Lagging Wireless connection woes ...

[Ungodly]

I recently setup my roommates computer in a room not too far from my wireless router.  So my computer is hooked directly into an ethernet port on my Linksys WRT54G router, and he has a USB wireless adapter hooked to his.  Well, when we try to play BZ he totally lags out and it forces a move-lag and disconnects him.  He may reconnect and stay on for a few minutes before the same cycle occurs.

Wierd thing is, we can play Enemy Territory just fine, BF1942 and several other games for several hours w/o him disconnecting.  I'm always hosting because i have the faster computer.  There is no firewall between our computers because we're behind the router (and no soft-firewalls are installed on either computers.  I've gotten new drivers for the USB wireless adapter, i've even upped my firmware on my Linksys.  Even played w/ some of the setting for wireless (disabled WEP encryption, turned off MAC filtering, turned on/off NAT redirection [should be off]).  Nothing seems to get BZ2 going for us.  

Has ANYBODY been able to get BZ2 going between a wired/wireless setup?

We both have 1.3 installed w/ G66 maps.

[BZZERKER]

We need system specs of both comps to be of any real help.

If all the other games are newer than BZ2 that might be a big clue as BZ2 hammers the CPU much harder than newer games and 1 (or both) of you may not have enough "horsepower" to keep BZ2 and the connection going.

[Ungodly]

That may be a good theory, BZ.  Here's specs (both puters home-made):

My comp (wired):
AMD Athlon 2600+ (1933GHz i think)
1GB Single channel DDR kingston RAM
RAID 3 Array w/ 3 WD 80GB drives plenty of diskspace
Nvidia 5700LE 256MB 8x agp
SB 512 PCI sound (old card, but still works good)
NForce onboard ethernet
Running XP Home

Roomy's troublesome puter(wireless)
AMD Duron 1300GHz
512 Single Channel DDR generic RAM
1x 80 GB WD HDD
Nvidia Geforce3 TI200 (overclocked a little to make it a normal GF3 speed)
AC' 97 sound (onboard)
Xterasys USB wireless stick (XN3133g model)
Running XP Pro

Whatcha think?

[BZZERKER]

How much free space does your roomy have?

How much swap file space does your roomy have?

Yours seems to be pretty decent spec wise.

[Ungodly]

I think we got it!!!

Basically, BZ, what you said earlier about it being so CPU intensive got me thinking.  During some tests I've done w/ transferring files to his wireless box, i've noticed the process "system" using 2-4% of the CPU.  This makes sense because the USB drivers have to translate all the serial data to packets for the wireless to be used (basically a software ethernet adapter).  If BZ is taking up all that CPU, then the wireless card has to wait it's turn at the processor .. causing major lag.

I made a cmd script with these contents:
C:
CD "c:\program files\battlezone II"
start "This puter needs Geratol" /min /BELOWNORMAL bzone.exe /poweruser /nointro

All he does is double-click this script, instead of the normal shortcut.

Since BZ is usually launched w/ "normal" thread propriority (same as "system" process"), i've moved it DOWN one notch.  This improved the network performance greatly.   He still get's some hiccups, but it's still playable.

Thanks for the dialog...

[BZZERKER]

N/P  

It might help some more if he cleans up the swapfile and tweaks the size (ex. I have a 60GB HDD with 4 partitions on it. C: drive has 2000MB, D: drive has 4000MB, E: Drive has 4000MB dedicated to paging). That HDD of his looks a little small to have that many games on it and run efficiently.

[Saloei]

i know your using a wireless connection, but this read will introduce you to some other minor settings that might help. http://www.nforcershq.com/forum/attn-nvidia-ethernet-controller-settings-vt60342.html

[Red Devil]

Interesting script there, Ug.  Have to try that.

Also, does your friend have USB 1.1 or 2.0?  Sounds like 2.0, but thought I'd ask.

[PhoeniX-FlamE]

if your wireless I'd suggest checking the Internal IP and settings that the router assigns and put it in yourself on static

it might not be much, but it improved my ping by about  30-40 to all servers

[Ungodly]

Thanks all for your suggestions,

Sorry I haven't gotten back here for awhile.  The 4th holiday had me running around quite abit w/ family, beer, and mortars (not so much beer when firing off mortars, i like to keep my eyeballs) =)

Sabor, thanks for the read on the checksum offload, is a good tweak on my puter.  I have noticed a bit less latency on my end on playing BF2, BZ2, and Half-life2 (all these sequels have me in a tangle).

RD, he's on USB 1.1, and the USB stick can use 2.0 .. I didn't mention this before because I knew someone would instanly say "get a USB 2.0" card.  But the fact is, 1.1 still can xfer up to 12mbps .. which should be plenty for this game.  

I HAD set the router to only accept 802.11b (11mbps) speeds to compensate for this and therefore reduce his speed.  Now i have a different setup for him which works much better.  I have a home-built DVR (dual celeron 400MHz) setting in my living room (just a wall between him separates it from his room).  I've now using the USB stick inside it, and connecting his computer to the DVR using a crossover ethernet cable (DVR also has 10/100 ethernet card), basically offloading the wireless connection overhead onto the DVR puter.  I've turned on ICS on the DVR (XP pro) so he can get a connection.  Now he's lost the extra stuttering he had before.  So it turns out the darn Duron processor just couldn't keep up w/ BZ2 AND keep a "software" wireless connection.

Which brings me to an addt'l question for anyone to answer.  Has anyone gotten a network "bridge" in XP to work between a wireless connection and an wired ethernet card?  

After I setup the bridge, both the computer hosting the bridge and the computer on the wired side can't connect to internet  nor pull DHCP addresses.  I'd really like to use the "bridge" over ICS on XP.  ICS has the shortcoming of having my roomy isolated in the 192.168.0.xxx IP range .. where my router's IP range is 10.1.1.xxx.  We can still connect to each other using direct IP's, it's just a little bit of a pain.

[CmptrWz]

That is easy in windows XP.

Step 1: Turn off ICS
Step 2: Install a network bridge(right-click on one connection, select bridge connections)

[APCs r evil]

WHAT!? What kind of 4th of July celebration is that where nothing gets damaged? Thanks to us my aunt has dead patches in her lawn from those rocket things, dents all over her roof, a dent on her car, and 7 kittens hunkered down under her porch. Oh, and all of my cousins have burns, the youngest damn near set his hair on fire, and we burned a hole through a chair! And we didn't even have beer! Amateurs..

[Spawn]

i gotta come down there next year...

[Ungodly]

Oh, it wouldn't have been a complete 4th w/o the saturn missle battery falling over towards where my whole family was sitting.  I've never seen so many people scatter so quickly .. hell, I think my grandma beat my dad around the corner!

It was also funny to see my bro's bull mastif duck into his 'igloo' when the first fire-crackers went off.  PETA is now after my family =)

Okay, onto serious stuff .. C.Wiz .. when I mentioned about the bridge, I guess i was implying I've already "been there, done that".  Yes, I've had ICS off, and completed the bridge process.  But, after I complete the bridge between the wireless (being the feeder to the internet connection) and wired network .. No DHCP or network traffic can go through that bridge.  This includes on the computer that has the bridge and the other computer connected to it.

I've since done a little research and found a small population has had the same trouble. Something about wireless incompatibility. There's a utility called 'netsh' that comes w/ XP that I'm learning to use .. I'll see if i can get r' done.

[Red Devil]

Best fireworks display I went to was one that went wrong.  Somebody got the fuses wrong and all the finale bombs went off about 50 yards over our heads.  People were screaming and running, but you couldn't hear them due to the constant explosions.  Just one long BOOMBOOMBOOMBOOMBOOMBOOMBOOMBOOM........

Okay, sorry, back on topic.