Networking

Hey everyone! Just a random networking question to anyone who's more experienced than I am out there.

I had an old Netgear 802.11B only wireless router for a few years, and it finally blew up the other day. I play GW on my laptop (a Compaq X6000, it stomps the game out VERY well) so I know it's not an issue with my computer, but here's the deal:

I bought a Linksys WRT54G wireless B/G router to replace my Netgear, and now i'm having lag issues while playing GW. My old B only router? Smooth as silk and ultra-responsive ... the new one gives a lag about every 6-8 seconds (a little "skip" when walking around, activating skills, whatever action I happen to be taking at the time). I've checked and double-checked all the settings, I still have the same ISP, same DSL modem, etc.

So I think to myself "this has to be an issue between the NIC in my computer and the router ..." so I do some ping tests over the wireless ... all less than 3ms (average was 1), no packet loss ... perfect.

Now you're thinking "ok, well maybe you're having some issues outside your network, between your house and GW servers ... packet segmenting, too high of an MTU, blah blah" ... right, same thing I thought, but my other 2 computers are both hardwired up to the router, and I unplugged the network cable from one and plugged it into my laptop, and everything runs smooth as glass! You'll also note that the router shares the MTU across all it's transmission methods (wired and wireless), So there is definitely something still wrong with the wireless settings on the router

Anyone else have this same router and can recommend anything? (apart from throwing the thing out of my window, that is)

Thanks in advance!

EDIT: and yes, i've talked to Linksys tech support, who told me to lower the MTU to 1100 which is quite possibly one of the dumbest things i've heard ... and besides that it didn't work (no surprise)

Since you've narrowed it down to wireless, and the troublshooting sounds sound, I would look to the various wireless settings. I'm not a real expert on this stuff, but I've heard stories of turning of Dynamic Turbo, or at least switching to Static Turbo can cure some various wireless issues. Also wireless can operate on any one of eleven (I think) channels. Perhaps there is another wireless device nearby in the house that is interferring with the channel it is currently set to use, try changing the channel.

Did that, and if it was interference between the wireless NIC and the router, my ping time would suffer ... I ran ping -t for a solid 10 minutes, and not one packet lost, and no response times over 3ms

Also interesting to note, is that I ran the same -t ping test while GW was running, and was getting slow ping times (up to around 6-8ms) periodically but still no packet loss. I'm sure GW uses larger packets than the default 32 bytes that a normal ping uses, though ...

I suppose I can chuck out the $25 to buy my same old router (discontinued now, but available on Amazon) ... but I hate that I just dropped $50 on a new one that isn't that great

I've heard others have had problems with this model, and fixed different issues they had, but nothing like the one i'm experiencing.

I have a wrt54g V3 and Im not seeing the issues you are having unless my isps gateway is acting stupid.

It maybe an issue involving the encryption type you are using over the wireless network, higher encrption bits require more processing time. You may also find that if your laptop is wireless B and the router is wireless G there may be issues with the way in which the router handles the connection wirelessly. You should try to enable mixed mode and CTS Protection Mode.

I would also suggest you try running a ping test to your default gateway on the wan. Run atleast a 50 packet test and see what kind of times you are getting to your wans default gateway.

Other then that It could quite possibly be a quirky incompatiability between brands. Ie Linksys Router, Netgear WNI.

You may also need to enable port triggering for the default port that guildwars requires unrestricted access to. Though I doubt it would affect wireless only.

Mine's V5 with latest firmware, and my ping tests to the local gateway (192.168.1.1) have little to no latency at all over the wireless.

The built-in NIC in the Compaq is a Broadcomm B/G compatable card, and does have good thruput once the connection establishes itself, it's just the latency that's way off during GW play.

The encryption part I hadn't heard before, only thing i'm running is standard 128 hex WEP key (which the old router was running as well) ... I know a good bit about networking, and little to nothing about the way wireless works

I'll try looking at CTS, but to also note: i've tried changing the network mode from mixed, to B only, to G only ... all the same.

I've tried adjusting some of the advanced wireless settings, and the only thing that helped a bit was bumping the beacon interval down from 100 to 50ms, but the improvement was very minor.

The only other difference I can think of between how my old router was set up and this one, is I set an allow list for MAC addresses in the old router ... but the network was still 128 WEP encrypted as well ... *shrug*

I'm leaning toward quirky incompatability between hardware manufacturers myself, which I hadn't thought of ... i'll run out to the rest of the 'net and search a bit

My little Netgear router was the best i've owned to date, small, sharp-looking, easy to set up and configure, blazing fast (and it was a B only!) ... this makes 2 Linksys products i've bought that I haven't been happy with, I guess i've learned my lesson.

EDIT: hmm, I need to learn to read ... I haven't fooled with any ping tests on the WAN side, but I have sent some out to various sites across the 'net and compared them to the pings from either of my 2 hardwired machines, virtually identical ... which still leads me to believe the problem is within the 4 walls of my house :-\