The Saturday problem - Skuzzy any thoughts?

[RELIC]

Ok I hesitate to even post this because it will sound like I'm nuts but for some time now I have been having "problems" when I fly on Saturdays and to some degree on Sundays.  The frequency of this makes me wonder if the problem is connection related.
What happens is my planes simply don't seem to fly like they should.  Acceleration, climb rate, turning abilities all seem somewhat "off".  In addition I seem to have a much harder time getting hits and damage when shooting.
For example last Sat I ended up in a turn fight against a N1K2 in a Ki84.  Now normally I have no problem killing Niks with the Ki but this time my Ki just would not fly "right".  The stall buzzer was going off at times when it seemed like it normally would not and no matter how hard I tried I couldn't get those nice stable stall fight moves.  I had two fights with the Nik and on the 2nd fight I made sure I was trimmed out for stall fighting and got on his tail immediately after the merge but simply could not hang on.  Perhaps it could have been too much fuel on my part but I only loaded out 50%.
Later that same day I took up an F4U-4.  I ran into a Ki84 at around 15K and we started to tangle.  I came in with quite a bit of speed and he stalled out trying to turn and then he had that "fish flopping" thing going on and I couldn't bring guns to bear.  I figured he didn't have near my E state so I went vertical and he followed.  Dang if he didn't pull within 400 of me before both of us stalled out.  I came down on him and scored some hits but no kill (wtf?  grr) and then blew past him again (dang it I usually get those shots) and (considering the luck I'd had so far that day) decided screw this and extended (ran away..) down.  He follows me in the dive and as I spool up over 500 I figure he will start to lose parts or break off so I level out just a bit lower than him hoping he will follow.  He shows 2.0 behind me and then levels out.  I pull up into a fairly steep climb and he follows.  Now I figure I'm in the perked F4U, I got a ton of E going here, I was pulling away, I'm WEPPING and I should be safe.  But no...  that Ki climbed right up to 200 on my tail and bye bye Corsair.  The next flight I grab another F4U-4 and spot a 51D vulching below me.  I dive in on him and he turns.  I can tell he has some speed but I am closing too fast to get a decent shot so I nose up a bit and roll over to drop down on his tail.  At the top of my "rollover" the pony went from 200 to 400 out.  I dive in on him and hit WEP.  Now normally what would happen is I would close quickly but this 51D just walks away from me.  At 800 out he is still pulling away and at 1000 out I give up.
Frustrated I finally log off but decided I would try again at 10 pm central.  Still had the same problems but around 11:30 to midnight suddenly things just "went back to normal".  The planes seemed more responsive and bullets were hitting and doing damage.
Like I said - it sounds crazy but this has been a reoccurance on Saturdays for some time.  It is especially frustrating cause I really like to fly on the weekends but lately I have found myself avoiding the game.  I'm curious if anyone else has problems on the weekends?  
Can anyone help?  Skuzzy any thoughts?
I have cable for my connect and I do get the "switched to UDP" message occasionally on Sats and Sundays - but never any other time.  I ran ping plotter and can send that if it would help.  On my end it looks good but there is a jump near the HT end with Savvis.  
Sorry about the length of this but wanted to try and give some good examples of what I'm seeing on my end.

RELIC

[SIK1]

Relic I have noticed that on the weekends I have trouble putting rounds on target (not that I'm that great of a shot any other day of the week), but it does seem worse on the weekends. I always chalked it up to the increase in net activity on the weekends.

SIK1

[OOZ662]

I find that I play better when I'm tired. I don't get as riled up in fights simply because I'm too pooped.

I'm guessing that on weekends, you're more rested, over-alert and have problems. When you stay up late, you get tired and fly as if you had had a day at work.

Just my 1.5 cents.

[BBQ_Bob]

If I might add you can go to our squad website, there we have a link for a program called HiJackThis, you can download that program and post the log file, we can then take a look at what is happening when you start your machine. Then maybe we can get rid of the spyware.

http://uknightedstates.net

[The Fugitive]

I get the same thing too, but mines on Sundays mostly. Like SIK1 said I've always put it down to net traffic. My computer is cleaned weekly with a number of virus and spyware programs... very rarely find anything because Im VERY carefully. I just think Savis stinks and live with it  

[RELIC]

Thanks for the responses.  Like I said, I hesitated to post this cause it does seem well... crazy.  I take some comfort in seeing I'm not the only one having issues on the weekends.
BBQBob, I will run that program and send it to ya.  I think I'm running a pretty clean system - I use adaware on a regular basis - but it can't hurt to check.  Thanks for the help.
I'm hoping that all of this will be resolved once HT switches away from Savvis.

RELIC

[bustr]

I have noticed similare things.

So I will exit the game and run pingplotter. It will show errors happening at 1 to 3 of the hops in my 13 hop trip to the game server. Or I will show no errors but 2 - 3 of the last 4 hops will show a ongoing MAX ping at 120 - 130 while the average is 62-66. End result in the game seems like I can't hit watermelon no matter how close I get to the con.

It's possible that yes the weekend might hit a bandwidth choke somewhere along our paths. If I wait untill the game server is down to around 150 players logged on, I can start killing things again along with my manuvers actualy working, rather than parts of my plane falling off when cons are at the strangest angles and distances from me.

The reason I have suggested this is I took about 10 days off from work recently and played enough of them from about noon pacific time untill late at night week days and week ends. I found during the daytime with less than 175 players I killed what I shot at from 200d with 8 .50 cals. As the number of players increased my hits at 200d became questionable, or I would use 1000 rds per wing to kill one plane from 200d. It was at its worst on Friday, Saturday and Sunday evenings prime time for me 6pm-10pm PT.

Last night I was having problems shooting and out manuvering other planes. After several hours of this I logged out and checked pingplotter. It showed my last 2 SAVVIS router hops each had MAX counts of 120 with average of 63-66. My average round trip was 62- 63 based on the AH client. Guess I should buy the full version of Pingplotter and run some trending for a week. I also find some of the time, by rebooting my DSL modem and home router, my game experience improves.

It's possible with the recent Hurricane's in LA and TX that the Internet is being overburdend with extra traffic.

[BBQ_Bob]

So Relic how did it work out for you?

[RELIC]

I downloaded the program and ran it on Wednesday night.  Sorry I have not sent it to you yet - I will send you the results ASAP.

Thanks!

[Skuzzy]

Just FYI, nothing will solve Internet congestion, except larger/faster pipes, faster routers, and faster switches.

Or, requiring all Internet users to be over the age of 25.

There is always more (much more) traffic on weekends and weeknights than during the day.  Always.  The Internet is not an infinite pipe.  There is a limit to how much traffic can be handled before all traffic takes a hit.

[RELIC]

BBQ_Bob,

I emailed the results to you.

Skuzzy,

Thanks for replying - that is what I was afraid you would say.

[FireOf59]

You also mentioned that you have a Cable Modem. Depending on the provider, Cable modems, by nature get more "laggy" and slow as more users get on your system. You dont have a dedicated line to the internet.
If your provider configures his network for heavy traffic, this has no affect. If they dont, then as users get on, everyone gets slower throughput.

I would run the Pingplotter (or any trace program) on a night when your performance is good and again when performance is bad.

I know I had to b$#@* at my Cable provider many times to get them to engineer my system properly.

Good Luck.

Fireof59

[BBQ_Bob]

Ok Relic  I got the file, to me it looks pretty clean as far as spyware goes. I have another question for you.
You said that you have a cable modem, do you also have a router? This may be another thing we can look at, "firmware".
Firmware is software that is embedded into the hardware. How old is the modem and what kind is it, maybe if we update the firmware this may help.
 
While it is true that with a cable modem your signal strength will degrade during high usage periods, I am leaning towards something else, I personally have never had it drop below 3Mbps during high use. Meanwhile there are a couple of tricks you can try, go to Start, run then type in dxdiag. Let it load and click the save all information button, save it to a place like desktop. This is what I would do to test it out. I would go to sound then I would set the acceleration down a couple of knotches.  Something is taxing the system resources IMO.  How much memory do you have, and how close is your hard drive to being full?

[RELIC]

BBQ,

Well the modem is fairly old (5 years +) so maybe that is the part of the problem.  I can check with the cable company about a new one or try to update the firmware - but I fear the problem is probably just internet overload.
I do have 512 of RAM and will be adding another stick very soon.  That will allow me to run in dual channel and will double my memory so who knows, maybe that will help some.

I appreciate the help!  Was wondering why you have the "BBQ" in your handle?

RELIC