Wireless Internet.. Good, Bad, Okay?

[q2dude]

Hey.

Just wondering..  I'm on a wireless internet connection right now, and sure I've heard wireless is known for its reliability in dropping packets, but heck, sometimes my connection is just as good as a wired one - no packet loss, no ping spikes..just a solid low ping that makes for some fragging fun. Other times though, I almost wanna shoot myself.. heh, well, I'd never go that far at all, but geez.. what the heck

Is wireless kinda like 'quake skills'.. where it has its 'on and off' days?
If so, I kinda wish I had my ISDN back, though without my bro and sis on the LAN, killing my game! :x


You might say, "Why not get on cable or DSL?" Because, even though both 'technologies' are available here, the cable co won't come 'this far' out for a 'few customers' and DSL simply won't stretch that far. So I've got my choice: dialup, digital dialup (ISDN), or wireless (agh, kill me!).

[hash]

Hiya majik!  Wireless can be "moody" because the signal is affected by lots of things.  Open air is a very unstable transmission medium, esp compared to coax or UTP.  If your Line of Sight (LoS) is obstructed, bouncing signals can cause delays in reassembly/retransmision of data.  Even with clear LoS, the path loss (signal power loss in the air) will vary with temperature, atmospheric conditions, interference, solar flares, etc etc...

Didja know that your microwave oven is smack-dab center of the 2.45GHz WiFi band?  UNRegulated (like WiFi) spectrum is a free-for-all... your mileage *will* vary.  Of course, the lack of spectrum is just an illusion created by the FCC for profit.. but I digress  

You could try a higher gain antenna for your setup, or maybe setting up a wireless repeater/bridge somewhere halfway... but if you've got $$$ to burn, get ISDN for a stable ping  

[q2dude]

We bought the YDI Ethernet Convertor II or something like that..  for something like $500+?  I dunno I remember the antenna was something like $500, but I also remember hearing that the end price was like 1K! We've got a decent 'signal rate', and it doubles if we switch it to this new tower they have, called 'sherwood'. Ping times are down by about 7 - 10ms on that tower as well..

Dude was even saying how he needs to fix the packet loss.. but that'll probably only happen when we have another storm and so he has to fix/replace all the damaged equipment.. like last time.

And yeah, ISDN is pretty cool, but if you start to do alot of stuff over it simultaneously, the routers tend to 'lock up' and then you need to power them off and back on.. and then if you do that, you gotta play with it for maybe 5 minutes before it finally synch's with the line. ISDN's not so bad if you only have a few other's surfing the web.. cuz if only affects your game for a second or so and its hardly noticable. However, if ppl are downloading.. to hell with quake, you know? That is, it'll be so bad, you'll be 'walking in place' and getting raped on the servers.

So we got this wireless hoping it'd be good... and for the majority of the time, it totally sucks. About 5% of the time though, it's really good stuff.

...man just thinking about when we had packet loss since october of last year to like late january / early february of this year. I swear.. and it was *awesome* (!!) when we first got on.  I dunno what happened.

But yeah, I do still have all this ISDN equipment laying around here.. I was planning on selling it, but who knows.

[applejacks]

how far out are you from the co?
if your on isdn they can convert you over to idsl 144/symetric
thats if its offered in your area basically its idsn bri with the 3rd channel always on.
But depending on your location you might be able to hook up to a remote terminal. Wireless isnt so bad its not bad if its your only choice. Ive noticed alot of wireless people on the server movement to them seems good but to everyone else they move like they are on crack dial up. which they are hard to hit. i think cahawk or something like that was one of them.  Is your line metered? are you paying for unlimited bandwith or what? what kinda speeds do you get?
i know of some wireless providers that give you bookoo speeds but they also give you non routable ips kinda sucks..

[q2dude]

I think we were 45k feet or so away from the co, and I remember when BellSouth hooked up our ISDN line, they had to run it an extra 9 miles out, though free of charge. IDSL would've been stupid, for us atleast.. you get just a little bit more speed over ISDN, and the only provider that I could really find was SpeakEasy.. and they wanted something like $100+/mo!? No way! heh

We're paying $60/mo for [their] fastest residential package -- 1.5Mbit down, 128Kbit up. We were told this was "burstable"..and I'd have to agree.

When we first got on, things were great.. pings weren't the best, but I was atleast getting half the ping I did on ISDN (usually 100-180ms, and solid), and we were getting..I dunno, anywhere's from 50KB/sec on upwards of 160KB/sec.. and sometimes it'd 'burst'..finishing a ~6meg file in a matter of seconds.

Now though.. it's anywhere's from ..0KB/sec ? to 50 - 60KB/sec, though usually pretty crappy.

I'd e-mailed him about not even being able to surf the web the other day cause of how slow things were and he told me he'd replaced a fiber optic cable, saying that should fix things. Which, yeah, I can surf the web now, instead of typing in a URL or such and *maybe* 5 minutes later, it'll be loaded..at the very least, half way loaded.. but, the packet loss.  I'd e-mailed him about that just earlier, so hopefully he'll get something done about it.

I swear, if I didn't have my custom q2.exe setup so that it wouldn't do that 'freeze frame' with packet loss, it would truely be unplayable. Atleast this way I can somewhat stand it. (Which btw, as soon as I get [this] site finished, you guys can download it and check it out if you want. (This is the MyQ2 stuff for those of you admins who have seen me playing with it.))

And uh, the reason for the low 128Kbit upload, is (I believe) to further discourage customers from running servers over the wireless. (Heh, we're already behind the NAT/firewall on our routers at home (providing you purchased and needed one..otherwise your single computer was hooked directly up to the Ethernet Convertor/Antenna) and one or two NAT/firewalls up there at our ISP.) Says it could probably bring the wireless network down or something..  so that and I guess because I'm kinda working with him on a few projects, he's let me co-locate a server up there, that's not on the wireless at all. So atleast there's one good thing to come out of this. heh

[q2dude]

Hey guys.. lets play a game. It's called, "Count the Packet Loss Lines": http://majik.darkregion.net/misc/packetloss_rules.jpg :wink:

[Slikkster]

Gotta love that pic just 'cuz I'm winning at the time, heh heh.  But you do have some serious spikes.  

Questions:  Have you done packet-loss testing both locally (from your pc to your router) and from the pc to the ISP?  

If you do a "ping -t xxx.xxx.xxx  where x=IP numbers, you'll get a continuous ping until you do a ctrl-c to stop it. (assuming windows here)

I'd do it from your pc to your router gateway, and then, if that's good (no "request timed out", meaning packet loss), I'd do it from your pc to your ISP gateway.  Then, if that's ok, do a "ping -t arena.xquake.net"

There are some good freeware apps that will show packet loss as well as pings.  http://www.analogx.com/contents/download/network/htrace.htm is the page for AnalogX's free "Hypertrace" app.  Just install it, then click on the "Config" button and Enable DNS Lookup and Packet Loss.  Then, trace routes both locally and externally.  See what the loss looks like.

I saw your posts in the game about the packet loss, and didn't know what your configuration was.  It seemed like a game specific issue when you were talking there, but now I get the impression that it is an online issue for you, no matter what you're doing, either gaming or surfing.  

I had a problem with the latest version of ZoneAlarm Pro.  It's 5.0 update really started throwing extra packet filtering in and hosing my gameplay...lots of spikes like yours with phone plugs.  I had to uninstall it and go back to version 4.5.  Sounds like you're using a router vs. software firewall.

And as Apple was saying, you're in the 2.4Ghz spectrum for wireless, at least insofar as inhouse is concerned.  Try unplugging any 2.4 wireless phones and see if it helps.  

I noticed your YDI EC-II has a diagnostic screen that lets you see packet loss and signal strength for aiming the antenna.  Give that another looksee, too.

good luck.

[q2dude]

Yeah..  0% packet loss from my computer to our D-Link DI-604 router, and 0% packet loss from my NetBSD server to the gateway that all of dude's wireless customers go through (including my server)..  even 0% loss from my server to arena.xquake.net.  I've done ping tests and traceroutes before, and though you're only seeing a little bit of packet loss like that.. its much worse in game.

Heck, I've even upgraded the firmware on both the router and the EC.. er, the signal rate to this tower ('sherwood') is like 20 - 28, and usually showing 100% on 11Mbits.  The rate to the previous tower ('ucwsec2') was something like 10 - 16.  And then our neighbor has a better line of sight than we do, so he's on 'ucwsec1' or what not.. which goes right to their main tower I believe.

Also, when we got on this wireless, we had our ISDN turned off, and had a normal phone line hooked back up, but since our phone service was crap after that (ie, no dial tone..couldn't make or recieve calls half of the time), we had that turned off as well, and we're only using cell phones now. Might that be an issue?  Also, we've got this nice Sharp brand microwave (1200 watts).. dunno if that'd make a difference?  It sits idle alot of the time...showing the time. heh

Back to the cell phones though, we have those on all the time pretty much..because if its off, you can't take any calls. >_< heh

And nah, I don't have anything like ZoneAlarm.  (That's invitation to you 1337 hax0rz. )

[QuakeDuke]

That's invitation to you 1337 hax0rz.

Tadum, tadum, tadum, dadum dadum te duuuummm te dum de dum(the pink panther tune)

looking to the ---->
looking to the  <------

tic, tic, tic... sneaky footsteps...

glance to the ------>
glance to the <-----

Oh no!

It's the l337 hax0r!  Hurry hit the rese..........* plip! ................
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Ladies and gentlemen, we are experiencing strange  technical difficulties.
We will return you to our normal programming just as soon as possible.
Thank you for your patience.

The Management

[Slikkster]

Well, maybe you do have a game issue of some sort.  Why not do a separate install of Q2 in a different folder (just a basic install with 3.20 patch and Xquake skins) and give it a shot.  

Also, is there anyway of determining if you've got steady outgoing/incoming packets other than what you think you have (like some apps running in the background, for example)?  Maybe something is sucking up the bandwidth.  

It almost sounds like some kind of configuration setting that's amiss somewhere, be it in the game or with your router/ECII if you're not getting packet loss in your tests outside of the game.

[Slikkster]

P.S.  Every now and then my config.cfg gets hosed.  Hasn't happened for quite some time, but when it does, my gameplay is totally messed up.  The video starts and stops every couple of seconds in some kind of cycling manner.  The only thing that brings it back to normal is to delete config.cfg and recreate it, or delete the current one and copy in a backup of config.cfg.

A line by line comparison of the bad config.cfg and the good ones shows no difference, btw.

[Matster]

I have a wireless hookup...but not on the grand scale you do...mines a wireless network that i made in my house w/routers and hubs and such...its been pretty good to me...and firewalling is alot easier w/a router.Packet loss is a problem and [los] does make it harder to position your comp where ya want it exactly, and still get a better signal.But really the pluses out-weigh the minuses... I could if I was inclined,... play quake2 in my backyard on my wireless laptop...if it wasnt so friggn old!

[Slikkster]

I asked Majik in the game if he had fixed his problem and he said yes; that it was a driver issue (ATI Catalyst).