Red Minimap, PPPoE Lost Connection Problem

And I got cable broadband today!

Some problems getting it installed. A technician had to run a new tap from the pole to the house.

But, it does indeed beat the pants off DSL. SL is much more responsive on a cable connection. I need to do some tests to see exactly how it has improved as far as large-scale building goes, but I like it.

For comparison, here are WinMTR numbers for the cable connection. The setup is the same as I had with DSL except that the DSL modem is replaced by a cable modem.

No packet loss to the ISP, but I'm still concerned about this 50% packet loss that I see intermittently to the INTERNAP-NE.gar1.SanFrancisco1.Level3.net node.

|------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
|                                      WinMTR statistics                                   |
|                       Host              -   %  | Sent | Recv | Best | Avrg | Wrst | Last |
|------------------------------------------------|------|------|------|------|------|------|
|                             192.168.0.1 -    0 |  586 |  586 |    0 |    9 |   32 |    0 |
|                               10.45.0.1 -    0 |  586 |  586 |    0 |   10 |   47 |   16 |
|           srp8-0.rlghnca-rtr2.nc.rr.com -    0 |  586 |  586 |    0 |   10 |   31 |    0 |
|        pos14-0.rlghncrdc-rtr2.nc.rr.com -    0 |  585 |  585 |    0 |   10 |  110 |   16 |
|  son0-1-1.chrlncsa-rtr6.carolina.rr.com -    0 |  585 |  585 |    0 |   14 |   32 |    0 |
|     so-4-1-0-0.gar1.Atlanta1.Level3.net -    0 |  585 |  585 |   15 |   21 |  156 |   15 |
|        ae-1-55.bbr1.Atlanta1.Level3.net -    1 |  585 |  580 |   15 |   24 |  172 |   16 |
|   so-3-0-0.mp1.SanFrancisco1.Level3.net -    0 |  585 |  585 |   93 |  113 |  266 |  109 |
|  ge-7-0-0.gar1.SanFrancisco1.Level3.net -    0 |  585 |  585 |   78 |  100 |  188 |   78 |
|INTERNAP-NE.gar1.SanFrancisco1.Level3.net -   50 |  585 |  298 |   78 |  102 |  297 |   78 |
|    border1.ge1-1-bbnet1.sfo002.pnap.net -    0 |  585 |  585 |   78 |  102 |  312 |  109 |
|                 data.agni.lindenlab.com -    0 |  585 |  585 |   78 |   91 |  110 |   78 |
|________________________________________________|______|______|______|______|______|______|
   WinMTR - 0.7. Copyleft @2000-2001 Vasile Laurentiu Stanimir  ( stanimir@cr.nivis.com )

Hey you guys, Have you done much in ways of solving this or just switched internet providers? I just moved to a new apartment, cable internet on a wired connection and now I seem to be getting this problem as well... Minimap turns red, Bandwidth drops to 0, the ping to the sim freezes on a number... I am not sure whats going on. Ive elimited the router completely and connected to the cable modem and still have the same problems. The game worked before and now it doesnt. Unfortunatly I am outa range to switch to DSL and so this is all I have. Any help would be appriciated.

Ive been in talks with support and my ISP and they just dont seem to be turning up much to fix this problem. My traceroutes have been going through sprintlink...

|------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
|                                      WinMTR statistics                                   |
|                       Host              -   %  | Sent | Recv | Best | Avrg | Wrst | Last |
|------------------------------------------------|------|------|------|------|------|------|
|                177.150.cm.sunflower.com -    0 |  225 |  225 |    0 |   61 | 1078 |    0 |
|                          10.203.254.254 -    1 |  225 |  224 |    0 |   71 | 1062 |    0 |
|                  254.5.cm.sunflower.com -    3 |  225 |  220 |    0 |   72 | 1031 |   15 |
|           sl-gw10-kc-3-0.sprintlink.net -    3 |  225 |  220 |    0 |  156 | 1328 |   47 |
|          sl-bb22-kc-10-1.sprintlink.net -    3 |  225 |  219 |    0 |  102 | 1297 |    0 |
|          sl-bb21-stk-6-0.sprintlink.net -    3 |  224 |  219 |   46 |  133 | 1266 |  406 |
|         sl-bb22-stk-15-0.sprintlink.net -    2 |  224 |  220 |   46 |  140 | 1219 |  469 |
|          sl-bb23-sj-10-0.sprintlink.net -    2 |  224 |  220 |   46 |  145 | 1328 |  406 |
|          sl-gw19-sj-15-0.sprintlink.net -    3 |  224 |  218 |   46 |  135 | 1219 |  390 |
|        sl-internap-140-0.sprintlink.net -    2 |  224 |  220 |   46 |  139 | 1297 |   94 |
|    border1.ge2-1-bbnet2.sfo002.pnap.net -    1 |  224 |  222 |   46 |  131 | 1078 |   63 |
|                 data.agni.lindenlab.com -    2 |  224 |  220 |   46 |  125 | 1219 |   47 |
|________________________________________________|______|______|______|______|______|______|
   WinMTR - 0.8. Copyleft @2000-2002 Vasile Laurentiu Stanimir  ( [email]stanimir@cr.nivis.com[/email] ) 

It's difficult to say how to fix this problem.

Simple packet loss is not a good metric for it. I tried two different levels of DSL service (1.5 Mps and 6Mps). I measured about the same level of packet loss in both of them (10-15 %) using traceroutes. But the 1.5 Mps worked okay and the 6Mps didn't work at all.

Now, I'm on 5Mps cable and it's working great with no packet loss.

But it seems like there's something other than raw packet loss going on. My guess at the moment is that it might be related to packet ordering. So, if the ISP allows packets to become grossly out of order or some of them are delayed abnormally, it seems to cause SL major problems. This is supported by the tiki's explanation of why wireless home networks can be problematic.

In any event, this is definitely a case where quality of service is much more important than raw speed or throughput.

Unfortunately, LL is being very unhelpful. It seems like something has changed in SL that's made it less fault tolerant, but apparently LL doesn't have a way to reproduce it. (Hint: try a high-speed 6Mps DSL connection).

But since it isn't a widespread problem, I don't have much hope that LL will address it.

I've solved my problem by switching ISP's, but if you can't, I'd talk to the ISP about what kind of speed enhancements they are using. If they're using the same techniques that are described here, then you've probably found the problem. Whether or not they can dumb it down for you, I don't know.

Best of Luck!