Lag problems

Hi,

Hoping someone might be able to offer some help.

My son likes to play CS:S and recently has been getting terrible lag (150-500) on a local server (my PC hosting on local network)

Ive updated the gfx driver (Radeon 9600Pro 256Mb) to the latest ATi offering with full catalyst package, running WinXP Sp2 with all updates etc which fixed his general lag on any server but he still gets lots of lag when connecting to my pc.

His lag is fine if he hosts, as is mine if I host but as soon as he connects to me his latency goes through the roof. My PC is more than capable at hosting a basic 6v6 bots and humans match so im pretty sure its not that.

He can download from the net at decent speeds (700Kb/s +) and doesnt have problems browsing web etc or accessing files on local network, its just playing CS:S.

Having just changed over to a BT Home hub from a Netgear router, I wondered if its not doing a decent job with internal traffic? Ne1 got one of these and can comment?

i would never reccomend any networking kit made by BT....

previously had problems with their internet connectivity, and dont know if this means that internally they are not 100% secure!

Ok small update, tried with him hosting an me connecting, fine for 5 mins (latency for me 30 or so, him 5) then started going up, averaging 150 but spiking to 500.

All traffic is internal so is this just BT's lack of decent routing?

Would it work to put in my Belkin (not Netgear as I said above, i forgot what i had) as a repeater of sorts to handle the upstairs wireless traffic?

Also does anyone know any good networking management tools where I could see whats causing the latency increase?

If the traffic is all internal then there's no routing involved. You could download wireshark and see if that shows anything of interest.

thanks ill have a look at Wireshark and see if I can see where the increase is coming in

It sounds like a firewall is scanning the traffic on one of the machines (most likely yours) and because of this it is taking longer for it to reach its destination. If you have any security software like this then try allowing traffic from your local ip range, to find this type ipconfig into a command prompt. If you want to quickly test before creating a rule then temporarily disable your security software and see if you still experience the same issues.

Cheers Ell, strangely enough its fine now?!?!

I did run Wireshark and it showed fairly normal activity but ping's are fine now.

I did take off IPX before I ran the tests so that might have been it but otherwise its fine now.

Network security applications can be plain bizarre at times, anyway i'm just glad to help :).