Wireless connection issues.

[Fillo]

im seeking advice from you good people about my wireless connection, and the effect it is having on my GTR2 online play.

having just finished the BMW M3 season, it was brought to my attention that my car was lagging badly around the circuit. not wanting to be a menace to other drivers i thought i better try and do something about it.

so the symptons are:

during online gameplay i regularly recieve the message 'synchronizing game'. i would say i get this message, on average, once every 2 laps. more often than not, 2 messages appear in quick succession, ie, 'synchronizing game 440ms' followed shortly afterwards by 'synchronizing game -35ms'.

so next i pinged my router, which showed a steady rate of 2-5ms with an occasional (every minute ish) spike of anything between 500-2000ms.

next i connected router to pc via ethernet and it was pinging at a constant 0ms with no spikes at all.

so, experts, whats causing the spikes on my wireless connection and is it anything that can be cured?

thanks for any help or advice...

Fillo

OS: XP
ROUTER: D-Link DSL-G624T
WIRELESS ADAPTER: DWL-G122 USB2.0
ISP: MADASAFISH

[Marcel Hulsbergen]

Hi Fillo,

I see you have a usb wireless adapter which is bad, this is your problem.

I would suggest always to use a wired connection for gaming because wireless isn't stable enough and in your case the second notmstable connection is the usb, usb is constantly polling the ports and i assume your wheel is usb too.

These things work in theory.

So my advise is:
1. Use a wired connection for gaming
2. If wireless is really needed then get a motherboard with wlan integrated, or find a pci wlan card.

I hope you can manage the first solution, this is the best for all of us, lag is indeed the worst thing there is while you race.

[Gearjammer]

There is an issue with wireless routers and gaming that has been documented on several sites, though I can't give you any direct links to them. Windows wireless networking wants to do something at consistent times that causes lag. I believe it communicates with the router to ensure that the connection is still there. This communication causes the lag that you are seeing.

There is a fix for it that requires a bit of tweaking in windows, and you can try these steps to see what happens:
1. Go to Start, open Control Panel.
2. Open Administrative Tools.
3. Open Services.
4. Search for the service "Wireless Zero Configuration" and open it.
5. Click stop if necessary.
6. set the service to disabled

Reboot your system and make sure that you can still connect to the internet. Most routers have their own software which allows them to connect to the internet, and allows your system to talk to the router. If your router doesn't have this, then you won't be able to communicate with it once you do these steps, so reverse what you did in the services.

[Fillo]

tried disabling the wireless zero config, but i lose connection completely. even after reboot it wont connect.

[Fillo]

we may have a result......

reinstalled the drivers for the usb adapter, and during installation it asked me if i wanted to use this 'wireless zero config'. the recommended answer was yes, but i ticked no (thanks to gearjammers advice).

checked pinged times to router, constant 1-2ms with no spikes!!!

yet to race online, but i'll be sure to let u know of results when i have....

thank you both for your time....

fillo

[Gearjammer]

Hope it all works out well. GL

[Marcel Hulsbergen]

I hope it stays stable, great if it is solved this way, but still my opinion is gaming with wires is the best.

I hope lag is gone during races.

Good luck.

[Fillo]

ive since restarted my pc a few times, and it seems to connect instantly upon desktop loading, then it will disconnect for about 10 secs, then reconnect and everything is fine after that.

also, after 1 restart i got a blue screen. apparently a 'stop error, where a driver has caused windows to shut down'? if it happens again, i think ill reinstall the driver for the usb adapter?

cheers guys

fillo

[Marcel Hulsbergen]

You can try this but i don't think it will help much, unless you can find a newer / better driver.

I myself hate usb/network connections, i would never advise them to use, but you have one so you can try to make the best of it.

My solution is still a wired connection if possible.

You can try to play a bit with the usb settings, you can adjust usb power etc, but i don't think it will help you solve the problem.

Good luck.