Router Probs

i was wondering if anyone had any insight to the problem we've been having. we just got another computer with a netgear wireless router going through one highspeed dsl modem. my hubby & i can't seem to be on sl at the same time. sl will run on either computer but not both at the same time. everything else seems to work fine simultaneously.......internet & there for that matter.

any ideas?

i have a linksys router and the issue i have is when running more then one instance of sl at a time they grab eachothers packets.. example.. if me and my friend are on sl at the same time and we are both jacked into the router and someone sends me a instant message he will receive it.. even though he is not on my char or anything he gets it same thing with inventory items.

The problem is you are both on the exact same IP address.

You have different ones to talk to the router, but the router is talking to SL with the same IP address. That is probally why you get the same inventory.

I have gone through a number of netgear routers and have found each time that their processing power is quite limited... eg, they can't process NAT packets at the rate SL requires. I could get one computer on SL, but it basically shut down the rest of my network... we're talking web browsing, email, chat, anything.

Whenever that sort of behavior is witnessed on a network, it means there is a bottleneck somewhere that is saturated. In this case, Netgear routers become a major bottleneck when dealing with SL traffic.

I bought a new mid-range linksys router and i haven't had any problems since.

billy, I have read that newer versions of the linksys firmware fix the problem you are having, so you may want to try an upgrade.

I was originally using a Linksys BEFSR41 four-port router, and experienced the exact same problem, where one user on our network could access SL, but if two tried at the same time, both of us would, within about 30 seconds of connecting, lag right out of the world. We also tried an SMC router, but I think I killed the poor thing flashing the firmware.

We subsequently switched to a nice D-Link DI-604 router, and the problem went away. I guess it has something to do with their implementation of NAT, I dunno. God I love D-Link routers. Pleasantly configurable.

In the cases where routers are used to provide internet to multiple PC's ... what's the ISP bandwith the router's recieving? a less than megabit stream is quite insufficient for 4 computers running second life and streaming MP3 as well, for example.

There have been a bunch of posts in the past about linksys routers not doing a good job in SL. Search the forums for linksys for the particulars.

I have practically the same setup, two computers and one modem. I currently run SL on one, and my Shoutcast radio station on the other.

I've got a netgear router, and had exactly the same problem as you. I solved my problem by enabling UPnP on the router admin page. I don't know a) if this will solve your problem, or b) how wise this move is, in terms of network security - I'm sure a network boffin will enlighten us on that particular point. Once I enabled it, I was then able to run two simultaneous SL sessions on two different computers, going through the same cable modem.

We're on a 3Mb connection, and we can run 2 SL sessions just fine, with no noticable network slowdown.

Good luck, hope you get it working

using a little program called portlock & no more problems

thx for all the advice

The use of a single address out of a NAT router is correct operation though.

NAT remaps the two or more different client machine IP addresses onto different source ports which it then uses with the single outgoing router source address. That doesn't lead to any conflict nor crossed lines of any kind, in the absence of faults, since the server sends traffic to the appropriate port and so the router can demultiplex it back to the right machine again.

Of course, that phrase "in the absence of faults" is a pretty important one ... Routers may have flawed implementations of NAT (hopefully rare nowadays, it's been around for ages), and occasionally some novice designer implements services in a NAT-unfriendly way. RFCs and other standards documents are available that offer plenty of advice on how not to repeat old mistakes.

NAT is a very well known quantity. I wouldn't expect Netgear nor LL to mess this up.

For Most of the people in this thred this should work for you and is an easy fix.

change your SL shortcut to read
"C:\Program Files\SecondLife\newview.exe" -port 13000
instead of
"C:\Program Files\SecondLife\newview.exe"

as described in this thred.

I sometimes have 3 computers running and so here is how the shortcuts look ,,

CP1 "C:\Program Files\SecondLife\newview.exe"
CP2 "C:\Program Files\SecondLife\newview.exe" -port 13000
CP3 "C:\Program Files\SecondLife\newview.exe" -port 13005

It allows everyone to connect, and stops the mixed ims and invatory problems.
Also I'm using a good ole Linksys.

The very useful thread linked by LordJason also highlighted that the D-Link NAT router seems to solve the problem without requiring a "-port NNN" to bypass the fault, unlike Netgear or Linksys.

Can anyone else confirm that? If true, I'll be sticking to D-Link exclusively for my network gear. It might indicate that their devs are more clued up than those in the other two.

*points up at her own post up aways*

Yep, I was using a Linky, and it would totally kill multiple connections to SL; both users would lag out of the world within 30 seconds.

Upon switching to a D-Link DI-604 router, all the problems went away.