Bad ping question

Thom Yorke Obliterator · Posted: Tue Oct 30, 2001 8:16 pm Post subject:

Hey folks, here's a rare dead serious Thom post. Lately I've been vitually unable to get a decent ping at the Ville (although technically, we're talking latency here, right?). I'm on a cable modem, and enjoyed a spiffy 60-80 ping for my first six months or so here. Lately it's been mostly in the 800-1000 range for Ville I through III, which is unplayable. Oddly, I can always get a decent ping on IV. But IV is always empty.

Here's my question: Anyone have a guess where the problem lies? My ISP could give a rat's ass, because they're the only broadband in town. But is it even them? I'd hate to drop back to a 56k dialup for no reason. I sat here and ran traceroutes to my IP from maybe 20 different sources, and for a dozen of them I'd never see a hop above 70 ms, while the rest would explode to 1000-1200 ms as they got closer to me.

Just frustrated over my lack of knowledge in this area, I guess. Grrr.

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ROOFCUTTER · Posted: Tue Oct 30, 2001 8:29 pm Post subject:

http://www.visualware.com/visualroute/index.html

Go here and download this great tracer program. it's free for 30 days.
Robert told me about it and I have used it.
It gives you your complete path round trip and all the times that it takes to get there.
It also graghes it nicely and gives you a regular road type map of your trip (path).

Good luck
Roof

John Doe · Posted: Tue Oct 30, 2001 9:40 pm Post subject:

Go with Roofs suggestion it sounds like a problem with a crappy router out on the net somewhere, but there is another possibility.

Are you running anthing in the background while playing TFC? Ie) ICQ, Napster like stuff, or a software firewall? Shut down anything that you dont need, perhaps one of them is causing the problem.

Do you have a hardware firewall instead? This is the better choice, I have seen TFC lag spikes with software firewalls when its being probed, but nothing with a HW firewall.

Are you being pinged and poked to death? Zonealarm is a good item to see if thats the case, just check out the log for intrusion detections.

Just a few thoughts, let us know what you find.

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Thom Yorke Obliterator · Posted: Wed Oct 31, 2001 9:26 pm Post subject:

It's definitely the crappy router thing, I think. There's a little UUNet bugger right halfway between me and Ville I & II that has consistently given me a time of 1000 ms and up. Grrrr. It seems like everything I trace the route of has a slow spot somewhere. Phooey. But hey, so what if it takes 45 seconds to load the front page of Yahoo? I'm tough. I can take it.

[goes off to find something to obliterate]

_________________
I'm not internationally known, but I'm known to rock the microphone.

John Doe · Posted: Wed Oct 31, 2001 9:45 pm Post subject:

Here is a link to another sweet little program that you can run to check things out.

http://www.netiq.com/qcheck/default.asp

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