wifi + game = no wifi

[cc]z@nd! · Post by **[cc]z@nd!** » Wed Mar 14, 2007 12:05 pm

so i've moved into my dad's house, and after confusion when i tried to set up the wireless (one of our laptops doesn't support WPA, which i tried to use) he went ahead and did it himself. i may re-do it today, but here's the issue:

my internet works fine when just surfing the web, watching videos online, or im'ing, but when i start to play a game, like CSS and Oblivion, i constantly lose wireless connection. i can tell because in CSS, i'll finish 5 rounds or so, then all of a sudden i'll timeout, and i disconnect, then when i refresh the server list, none of the servers respond. i exit the game (closing it down) and once xp automatically reconnects, it's fine.

same thing in oblivion, i start playing for a bit, then xfire pops up saying i've lost connection to the server, and so on. once i've closed the game down, the connection problems are fixed.

since i'm at the far end of the house, my connection is usually less-than-perfect. this very instant, signal strength is vey low and i have a transfer speed of 11 mpbs, which seems to be the average constant for light internet use (surfing the web).

i think this is a problem with windows, so as soon as i can, i'm gonna reconfigure this wifi network's settings on window's end and see if it fixes it. otherwise, i'm stumped. any ideas?

SuperCommando · Post by **SuperCommando** » Wed Mar 14, 2007 12:11 pm

It may be your computer has two programs trying to control the wifi network, like when I first set up my belkin thing, the belking software AND windows where controlling the network, my regular internet worked fine, but my games had regular interruptions, (like predicable) so look, if you have two programs controlling, disable the non-windows one, (I turned off my belkin software and it works perfect now.)

That OR since your at the far end of the house the signal may be getting cut off by someone using a cordless phone or somthing similar, (microwave, satellite TV, etc.) in whihch case your best bet is to just move closer to the router.

[cc]z@nd! · Post by **[cc]z@nd!** » Wed Mar 14, 2007 12:30 pm

my dad used some sort of linksys thing to set up my connection (he didn't have the WEP key in text form....) so that may be it. also, i thought it would be the connection strength, but it would give me problems all the time. i think i'll just build a cantenna anyways because i don't have one.

but what i find real bizzare is the fact that my wifi goes out when i'm playing Oblivion. it doesn't use the internet, so it isn't putting any strain on the network or my TCP/IP stack, so why should it affect it at all?

anyways, i'll look to see if i have any programs other than xp managing my wireless. does yours have some sort of icon in the system tray?

SuperCommando · Post by **SuperCommando** » Wed Mar 14, 2007 12:36 pm

My belkin software did have a little antenna in the tray, I imagine any other software would so you can easily check your wireless connection stuff, Windows icon is like a little computer monitor with wireless signals coming from it so you don't mix any up, if you don't have those try right clicking your windows wireless icon and then clicking "repair connection" that will clear your caches and may speed it up.

[cc]z@nd! · Post by **[cc]z@nd!** » Wed Mar 14, 2007 12:52 pm

i looked through my running processes with process explorer and none of them seem to be culprit for anything wireless. my biggest process suspect right now is Communications_Helper.exe, but it's from logitech, and i did just install one of their webcams recently, so i think it has something to do with that, however it does have a few network-related DLLs in use though, like WSOCK32 (i'm guessing it's for socks).

i'm gonna repair, the connection, end the communications manager process, and play some CSS.

edit: breaking news, i started up CSS, and joined a game. while the loading bar was still going across the screen, the xfire "lost connection to server" popup appeared, and shortly after CSS crashed. with the game closed, i try the internet again and it seems perfectly fine. i'm posting this edit without reconnecting or repairing.

SuperCommando · Post by **SuperCommando** » Wed Mar 14, 2007 2:17 pm

Try disabling the logitech app and see if it helps.

[cc]z@nd! · Post by **[cc]z@nd!** » Wed Mar 14, 2007 2:38 pm

i ended the communication helper thing and i played well for about 1-2 hours. after i finish installing linux on some spare HDDs i've got laying around, i'll try it with that ap running, but i think i've found the problem....

SuperCommando · Post by **SuperCommando** » Wed Mar 14, 2007 2:57 pm

it sounds like its your problem, try using your webcam and other stuff you use regulary and see if they all run smooth without it, if they do, remove it from startup so you don't have to deal with it anymore.

[cc]z@nd! · Post by **[cc]z@nd!** » Thu Mar 15, 2007 4:29 pm

i was going to type up a long explanation, but i'll spare you guys

summary:

-games use UDP instead of TCP to keep latency at bay
-because i happen to be using the same channel as 5 other people, there's essentially 6x the amount of traffic there needs to be
-because games use UDP, while web uses TCP, web surfing was a bit slower, but not terrible.
-on the other hand, my PC spewing out UDP packets faster than greased lightning puts a lot of traffic in the air
-basically, i most likely hit someone else's game packets, or even just their TCP packets when they surf the web
-because all devices on a network shut down for a random time until they allow data to be transmit, this means playing a game on such a crowded channel is death for the network, probably over a hundred collisions by the time i timeout.

what i'm going to do is change the wifi router's channel, and that should fix it.

if you don't really understand this but want to, look on wikipedia or connectionless vs. connection-oriented protocols.

[cc]z@nd! · Post by **[cc]z@nd!** » Sat Mar 17, 2007 7:40 pm

BALLSACKS!!!!

i'll bet the channel change helped more than it hurt, but i don't think it fixed the problem. i have a psare coffee can here, so i think i'll make a cantenna as some sort of father-son project and bet that my problem is signal strength.

and if it's not, and anybody knows of a method to tell if 2 different programs are trying to control my wireless card and conflicting, can i know about it?