Internet DL and UL speeds????

I've posted before...brand new computer (8G RAM, 640HD, etc) great Nvidia 9800GTX video card, changed ports on the firewall, did everything to get SL running right, but with everything, I still keep getting dropped between every 20 to 30 minues. On a rare occasion I can stay online for 40 minutes or so. I am not away from SL when this happens. I am wandering around or playing a game or doing something.

The next question is....what speed is your internet DL? I thought we were doing well with a pretty good DSL package, which we just upgraded, but I'm thinking maybe that is the culprit now because there is nothing else that can be causing the problem.

I want to compare our speed to others, so if you don't know how to check it go to speedtest.net and let me know what you came up with on DL and UP, thanks!

Depending on what test server I use, I get anywhere from 15 to 35 Mbps down, and from 700K to 1.5M up. 35/1.5 is what I'm paying for with Time Warner, so it makes sense that that would be the maximum.

i had clearwire, which was 768k down and 128k up, it was SLOOOOOOOW but perfectly stable

now that i have moved out of their service area i have 1.5mb DSL (im cheap) which is on average abit over 1.5mb down and 256k up, which is reasonably quick on sl and again stable

how old is your router / modem

Os....wow, that's about what we have and I think it's awful actually. We just upgraded to AT&T's (We are in CA) second tier of DSL and our DL is up to 1.5. Ours usually is about 1.2. The modem the AT&T guy put in two weeks ago was brand new, replacing an older one. Now I'm thinking I need to upgrade to their higest which is just up to 6kbp which seems slow too. We can't switch to cable though, so I'm stuck with the phone company's connection.

So you aren't havng any problems? Every 20 to 30 minutes I am logged off still..and if it's not the net connection then I have no clue what it can be anymore. When I'm on SL it's great, it's just the logging off that is driving me nuts!

No its fine as stability goes (note i am the only one on SL in my house, my wife doesnt play online ... anything)

and I had the 6mb package for a while when i first started SL, it was great, there was 3 of us on it and SL at the same time, 1 roomie DJ'd


In our area (comcast) cable is horrid, its fast if and when it connects to something, but my experiences may not jive with other peoples experiences in your area

another example of that is Chosen, who likes the time warner connection, but my old buddies down in orlando have a really bad time staying connected to anything

one last thing, if you have a router tween your computers and the modem try connecting with out the router in the mix, their cheap and the chips have a tendency to burn themselves over time and become "weird"

Osgeld..I'm the only one in the house who is on the net most of the time. My husband is at work during the day and at night he may check email, but that's about it. He doesn't use SL or any other things much on the net. I'm also connected through our network on an ethernet cable. The modem for the connection is downstairs, but it connects just to the network, not to individual computers. We had AT&T here two weeks ago upgrading and the guy put in a brand new modem like I said so that's not the issue either. I think I'm going to go to AT&T's fastest connection which is just "up to 6", which doesn't seem that fast, but I'll try it. It's a bit pricey, but I want to see if it makes the difference. Thanks for all your suggestions.

Run AT&T DSL 9 down max (runs about 8600kbs, ping time to LL servers is 12 -- had issues on the inside phone line (it was old, I dropped a cat 5 in after the at&t tech fixed it once, and it went to dropping connections again soon after... have had the same at&t wireless + 4 earthnet modem for 2 years now never off.. no restarts and runs like a champ ( I tossed the $100 net gear that was replaced 6 times in a month) could be as simple as a loose wire on the main phone jack if your DSL.. ) 1.5 up, We Run 4 instances of SL as well as a shout cast stream Uploading to the relay server and possibly the kid on you tube or torrents no issues (unless the kids running a big torrent )

your getting dropped at 20-30 min even if your just on line ? if so you need to be up your providers butt, cause there is something wrong... ( I had that issue with Earthlink DSL years ago, finally went to another as they never really fixed it )

sometimes as well if you are far from the main box DSL will be bad, could be an outside line down the road... (at&t replaced my drop and 300+ feet of liner to fix me , squeaky wheel gets the grease and when you threaten to go to comcast LOL-- and I hate comcast!!!

I am not totally sure I got all you typed, but we are paying for up to 1.5 DL and we get about 1.2 on average. I can stay on the net and any other program for hours, but SL keeps dropping me as I said. I watch the stats and the FPS is ok, but the bandwidth drops to zero and I drop. Just happened again at 23 minutes and I was just walking around exploring.

We had AT&T here two weeks ago. They changed our modem, but they said it was not a problem. They aparently checked the lines and all was well. They say that if we are getting what we pay for and we can stay on the net then all is ok. They didn't know a thing about SL, of course.

The highest I can pay for at AT&T is up to 6, but I'm not even sure that will work because supposedly what I have is working fine for everything else, so paying so much extra, like I did for this computer, and not having it work even then is going to be very upsetting.

I'll have my husband check my ethernet connection. Maybe there is a problem with that that we aren't aware of. Maybe there is a short in the cord, but then again, why would it work for 20 or so minutes and then drop? The whole thing is making me absolutely annoyed to the max, but I want to be able to use SL, so I keep trying to figure it out.

If its only in SL then more than likely it is a setting. (could still be other issues) what do you have the max bandwidth set at in preferences? there was something to show what good settings were I run mine at 900 on all of them. But I know I have read people saying 500 and less is a good setting as well..

EDIT TO ADD: if you have another earthnet cable around try changing it they do sometimes get shorted as well the shortest phone cable (cat 5) from the modem to the jack

there are so many odd bugs like this that happen to some and never others.

What kind of crash is it?

do you get the SL pop up saying you have been disconnected?

do you get a red mini map?

can you still turn in a circle but not move?

Dose it crash to your desk top?

as others have said 1500 is good or should be..and for just one computer and one app like SL at a time fast and stable.
DSL although slower than cable is much better IMHO I dumped my real fast comcast because of throttling and some crazy caps and the fact it is really a "Shared" bandwidth with all the neighbors

Distilled, the exact message I get is this "You have been logged out of second life. The region may be experiencing trouble. Please check your connection to the internet. You can still look at existing IM and chat by clicking "View IM and Chat" . Otherwise click Quit and exit Second Life Immediately."

If you click View IM and Chat it doesn't work because no one sees what I have typed in IM after that, and I have tried it a few times.

I cannot move at all when this happens and it does it all the time.

I keep tracking...just now it had me on for 30 minutes and then 29 minutes. I was here, just walking around, and there are folks that are in the same sim for hours on end.

Even if I put video at low it does the same thing. I've tried all the video settings and the net settings. I have had the cache from 500 to 1000 and the bandwidth from 500 to 1500, doesn't seem to matter. I even went in and added the port settings that SL suggested needed to be done on a the firewall. I also took off the Norton firewall, but that hs made no difference at all. This is crazy!

Maybe it's just SL! Maybe they need to get their act together, I don't know.

Sorry it's been so frustrating for you, Lexi. I still think your ISP is throttling you. They might not admit it out loud, but my guess is that whenever a session exceeds a certain amount of bandwidth, they probably cut it off. The fact that it's happening so regularly strongly suggests that this is likely the case.

Do you have a friend with a different ISP whose house you could bring your computer to, in order to test the theory? Maybe someone with cable or FIOS instead of DSL? (Differently branded DSL providers in the same area may actually be the same provider, just subcontracting to different brand name sellers.)

Chosen, no don't know anyone around here much, and this computer weighs a ton, so that's not a viable option. I did call the DSL provider (AT&T) and they are supposed to be calling me back in 48 to 72 hours. I will see what they say, and if I must I'll up the service again, but only keep it that way if it makes any improvement.

I put the avatar in a place today where there was absolutely nothing going on, nothing moving except me to make sure I didn't get logged off for inactivity, no other avatars around and I didn't get the boot for 49 minutes..so I wonder what that is saying. I do think though that one should be able to stay on SL until they decide to sign off, right? or until it crashes, which I know it does occasionally.

I'll post when I find out what AT&T says. Thanks again for all the help and suggestions everyone.

That would seem to support the throttling theory. If there's less stuff and less other people around, you won't be using as much bandwidth, so it would take longer to hit any sort of cap, if a cap is indeed in place.



Right. Barring crashes, Internet hiccups, and alien invasions, you should be able to stay on as long as you want.

It's not uncommon for me to be on for 8-12 hours a stretch. The longest I've ever gone was about 30 hours straight, when I had an insane deadline.

I cant speak for your local baby bell, but ive been on ATT / Bell dsl for most of my broad band life, including now

ive never seen any indentation of a bandwidth cap here, one would assume the entire network would be the same BUT since ATT is just a umbrella name for all the old baby bells, which could have different rules (altho i kinda doubt it)

and believe me, I and my old roommates would abuse the crap out of our 6mb dsl connection, id be streaming a movie from netflix while on SL, the other guy would be on DDO or something while listening to shoutcast and his wife would be on SL while doing live dj broadcasts all night long

And of course its hard to get anyone at the phone company to accept fault with their system, best thing to do is skip all the phone operator "textbook technicians" and get in touch with someone who actually does the work, even a field tech is more bound to actually help you than anyone on the 800 number (especially those ind, er i mean outsourced flunkie weekend crew)

Believe me on that one, On my recent re-install i spent all weekend explaining to those people that Tennessee WAS infact a state in the union, just to get a new yorker on monday and a tech knocking on my door @ 7:30am telling me they work 7 days a week, and that the problem was a disconnected line at the junction box

Or another lovely time with an operator trying to tell me to reset my modem WHILE i held the broken phone line in my hand coming off of the pole (utility companies suck)

Clearwire is another option if your in their service area, they offer 768k and 1.2 meg lines for more but its portable too since its wireless, never had much trouble out of them but you have to sign a contract which stinks cause i just moved out of their service area and i still have 2 months under contract

AT&T - sbc/bell is testing throttling and/or bandwidth caps in some areas, but I thought only on their FOIB and cable stuff could be DSL too... somewhere in TX Huston maybe? and somewhere in CA if I remember right.)

do you have your time out set to a high number (edit Pref 600 is max) ? or in advance menu (ctrl-alt-D Character character test - untic go away/afk when idol unchecked the log off when inactive? sometimes just moving around will still log you out.


the log out does sound like a disconnection or some issue in the DSL line somewhere and my guess is somewhere like the junction box or on the line drop) .
I have had that happen with inactivity in the client as well until I would remember to set my do not log if inactive , and I set the time as high as it will go (as I have been logged while looking at stuff in a store or in my inventory)

and again in edit pref. network what do you have your bandwidth set at?

Edit : I can stay on for days as well... baring crashes....

last time I got that pop up it was because I had been not doing anything opened a fire fox tab went back and was logged off, setting the go away to un checked and the time to 600 it didn't happen anymore... (each time I update it resets it, )

Edit again: Sorry I didn't see you have tried the bandwidth.. I would try it down about 250 - 400 for your connection but I may be speaking out of my butt on that...LOL

SL always have some issues till you really play around with it it could wind up being one silly thing. as well maybe it is the region try some other regions maybe a empty Linden water sim and just chat in IM or have a friend come meet you..

Sometimes certain regions are just well not so hot.

Still would point to the DSL line somewhere or AT&T kicking you at a certain point.

log into your router and look at the logs it will tell you if its loosing connection and having to rediscover the network

to login to router get your subnet mask


go to start .. run .. type cmd ..enter
.........for dos window
type ipconfig ... enter

now put that subnet mask number in your browsers address line

it will give you the login page for the router

what is the name and password only you or the manual knows . go to the routers manufacture website to get . if ya still don't know reset the router but you will loose the logs and have to wait to get them after a few days running .

copy them and put them here if you want. but they will have your ip in them sooo .. just read them give the errors you see

Ok, so called AT&T again and now they are sending someone out again. They seem to think that because the only site I'm having issues with his SL that it is not a DSL problem, but they ran some tests and a "sync" test kept failing, so they are sending someone out again tomorrow. Who knows what he will do, but we also pay a fee to have them deal with inside lines too, so I'm not letting the guy leave until he comes up with something.

As per someon's suggestion, we also printed out the logs to show him. They have a lot of "TCP connection dopped" items, so maybe that will tell him something, but I have no idea.

As far as settings on SL go, I seem to have tried them all and they don't do much. This morning I was on for 13 minutes twice, got dropped, once for 41 minutes which was a long time for me, and haven't been back on again today yet, but I don't expect anything has changed.

I have read all thye help and suggestions here and have tired to put them all into place. Nothing much seems to be solving this issue. I'm going to give the DSL one more try and if that won't help it then I'll have to redo all the settings starting from scratch again and see if any combinations work, but I don't hold out much hope. Even if I go to a sim where nothing is happening, no one is doing a thing and there are no avatars and no motions, I still get dropped. It just doesn't make sense.

Ok, I need to get away from this computer for a while longer.

Thanks again to everyone who has been helping. I really do appreciate all the assitance.

AT&T tech came out again. He said that our line and connection are working how they should, no problems, so he left. I wanted to show him the log from the router or firewall or wherever that kept showing that things were dropped, but he didn't look at it. I am so annoyed. His only suggestion was that we upgrade DSL again, which I am going to do, but it that doesn't solve it then I guess I'll just have to deal with the constant droppings which is soooooooooo aggravating!!!

Yikes. Yet another example of how AT&T is one of the most evil corporations on this planet, I guess. "No, I won't try to figure out what's wrong. Just give us more money, and hope for the best." As if the wiretapping stuff wasn't bad enough.

followed by disney

/me wonders what upgrading has to do with all this......

sounds like a rip to me

Buster, upgrading on my end because I don't know what else to do! Any suggestions? I've done everything everyone has suggested and the longest I am able to stay on SL no matter where I am or what I am doing or not is now about 40 minutes. It is very frustrating to say the least, and I'd like to continue using SL, so any ideas?????

Download something big. like.. a linux distribution (700 mb, perfectly legal to download, you can delete the file afterwards).. put 2 or 3 in download at the same time if it's too fast.

That's a way to check if your connection has any issue or they're throttling you. if that works, and you can download without any issue, the poor tech guy you're so pissed with, was completely right.

a 56k dialup modem is enough to stay connected to SL. will lag like crazy, and being unusable, but the connection won't drop unless there's a lot of packet loss going on.

you can check the packet loss in SecondLife by either removing the (stupid) search bar on the top right of the screen (to toggle it off: preferences, general tab, uncheck "show search panel in overlay bar" or with the Stats window.

turning the search bar off, will show two vertical bars instead. the right one is the current bandwidth usage, and the one on the left is packet loss.

On the stats (performance?) window, that you can toggle with ctrl-shift-1 , you can read it on the first part. it will show FPS, Bandwidth and Packet Loss, in order.

High packet loss = the client and the server keep losing "system messages" between eachother, and if it increases more, the connection TO SL will drop or hang.


One thing that I'm failing to find (maybe I'm blind and missing it)... Are you using a "wired" connection to your computer from the router, or a "Wireless" ? wireless can cause that kind of drops if the signal is not clean enough, or there's interference in the house.

if you use wireless.. either try with a ethernet cable, or move closer to the router if you have a laptop, and see if that changes anything.

Let's see if we can pinpoint the issue.

Regads,
WoLf

[Edit: Nevermind, found the message where you said you run on ethernet. disregard the part about Wireless]

One thing I'm confused about..

you state

"I'm also connected through our network on an ethernet cable. The modem for the connection is downstairs, but it connects just to the network, not to individual computers."

so.. there's a cable going from your computer to the modem, or not? O.o

if not.. then you're in wireless.

Or if your computer is connected with a cable to the other computer, and that computer is connected to the router, you're using connection sharing (and that's a whole new world of issues and headaches)

I didn't even think of that... I tried to run SL in connection sharing (PC tp PC to modem) and never could get it right.. finally got XP and Vista and 2000 to play and share nice through the modem and wireless networking.

if its Modem to a network hub there may be something in that hub (what ever the tech term is) Had that set up in my last office 20 PCs wired to the network then into the single input modem) Always had issues with packet loss on big files at that office ALWAYS. IT never could get it right.

How many PCs are you running in the house? I am guessing that the house is all pre wired up real nice and that there is a network hub that sends out cable to each room... want to check out if its the network hub or wiring? lug the PC next to the modem and plug it in direct see if it stays on. the shortest Earthnet and shortest phone line is the best bet .

.. Oh as well And I wish I thought of this prior to the techs latest visit. The last time I had an issue the Tech had me REMOVE all the DSL filters (from the phones and DVR fax etc. , He installed one on the main Phone interface outside . and that was the last time I had even a small DSL loss or slow down.

at&ts free dsl modem (well it was free) runs four (4) earthnet and wireless I feel the less and shortest distance makes every bit of Diff. Some may disagree ...