college internet
 

well im at college and the one thing thats been unusually hard for me is that the internet isn't slow for webpages, but durring games, man does it lag like crazy, so i was wondering what i could possible do or change to maybe get a better speed while playing games

Most colleges throttle game ports using some kind of packet shaping device. The problem is that games have the potential to usurp a lot of bandwidth creating a poor experience for other users.

You may want to contact your IT department. Be nice about it. We just set up an agreement with our battle.net users guaranteeing them a certain amount of bandwidth.

Most IT staff play games ... most of them are aware that games are a legitimate form of entertainment. But your campus network and internet connection are for ACADEMIC purposes first and entertainment second. I know it's a fine line ... I mean you're probably forced to live in the dorms and all. But the network is the same in most schools ... some schools outsource the residential network. We came close to doing that.

Get a group of people together and propose it to IT. You might want to get the student affairs or student activities departments on your side as well.

The BEST thing you can do for yourself (depending on where you're at college and your financial situation) is not to live in university housing and just get your own ISP. I got really really lucky insofar as my undergrad had a bleeding fast LAN and had zero packet shaping, so I didn't need to worry about it.

My law school, however, has a miserable network and ridiculous amounts of flitering. I'm thrilled that I live far off campus. Comcast isn't perfect, but it's fast and consistent enough and no one messes with it. If you have to live in the dorms this year, there's not necessarily a whole lot you can do about it. If it continues to bug you, though, definitely look into taking care of it yourself with some friends next year.

Gotta this outta the way:

Do your homework!

Anyhoo, I find that firewalls tend to fuck up networked games as well P2P application. I never do both at school anymore as I gave up trying to do anything with it.

See if there's a club like SPLAT at your university. If so, hit them up before hitting up the IT department, you'll probably find out they are closely affiliated with the IT department. If nothing else, that club will usually have events every few months, and get as many people together on a LAN and go to town. If you don't have a club like that at your university and are serious about gaming, look into starting one. SPLAT tournies started with 15-20 people showing up, and now they consistently have 100+ show up.

Make friends with the IT guys, or become an IT guy and get the way to bypass the filtering.

im not serious serious, but in downtime i'd like to be able to play like some guild wars, or some Cs or some diablo or starcraft

Edit: im gonna try some of the suggestions, thanks guys

There are also tons of ways inside of games to limit the amount of bandwidth needed to play it... Half-Life games for example, if you change the rate (how much is coming in), the cl_updaterate (how many times the rate is updated per second) and cl_cmdrate (how many times commands are updated per second), you may find that the gameplay is a little different, and you'll have to get used to it, but you'll no longer lag in anyway, if you set them low enough; and realistically, you don't need them very high in the first place if you're just playing for fun.

This is just what I did to get around my school's ISP craponess. Also, if you wish, get all your friends to become night-owls too... usually connections inside a school network are shared by WAY too many people, this problem frees itself up usually around 1 am. =o)

the problem at my school is they block ports like it's their job, they refuse to stop or even do it in a nice manner, THey blocked a wrong port and im without instant messanging . I called up and complained and told me that it's a problem on my end. Which it's not cause i was logged on today, got logged off and currently can't get back on.

BAH!

which port are they blocking that is denying your messenger client?

I see your attitude coming through.

They block ports like it's their job ... BECAUSE IT IS THEIR JOB! They are having to ride a very fine line of allowing certain traffic while denying others.

How do you KNOW they blocked a port at all; let alone a "wrong" port? It's very unlikely that they did it arbitrarily if they did. Most likely they saw questionable traffic coming across that port and decided to shut it off.

All I get at my job are people complaining about viruses or the internet's too slow or they get too much spam. Then when we do something to remedy the situation (packet shaping, port filtering and spam filters) all we get are complaints from gamers that their shit is too slow. It's a no win situation for your IT department trust me.

Here's the important part:

IT departments at schools will always err on the side of academia and that's all there is to it. Games, IM and pornography are NOT integral to your college career. We aren't saying you CAN'T use those things, but they WILL take a backseat to any academic related sources.

well apparently my college blocks more ports than most other major colleges. Also when the gamers club said listen if we get some money together and buy a server can u guys set it up on the network and allow wveryone to play on it. THey denyied us rather quickly and harshly


im pretty sure it's a mistake because it came out of the blue, some of my friends can get on AIM, yahoo, msn, ect... Also i called the help desk and they said it was down school wide, when i said i know about 15 ppl on aim they basically told me i was out of luck :mad:

what kind of help is that!

They denied you and your group because the network is not for gaming; it’s for school related projects. if your IT department is anything like mine, they are overworked, and underpaid and have enough professors trying to get bonzi buddy to install to have the extra time to setup a server for you, and probably don’t want to have to secure it from the outside, and separate it from the rest of the inside. I guaranty there is no way in hell my IT department would ever allow students to have a server on our network.

an odd development. as of 130 am last night i can play any and all games i own online, and use my instant messanging again. The inconsistancy is odd, but at this point in time my feelings have swung from hate to happy


edit: it's gone again

i think they're making sur emy joy doesn't reach a level above my saddness[/emo]

:lol: haha! exactly what I was going to say! IF you have time after study to do something else, it should be
1) drinking
2) fraternizing with an individual of the gender of your choice
or
3) 1 & 2