb up DSL line), then my network performance goes to hell.

If I run a tracert to my ISPs web-pages, then the timings look like

<1ms to my router
1500ms to the 1st hop of my ISP

As soon as I exit Azureus, the timings drop to

<1ms to my router
12ms to the 1st hop of my ISP

Azureus only adds to the latency, if I try downloading something - once I've finally managed to get to the web-page, I get download speeds of about 180KB/sec.

Principa Discordia · Jun 12, 2005, 06:13 PM // 18:13

Yeah, but it's never been a problem before. My line has always been able to handle whatever number of incoming and outgoing connections I've required without a single problem. So I'm guessing something is wrong on my ISP's server end that's clogging up my line somehow, or the sneaky so-and-so's have imposed a stealth cap. Unfortunately I can't find out until tomorrow.

Eluril · Jun 12, 2005, 06:42 PM // 18:42

Now that I think about it, its only started happening to me badly in the last 2-3 weeks.

I notice you're in the UK too - is this DSL or Cable ? If DSL what ISP ? I'm with PlusNET atm.

I'm wondering if it may have something to do with BT rolling out the speed upgrades ?

Principa Discordia · Jun 12, 2005, 07:02 PM // 19:02

I am in the UK yes, and I'm on a 1Mbit cable connection provided by Blueyonder (Telewest).

Also, yet another update... I just ran a speed test of my line online (not exactly 100% accurate I know) and found that my line is performing about as well as a 512k line. That would explain why Guild Wars is running so crap when I'm downloading at 60Kb/s.

I'm going to call my ISP tomorrow and flip the hell out.

Edit: Just ran 35 individual tests and it seems that it's varying in performance between 50% and 75% of its normal speed. This is just not on.

Principa Discordia · Jun 16, 2005, 11:22 AM // 11:22

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dirkiess

As for trying to help you Principa, I won't even insult your intelligence by trying to help you as I know you know what you are doing.

Any input you have is helpful, Dirk. Don't worry about insulting my intelligence. I am only human, after all, and bound to miss something sooner or later.

I think I got my problem figured out anyway, no clear answer from my ISP but my connection is lagging down to 50%-70% of its usual speed quite often according to speed tests.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dirkiess

Could be why he isn't on, maybe his Network connection has fallen over all together.

Didn't think of that.

Let's hope he can let us know.

Dirkiess · Jun 16, 2005, 11:32 AM // 11:32

Quote:

Originally Posted by Principa Discordia

Any input you have is helpful, Dirk. Don't worry about insulting my intelligence. I am only human, after all, and bound to miss something sooner or later.

I think I got my problem figured out anyway, no clear answer from my ISP but my connection is lagging down to 50%-70% of its usual speed quite often according to speed tests.

Didn't think of that.

Let's hope he can let us know.

Which ISP are you using and what Router/ADSL setup do you have?

Must admit though, I was playing last night, and I haven't experienced any problems up until last night. I was getting lag spikes where the game would keep chugging and then carry on again and this was while I was out questing, on my own with henchies.
Didn't get much of a problem with it, as I was able to carry on ok, but does seem a little iffy. I run in the American Districts but i live in the UK.

Does seem like this could well be a network problem with GW, as this is the first time I have experienced any issues on my PC with regards to GW.

My friends PC still has problems and I have a few ideas. One is, I think the PSU may well be at fault, as everything has been changed now except the HDD and PSU. I swapped out the HDD with a spare i had and still had problems in the machine. I have a few higher spec PSU's lying around so may well swap it out and see what happens.

If that fixes the problem then I can get the PC COmpany to come out and swap the PSU over. Don't want them taking the PC away as it's only thing really left to do, even though they have Support on site.

Principa Discordia · Jun 16, 2005, 11:43 AM // 11:43

I'm using a 1Mbit connection called "Blueyonder", provided by a company called Telewest here in northern England.

As for my setup, at the moment I'm not even really using one. I have an ethernet lead connecting my cable modem directly into my NIC (a Realtek RTL8139 Family PCI Fast Ethernet NIC).

Dirkiess · Jun 16, 2005, 11:53 AM // 11:53

Quote:

Originally Posted by Principa Discordia

I am in the UK yes, and I'm on a 1Mbit cable connection provided by Blueyonder (Telewest).

Also, yet another update... I just ran a speed test of my line online (not exactly 100% accurate I know) and found that my line is performing about as well as a 512k line. That would explain why Guild Wars is running so crap when I'm downloading at 60Kb/s.

I'm going to call my ISP tomorrow and flip the hell out.

Edit: Just ran 35 individual tests and it seems that it's varying in performance between 50% and 75% of its normal speed. This is just not on.

Principa, this may well be worth a check. My friend runs Blueyonder, and before I first got it setup for them, there machine was running fine.
Then when I went ahead and installed the software, I didn't have any Firewall or Virus software installed at the time and this is what I found.

There was a program that was hogging all the resources, and I mean all the resources. THe machine ran like a pig. At first I couldn't work out what was going on, and as it was a new build machine straight from the supplier, I decided to rebuild as I normally do with new builds and start from scratch.

Everything was fine, then installed BY and the exact same thing happened again. It was also the same program hogging the resources as before.

Couldn't get rid of it, as I had no idea what it was, and spyware didn't find anything, so had to rebuild yet again.

This time, I installed the virus and firewall software before installing BY. This worked, and that so called program wasn't installed, so I can only assume it was some sort of BY Spyware or something that was getting through there system and being installed in the background.

I can't remember what the program was now, but it was located in the Root of C:.
Have a look at your performance and see if there are any programs that are hogging the resources from the C: drive.

I know it's a long shot, but worth a look.

Another option, do you install the BY software? If so, uninstall the BY software as it's not needed to get BY working. I run my friends machine without this software being installed and still get connection to BY.
This software is only there to access email and BY services from the PC instead of there Website.

One last thing to check. Get Telewest to check the frequencies on the cable line. If you have any issues here, this will hit your connection big time, and could explain the drop in speed. I know with NTL, we had frequency problems and the Cable TV just kept falling over.
They set the frequency to the correct settings, and it's been fine ever since.

I run BT Yahoo on Phone line, so I don't have any problems there, but thought that may help you out on the cable front.

Principa Discordia · Jun 16, 2005, 12:19 PM // 12:19

I used to be on BT myself, quality service. A little pricey though.

As for my connection, I've tried a ton of stuff now and I'm just getting a headache. I've messed with all the settings, tried opening GW and BT ports in the firewall (already opened them though), tried running without a firewall, and I even disconnected my 20ft of ethernet cable and spread it all over my living room looking for kinks. Also checked the drivers for my NIC and the physical surface of the NIC for problems, nothing.

As for Blueyonder, I really wish that were the problem, but I'm not even using their software.

I'm using a direct LAN connection set up with Windows by my NIC card, as a rule I never install an ISP's junk program.

I think it falls down to a problem with Blueyonder's damn pipes or their servers, but I can't get a simple answer out of their staff whatsoever. It's bad enough their service has an unrealistic 16Kb/s upload cap (not related to BT anyone, don't try, I upload to BT at 3Kb/s) but it's also not reliable.

Dirkiess · Jun 16, 2005, 12:40 PM // 12:40

Quote:

Originally Posted by Principa Discordia

I used to be on BT myself, quality service. A little pricey though.

As for my connection, I've tried a ton of stuff now and I'm just getting a headache. I've messed with all the settings, tried opening GW and BT ports in the firewall (already opened them though), tried running without a firewall, and I even disconnected my 20ft of ethernet cable and spread it all over my living room looking for kinks. Also checked the drivers for my NIC and the physical surface of the NIC for problems, nothing.

As for Blueyonder, I really wish that were the problem, but I'm not even using their software.

I'm using a direct LAN connection set up with Windows by my NIC card, as a rule I never install an ISP's junk program.

I think it falls down to a problem with Blueyonder's damn pipes or their servers, but I can't get a simple answer out of their staff whatsoever. It's bad enough their service has an unrealistic 16Kb/s upload cap (not related to BT anyone, don't try, I upload to BT at 3Kb/s) but it's also not reliable.

Have you asked BY to come out and check your Frequencies on the cable line?
We thought it was just our NTL Cable box was just over heating and falling over. When they came out and checked the frequencies, we found for some reason they had changed yet again, even though they had been out before and done the same thing, when we last had a problem with the box.

As for the Cat 5, have you tried a shorter cable?