my connection sucks

[Warty]

Seems to be worse in last few days. I can't get on tonight at all really. I get to the arena, but get "host connection lost" and booted to desktop. This is win7, coming from a cold start. Using USB wireless adapter-on-a-stick. Worked fine the first week or two I had this computer.

tracert says:

Tracing route to 206.16.60.39 over a maximum of 30 hops

  1    21 ms     6 ms    29 ms  192.168.1.1
  2    16 ms    17 ms     9 ms  XX.XX.XX.XX (i did this)
  3    25 ms    30 ms    13 ms  ge-9-1-ur02.shoreview.mn.minn.comcast.net [68.85.166.197]
  4    12 ms     9 ms    13 ms  te-8-3-ur01.shoreview.mn.minn.comcast.net [68.87.174.125]
  5    16 ms    17 ms    11 ms  te-2-1-ur01.shoreview.mn.minn.comcast.net [68.87.174.178]
  6    23 ms  1214 ms     *     te-1-1-0-5-cr01.chicago.il.ibone.comcast.net [68.86.95.193]
  7    26 ms    25 ms    24 ms  pos-1-6-0-0-pe01.350ecermak.il.ibone.comcast.net [68.86.87.130]
  8    29 ms    20 ms    24 ms  192.205.37.117
  9    50 ms    52 ms    49 ms  cr2.cgcil.ip.att.net [12.122.86.42]
 10    44 ms    45 ms    59 ms  cr2.sl9mo.ip.att.net [12.122.2.22]
 11    62 ms    48 ms    51 ms  cr2.kc9mo.ip.att.net [12.122.28.89]
 12    50 ms    48 ms   447 ms  cr1.dlstx.ip.att.net [12.122.28.85]
 13    52 ms    53 ms    49 ms  gar23.dlstx.ip.att.net [12.122.139.153]
 14   154 ms   187 ms   208 ms  12-122-254-154.attens.net [12.122.254.154]
 15    76 ms    51 ms    52 ms  63.241.193.22
 16    51 ms    60 ms    55 ms  206.16.60.39

Any ideas? The ping times look ok when looking at the arena menus. When I do ping details, I see 15% loss (15 out of 100 packets are lost).

The networking problems read-me post here says reduce wireless speed. How does one do that?

[Tigger29]

Well the bad news is that USB wireless adapters are usually hit-and-miss.

The good news is that according to that tracert, the problem is in comcast's networks, and possibly one or two hops of att's servers as well.

Hop #6 is incredibly horrible, and hops #12 and 14 aren't so hot either.

[Skuzzy]

Wireless will always be hit and miss.  You will never get the same stability from any wireless connection versus a wired connection.

It also appears Comcast is having problems.  Not surprising as the weather has taken its toll on the telecommunications infrastructure, particularly in the Northern half of the U.S.

[Warty]

Thanks for analysis guys. I still get bad sessions, but it seems like if I disconnect and then recognized the wireless, I can get different results. I don't know how routing works, so maybe it's not really doing anything, and the connection was goon to get better all by itself.

I would have to drill through 3 walls to get a wired connection, but if I understand you both correctly, my main problem is probably comcast, right? Is it possible/likely I'd have a better connection with DSL?

[thud123]

Warty,

A couple of things to try to narrow down you issue:

You can use tracert with the -d switch to disable DNS lookups. This will speed your result. Also, do more than one traceroute; compare results.

One thing that sticks out is that your first hop (probably your NAT device/Router) should be very low in latency. Your's looks high:

  1    21 ms     6 ms    29 ms  192.168.1.1

Looks like it might an issue with your wireless connection to the first device. One thing you might have control over is the channel you're setup on. You might want to change that and test ping to your gateway 192.168.1.1 Most Wireless devices ship default. If there's a bunch of folks using wireless in yer  vicinity chance are that they are all using the same frequency.

Like you said in your post, you're seeing 15 percent packet loss to an AH host. In my experience, most users start to notice/complain when packet loss starts to get over 10 percent.

Feel free to PM me if you need any other suggestions,

-thud

[Warty]

Thanks Thud.

Here is the dump with the -d option:
 1     3 ms     2 ms     1 ms  192.168.1.1
 2    10 ms    20 ms     8 ms  73.115.162.1
 3    38 ms     9 ms     9 ms  68.85.166.197
 4    13 ms    10 ms    12 ms  68.87.174.125
 5     *       10 ms    14 ms  68.87.174.178
 6    37 ms    21 ms    21 ms  68.86.95.193
 7    20 ms    20 ms    20 ms  68.86.87.130
 8    23 ms    22 ms    28 ms  192.205.37.117
 9    47 ms    46 ms    66 ms  12.122.86.42
10    53 ms    47 ms     *     12.122.2.22
11     *        *       45 ms  12.122.28.89
12   223 ms    60 ms    53 ms  12.122.28.85
13    80 ms    42 ms    43 ms  12.122.139.153
14    44 ms    44 ms    43 ms  12.122.254.154
15    92 ms    44 ms    49 ms  63.241.193.22
16    48 ms    55 ms    45 ms  206.16.60.39

and one more a few minutes later:
 1     3 ms     3 ms     9 ms  192.168.1.1
 2     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 3     *        *       20 ms  68.85.166.197
 4    11 ms    22 ms    14 ms  68.87.174.125
 5    13 ms    13 ms    12 ms  68.87.174.178
 6    27 ms    21 ms    18 ms  68.86.95.193
 7    30 ms    34 ms    26 ms  68.86.87.130
 8    24 ms    24 ms    22 ms  192.205.37.117
 9    72 ms    96 ms    48 ms  12.122.86.42
10     *        *       46 ms  12.122.2.22
11    46 ms    44 ms    46 ms  12.122.28.89
12    51 ms    56 ms    49 ms  12.122.28.85
13     *       43 ms    51 ms  12.122.139.153
14    50 ms    44 ms    47 ms  12.122.254.154
15    45 ms    46 ms    44 ms  63.241.193.22
16    52 ms    47 ms    52 ms  206.16.60.39

Could it be that the * (data loss??) up there are not due to comcast at all, but internal to my wireless network? I don't really have a clue here about this topic, so just guessing. It's not like the *s always show up against the same IP addresses.

I think the problem might be the combination of this linksys USB stick (811g) and my wireless router (811g+n, apple airport extreme). I tried doing tracert from a mac on the same wireless network, and it was perfectly clean (to the same IP as above). I found a couple PCI cards on newegg that are listed as 811n, I think one was $30 and the other was $50. The wife and kids watch a lot of streaming video on the internal network during the day, so I don't dare downgrade the airport to g-only mode.

Hmm. maybe I could get a second cable modem, there is a cable socket in this room. Not sure how comcast would feel about that. If that was ok, then I could have a wired connection to this pc.

[thud123]

If your mac is returning clean traceroutes on the same network at the same time your PC is getting some "*" work on the PC's wireless. I think you are on the right track!

Another thing to try is pinging your gateway 192.168.1.1 from your PC. You should have virtually ZERO packet loss even after thousands of pings.

Here's a man page for traceroute on unix systems. tracert on windows is similar; http://www.zytek.com/traceroute.man.html

good luck Warty,

-thud

[Warty]

Thanks again Thud. 

I don't get data loss on pings to my router from the pc, but the response time is relatively crap, and very variable. 

I've ordered a pci card with 801.11n support, hopefully that will do the trick. Apparently adding a cable modem would be fine with the cable company, but you have to pay 2x. 

[Warty]

Just a follow-up in case anyone searches this in the future: I got a $20 801.11n wireless PCI card. No change. I moved the PC to the other side of my simpit, and the reception went way up. The connection (to the internet) via the wireless is now fast and stable. However, I still can't get reliable connections to AH servers via wireless.

Solution: 100 ft (or 50 I dunno, I lost the label) ethernet cable I run from router to sim PC when I want to get online. Take it off afterwards, so kids and cat don't trip over it and wreak destruction on the router and/or PC. Caution: This is a very sophisticated solution that beginners may not be able to pull off. Also, women will be drawn to you once they know you have such elite computer skills.