Important Breaking News: Stars Support is still awesome.
I e-mailed them about experiencing lag (the internet connection problem, not the playing style) everytime I logged onto PokerStars. expecting a curt "sorry dude, gl" response back, this is what i got instead:
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Hello Matthew,
Thank you for your Email. I will do my best to assist you, but first
I must explain a little bit about how the Internet works. My
apologies if this is information you're already familiar with. If
you're already familiar with how the Internet works, please skip the
next 3 paragraphs.
The Internet is a peer to peer network. Information between your
computer and our servers will pass through a large number (8 to 24 or
more) of "peers", machines that aren't ours and that also don't belong
to your ISP. Your connection is only as good as the WORST of these
machines. If any single one of these is having trouble, or fails to
properly forward your data, you will experience a disconnect.
You will often be able to check Email or browse other sites, even if
your connection to PokerStars experiences brief outages. This is
because the path (the chain of machines) between you and each
destination site you visit is different. The path to your Email
server, for example, is very short since your Email server is usually
right there at your ISP. The path to other sites you might use to
test (like yahoo.com or CNN.com) will likely be very different as
well, based on geography. You may have a stable path to Yahoo, but an
unstable path to PokerStars simply because your path to PokerStars
passes through an unreliable peer.
Finally, the demands of online gaming on a connection are much higher
than on browsing the web or checking Email. With web browsing you
load a page, and then your connection is "idle" -- you don't stay
connected to the web server. The same is true of Email. However,
with real-time applications such as online poker, the connection is
constant and must be very stable. The average disconnection from
PokerStars is very short (only a few seconds), and by the time you
notice you were disconnected, you're probably already reconnected,
which is why many users report that the problem is only with
PokerStars ("because they were able to browse a web site right
then"). You may therefore be experiencing these same brief
disconnects during web browsing and Email checking, and never know it.
That said, the most common causes of brief disconnects are sometimes
within your control, and sometimes are not.
Common causes that are within your control include:
Dialup modem "handshaking" (known as retraining)
Unstable routers (DLink DI-624, LinkSys BEFSW-11B among others)
Use of unstable wireless connections for play
Bad cables (CAT-5 network cables are recommended)
Computers running with insufficient memory
Spyware or other programs on your computer interfering
Common causes that may be outside of your control include:
Permanently poor Internet route to PokerStars' servers
Temporarily unstable route to PokerStars (usually self-correcting)
ISP equipment failure
Using some trial and error, we can likely narrow down the cause of the
problems. If you have a Cable or DSL connection and also use a
router, take it out of the loop. Run a known good quality Cat-5
Ethernet cable (available at Radio Shack, CompUSA, or any office
supply store) directly from your DSL/Cable modem to your computer. If
your connection stabilizes, the router is at fault. Sometimes a
firmware upgrade can stabilize a bad router -- contact the router
manufacturer for assistance with a firmware upgrade. If this fails,
you may want to try a different brand of router.
Wireless isn't recommended for real time gaming such as PokerStars.
The average disconnect rate on a wireless connection is over twenty
times higher than on a wired connection. If you have a wireless
router, try playing through the wired connection through the router.
If the connection stabilizes, wireless just isn't for you.
If you have a dialup modem connection, re-handshaking (known as re-
training) can be a problem if the modems are incompatible. You may
want to either try a different brand of modem in your computer, or try
a different dialup ISP (to get a different brand of modem on the other
end). This may stabilize your connection. If not, you may want to
consider an upgrade to cable or DSL, if available. If you'd like a
more detailed description of retraining on dialup modem connections
from one of our connection specialists, please let us know.
Regarding spyware, we recommend you ensure your system is clean using
two quality spyware tools:
http://www.lavasoft.de (AdAware 1.06 SE Personal Edition)
http://www.spybot.info (Search and Destroy)
Both are free, and work well in conjunction with each other, finding
things the other does not. Cleaning your system may free up more RAM
and remove bad things from your system that affect your connection.
Regarding memory load, PokerStars and Windows *can* run with as little
as 64 MB of RAM, but it isn't at all recommended. We have also seen
128 MB of RAM be problematic, especially on Windows 98 machines.
That's enough RAM to run Windows, but not much else. If you're going
to run anti-virus software (and you should!), a firewall (and you
should!), and any number of other programs, then 128 MB is not enough,
and 256 MB is barely sufficient. For best performance we recommend
512 MB of RAM in your system. This should ensure that your connection
is stable no matter how many other things you're running. Contact
your local computer store for assistance with a RAM upgrade, or if
you're a do-it-yourselfer, visit Crucial.com.
If you've done all the above (cleaned spyware, ensured you have ample
RAM, have eliminated a router as the source of the problem, etc), and
the problem persists, the problem may simply be out of your (and our)
control. Here are a few things you can do that might help narrow down
where the problem is outside your computer:
In the PokerStars software, click "Help -> Network Status", and then
click on the 'Advanced' button for the details of each connection as
well as highlighting one of the sites listed. Other than PokerStars,
none of these servers are ours -- we use these other sites worldwide
to see how your connection is in general. Lost packets to most or all
of the sites are indicative of problems nearer your ISP or own
computer (your connection is poor to everywhere). Lost packets to
just one or two sites indicate problems closer to those sites.
Highlighting a site and clicking 'Trace' will display the "hops" (each
machine along the path) between you and that site and how fast the
data is travelling at that time. 100 milliseconds or so is great, over
500 milliseconds is slow and over 1 second is very bad. Look
for "lost packets" on the trace to PokerStars -- the closer the lost
packets are to the top of the list, the closer the connection problem
is to your own computer.
If your connection to sites other than just PokerStars is bad, then
it's likely there's a router problem somewhere close to your ISP. You
can inquire with your Internet Service Provider about this connectivity
problem, or you can try again in a little while. A problem like this is
usually temporary and in most cases, corrects itself.
If the connection is only poor for PokerStars, or has been a long-term
connection problem here on PokerStars, then this may simply be
revealing a connection stability problem that won't manifest itself on
most other Internet applications. In this case, we recommend that you
consider trying another ISP to see if the problem is related to that
ISP or to the path that ISP uses to reach PokerStars.
For all connections, if there are "lost packets" in a trace to
PokerStars and they are mid-way between your computer (the top of the
trace) and our server (the bottom) , then there's little anyone can do
but wait. Most times when the lost packets are in the middle of the
trace, the problem router (the middleman) will be corrected within an
hour or two.
Therefore, if this is only a temporary problem and your connection to
PokerStars is usually good, we advise that you simply try again in an
hour or two. That will give the ISP's involved a chance to notice,
diagnose and correct the problem. If this is a long-term, recurring
problem, please let us know more about your connection.
Among the things we'd need to know are:
Operating System (i.e. Windows 98, Windows XP w/ Service Pack 2)
Computer processor (i.e. Pentium 4, 2.4 Ghz)
System RAM (i.e. 256 MB)
Connection type (dialup, cable, DSL, satellite)
What ISP you use
Router brand and model (if any)
We'd also like to know the results of any of the recommended tests you
performed above. Once we have this information we will have
one of our connectivity specialists take a more in-depth look for you.
Regards,
Jackson
PokerStars Support Team
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Jackson is the man.