Campus Network Issue?

[DMystikaLD]

I attend the University of Dayton and they just switched us over from OARNet (33 mbps line) to a Time Warner (80 mbps line). Our download speeds are much better now, and our overall web page load times have improved. Also, AIM works fine now, instead of disconnecting us every 5 minutes (Yes, that's not an overstatement).

However -- problem. When playing games, the lowest pings we EVER get is around 450. However, if we go to start -> run -> cmd -> ping [address of server], it usually pings around 15 - 30 depending on where we are playing.

What gives? I've -never- seen this before, but I know pinging 1200+ in World of Warcraft isn't fun, and neither is pinging 600 in UT2k4 =\. Do you think this could be a problem with ports? Do you think that they're capping ports to such an extreme that it's choking the application?

 

[lomn75]

It's probably a packet shaper (somebody correct me if my terminology is wrong) and they've dumped gaming ports (and P2P ports, if they're smart) to low priority. Ping runs on a different port, so you don't see the effects there. Pretty common these days.

//edit: only solutions are
(1) Convince the IT dept to let up on gaming (not likely, though they might be persuaded into an 8PM - 4AM window or something)
(2) Get your own net connection

 

[Xipher]

Actually, its more often refered to as a Traffic shaper, and ping doesn't use a port, but a different protocol, ICMP, which runs on top of IP. You have the right idea though, they probably are blocking access for games, or at least lower prioty for other traffic.

 

[UnderLoK]

Your best bet is to contact them. Odds are that someone there has accidently de prioritized the ports your using because they thought that only a game server on the inside would be using them.

Check the ports your game needs and forward them with your inquiry. In all seriousness it sounds like a mistake to me. Colleges expect people to be gaming on their network, but probably were just trying to stop people from running game servers.