Router / Overnet / Game - question.

[ByteMe]

Hello everyone,

I have a linksys router. When ever overnet is running on one computer it KILLS game performance on the net on another. EVEN if the bandwidth that overnet is using is small (15kB or less). I have 1.5 Mb cable (256 kb upload).

Another thing. When one puter does a refresh of a games list the other computers get massive stutters in games.

Why would the performance degrade so bad when overnet is NOT using much bandwidth?

 

[ByteMe]

Another question. Even if I DMZ the computer running overnet it does NOT seem to like to connect much for than 10 with overnet. I set it at 55. Is my router interfering even set to DMZ?

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

Are you limiting your upload in Overnet? A fully saturated upload will kill your download because you can't send the necessary ACKs.

Overnet also spikes quite a lot. Although you may see a given average bandwidth usage, there are much higher spikes. Your router may be having problems keeping up with Overnet as it makes lots of connections all the time. If you've fiddled with your settings, you could be making things worse as your router is spending all it's time sending and servicing requests from Overnet.

You might find that using something like Netlimiter will help as you can restrict the bandwidths outside of the app.

 

[ByteMe]

Are you limiting your upload in Overnet? A fully saturated upload will kill your download because you can't send the necessary ACKs.

Overnet also spikes quite a lot. Although you may see a given average bandwidth usage, there are much higher spikes. Your router may be having problems keeping up with Overnet as it makes lots of connections all the time. If you've fiddled with your settings, you could be making things worse as your router is spending all it's time sending and servicing requests from Overnet.

You might find that using something like Netlimiter will help as you can restrict the bandwidths outside of the app.

hmmm, good point. I did try limiting my upload to 10k. (30k is max up bandwidth). I had a theory that the requests/acks were keeping the router busy even if they did not use much bandwidth. Does this sound correct?

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

hmmm, good point. I did try limiting my upload to 10k. (30k is max up bandwidth). I had a theory that the requests/acks were keeping the router busy even if they did not use much bandwidth. Does this sound correct?

It's not so much the ACKs keeping the router busy, it's that any TCP packet that comes in needs an ACK sent on your upload. If your upload is completely saturated sending data, then ACKs will need to fit in with all the other upload traffic. While the computer sending data down is waiting for ACKs, to be sent back, your download will stall. Basically, when you are on an asymetrical connections, you need to reserve some of your upload bandwidth just for sending ACKs.

It only an overloading issue if it's UDP traffic. UDP doesn't need ACKs but still generates traffic. Overnet and lots of games use UDP where they can in order to do away with ACK traffic, but they will still need TCP for other things.

However, it should be pretty easy to test. Just restrict your upload in Overnet to 10 or 15K and see if things improve. You might also want to get some kind of netowork monitoring such as Netlimiter or DUMeter to see what volume of traffic is actually being sent.

 

[ByteMe]

Thanks for the info, will try tomorrow.

 

[Sage]

linksys = teh devl

get a D-Link, that's what I had to do