We have a Belkin 802.11g Wireless lan at our place which we use to share our Cable internet with 2 pc's and 2 laptops. The server pc with the access point is 1 1/2 floors down (split level house) with a cpl of plaster walls between my pc and the server. Now the connection is fine, my signal strength is nearly always "very good" . But when i play CS, or other games, over the net, even if i have a really low ping i still get occasional intermittent lag spikes. They seem to be pretty randomly timed and doesnt really affect my gaming ability (or inability :S) but its kinda irratating. Anyone using WIFI got similar troubles or a solution? Im thinking its got to be a software problem, like a windows service or something. btw : I know its not a worm/virus as i've checked with a few full system scans.
Have you got the fps thingy running in the bottom corner of cs? If you have it tells you down there if there is any lost packets which may be causing the lag you described.
I get this when I am home using D-Link kit to connect to my mate accross the road. Happens whatever game it is...
well im happy to say i figured it out. After some extensive googling and posts on other forums i found that all i had to do is disable the "Wireless Zero Config" service in windows. This service stops your wifi card polling for new connections, seeing as tho my server is the only one i have i dont need this service on. To disable it open up Services (in Administrative Tools) and scroll down till u find it. Open it up and set it to "Disabled". easy, now i can play CS with 0 lag
Interesting, I have Netgear 802.11g router and pci cards and I never have any problems with wireless zero. I just turned off the popup bubbles because they annoy me
Same Problem! I am having the same problem as you did rahoul. I attempted to follow your steps, but in disabling that zero wireless service, not only did my wireless connection go down, but the computer went into slow cpu-thinking sluggishness. Everything loaded slow, my music playing got all distorted and slow, and it took me like 20 seconds to pull up the start menu, just to shut down. I restarted, thinking that was the issue. When I came back online, I still had the computer slowdown issue, so I re-enabled the wireless zero protocol... Any ideas anyone? I'm running Wireless-B D-link PCI card, onto a wireless network from one floor up. The router that projects the signal is a Linksys Wireless B router. My connection bars show "Very Good" and 86% respectively. My internet surfing is nearly flawless, but I've noticed the same thing Rahoul described. Intermittedly in games I will lag out for.. sometimes 15 seconds. During the time that this isnt happening, my ping is very low (30-60), so its not the connection to the server.(and no one else in the servers I'm playing in are experiencing the lag that I am.) I also noticed something akin to this in AIM.. when I sent a file to my friend yesterday, it'd zip along, then stop for 5-10 seconds, then keep uploading very quickly. Any suggestions? Rahoul, did you disable that zero service and it worked instantanously?
Actually I too fixed my own problem.. I had noticed during the time when my connection didnt work after disabling Wireless Zero Config that i had a different window when I right clicked on my d-link properties. But w/out internet I didnt see the point in setting up my config. After re-enabling this Wireless Zero Config protocol, the d-link window was replaced by the standard windows network dialog menu. (when you right click on d-link and hit properties). Just was wondering what the d-link config did, I tried to get back to it, but the only way I could was by re-disabling Wireless Zero Config. Did that, and looked in and out of the d-link configuration itself. Turns out that windows actually overrode D-link's network configuration, and disabled d-link. I had to restart, then re-define the wireless network's SSID and channel, add the network as the primary, and hit connect. Now it works like a charm. Thanks raoul
Ugh, sorry to triple post. Connection and everything worked perfectly fine last night, I stopped having those lag spikes.. Tonight they're back, and my configuration hasn't changed. Just to re-iterate... I lag out in a game, totally. I go to the desktop with the game still running, check the wireless signal strength and quality--normal (~65%) Using a 3rd party server finder, I FIND the server where I'm lagged out, ping it--NO PROBLEM. In fact, I can see myself in the server, with a 996 ping (=lagged out in the game I play). Re open the game, I'm still lagged out. The spikes were totally random, sometimes I'd have none for 5-10 min, and sometimes I'd get huge ones within 20-30sec of each other. The spikes usually last about 20 seconds long. (totally unacceptable for gameplay..) Anyone have anymore suggestions?
What kind of firewall problem? I'm confident it isn't a game problem, because I just came home from college. I played this same game, on these same servers at college without a hitch, so it must be related to the router, the wireless, or the ISP here at my house. It's a Linksys Wireless-B router, no WEP encryption enabled, and my computer has a D-link wireless-B card. Are there any settings on the router I should mess with? I should also add that my family just moved across town, and that at the old house we had the linksys regular hard-cable router, and that I didn't have these problems. That's why I didnt think it was the router/firewall causing problems, but you tell me..
ahh good ol thread resurection. i had some problems too after i disabled wireless zero config, ie : it wouldnt detect my Routers signal. But then all i had to do was uninstall the drivers and reinstall them and make sure the MSI's (my wifi card brand) util was managing the signal, not windows. I didnt have any problems after that and my gaming is perfecto. sorry im no help
At someone else's suggestion, I upgraded the linksys router's firmware. That upped my signal strength and quality 10-15% each. Since then, I've only received lag stops once or twice a game, instead of 25-30x/game. Someone mentioned that I should turn off some authentication feature? Anyone know what this is?
