Author Topic: Connection Quality (Read 798 times)

AKcurly · « **on:** June 07, 2003, 05:33:38 AM »

I was listening to a KAZAA discussion among a large number of AH participants. It seems that a large number of you are running KAZAA.

Did all of you see Skuzzy's post? Among other things, he said:

KAZAA AND FILE SHARING PROGRAMS

If you run any file sharing program, you might as well get use to the fact that you will never have a decent connection to the servers.
Turning off those programs after they have been running for any period of time at all does not stop the users on the Internet from pounding on your connection.
This will cause lost packets, switches from UDP to TCP, and just generally lousy connections to the servers.
My testing shows, that after the program has been running longer than 3 hours, it takes over 24 hours for your Internet connection to return to normal.

curly

beet1e · « **Reply #1 on:** June 07, 2003, 06:13:40 AM »

Hi Curly,

I run Kazaa, but I have a two hard drive set up in my PC. WMe for games like AH on one HDD, and W2000 Pro for Kazaa and everything else on the other HDD. I flip-flop between the two, and have no problems at all with Kazaa or my connection for AH.

If I were to be running AH on the same system as Kazaa, things might be different - according to Skuzzy. But I don't see how, because under File on the Kazaa menu, there is a disconnect option. Once disconnected from Kazaa, I don't see how other Kazaa users can continue to hit your connection. Hoping Skuzzy will elaborate on what he's said so far.

Ghosth · « **Reply #2 on:** June 07, 2003, 06:50:02 AM »

Doesn't bother me at all on this end.

I can see where it would hit a dialup connect & cause problems.

lord dolf vader · « **Reply #3 on:** June 07, 2003, 07:43:46 AM »

steady 50ms ping no degradation i have ever seen.

you have a cite other than scuzzy?

Saintaw · « **Reply #4 on:** June 07, 2003, 09:45:17 AM »

Beetle,

Kaazaa probably keeps a list of ips -> poeple connected, and probably users's aplication will keep on looking for that IP (your ip) for a given time even if if you have shut down your own system. (Given the active list is not sync'ed). You would have to get a different IP address to get out of that 'list' faster.

Skuzzy said it in english here, at least that's how I understood it:

Quote

it takes over 24 hours for your Internet connection to return to normal.

devious · « **Reply #5 on:** June 07, 2003, 10:44:35 AM »

As for running KAZAA / EMule / somesuch in the background, it`s a bad idea because you cant help the traffic it produces, resulting in less bandwith for AH and worse latency as the driver can't discriminate between AH and other packets -> first come, first served, theres no "Urgent, I`m a game packet" flag in IP [1].

Generally, you should ONLY be running AH when playing for max. performance.

Also, even if the OS blocks packets from KAZAA et al. (ie. you barred those ports in /etc/services), they will hit your network card IF you have the same IP Adress as when you were online sharing porn - still taking bandwith for being transmitted. So get another IP - which may be difficult, as dialup DHCP servers "reserve" IP adresses for a certain hardware adress (say, phone number, MAC adress). After 24 hours, you should be save however

[1] Well really there is

Vulcan · « **Reply #6 on:** June 07, 2003, 04:55:35 PM »

I run two DSL accounts as we get data capped here, last week I switched to the other and picked up and IP that had been used by someone using Emule, I watched as I got continuous Emule hits for the following 24 hours.

There are other alternatives to that file sharing crap.

SunKing · « **Reply #7 on:** June 07, 2003, 05:09:33 PM »

I'm mp3 sharing all the time while flying AH. Depends on your connect how many files and what servers you are using. YOu just need to assign the correct amount of bandwidth so AH isn't effected.

Shiva · « **Reply #8 on:** June 07, 2003, 06:40:54 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by beet1e
I run Kazaa, but I have a two hard drive set up in my PC. WMe for games like AH on one HDD, and W2000 Pro for Kazaa and everything else on the other HDD. I flip-flop between the two, and have no problems at all with Kazaa or my connection for AH.

It's not how you have your system set up, beet1e, it's the fact that anyone who found your system while you had Kazaa running can still hit your system with their Kazaa. Even if you aren't running the software, your system will receive the connection attempt and have to decide what to do with it -- send back a 'connection refused' packet, which both eats a bit of processing power and some bandwidth on your Net connection. Enough attempts, and your connection quality dives into the toilet.

beet1e · « **Reply #9 on:** June 08, 2003, 05:58:50 AM »

Quote

Originally posted by Shiva
It's not how you have your system set up, beet1e, it's the fact that anyone who found your system while you had Kazaa running can still hit your system with their Kazaa. Even if you aren't running the software, your system will receive the connection attempt and have to decide what to do with it -- send back a 'connection refused' packet, which both eats a bit of processing power and some bandwidth on your Net connection. Enough attempts, and your connection quality dives into the toilet.

Surely the act of disconnecting from Kazaa delegates the responsibility of sending a "connection refused" packet to Kazaa itself. When I disconnect, I'm effectively telling Kazaa that my IP is no longer available. When I log in to AH (having rebooted) to WMe, my AH connection certainly does not dive into the toilet. Now you could say that the act of having to redial my ADSL causes a new IP address to be assigned. So what's the difference between that, and redialling the ADSL from the same system, assuming there was a connection problem? That leads me on to another question: You're saying that my system has to send a "connection refused" packet, even if I disconnect from Kazaa. What happens if I disconnect from the ADSL or even turn my computer off? If the sending of a "connection refused" packet has to be sent, then clearly my PC is not doing it, and Kazaa has to allow for that.

AKcurly · « **Reply #10 on:** June 08, 2003, 07:42:54 AM »

Quote

Originally posted by beet1e
Surely the act of disconnecting from Kazaa delegates the responsibility of sending a "connection refused" packet to Kazaa itself. When I disconnect, I'm effectively telling Kazaa that my IP is no longer available. When I log in to AH (having rebooted) to WMe, my AH connection certainly does not dive into the toilet. Now you could say that the act of having to redial my ADSL causes a new IP address to be assigned. So what's the difference between that, and redialling the ADSL from the same system, assuming there was a connection problem? That leads me on to another question: You're saying that my system has to send a "connection refused" packet, even if I disconnect from Kazaa. What happens if I disconnect from the ADSL or even turn my computer off? If the sending of a "connection refused" packet has to be sent, then clearly my PC is not doing it, and Kazaa has to allow for that.

If you connect to Kazaa, your presence is registered. If you disconnect from Kazaa, then other Kazaa users can still attempt to reach you. If only one Kazaa user hits you, no, that would not be a problem. If dozens hit you repeatedly and your computer connection is up (but Kazaa is down), your bandwidth is being consumed. Note in this circumstance, the Kazaa software is nonresponsive, but you still have Kazaa packets filling your pipe.

I am not a Kazaa user, so I know nothing about the extent of the problem other than what Skuzzy said. And he said : It takes 24 hours after the Kazaa software is stopped for the connection to return to normal. This wasn't Skuzzy's opinion, rather the result of some tests he ran.

I suspect that if you force (by rebooting) your ISP to assign you a different IP (different than the IP that was assigned during the Kazaa session), you will be ok. Of course, if you reboot and you get the same IP back, you're hosed.

Don't confuse the IP assigned to you by your ISP with the nonrouteable IPs used by firewall software (192.168.x.x)

curly

Skuzzy · « **Reply #11 on:** June 08, 2003, 08:46:27 AM »

When you turn off your computer, then your ISP's router takes up the responsibility for sending the "connection refused" ICMP packet back to the requester.

Switching to another IP from your ISP, will stop the connection attempts to you, but it just means the ISP's router is handling it, or another computer on the ISP's network, which gets your old IP, handles it.
Thus the paranoia is extended to another user that may be running a firewall, and see hundred's of hits on thier computer.

Kazaa and other programs of that ilk, turn your computer into an Internet server. Just like our WEB server here at HTC. Even if I turn off the computer running this bulletin board, the router will get hundreds of hits from all of you that want access to it.
These end up being ICMP messages sent back to the requester to notify the user that the server is not available.

This happens very quickly, almost instantaneous, but the traffic on the pipe is visible and does degrade the overall connection speed.

Now, if you are not serving files, and only grabbing them from the Internet, the damage to your connection is minimized, but if you serve files, then your connection will take a pounding, even after the server program is terminated.

This is all the basic premise of a DOS attack. It is one way hackers attack routers on the Internet, by sending thousands of requests to non-existant IP/port services, which keeps the router flooded with handling the connection attempts.

lord dolf vader · « **Reply #12 on:** June 08, 2003, 09:13:19 PM »

so i can hook up a firewall and get a good idea of how many legacy kazza searching for a connec hits i get. will do to test

i watch my connection very closely and have seen no difference on ah connec. ( as seen in game setup screen or my own pings) but i never run kazza and ah at the same time and believe that will cause connec problems similar to fariz ( the scourge of the 800ms connec) as kazza seems to not share well resources wise. i really dought there is a home system powerfull enough to run kazza lite cranked out with 40 connects on this planet.

Vulcan · « **Reply #13 on:** June 08, 2003, 09:44:57 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by Skuzzy
When you turn off your computer, then your ISP's router takes up the responsibility for sending the "connection refused" ICMP packet back to the requester.

And even then the next sorry sod that picks up your old IP gets the Kazza hits coming in. The IP I picked up had the Emule hits coming in for at least 12 hours, maybe longer, I wasn't really watching that closely.

There is an alternative to Kazza that doesn't have all the hangups, its a closely guarded secret of the internet underworld - just find you isps news...(sound of rifle crack)

(thump of body on floor)

beet1e · « **Reply #14 on:** June 09, 2003, 05:04:08 AM »

Skuzzy,

I bow to your superior networking knowledge, but I am unable to emulate the difficulties experienced by some users. I tried disconnecting and reconnecting the ADSL, and got the exact same IP address on the second connect. Then I restarted on WMe and dialled the ADSL - got the same IP as on W2000 - but no problems with my AH connect, which is generally around 135ms - not the best, but adequate. I'm actually using K-Lite, the lite version of Kazaa - would this account for the difference?

Obviously I don't run K-Lite on my WMe system, and don't even have it installed there.

I have now installed a firewall - Zone Alarm Pro. It works on WMe, but Aces High locks up if ZAP is running. I think ZAP is trying to display its window asking me if it's OK for AH to access the internet, but AH is preventing that window from being displayed.

Can you advise me please.