For some time now, I've been having a lot of trouble with Halo multiplayer for the pc. I'm on a 56k connection but my pings are usually fine, usually between 200-275. However, before long, I always get disconneced from the game and a message comes up saying - Network Connection lost. Sometimes it happens within 10 seconds and sometimes I can last up to ten minutes. I've tried switching off the firewall while I play but doesn't appear to make any difference. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thats just how 56k works. I have 56k (ive had it for years but i'll finally be rid of it in 1 week!) and it does that to me too. Its not a problem its just the slowness of 56k, its not always the greatest.

Well, I get that error on cable internet too alot. But only when trying to host. Does it also happen when you join games? Computer Forum

It happens every game I join, and I used to have no problem at all with any games that I joined, but just up until recently, I can't stay in a game for longer than five minutes withought getting - Network Connection Lost. Any more ideas ?

Run a traceroute to your game servers and note any hops with unusually high ping times and packet losses. If everything *was* working and you haven't made any significant changes to your system then chances are your path has changed and one of the routers along the way is overloaded/misconfigured. You can usually complain to your ISP and they'll look at rerouting you or getting the intermediate to fix his router. A 200-275 ping is not all that good. I normally ping 20-30ms to my online games (the server is a couple of cities over) and when network latency bumps me up to 100+ I can really tell the difference.

Well a 200 - 275 ping is not too bad for 56k I meant, obviously to broadband owners it seems obsurd. Broadband is not avaliable in this area yeat, otherwise I'de be the first to get my hands on it. Can you explain what a traceruite is ? Can you explain the whole first paragraph a bit clearer please? I'm not commong with what you said.

To send your data packets to their destinations, your ISP has a "DNS Server" that keeps track of which routers to send the packets to in order to get them there. These paths are periodically updated according to network latency, a given "hop" dropping off the net, a new one coming on that allows a better, faster connection, etc. Traceroute is a program that reads this "routing" information from your DNS server and pings each server or router along the path. The "ping", an ICMP "magic packet", simply instructs the router to "ping" back. The round trip time to each "hop" and % of pings responded to are reported back to you. In general, the lower the ping-time and the higher the percent of packets responded to, the better that segment of the route. Some routers are set not to respond to pings syou you'll get a 100% packet loss for those segments but it usually doesn't mean anything, if the next segement responds. Gaming servers usually post their IP Addresses so players can check their routes periodically. Windows has a basic traceroute program built in; there are freewhare/shareware versions that are much more sophisticated. To use the Windows version, go to the command prompt and type in tracet <ip address or domain name> You'll get back a response that looks like this: tracet www.computing.net # IP address Host name Round trip time 2 10.239.64.1 Unavailable 40 ms 3 No response 4 No response 5 67.72.116.5 so-6-0-0-0.gar2.LosAngeles1.Level3.net501 ms 6 209.247.9.217 so-0-3-0.bbr2.LosAngeles1.Level3.net511 ms 7 209.247.8.10 so-1-2-0.bbr2.Atlanta1.Level3.net 551 ms 8 No response 9 209.246.169.150 unknown.Level3.net 561 ms 10 No response 11 64.94.3.98 mariet-2.border4.acs.pnap.net 571 ms 12 No response 13 216.235.146.246 Router-5-MFN-Atl.capitalinternet.com581 ms As you can see, the router so-6-0-0-0.gar2.LosAngeles1.Level3.net starts giving me very high ping times right away, meaning it's overloaded or just flat not very responsive. This is OK for typing messages to the forum but if I was playing a FPS through this route I'd be in BIG trouble if the other guy had a better connection. If you had a decent route a couple of weeks back but it changed to a bad one that could explain why you're suddenly getting lots of lag and network latency. Sometimes a netadmin can change your route or reboot the router to make it work better.