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Alright my university line was ok for the first two weeks of school. Then it got really really crappy. Not for web browsing or for downloading but for gaming. The connection will spike about every half a second and make you freeze for a extremely short duration making a sort of jitter lag. Now I talked to some people and they said that my U has a packet shaper or something to that affect.

I am wondering if any of you guys in your past experience have had to deal with something like this to get a good ping again. I really liked my ping till it got toasted. I get a 80ms ping in most games but that doesnt help if it jumps up to 400ms every half a second.

Anyone have any Ideas of how to get around this?

It might actually be due to traffic from the Welchia worm. My firewall is still blocking buttloads of what appear to be Welchia probes (ICMP Echo Request packets). The frequency of these packets went through the roof sometime around the beginning of September, and has only dropped off slightly since then.

If you have infected machines on the network, there could be enough spurious traffic to hose your network latency.

no, we are required to patch our machines before they let you on the network. if you are on the network and not patched it wont let you use the internet.

Just because the machines are patched doesn't mean they aren't infected. If the infection occurred before the patch was installed, the patch does nothing to remove it.

the patch is a virus remover. its a anti-virus program made specifically for a couple big bugs like msblast, welchia and a couple others..

Bensam123 wrote:

the patch is a virus remover. its a anti-virus program made specifically for a couple big bugs like msblast, welchia and a couple others..

Must be a different patch from the one I installed then. I had to install the patch (from Microsoft), then run a removal tool (from Symantec) to get rid of the actual virus (Welchia).

thats what it is all wraped up into one program.

anyways.... do you guys have any advice about the packet shaper?

Is it actually one program? What we have at my college is a CD with the MS 039 (counter-Blaster-et-al) rollup patch, assorted Service Packs, Stinger (to scan for and delete the most worrying viruses), and McAfee 7 (site licenses are good), plus a little VB menu frontend which just provides a convenient interface for doing them in order. All the programs are still being run separately, though, so it only takes someone to forget to turn off System Restore when running the virus scan (Nachi gets itself copied to the System Restore directory, waits for virus scan to finish, then Restores itself...), or forget one of the steps, or something, and the computer can still be vulnerable. An automated system would make it more reliable, but not foolproof.

Something to bear in mind is that on XP systems (at least), if the 039 patch is run on a system that hasn't been updated to SP1 or SP1a, the patch can sometimes fail silently - ie appear to install, but actually do nothing, leaving the machine totally open to Blaster and Welchia and fun things.

I certainly wouldn't discount the possibility of the network flakiness being caused by virus activity, simply because precautions against viruses are being taken. Are you saying that the network can actually scan your system and disable your connection if you're not patched? That seems quite unlikely, but even so, unless it does it before any other network traffic is permitted (all Blaster et al need to spread is a working TCP/IP connection), it's not going to remove the risk of infection entirely.

no the computers are required to have service pack 1 and the patch disk which is what you said just a copy of a disk with a whole lot of patches on it and a automated setup. we all have Norton Anti-virus Corperate Edition. They gave that to us free when we came here.

we get heavy duty lag every once in awhile that might be from the viruses but what im talking about happens about every half a second. no one has even said anything remotely concerning a packet shaper or how to get around one...

Bensam123 wrote:

we get heavy duty lag every once in awhile that might be from the viruses but what im talking about happens about every half a second. no one has even said anything remotely concerning a packet shaper or how to get around one...

Probably because it isn't possible to get around one, without also installing something at the other end of the connection to allow the packets to be disguised (i.e. encrypted/decrypted). A VPN might work, but the remote end of the connection has to be running VPN software too.

Edit: Bottom line... if there is a packet shaper in the network, then it is almost certainly configured to give game traffic a low priority. The only way to change that -- short of bribing the network admin -- is to disguise the game traffic as something else. In order to do that, you've either got to use some sort of tunneling protocol (e.g. install VPN software at both ends of the connection), or modify the game client and server to use a different protocol that the packet shaper won't recognize (which is gonna be difficult unless you've got the source code to the game & the tools to compile it).

Edit #2: If you're playing primarily with other people in your dorm, you may want to consider getting some 802.11b (wireless LAN) hardware, and bypassing the wired LAN entirely...

the on school lan is fine... its whenever we use the internet that we get that problem...

i heard a packet shaper gives priority based upon what port it comes from if thats true cant you just make a game use a diffrent port ie 80 that your browser uses?

You can do that on some games, but you need to change it on the server, not on the client.


FWIW, your symptoms sound *exactly* like the ones I had a few weeks back. It turned out my HTPC had picked up Welchia. Welchia got in before the automatic update did it's thing, so I got hosed over my own LAN. Even though all the boxes have AV software, it nailed the HTPC, and after that, the problem wasn't the worm/exploit, but the INSANE BUTTLOADS of CRAP the infected machine began spewing.

I would get online and be gaming along happily, then it would stutter/jump, good, stutter/jump, good, stutter/jump, about once a second or so. Just enough to be TOTALLY FRIGGIN ANNOYING!

Ended up canning my ISP before I realized my mistake.

Ahh well, Speakeasy is cheaper and faster both.

Here at eastern you can talk to the tech dept about letting you game. We did that for a friend of mine for his ps2. You should try and email them and complain or soemthing.

Bensam123 wrote:

the on school lan is fine... its whenever we use the internet that we get that problem...

Well, here's the thing... I still wouldn't rule out a Welchia infection entirely, and here's why. Welchia hunts for new systems to infect by spewing out floods of ICMP Echo Request (ping) packets, and looking for replies. A small number of systems doing this won't be able to generate enough traffic to completely saturate the local network... but they might be able to saturate the Internet feed to your residence hall.

Here's an experiment you could try. Run the command 'ping -t techreport.com' from one system; this will ping the techreport.com server once a second, and report the round-trip time. Play your game on another nearby system. When you notice a stutter, check the ping test, and see if it got higher round-trip time (or packet loss) at the same time you experienced the stutter in the game. If ping problems coincide with problems in the game, then the problem is probably general network congestion, not a packet shaper.

i heard a packet shaper gives priority based upon what port it comes from if thats true cant you just make a game use a diffrent port ie 80 that your browser uses?

Like Forge says, that might be an option depending on the game... but you need to be able to change it at the server end too.

i can't ping anything outside of my network...

it translates the address from techreport.com into a ip address but then says the request times out.

as I said before all machines on the network have had the virus removed and if your port creates a excessive amount of traffic they shut you off. IE what welchia does.

Forge said that he was experiencing similar problems, but mine happen all the time. sometimes the spikes are worse (not lasting longer it just spikes from 80ms to 175ms instead of 80ms to 440ms), but they are on timed intervals. you could put a watch to it and get a constant reading. I dunno if you guys play Tribes 2 but that has a nice netgraph for playing. It shows the ping jumping up every half a second. Its perfectly smooth sailing besides every once inawhile we get extreme lag on our connection but that isnt nearly as bad as the spikes.

as to what capoop said thats what im currently doing. Im going to talk with the head of my floor tommorow. I already notified our recognized gamer club and we will see what we can do from there. I sure as hell hope this can be fixed cause this is really, really, really pissing me off. I take games serious and I'm a hardcore gamer. This kind of stuff really pisses me off.

Oh yea I found out our school has a OC-48 or the connection equiv to 144mbps. Alas I was transfering to a person in point who has a good internet connection at 2.1 - 2.3 kbps. -_-

Just so you guys know this wasnt like this at the beginig of the year. It was a amazing connection up until 2 weeks after we were all here then all of a sudden it got **** like this.

hehe, if all else fales I got a application for commons (the place where everyone eats) sitting next to me. Ill end up working for 4 hours a week so I can get broadband from a local ISP in my dorm room.

Will work for good lag.

Totally OT but I couldn't resist:

Jeez, BenSam... Your box is creepily similar to mine:

Abit IC7-G, 2X Corsair PC3500 512, P4 2.8C, Audigy 2, 9800 Pro, buncha WDs, a fanbus (temps < fan speeds), a 16X Liteon DVD, and a 52X Liteon CDRW.

You been snooping round my house much?

/me closes the blinds.

Bensam123 wrote:

hehe, if all else fales I got a application for commons (the place where everyone eats) sitting next to me. Ill end up working for 4 hours a week so I can get broadband from a local ISP in my dorm room.

Will work for good lag.

Have you verified that it is possible to get broadband to your dorm room? Depending on how they've got the building wired up, it may be problematic (e.g. if the building is using a proprietary phone system, DSL is not possible).

Cables possible not dsl tho...

yea forge, yours has better specs tho... all my extra hard drives are in a diffrent computer that just does files :l

faster memory, faster video card, 2.8C... i got my video card last year when 9700's first came out and its OCed right now but thats about all I can do to compare

all I can say is its a good setup so kodos on building it