Multi-PC disconnect issue

[pusatli]

Hey. I'm normally boxing with 16 characters. Last night i've tried with 32. I got 2 PC. Everything is ok when i log in, then MS-Ping is increasing constantly and finally some of characters disconnect. You have any idea how i can fix this? May my internet connection cause this? Now i cancelled 2nd PC and it seems good with 16 now. :confused::confused:

[jak3676]

Both PC's load fine with 16 each on their own, but the latency increases when you connect the control?

[Ughmahedhurtz]

Sounds like maybe your router is struggling to keep up. Can you keep adding one account at a time and find out how many it takes to start seeing the issue?

[pusatli]

Both PC's load fine with 16 each on their own, but the latency increases when you connect the control?
It does not matter if i connect both pc or not. If i go more than 16, MS is increasing. For example, it starts 70-90 ms with 16, then i go 17th client,it goes to 100-110 ms.It goes to 1k ms like that. Finally some of them disconnect

[EaTCarbS]

Sound's really weird, I can't imagine even that many accounts running stressing the average connection bandwidth, unless you have a REALLY slow connection.

[pusatli]

Sound's really weird, I can't imagine even that many accounts running stressing the average connection bandwidth, unless you have a REALLY slow connection.
You think 8mbps is really slow?

[WOWBOX40]

8 mbps is really low.

F.ex netflix alone in HD can demand 5 mbps.



For 32 accounts, id suggest getting like 60 mbps.

Check your options from your local and/or other internet providers.


If possible, step into the modern world and get fiber internet installed, its much faster than the old "copper wire standard" (copper maxes out around 60 mbps or so it seems: that was the max my old internet provider could offer, while being a stable connection).


If you have others using the same internet connection...to watch netflix f.ex... that adds load on your connection too ofcourse.

[EaTCarbS]

You sound like an ISP salesman right there.

While I can't check wow's bandwidth use, I can check eve online... and we're talking Kbps. Games don't even come nearly as close to the bandwidth use as things like streaming/youtube/netflix. Id suggest OP load up his resource monitor and check all of this out when opening everything up.

[kate]

I just checked my network usage while playing WoW with a single character, .1 mbps. There's probably something else going on - hub or router isn't handling so many connections maybe.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

The processing power required by the router is something like <number of open socket connections> * number of firewall rules * number of interfaces on the router * 2, for a single operation. The SoC on the router has to decide where to route traffic for every single packet that goes through it, and smaller home routers just aren't designed for low-latency operations the way a good managed switch or commercial router is. The more expensive ones like the R7000 (NetGear Nighthawk) and such have higher speed processors and more RAM to help with that. Then there's the quality of the router's firmware that potentially just adds more pain to the mix. What happens when you start stressing them beyond their capability is usually intermittently higher latency (and connections that expect low-latency getting dropped).

Another few tips: https://www.speedguide.net/faq/asus-router-one-cpu-core-100-usage-510

Some other considerations and things to poke around at: https://networkengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/780/what-would-cause-high-latency-anytime-there-is-traffic-on-wan

It could be something really simple, but trying the easy stuff first (disabling QoS and WiFi Auto-Channel) are easy low-hanging fruit that might get you just enough to avoid the disconnects.

[jak3676]

Are you actually using an old school "Hub" (probably haven't been made since 2000), not a more modern "Switch"? If so, that's likely your problem - you're getting collision storms and you need to swap out your networking gear to get an actual switch instead of that hub.

Hubs don't actually separate your network traffic - they just connect every PC together on the same network segment. This can become a problem because the way standard Ethernet traffic works is that if 2 PC's on the same segment try to communicate at the same time, they'll over-write each other and neither message will get through. So the clients will wait a random amount of time and try to send their data again, and if they collide again, they'll wait some more and try again - rinse and repeat until the packet times out. A "Collision Storm" is where you have multiple PC's all trying to talk at the same time and that essentially plugs up the line and no-one can talk. Watching that happen from a PC would look exactly as you describe - at 1st it may seem OK, then latency will increase slowly at first, then snowballing to the point where nothing gets through. In this situation the overall bandwidth being successfully used is quite small, but the latency can be extreme.

I know I even use the terms hub and switch interchangably myself sometimes even though I know the difference. Your situation used to be a common problem back when people used hubs - especially on small networks, but starting in the 90's switches became just as cheap as hubs so everyone switched (no pun intended) to using switches instead.

Multiboxing is probably the perfect storm (OK that pun was somewhat intended) in terms of causing collision storms. You have multiple clients all trying to communicate at the exact same time - every time you hit a button. By dumb luck, you'll likely cause multiple collisions every time you do anything in game - because its all trying to happen at the exact same time.

At least the fix is cheap - just replace your old hub with a cheap switch. Switches look almost exactly the same as switches, but the internal wiring is much different - instead of connecting every device together on the same network segment, a switch actually makes a separate network segment for each connection.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

Not a bad point about hubs. I thought I was one of the last people on earth to have one of those (I use it for packet sniffing Wireshark shenanigans in certain rare cases at work).