Online Gaming lag with Comcast?

[Gamer]

Anyone been experiencing a lot of lag and high ping times in the evening
with their cable internet? Ever since that worm hit my games have been
almost unplayable, and I know I don't the virus my machine is clear--I'm
trying to pin down the cause. It seems to be at peak times but I don't
remember it ever being this bad--my download speeds are like 20 k/sec and my
pings are like 300+ in BF1942 on all servers. Something is wrong--any
suggestions? Comcast keeps blaming it on the worm.

~J

 

[Lenroc]

Anyone been experiencing a lot of lag and high ping times in the evening
with their cable internet? Ever since that worm hit my games have been
almost unplayable, and I know I don't the virus my machine is clear--I'm
trying to pin down the cause. It seems to be at peak times but I don't
remember it ever being this bad--my download speeds are like 20 k/sec and my
pings are like 300+ in BF1942 on all servers. Something is wrong--any
suggestions? Comcast keeps blaming it on the worm.

Cable is a system with a shared bandwidth per neighborhood. Therefore if
everyone in your area is using their connections, your connection will
suffer. Generally, this will happen at peak times, like early evening.
Generally, lots of people are online in the evening. If your neighborhood
has enough bandwidth though, this "expected" peak isn't a problem. The
problem is that all the unpatched boxes in your neighborhood are spewing
worm-spawn into the network, so on top of all the valid traffic from people
using their computers, you've got a lot of worm traffic. The worm traffic is
there all the time, but it only affects your connection when everyone else
is also trying to use their connections.

So, in short, yeah, it's the worm's fault.

Only thing you can really "do" about it is use DSL, which is not shared
bandwidth.

HTH, HAND, etc...

 

[Steven Moyer]

I have Comcast High Speed (not the ultra high speed service now available)
broadband and I am located in Jacksonville, Florida USA, I have noticed
slow load times for some IPs. I normally always expeience the deadly
unplayable rubber band lag on 64 player EAUK servers. I know this issue is
due to routing, and the simple fact EA just has not been creating 64 player
games on EAUS servers. Don't anyone here tell me the rubber band lag is
caused by anything other than a net bottleneck because I have a good clean
running deck, good DirectX video and sound settings, and play BF with all
the graphic settings backed off except for detail (you have to leave this up
or some gunsights blur too much).

 

[med]

I do know what you mean about the "rubberband" effect, but that isn't what
I'm talking about. I'm talking about MY connection. I think it has to do
with peak usage but it has never been as acute as in the past few weeks. I'm
thinking about DSL but it is just so expensive for multiple computers.

No, it's only so expensive for multiple computers if you need to be able
to have incoming packets addressed to them specifically (i.e. if you can't
use an FTP in PASV mode, or other commands in other programs) There's a
thing called NAT that basically allows many computers to share an internet
connection transparently -- and unless your DSL provider's *REALLY* a
dick, it's not a big deal. It's not as bad as *gasp* hosting your own ftp
server or something.
But yeah, you usually see it implemented in "broadband routers" -- you
plug the ethernet from the dsl "modem" to the router, and you use
configuration tools on another machine to tell the router how to connect
(like PPPoE or whatnot) and how to let your computers connect (i.e. DHCP,
which is really the best because that way ip addresses are handed out
round-robin and it's all managed transparently by the Gateway (router).)
Anyway, that's what we use and as I'm typing this, my brother's playing BF
and my mother's on upstairs (three separate computers on three floors; a
hub and a router). On DSL.
So don't worry about not being able to share things amongst yourself. You
bought the line; as long as you're not altering the modem or connecting
two computers themselves to the line, it should be all good according to the AUP
(if you truly have to fight it).