ZoneAlarm causing Lag in online games....

[DragonQ0105]

I experienced quite a lot of lag in my last few games on Age of Mythology (similar to the lag experienced over a Phone Line Connection, e.g. 56Kbps Modem), and I tried disabling my Firewall to see if it helped and the lag disappeared almost completely (obviously it can't be completely gone). I have a 768Kbps Cable Broadband Connection, so I need my Firewall on all the time, ideally.

Is there any way to prevent this lag without shutting down Zone Alarm Pro?

 

[cdogg]

Well, the firewall is also using CPU resources, so the speed of your PC might also be a factor.

You can try going into the properties of the entry listed under "Program Control" in ZA. Set the ports and restrictions manually, which should save some processing time (though probably not much). You can likely find the port information needed from the game's website.


~cdogg
[tab]"All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind";
[tab][tab]- Aristotle
[tab][navy]For general rules and guidelines to get better answers, click here:[/navy] faq219-2884

 

[DragonQ0105]

I've already done that with no change...if Zone Alarm is on, I get a Red Latency Icon (Which is bad), but if I then disable it, it goes completely and I hardly lag at all.

I have a Athlon 2000+ with 512MB of PC100 RAM...perhaps the RAM is too slow to keep up with the processors requirements...

 

[linney]

If you are running a firewall (such as ZoneAlarm, ZonePro, etc), AOM will try its best to play through it if possible, but it may sometimes be necessary to open up a port. AOM uses UDP port 2300 for all its in-game traffic, so you can open this port (bi-directional) if your firewall is blocking game traffic."

http://www.google.com/search?source...oe=UTF-8&q=Age+of+Mythology+zonealarm+problem

Try the ZoneAlarm forum for more help.

http://forum.zonelabs.org/

 

[DragonQ0105]

How do I open specific ports with Zone Alarm? I see no setting for it in the "Program Control" section...

 

[DragonQ0105]

Don't worry I managed to open Port 2300 as instructed, and I will test it soon...

 

[DragonQ0105]

Well it didn't help, I still lag loads with Zone Alarm running, whereas once I turn it off, it's perfectly fine...

Can it really be my PC Specs?

 

[linney]

If you want (just as an experiment) you could uninstall ZoneAlarm and switch on the XP firewall and see how it goes.

This begs the question, you haven't per chance got the XP firewall and ZoneAlarm running at the same time?

If you were to try the above and it didn't help, you may find that when you re-install ZoneAlarm, with the game already in place, things are better.

 

[DragonQ0105]

The Windows XP Firewall is disabled.

I will try your suggestion in the morning.

 

[cdogg]

From the surface, it doesn't seem that your PC specs are that bad. It is strange that ZA is slowing down that specific connection to a speed that's barely better than dial-up.

What I would do is follow your advice in another thread and run a bandwidth speed test with ZA turned on. I like this site:

http://bandwidthplace.com/speedtest/

If speeds still seem normal, then ZA might not be the problem after all. As a matter of fact, you can give that game's entry full access (all green checks under Access and Server in ZA's "Program Control"). Getting this far should give you a better idea of where the problem lies.

You might want to consider in the near future upgrading you system to use DDR instead of regular SDRAM. There's a lot of latency there between the FSB and memory bus. Also, what video card are you using?


~cdogg
[tab]"All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind";
[tab][tab]- Aristotle
[tab][navy]For general rules and guidelines to get better answers, click here:[/navy] faq219-2884

 

[DragonQ0105]

Speed with ZA enabled, 626.5Kbps.
Speed with ZA Disabled, 643.6Kbps.


That is actually weird because my download speeds are always at least 90KB/s, and often 95KB/s (which indicates 720 - 760Kbps Connection).

Anyway, Age of Mythology has full access rights for being both a Server and a Client.

The motherboard I'm using I specifically bought because it has 2 SDR and 2 DDR Slots. This way I could use my old PC100 SDR RAM, and I can upgrade to DDR3200 RAM later this year (although I'd have to run it at DDR2100 Speed, I could keep it for my next system). I can't do that until November though.