Got DDO installed on my work laptop....

[der_kluge]

So, I'm working remote this week, so before I left, I installed DDO on my work laptop. There aren't any issues with that - and the game plays fine. However, in the hotel room, when I connect, the game basically does nothing at all. On rare occasion, I'm able to move through the marketplace, and go to various places, but at some point in time, the game simply freezes, loses connection to the chat server, and I end up just disconnecting it, and doing something else.

I ran an internet speed test here at http://www.speedtest.net/ and am getting 7.13 mbps download and 13.84 mbps upload. Both of which should be sufficient to play DDO. And loading DDO isn't really an issue. And the laptop is fairly new, and pretty rock solid. It has an Nvidia card built into it - and indeed, the in-game graphics look really quite amazing on this machine.

I could complain to the front desk, but I suspect she will simply stare at me blankly and shrug. I mean, what's she going to do about her hotel's network infrastructure? But I'm not entirely convinced that is the problem. I seem to be doing OK when I play various flash games - but I noticed something when I download largish flash games (when they queue up, for example) - it seems to stop/start - the download speed doesn't seem to be consistent.

I'm instead wondering if *something* is running on my work laptop that might be interfering - some sort of network listener daemon or something that might be doing security polling, or something to that affect on this laptop that might be just not playing very well with DDO.

This is what is currently running. There are a number of services running as well, but that's a much larger list.



Any idea? It's gonna be a long, boring week in a hotel if I can't play DDO!

[donfilibuster]

Maybe it is the hotel network after all, which is surely shared and the speed you see is just burstable and thus can't be mantained in the long run.

I'd guess you tried ethernet cable already, but if is wireless check for interferences.

[Maxelcat]

hardline the unit with a Ethernet cable. wireless is boo for games. (most likely, the wireless network is old flakey and hasn't been firmwared or maintained properly since it was set up.)

try something like DLing a large file and see if your just getting Burst bandwidth or if your being throttled with use.

you can also open up the full network map and see what your connecting to. (or traceroute if you know what your looking at)

[gk_zone]

I was traveling for business last week myself, and the hotel I was in only offered wireless service. I had to call their tech support to get connected, and they had to reboot several routers so I could connect. If you have the option to plug in an ethernet cable, that would be preferred over wireless.

Something to to consider is your Antivirus software. If you can configure it to exclude scanning in your DDO installation folder, that will increase performance. Check your firewall settings as well, but if you can connect at all that isn't likely the case. Close any unused programs and defrag your hard drive.

Even if the laptop has good specs, unless it was designed as a game machine you may still see performance issues. The bottleneck will likely be the hard drive, as most laptop HDD's run at 5400rpm.

Keep in mind that graphic intensive programs will probably make your laptop generate a lot of heat. The first time I used my work laptop to play DDO my laptop shut down due to it overheating. I propped up my laptop using one of the many plastic doohickeys on the desk to increase airflow and didn't have any more issues. If you're seeing slowdowns after playing the game for a short time, it may be due to the system throttling systems resources to prevent the laptop from overheating. If this helps, you might want to consider getting a laptop cooling fan. I bought one from my local WalMart.

http://www.walmart.com/ip/Belkin-Lap...i_sku=11038053

[der_kluge]

The room did have an ethernet cable that I'm using to connect with, and it doesn't seem to make any difference (I turned off the wireless on my laptop to make sure it wasn't over-riding it). The bursting thing does seem to describe what might be going on.

Though I suspect there's probably not much I can do about that, short of checking myself out, and moving to a new hotel!

[Dulcimerist]

My guess is that too many other people are accessing the internet in the hotel, and that's narrowing your bandwidth.

Additionally, the hotel router is likely not set up properly for port forwarding, and it could have some internal firewall programs that might block or restrict your continual connection to the DDO server. There might also be a proxy setting involved. Did you use pingplotter to check for dropped packets?

One thing to check on your end with the laptop is to make sure that no power saving features are enabled while you're gaming. You'll want to power your laptop by a wall outlet and change its power settings to maximum performance. Also go into the computer's graphics settings and make sure it's not set to power saving mode.

You could post your laptop's DXDiag report so we can see other possible issues. However, I'm pretty sure that the issue has to do with the hotel's router. My guess is that you'd face the same problem, even if you switched to a different hotel.