LAN Network/Lag issues

I am going to do some more t/s tonight when I get home but wanted to toss this out there for anyone else who is tech savvy with suggestions I may not be thinking of.

The issue is every 5-10 mins (depending) I will get a 3-10 sec network pause at what sees all streaming data not just SL. This happen when playing SL, streaming music, watching video, or most any constant network connection it seems. In other words it does not seem like lag on any specific server or connection but a constant issue across the board. Thus why I think the issues is on my end or worst case my ISP.

I have upgraded the firmware of my linksys router, have the latest asus nforce NIC driver for my mobo, updated my video driver a week or 2 ago, replaced my patch cable with a new one, have no backgrounds apps running except mcafee virus scan.

my h/w:

AMD X2 4200+
7600GT 256meg video
1 gig ram
SB audigy2 sound

Using comcast as my ISP with 8meg/768k service

I have my domain/web server on the LAN as well but since it it running server 2003 with min video/sound h/w I cant really use it to test SL or the like (plus it has no direct monitor connected to it I access it via remote desktop)

So I am sadly stuck t/s with just my workstation PC (my roomate has a laptop he uses to connect to our LAN but hes away for a few weeks)

So I am thinking either to pop in a NIC card (and disable the onboard nic) to see if its the nforce chipset/onboard nic problem or simply direct connect my workstation into the cable modem and get on SL or watch video and see what happens.

I never really noticed this issue until I strted playing SL, then it occured to me the same issue happens when I watch streaming video... then it all started to fall into place this pattern.

Anyone else has any suggestions/ideas that will save me from gutting/re-wiring my home LAN to t/s this issue?

Maybe try packet sniffing on the LAN to see if there's anything interesting happening coincidental with the pauses? I do this with Linux so I've never used Microsoft Network Monitor, but it sounds like it should be up to the job, and there are no doubt other PC tools for this. Although... it may be easier to first just try the direct connection: if the pauses still occur, at least you know it's either your PC or ISP, not something else about the LAN. (Or, if there's any chance it's not really network at all, but rather some Windows service periodically hogging the machine, perhaps try watching a DVD or disk-saved video with the network completely unplugged?)

Be sure all of your Fans work...

otherwise it is not that big of a problem

Tweek and freak, thats not worth your time, 3 to 10 seconds, just a pause?

no worries

Relax

Is your router wireless? I had the same problem, and still do, when using the airwaves. A physical connection makes it go away.

You mentioned McAfee - there is a thing you have to do if you have either McAfee or Symantec/Norton AV running on your system. Check your preferences in SL for the "Cache" folder, and make sure to EXCLUDE it from real-time virus scanning. The method SL uses for caching is very disk-intensive, and real-time scanning will severely screw your SL experience. Also, check your Task Manager, make sure nothing else is eating CPU time or page-faulting like mad when these pauses occur.

If your router supports traffic shaping, put outgoing SL packets on a higher priority queue - and unfortunately, I can't walk you through that, I use a FreeBSD PC for my routing rather than a grey-box router.

Generally i'd deal with it BUT I am trying to stream music (DJ) to my club by running JetCast on my PC. Thus when these pauses happen it does the same to my music feed to the club. Pretty sucky to have the music fad out evey 5 mins or so for ~5sec when DJing

It does support wireless but I am wired.

As a interesting side note I disabled my nforce 570 onboard NIC and popped in a older intel PCI nic I had laying around. I tested DJing in my club with a few people listening and they said while the pauses in music still happened they were less frequent. I am thinking perhaps if I buy a good solid PCI NIC this may be part of the issue. I have always been wary of onboard NICs.

I did totally disable scanning during my t/s last night while using another NIC. and the reports form the testers I had in the club said the pauses was less frequent bit still happening. But just to make sure, I will put that exclude path in, thanks for the tip!

I recall your post on another thread - are you still trying to stream using your own upstream bandwidth? ie, is your Stream Server at home? If so, that's your culprit. I was serious in that thread, I'm serious now - unless you're only letting, say, four people listen, you're just not going to be able to use a home stream server to power a club.

During the testing only 2 to 3 people were present so it wasn't like I was trying to stream to a packed club! lol. this is more a exercise to find out where this pausing/latency is coming from. As it is happening it seems during ANY streaming. Watching videos in my browser, playing SL, feeding music, etc.

You are running some kind of web server from home, plus running SL (a bandwidth intensive program) and hoping to stream from your one PC?

I would first turn off the domain/wed server and see what that does. 768 just isn't a lot of upstream bandwidth for what you might be doing here.