Must prepare for QuakeZero

August 28, 2007 3:49 PM

Despite my sub-20 ping, when playing Quake 3 multiplayer. every 60 seconds I get a huge lag spike, every minute or so like clockwork

I know it has something to do with my wireless connection but I'm not sure what it is or how to change it. The lag spike is not sporadic but rhythmic, every minute or so, like the router and the adapter are saying hello.

I have a WRT54G like everybody else, I've installed DD-WRT onto it in hopes of killing the lag spike, but the lag spike still lives... I even checked to see if it was some lame WGA "feature"... but to no avail

Any ideas? Rhythmic lag spikes, every 60 seconds, even if I could someone change "it" to every 5 mins I'd be happy.

posted by Satapher to computers & internet (11 comments total)

Can you provide the log files from the router, as well as a task-manager dump of what's happening when you see the spike, along with the timestamp of when the spike occurs?

My guess is either (A) this isn't network related, but rather, something churning on the client PC that is pinning the CPU every 60", or (B) some burst of activity that's hogging your bandwidth.
posted by ellF at 4:13 PM on August 28, 2007

I believe this is caused by the microsoft wireless manager. It polls (or does something) every 60-120 seconds. Did your wireless card come with its own client? If so use that.
posted by damn dirty ape at 4:14 PM on August 28, 2007

If that doesnt work try setting your AP to G only or B only. Or try a different channel. With netstumbler you should be able to see the least used channel.
posted by damn dirty ape at 4:17 PM on August 28, 2007

Connect to a wired port temporarily, to rule out ellF's (A) possibility.
posted by davejay at 5:00 PM on August 28, 2007

We've done this before here, I'm sure. It's something to do with a Microsoft thing. Are you using Vista? I think that might be related. Sorry I can't be more help, but try having a good trawl of the archives.
posted by bonaldi at 5:01 PM on August 28, 2007

My usual answer to whether something is the OS or not:

Make a Ubuntu CD and boot from it. Install Openarena. Play on a public server. See if it still happens.
posted by cmiller at 5:23 PM on August 28, 2007

I actually run Ubuntu full time, but the OpenArena servers are sparsely populated and even then its full of um, noobs. I can't get sound to work in Quake3 under Linux, so I still boot into XP every so often to get my Q3CTF fix.

I recently switched rooms and now don't have the option of a direct internet connection and have to rely on my wireless adapter. I get the same insanely low pings as the direct connection but the spikes are making me LOSE ;)

I bet it works just fine under Linux... lemme try a few of these leads so far, thanks guys, and sorry for the distraught grammar of the original post
posted by Satapher at 5:47 PM on August 28, 2007

thanks damn dirty ape, that was it! you just enabled me to waste a whole lot of time! the Linksys software is kinda clunky, does anyone know of a generic or open source network manager for wireless connections?
posted by Satapher at 6:39 PM on August 28, 2007

I ran into this a few years ago; the solution I used was to run a script after login that stopped the Wireless Zero Network Config service. It is only needed when first connecting. You just need something like:

net stop xxxxx

in a file called stopzero.cmd

where xxxxx is the short name of the service that you can find under Services in Control Panel.
posted by SNACKeR at 7:14 PM on August 28, 2007

Check out this page for ways to improve how Wireless Zero Configuration connects to a wireless network. It includes something like SNACKeR described at the bottom of it's page, and also what damn dirty ape suggested, plus some other stuff.
posted by philomathoholic at 11:56 PM on August 28, 2007

I had this same problem a few years ago with the WZCS. I was hanging every 63 seconds, but as I couldn't find vendor-supplied software I gave up on it. It's good to know now that there exist solutions to the problem, in case I come across it again.
posted by PuGZ at 3:24 AM on August 29, 2007