Lag problems at my Cyber Cafe! help!

[Noodles]

Hi

As you may or may not know, I now run a cybercafe/LAN Centre thing.

to the point.

I'm getting some wierd problems playing half-life and quake III online. The game will play smoothly for about 15-20 seconds then will spike, and you will freeze for about 1 second before you can cary on playing.

This applies to

CounterStrike 1.6 and CS:CZ. It also applies to DoD, but not so regular are the spikes.

Quake III and 3wave.

My Setup:

I have 2 x 2Mb/256Kb ADSLs from nildram, which are bonded together via a Cisco 2600 firewall/router. This router plugs into a HP Procurve 2324 switch which connects half my PCs. This switch connect to another HP Procurve 2324 using a gigabit stacking kit.

The swiches are patched into a patch-pannel, which connects to the wall sockets around the shop. Each PC connects straight to a HP2324, there are no smaller hubs/switches uses.

I'm running a peer to peer network with windows XP home, each PC has Steam, iNet Beagle (pr0n blocker), Daemon tools (for loading game images) and VNC 4.0 on it.

Now i'm out of my depth here, and I was hoping some of you clever people out there could help. I'll even consider rewarding you with a "mystery prize*" at i21.







*warning, mystery prize may have no monetry value, and may contain traces of nuts.

[Afty]

Does the game lag if you do the same but play on a server hosted locally in the cafe?

[Noodles]

Nope, when running a LAN server the game runs perfectly.

I have no idea why I forgot to say that in the first post :-)

[aled]

Try disconnecting one of the ADSL lines for a while - to see if the problem still occurs when you run with just one line.

[Afty]

Are you running any software monitoring the connection while you game?

[Noodles]

Aled: okay, going to try that now

Afty: No, I have no connection monitoring software

[Noodles]

I've disconnect one of my DSL lines, so now my connection is a single 2Mb/256kb connection, i've been playing CS since my last post and it has been running perfectly....

what does this mean? and can it be fixed/tweaked?

[aled]

Good news.

It means that it is Nildram's problem to fix it.

Get on to their support desk on 0870 094 6000

[Afty]

It means good spot Aled.

Just in case he isn't around to give us his knowledge, I can speculate : it's the bonding software causing the issue.

As for how you can solve it, I'd raise a support ticket with your ISP. They may want more proof though like traffic graphcs etc.

[Noodles]

whats the best way to get traffic graphics, can you recommend and s/w that does it?

[aled]

I've heard pingplotter (http://www.pingplotter.com/) is good for this kind of problem.

[zhardoum]

Hey Noodles, I'd be really interested in hearing about your adsl bonding system.

I also own a cyber cafe, and its something I have been looking at, can you tell me how it affects your upload ratio and d/l speeds, and especially ping..

Has the system been set up via your ISP, or have you done it yourself, and how does the system get around having 2 external ip address's...

[Afty]

Originally posted by zhardoum
can you tell me how it affects your upload ratio and d/l speeds, and especially ping.. That's what this whole thread is about! ;)
Originally posted by zhardoum
Has the system been set up via your ISP, or have you done it yourself, and how does the system get around having 2 external ip address's... AFAIK the ISP provides the equipment, and you don't have 2 external IP addresses, that's the point? You only have 1, and traffic for it is routed down the pipe most free...?

[Noodles]

The download speeds are incredible. Its so nice when you need a big patch like Desert Combat, and it downloads at over 400KBps.

As for the setup I payed somone from a network solutions company to do it. When we opened this place I had no idea about thinging larger than an 8 player LAN, so I dedicded to get the professionals to do it, and I'm glad, cos I would have been stuck.

The way it works is we have a cisco router with 2 ADSL modems in the back, and I plug my 2 phone lines into them. I have 2 static ip addresses, both that can be used to access my network.

We opted for a "Wires Only" option, so we bought the cisco router/firewall from the company that did our setup. Its not cheap, it cost us over £2000 in all, but then its worth it, as the firewall alone has saved me SO much greif.

[zhardoum]

Thats the thing, im in spain, im not sure if my ISP even does it, or knows about ( I did ask, but just got blank stares).

In particular, can you tell me how your ping has improved from this setup? or does it give you the same ping, but with far higher bandwidth...?

I am wondering because atm, I have a 2mb ADSL which is 2k Kb down, and 312Kb up, and the upload isnt sufficient.

I was thinking of maybe having 2 *1Mb lines, wihich would give me 2*1 K Kb down (2mB) and 2*256 up (512Kb).

Or maybe 2Mb +1Mb bonded, although im not sure if the bonded lines have to be the same speed..

Ideally I want to setup a dedicated server in the shop for people to play on from home, but with 312Kb uplaod only, its killing us..

[zhardoum]

also, are you listed on the Steam Cyber directory :) my shop is..

I am really interested in hering how you get on, being in the same trade and all, at the moment I have 40 pcs but due to the electricity company I can only use 26 as we dont have enough power (awaiting 3 phase electric install).

How much does the pron blocker cost? and what OS does it run on etc etc, I would like to stick in a proxy and filter software, but some of the prices I have been quoted nearly made my hair fall out..

[Noodles]

pr0n blocker "InetBeagle"

http://www.inetbeagle.com/

Its completly free!



As for the valve cyber cafe, we're just negotiating a deal with them at the moment, then we'll be listed.

Afty/Aled

I'm run that graph, and it looks the same wether i'm running on 1 line or 2.

Same about of spikes etc.

[aled]

With two lines connected and you're in game, as soon as the lag hits you, run pingplotter and see what is going on. Upload a screen grab if you want.

Where is your cafe by the way?

[Noodles]

when the lag hits me, i freeze for a second, then it dosn't happened for another couple of mins, its back to normal in a sec.

Can't upload images atm, cant use my btwebspace at work.

Cafe is in basilon/essex

[aled]

I think you're going to have to work with Nildram and/or whoever set your router up on this matter.

As bonded ADSL is a standard product from Nildram then as long as your router is configured the way they specify, then Nildram should take responsibility for fixing this.

[Noodles]

I've writted a detailed description and email them to nildram support. I'll keep you guys updated.

[Bonkers]

Sort out the config on the Cisco - it looks like its having some load balancing issues.
Might be IP issues - the connections are getting confused between the two IPs and tries to switch?
Maybe you can config the router so it only allows HTTP traffic on one line - and everything else on the other?

[aled]

As I understand it the service Nildram offer is multilink, not load balancing, so there aren't two seperate connections as such.
i.e. you can run with either connection stand alone (and the other disconnected) or with both multilinked together, but not with two seperate connections.

I agree the Cisco config might be the culprit, or something at Nildram's end.

[Afty]

Originally posted by Bonkers
Might be IP issues - the connections are getting confused between the two IPs and tries to switch? AFAIK there is only one IP in this kind of solution?

[aled]

That's my understanding too.

By offering multilink there aren't two seperate connections so there aren't two IP addresses.

This is the difference between "multilink" and "load balancing."

[zhardoum]

Quick question for Noodles

Tried out Beagle software, and it appears to work ok, but one question, have you managed to find a way to change the page cannot be displayed error?

Ideally id like a html from the shop saying somehting like we are sorry, either the page is offline, or it has been blocked by our filter.

Do you have anything like this? or do you show the standard error and have the bubble popping up?

[IronFire]

From what I have read it looks like people are getting confused with packet switched network topologies and circuit switched topologies like a telephone line.

As Noodles has said Nildram did not install the router and so they won’t really care what is going on your end, this also shows that from the External networks view of you there are two connections.

An example of how one can load balance two lines like this is by setting two static routes to the external IP’s and setting them with equal administrative metrics so that the router sees both connections as equal in preference. Due to this you can enable load balancing where the router will send the packets out in such a way as to keep the load on the two lines equal.

If your problem disappears when you unplug one of the lines then there is a problem in this area.

I may be able to help you fix it if it is the router that is at fault but you will need to log onto the console using a null modem cable. Once you have done that login to exec mode by typing “enable” then your password. The type show version and save it to a txt file, show running-config and save it to a txt file and then show interfaces and save it to a text file.

If you are going to post it on here MAKE SURE you remove your enable password and virtual terminal lines as well as any other passwords for users you have set form the text files.

From this you can then try using some debug commands to look at how the router is moving traffic but this places a heavy load on the CPU and should not be done while your using the network with people on it.

I am going to be at i21 if you still can’t fix it.

[aled]

Originally posted by IronFire
From what I have read it looks like people are getting confused with packet switched network topologies and circuit switched topologies like a telephone line.

As Noodles has said Nildram did not install the router and so they won�t really care what is going on your end, this also shows that from the External networks view of you there are two connections.


According to Nildram's support web site (http://www.nildram.co.uk/support/bonded.htm) they use Multilink PPP, not load balancing two connections.

As such they should care if it isn't working as this is a supported service.

I agree it would be nice to see the config though, so we'd know for sure what is going on.

[IronFire]

The load balancing is not done Nildrams end if configured on the router and as Noodles stated that Nildram didnt set it up I am prety sure the router wont be using PPP but as pointed out we can't really know until we see the configs.

[bvark]

The other useful debugging command for the router is 'show ppp multilink' - if you're seeing lost or re-ordered fragments that's usually indicative of a problem on the provider end.

It sounds from the description of the 'freezing' that you're giving the problem is in the direction provider -> you - if you're losing packets in the other direction you tend to get rubberbanding, not freezing.

There have been literally tens of bugs related to Cisco's MLPPP implementation over the last few years, so it's possible your router (or the BRAS on Nildram's end) is having a problem.

I note their tech support page says you need to be running IOS 12.3, which if it was installed more than a few months ago, it probably won't be.