For the last two or three weeks, we have been struggling with connection issues. Its one of those issues that you occasionally deal with living in rural America and having to use a wireless setup for your broadband connection.
The connection from my provider has been occasionally dropping for a minute or two, which isnt that big a deal. However, the connection has had a pretty large amount of latency, sometimes as high as 500 ms. Again, not that big a deal for normal web browsing and website work. However, it is a big deal for the internet gaming of Sean and I.
That amount of latency just makes any kind of twitch game almost unplayable. Sean, in particular, has been extremely frustrated when trying to play our favorite game, Call of Duty 4. I can’t say the lag has me too please either.
I have been working with my provider and his network guy both of whom I know personally – another benefit of small rural community living. They haven’t had much luck locating the issue, but have at least recognize that I/we are having some sort of issue.
Last night, all of a sudden, about 9 pm, everything cleared up and gaming glory was back in session. Sean and I were so happy to be able to play Call of Duty 4 lag free that we ended up playing until about 12:30 am last night – probably not the best thing for him since it was still a school night.
I don’t know if they actually fixed anything or not. I will check with them today, but I suspect it will be back to not operating correctly. My personal thought is some sort of RF interference is causing the issue and it just went away late last night. If that’s true, it could well be back today. At a minimum, this will give us some additional info to troubleshoot if it does indeed come back today.
Speaking of Call of Duty 4, if you haven’t played the game yet, what are you waiting for? For me, and probably Sean too, its the best game made to date. It easily blows away other FPS’s and we have played a bunch of them. It is leaps and bounds ahead of Halo 3, often considered a benchmark. In fact, our copy of Halo 3 only gets played these days when one of our friends invites us to play a game on Xbox Live. And the only friends that do that are the ones that haven’t gotten Call of Duty 4 yet.
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