Description of LAN:
-DSL to DSL ethernet modem
-ethernet modem to D-Link 604 DSL router
-router to VPR 1.8Ghz, 512Mb ram, 10/100 NIC that came installed, Windows XP Home
-router to Dell 300Mhz 96Mb ram, $15 10/100 NIC I bought at Best Buy, Windows 98 non-SE
Other Information:
VPR runs well with DSL, often downloading at ~90KBs
Problem:
Dell is very laggy while playing online games (Starcraft) even though the interface says it has a 1 green connection (usually connotes a low lag connection), loads web pages very (read VERY) slowly (so slowly, in fact that I couldn’t test how slow it could download because I couldn’t load download.com), and has a low ping of ~34ms. I have no idea what is wrong with it. It meets the system requirements for DSL. What would be the cause of this? Any help for that would be appreciated.
Other problem:
For Warcraft III that I play on the VPR, I can only host games when I put my computer on the DMZ. I want to be able to host games without being on the DMZ. On my router, I have it set up so that the Trigger port is 6112-6119 and the Public port is 6112-6119, both using UDP and TCP as Trigger/Public types respectively. On Warcraft 3, I have 6112 as the port to use for playing on Battle.net. However, this setup doesn’t let me host any games. From Blizzard’s site , I find that my setup should be correct. Any help with this will also be appreciated.
First of all, does the ethernet card in the Dell have a Realtek chipset? If so, you may want to consider going to their website and getting the latest drivers. How well does it work when transferring files on the LAN?
Oh sorry, one other thing. Where does the firewall come into play? I see you mentioned port forwarding and such. Did you mean NAT, rather than a firewall?
Ah, yeah. The router has a NAT that blocks anyone trying to join my games, despite having set up port triggering and port forwarding. I thought that NAT was a type of firewall?
Anyway, no idea what chipset the NIC on the Dell has. It’s a D-Link DFE-530TX+. I’ll update drivers now, once the thing starts up. I can’t transfer files to the Dell for some reason. Actually, I think I’ll just format the computer, reinstall everything, and then update everything. Ever since I got my own computer, my brother’s been messing around with the Dell so much that it’s impossible to do anything on it.
I have run into a smilar issue where as the 98 computer runs fine, but the XP one has issues. It appears as if your is the opposite though. First I would try upgrading to the latest firmware on your DSL router, this may fix the issue. Secondly I would try uninstalling the NIC through the networking properties and reboot and let windows reinstall it again. This will get you back to a default install. During your playing around you might have changed a vital setting. During the reinstall you might also want to download the latest driver. If all else fails I would look at getting another NIC to test on that machine.
I have a cheap D-link router at home (either a DI-604 or a DI-607) and find that if I don’t reboot it (cough unplug, replug cough) every few days it gets extraordinarily laggy, exactly in the way that you’ve mentioned. At least that’s what fixed my problem. At the very least, trying it couldn’t hurt.
Oh, and update to the latest router firmware–D-link’s updates are usually pretty good.