Rather stranger internet connection issue

Fuzzbox · 18 Jul 2011 at 08:01

Before getting on the phone to Virgin, I thought I'd post here to see if anyone else has had similar issues.

What's happening is while playing certain games (EVE, FFXI), it seems like half of my connection will drop and stop sending data to the server, but receiving part seems fine - the annoying part is that the connection sometimes takes 2-3 mins to realise it's dropped, so EVE will just sit there and not let me do much, FFXI takes a minute to realise something is wrong and then starts dropping the connection indicator (but slowly).

The wierd thing is, while playing World of Warcraft, I occasionally get disconnected/reconnected from/to battle.net, but manage to stay in-game without issue (connecting to the US servers if that makes any difference).

I've done some traceroutes to see if there are any obvious dud hops but as it's somewhat inconsistent as to when it happens, it's been rather difficult to pin down. It feels like it's something out on the internet rather than our own setup, but because it can happen so randomly it's going to be very difficult to diagnose accurately.

The setup I run is Win7 64-bit, wired to a D-Link DIR-615 wireless router and then to the Virgin Cable Modem (not sure exactly what model, it's one with 5 blue status lights on the to). Diagnostics on the CM show that it seems to be within acceptable ranges for power levels and such, the only slightly wierd thing is in the router logs show "Xmas port scan attack" for nearly 400 lines (and that's just from 4am this morning). The router also seems rather slow to load up pages using the web interface. SPI is enabled, UPnP is enabled, WAN ping is disabled and I don't have any rules set up to forward ports to my own machine (nor is the DMZ active).

Does anyone know if there have been connection issues from Virgin Media in say the last month or two, specifically relating to gaming traffic? Or is it likely that something is up with the router and getting a new one would likely help (one of my friends suggested the Linksys E3000)?

Cheers,

Euan

Efour · 18 Jul 2011 at 12:21

If you search offical VM forums You will find 100s of posts relating to gaming issues and their latest traffic management policies.

I stopped playing MMOs (warhammer then Rift) Because i couldnt get a stable connection during the traffic management hours.

Im not saying this is your issue but take it into consideration. Have you tried taking the router out of the loop and directly connecting it for a day or 2 see if its resolves anything?

The other fix i had used was changing my MTU from 1500 default down to 900. I dont know why it works but i read it on a forum and it helped for a while. Again not sayign this will do anythign for you.

David Koh · 18 Jul 2011 at 16:06

To me mate that is somthing on the ISP equipment. Are you cable or phone BB with virgin?

Fuzzbox · 19 Jul 2011 at 23:12

Made a post on the VM forums so waiting for a response to that.

Out of interest I tried putting my machine as the DMZ host this evening (infeasible to connect directly to the CM due to 3 other users in the house) and FFXI at least managed to stay connected for a good three hours before dropping in the same way. Didn't try EVE or WoW, might do that tomorrow evening.

I can't see how port forwarding (or lack thereof) would cause this type of issue unless there is some seriously strange traffic going on. About the only other thing I can think of is that two family members tend to torrent a fair bit which I guess could be clogging the router somewhat. Apparently DD-WRT is available for the VM model of the DIR-615 wireless router, has anyone had any experience using this?

happy_2008 · 20 Jul 2011 at 17:53

What virgin download package are you using? According to there policie the 50MB service is not restricted.

Fuzzbox · 20 Jul 2011 at 18:25

We're on the 50MB (XXL) package, it isn't throttled however AFAIK all of the cable packages are traffic managed 5-12 weekday evenings and 12-12 weekends.

I set up a thinkbroadband ping/packetloss tester thing yesterday evening, looking at it today it's not horrible but it isn't exactly stellar either. Might see if we can get in touch with VM by phone to see if there's an issue in the area.

steven_belfast · 20 Jul 2011 at 18:34

Greetings,

I thought the 50Mb could be capped also but this says not,

Virgin Media Traffic Shapping

Fuzzbox · 21 Jul 2011 at 00:10

steven_belfast said:
Greetings,

I thought the 50Mb could be capped also but this says not,

Virgin Media Traffic Shapping

It's not the download/bandwidth throttling that might be the problem, it's the traffic management for filesharing - http://shop.virginmedia.com/help/traffic-management/traffic-management-policy.html

"We moderate the total volume of file sharing traffic on our network between 5pm and midnight on weekdays and midday and midnight on weekends. This policy, which applies to all broadband packages, is restricted to Peer to Peer ("P2P") applications and Newsgroups (which are commonly used to distribute large amounts of data)

This policy does not impact any applications other than Peer to Peer and Newsgroups, so things like watching iPlayer, online gaming, making calls via Skype, downloading music tracks from iTunes or streaming them from Spotify and sending an email or normal browsing are unaffected.

It's important to remember that these traffic management policies only apply at peak times when speeds are most likely to be affected by people using more than their fair share. Outside of peak times we do not manage traffic."

I guess it's possible that certain game traffic is getting picked up as P2P, however I tried early this morning on FFXI and still got the strange dropouts so I suspect it's either the router, or something further up the line. Having looked at a few sites it looks like the DIR-615 might have a severely limited amount of connections so I may try flashing the DD-WRT firmware this weekend to see if it improves.