I've found myself with an unexplainable situation occurring with my internet connection. I have attempted to play online multi player games and it seems with the more people I play with the higher chance I have of being disconnected.

For instance; I used to play Age of Empires II online and I would do fairly alright, connectivity-wise when playing with six players but the chance of losing connection was relatively high. Four players I sustained a good chance of staying connected. The phenomenon I don't understand or comprehend is the relation between the connection and the amount of players.

Now recently I picked up Xbox Live and discovered the same thing happens when connecting with a large amount of players, and again that is five or more. I find I have a hard time connecting to most, but thats aside the issue.

Im not exactly looking for a fix because that is asking a lot, but more so inquiring about what causes this or what might be going on. I'm interested in it, more so.

When it's a connection between myself and one other player I rarely, if ever lose connection. I have contacted the ISP and they say the connection is fine and there is nothing they can do. I don't know whether or not to believe this.

Windows XP.
Netgear Gateway router/modem.
CG814WG.

The only reason I even inquire is because the same exact error that was occurring on Age of Empires II is occurring with Xbox Live. I am interested in learning the causes that may be leading to this.

Hi

There are many factors you should take into account here.

First of all, there is your internet connection and the server you connect to. This isn't the main problem anymore, broadband being accesible to almost everyone (where it is geographically possible) however, the problem still remains on the server-side. When you play an internet game like AOE the server that hosts the game needs to send all the coordinates of each individual object and action on the map to each player. More players means more objects. More players also means more directions to which the server needs to send data.

Also, people that are hosting the games are hosting them on their personal machine and on their connection, the game isn't hosted on any professional server. Although the average download speed is 10Mbs (in your city) the upload speed provided is around 256kbs - 512 kbs. That's because a home user doesn't need great upload speed because he is not hosting a service (like a webpage or a game server) that would require him to upload fast and a lot of data to remote clients. So, the server you connect to is limited in the amount of data he can send, because he has a regular connection just like you and me so if there are more than 4 players and each of the players has 200 units and 30 buildings it is likely that one of the players will experience high latency (lag, as gamers call it) and eventually disconnect.

You should stick to geographically close servers because you are less likely to experience problems there. You should also close any application that consumes bandwidth (downloads, messengers etc.).

What is your current download/upload bandwidth? there is a possibility that you connection isn't handling the amount of data coming from the server and dropping the connection.

download; 14460kbs
upload; 1439kbs

Hi

Then that clearly means the problem is not on your side. Have you ever tired hosting a game yourself?

Yes, same thing occurs.

Sometimes my connection is disrupted and I can't regain connection without resetting my modem. Recently I have been able to join multi player games on XboxLive but during the game I disconnect. If a single other player hosts a game and I join I can remain connected for hours, perhaps days! Vice-versa too, when it's just the two us.

It's strange that there are spikes in my connection, periods where I am just browsing the web and my connection is disrupted. There are times where it will regain connection on it's own and others where I am forced to reset the modem.

Back to the Xbox and when I lose connection, and I goto test the connection -- most times it will say my NAT is strict, and other times it won't make it to that point in the test before it fails somewhere else.

Any more information I could provide you to get a better understanding of this?

Hi

Call your ISP and have them do some testing on your modem and your connection. Also ask them about any limitations that might have been put into place for your connection class.

Hi

Spoke to the ISP and the person on the other end of the line ran tests. Nothing out of the ordinary came up, and I also asked about any limitations that may have been put into place, none. There is a technician coming out tomorrow, hopefully he knows what the hell he is talking about..

Stay tuned!


CR119493479.

Any news?

Im happy to report that the problem has since been repaired and it was done by switching out the Netgear router/gateway with a Linksys. I wish I only knew the reasoning behind the correction, an in depth understanding of why that was needed to maintain a connection.