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Camali · May 2, 2007, 07:52 PM

Lately while playing online games, I get the disconnected icons (Quake, Halo, etc) the connection resumes, but it makes playing online intolerable. Even music being streamed to my computer has to be buffered every 5 minutes or so. I've contacted Comcast and so far it looks like they've done all they can.

What I was told was that my upstream bandwith is being used while online, this type of interruption has not happened before. Is it possible that some program is sending out (up) information somewhere and me not evening know it? I don't know what tool to use to 'see' what program is using the upstream. This started happening about 1 month ago, but its becoming more and more frequently. I need any help I can get. I'm ready to go back to DSL....ugh

besson3c · May 2, 2007, 09:26 PM

netstat -ibw 5

ghporter · May 2, 2007, 09:59 PM

What makes you say "ugh" to using DSL? What kind of experience did you have, and with whom? My experience with SBC/Yahoo!/AT&T has been remarkably good. You should know though that typical DSL connections have significantly lower upstream bandwidths than downstream bandwidths. My "up to 6Mbps" connection is supposed to give me up to three hundred something kbps. It actually gives me almost 600kbps in practice, but that's still about 10% of my download speed. That can have an effect on gaming when you're in a congested segment of a network. That sort of congestion isn't particularly common with DSL, but depending on how a cable company has configured its distribution system, it CAN happen with cable.

shinji · May 2, 2007, 10:38 PM

Originally Posted by besson3c

netstat -ibw 5

where does that say which app is using the bandwidth? i just get a long list that keeps going, no app names.

besson3c · May 2, 2007, 11:19 PM

Originally Posted by shinji

where does that say which app is using the bandwidth? i just get a long list that keeps going, no app names.

This list will tell you how much bandwidth you are using, and it refreshes every 5 seconds. Running netstat without this flags will show you which network connections are running.

It won't tell you what applications are causing these connections, but that should be pretty easy to determine by figuring out what ports are being used.

Simon · May 3, 2007, 04:55 AM

Or check /Applications/Utilities/ActivityMonitor > Network

besson3c · May 3, 2007, 07:55 AM

Good tip! I rarely use the app, didn't know this was there!

Looks like it offers the exact same info though, but it's a little more readable and provides that graph.

ghporter · May 3, 2007, 08:17 AM

Originally Posted by besson3c

Good tip! I rarely use the app, didn't know this was there!

Looks like it offers the exact same info though, but it's a little more readable and provides that graph.

GUI > command line for readability and ease of use. This sort of thing, with the amount of information you can get from either utility, sort of demands some way to put it together so the user can make sense of it. I like netstat for individual "what's this doing?" issues, but Activity Monitor rocks for "what's going on right now?" issues.

Simon · May 3, 2007, 08:51 AM

Activity Monitor is great for quick checks of network throughput or disk activity. But obviously its network information is only useful for the machine it's running on. It can't tell you the throughput of your AP. IMHO there should be something like Activity Monitor's network graph in AP Utility.

Camali · May 3, 2007, 04:32 PM

I've tried using Activity Monitor and while it does show me data/packets being sent and received in that nice little graph, but I need to see WHAT program is causing my upstream to peak where it causes the timeouts I'm seeing in music streaming and the interruptions in online games.

besson3c · May 3, 2007, 04:34 PM

Originally Posted by Camali

I've tried using Activity Monitor and while it does show me data/packets being sent and received in that nice little graph, but I need to see WHAT program is causing my upstream to peak where it causes the timeouts I'm seeing in music streaming and the interruptions in online games.

Use Netstat to figure out the port number, then you can figure out what app is using that port using a tool such as Little Snitch, or some other network diagnostic tool.

Camali · May 7, 2007, 02:38 PM

Well I'm not sure what the problem was in the first place, since Comcast came and gave me what they call a new modem. I connected directly to the modem and played an online game and streamed some music, and i didn't get the disconnection icons nor any rebuffering. So it wasn't the cables lines at all but replacing the modem might have solved it.

Then I remembered that after installing a Dlink Gigabit router I had assigned static IP numbers to each machine, whether or not this caused the problem. So I setup each machine to USING DHCP. Played the online game and music stream and no interruptions!

I could have a defective router,so I'm going to have to look into it. But for now it seems the problem has been resolved and I hope it doesn't creep back up on me.

Thanks for all your help guys!