Mr. Athena and I just got a new cable internet connection. It’s fast and nice, but a bit wonky. For example, his VPN connection to his main client times out after a few minutes. More importantly <grin>, I can’t log into Everquest. I suspect there’s something a bit off in our connection, but it’s very difficult to diagnose as I don’t know a whole lot about these types of connections. Where do I start? Is there some must-have piece of diagnosis software out there?
A very usefull tool to investigate spurious network problems is a network sniffer, such as ethereal. It does, however, require quite a lot from the user. But if you know the difference between UDP and TCP, by all means give it a try! (It’s a completely free open source program. Similar commersial tools cost in the USD1-10k range!) (It is also available for a range of OS’es. You didn’t specify, but I guess you’re under some kind of Windows?)
But before you do that, you ought to check if you have any firewall of any kind enabled. (I’m not sure, but I believe that recent versions of Windows put in rather restrictred filters by default. RedHat Linux 7.2 cerrainly does!) Have you got any kind of hardware firewall? NAT box? any overintelligent switch?
I think you meed to tell us a bit more about your configuration before anyone can help you!
It’s a cable connection. We have a switch that allows both Mr. Athena and I to connect. (side note: is a switch the same as a hub?). We have two IP addresses - a static for him so he can use VPN, and a dynamic for me.
I have Zone Alarm running on my system, but have turned it off until we get this damn thing running. Other than that, no firewall (unless this $30 switch has one, which I doubt).
I’m running WinME, he’s running Win98.
Um, I know what TCP is, but not UDP. I’m much more of a C++ geek than a hardware/internet connection geek. But I learn fast! Really!
Aside from the Everquest/VPN problems, we get what appears to be random breaks in service - I’ll be browsing the internet, and 2-3 times an hour all my IE windows will come up with 404 errors, and a refresh brings 'em back.
Any suggestions?
I’m really not that much of a network geek either, and I have very limited knowledge of recent windows versions…
However, it would appear to me that maybe the problem is that the roundtrip delay is to long. Maybe there’s some kind of timeout in the WinME IE that’s different from the one in Win98?
You could always try to ping to some faraway destination, and see if you get decent response times. (Note the propagation time for a ping (ICMP echo) request may or may not be subject to the same propagation problems as your TCP stream…) But it could be a good starting point.
When it comes to your everquest problems… It’s possible that your switch somehow blocks the port that everquest tries to use?
I’m not familiar with ZoneAlarm (apart from knowing that SamSpade doesn’t like it), but I hope you might be able to use it to see what kind of traffic everquest is trying to generate, as well as seeing if you get any replies. Just a suggestion, as I really don’t know if you can see that.
Let’s hope that someone who knows more will pop in here with more info.
Just a last minute piece of advice: Buy a hardware firewal/NAT box, such as NetGear / Linksys. It’s supposedly a good investment! (I don’t use any, but then I haven’t got cable…)
For the record, I’ve completely disabled ZoneAlarm while trying to diagnose this problem. I figure I’ll get the #!# thing working first, then worry about setting up the firewall.
We’ve also reproduced the problem when either computer is hooked directly to the modem, not going through the switch, so I believe the issue is not in the switch.
I’ll try the ping thing.
-
-
- I had similar problems: search IMHO for a thread titled “Who’s Got Cable Internet and What’s It Like?”. - DougC
-