Massive packet loss playing game.

xplit871,

Most broadband connections will handle any online game. However, looking at Silo's packages it looks like some are very slow. I wouldn't even consider some of them broadband. Which package do you have from Silowireless. I was using DSL 768Kbs from our local phone company and was getting lots of lag playing online games. I switched to cable 6 Mbs and have had no problems even with three computers in the household playing online at the same time and streaming music.

As uetian1707 stated you also have to consider what else is using the internet while you are playing eq. P2P will KILL your bandwidth even though it looks like it's using very little.

If you are not using Silo's fastest package (1.5 Mbs) you may want to switch. Also, are there other providers in your area? You may have to switch to a faster service such as cable.

i played on dial up before getting this just fine, just during intesive things my latency would go to around 250-300 on dial up.  It doesnt require a lot of bandwidth

no other providers in the area, i have the 1.5mb package

xplit871,

If I understand you correctly, you are saying that you did not have the problem when you were using dialup, but you started having the problem when you switched services. That would indicate a problem with your internet service. Since your service is a wireless variety, you could be getting intermittent drops in bandwidth, similar to the way you lose reception with a cell phone.

Another thing you can try is testing your bandwidth. Go to giganews.com and run their internet speedtest. Make sure you are getting the bandwidth you are paying for.

It's also possible that the everquest servers are the problem and by coincidence the problem arose around the same time you switched services. There really is nothing you can do about that. Try going to everquest support / forums and see if other players are experiencing similar problems.

Another thing you can try is a gaming Network Interface Card. I don't know of any specific names offhand, and I can't attest to their performance because I've never tried them, but it may help in your situation.

I can't seem to find any specifications for what they use, but if I had to guess I'd say WiMax (it's the only wireless technology I know of for broadband). When you used dialup, you were communicating on a phone line, which will work regardless of your location. Electromagnetic waves are affected by hills and such, particularly at higher frequencies. Typical frequencies are 2.4 GHz and 5GHz (billion waves per second), which are very high frequency. If you live in a hilly area, it is highly likely that the problem lies in the wireless nature of your connection. Also, as a general rule, wireless communications are susceptible to interference from electromagnetic radiation. If you have a microwave, or use the television/radio frequently, that will affect the communications. I would highly advise you switch to a cabled connection, which would almost certainly fix your problem.

xplit871,

Have any of the solutions worked for you?

1.5mb should be more than enough to run quite a lot of instances of EQ. Is your connection synchronous or A-synchronous? Basically do you get 1.5mb upload as well as download or is your upload speed lower?

Latency and packet loss is more of a problem than bandwidth - games tend to have pretty low bandwidth requirements.

Other applications running could well be a problem when gaming, are you running any other software that would use bandwidth while attempting to play? Streaming radio, video (site like youtube) and p2p software would be my initial thoughts.

There is also the possibility of contention on your connection - ISPs don't generally have 1.5mb for you to use all by yourself, they work on the basis that not all users will max out their connections all the time and larger groups of users will share a pool of bandwidth - the way this works varies between different ISPs, different technologies used and the region you are in. If you are unlucky and have a few large p2p users sharing the same system as you they may be interfering with your traffic.

Have you contacted your ISP about this? If not you could try talking to their support and checking if they have any suggestions.

I doubt that a gaming network card would make any difference to you.

You could try using Pingplotter to test the connection (see http://www.pingplotter.com/) it basically just gives you results of a pathping but presents them in a nice easy to understand way and may give you some useful information to talk about when contacting your ISP. You can also leave this running over a longer period, try running this over 24 hours (dont do a query every second - maybe on per minute) and checking if the time of day affects you.

Good luck getting this sorted, but I would guess that talking to your ISP would be best way forward if are unable to change provider.