[SOLVED] Ethernet briefly losing connection when singleplayer gaming

[SinSilsa]

Hi,

I have a Cat7 cable running from the downstairs router, through two upstairs bedrooms, through the attic and into the back bedroom inserted directly into the PC. I have a MSI Mag Tomahawk B550 mobo. The BIOS is up to date A.80, the Realtek Ethernet Controller driver is up to date 10.54.1111.2021 and my AMD chipset software is up to date 3.10.22.706. Version 21H2 (OS Build 19044. 1503) is the current Windows version on Windows 10 Home.

These brief disconnects only seems to occur when game applications are open for a length of time. I only play singleplayer games through Steam so it's highly doubtful my internet connection is being overloaded and my Thinkbroadbandmonitor never displays anything of concern. The router continues to report stable connections between the router and the ISP provider and nobody else as complained about occasional dropouts in the household so I believe it as something to do with my computer network configuration or another setting on Windows or the worst case scenario my ethernet cable which will be an absolute nightmare to replace. We recently replaced our router not in the hope of resolving this issue but to fix an occasional desync issue that took the entire network down. It was infrequent and random so it was most definitely a software issue. A replacement router resolved that matter.

The only snippets of information I have to go on is that the event viewer reports DNS Client Events 1014 when the connection drops. The link speed will drop from 1000Mbps to 100Mbps and the DHCP Lease Obtained will update with a new date and time. The lease expiry always states 10 days later so it isn't a 1 hourly expiry issue. It sounds to me like a resource / temp issue with the computer or the cable. The connection uptime link remains stable when browsing the web, downloading huge amounts of data, streaming content and the like. This issue only becomes apparent when a game is open. I have had RTSS and HW Monitor running in the background and not a single one of my hardware components is overheating. The overall temps may be slightly higher than what other people would report but that's because I never went ahead and undervolted my 5900x and I bought an air cooler rather than having it watercooled. Temps for the gpu and cpu range anywhere from 50-70c in games with the rest of the system temps at 30-40c. Idly the temps of the entire system will stay between 25-40c.

As for system setting changes the only settings I manually go in and change from a networking or gaming perspective is deselectng the power management mode for allowing the computer to turn off this device to save power in the Realtek PCIe GbE Family Controller network and a few adjustments in the Nvidia Control Panel per game (not globally) max frame rate, prefer maximum performance, vsync enabled. GSYNC and refresh rates are set to on / highest by default.

I hope I have explained this decently enough. I don't know what's causing this issue and I don't have anymore information to go on.

 

[kanewolf]

Hi,

I have a Cat7 cable running from the downstairs router, through two upstairs bedrooms, through the attic and into the back bedroom inserted directly into the PC. I have a MSI Mag Tomahawk B550 mobo. The BIOS is up to date A.80, the Realtek Ethernet Controller driver is up to date 10.54.1111.2021 and my AMD chipset software is up to date 3.10.22.706. Version 21H2 (OS Build 19044. 1503) is the current Windows version on Windows 10 Home.

These brief disconnects only seems to occur when game applications are open for a length of time. I only play singleplayer games through Steam so it's highly doubtful my internet connection is being overloaded and my Thinkbroadbandmonitor never displays anything of concern. The router continues to report stable connections between the router and the ISP provider and nobody else as complained about occasional dropouts in the household so I believe it as something to do with my computer network configuration or another setting on Windows or the worst case scenario my ethernet cable which will be an absolute nightmare to replace. We recently replaced our router not in the hope of resolving this issue but to fix an occasional desync issue that took the entire network down. It was infrequent and random so it was most definitely a software issue. A replacement router resolved that matter.

The only snippets of information I have to go on is that the event viewer reports DNS Client Events 1014 when the connection drops. The link speed will drop from 1000Mbps to 100Mbps and the DHCP Lease Obtained will update with a new date and time. The lease expiry always states 10 days later so it isn't a 1 hourly expiry issue. It sounds to me like a resource / temp issue with the computer or the cable. The connection uptime link remains stable when browsing the web, downloading huge amounts of data, streaming content and the like. This issue only becomes apparent when a game is open. I have had RTSS and HW Monitor running in the background and not a single one of my hardware components is overheating. The overall temps may be slightly higher than what other people would report but that's because I never went ahead and undervolted my 5900x and I bought an air cooler rather than having it watercooled. Temps for the gpu and cpu range anywhere from 50-70c in games with the rest of the system temps at 30-40c. Idly the temps of the entire system will stay between 25-40c.

As for system setting changes the only settings I manually go in and change from a networking or gaming perspective is deselectng the power management mode for allowing the computer to turn off this device to save power in the Realtek PCIe GbE Family Controller network and a few adjustments in the Nvidia Control Panel per game (not globally) max frame rate, prefer maximum performance, vsync enabled. GSYNC and refresh rates are set to on / highest by default.

I hope I have explained this decently enough. I don't know what's causing this issue and I don't have anymore information to go on.

Your link speed changing is a symptom of a bad cable. Your "Cat7" cable is probably junk. Fake cables are sold all the time. You should run a new Cat5e or Cat6 100% copper cable.

 

[SinSilsa]

Your link speed changing is a symptom of a bad cable. Your "Cat7" cable is probably junk. Fake cables are sold all the time. You should run a new Cat5e or Cat6 100% copper cable.

When the cable was fitted in 2019 it appears as if it was an extension to the original cable in the front bedroom which was re routed to the backbedroom. I thought the entire cable was replaced but it appears not. I have a strong feeling the first part of the cable is at fault here. The reason I say this is because I remember years ago my link speed would cap out at 100Mbps. In part that was due to a 100Mbps switch limiter but I remember hooking up the ethernet directly to the PC at one point and the link speed would still drop from 1000Mbps to 100Mbps. In our household we can only manage a connection speed of 70Mbps over FTTC no FTTP as been implemented in our area, so I never saw a cause for concern. tbh though whenever I used to play multiplayer games I don't think I ever noticed any dropouts, it must be a split second disconnect with a new lease being obtained immediately.

These days I only entertain singleplayer games and I don't boot them up very often so this issue as been hiding in plain sight all along.

Is there an explanation as to why this issue only crops up when games are open? The only thing I can think of is the PC heats up and that somehow results in a loss of sync with the ethernet cable? You would think the ethernet cable would be more likely to lose sync when large amounts of data is being transmitted and yet it's totally fine under those circumstances.

 

[kanewolf]

To eliminate the possibility of a cable problem, get a new 100% copper cat5e cable and lay it across the floor temporarily. If you don't want to deal with a long cable, then move the PC close to the router and test with a short cable.

 

[bill001g]

Games use almost no network so it is not a load issue. Netflix uses much more even most web surfing does with all the crap that is loaded on web pages.

You likely just notice in games because they don't tolerate even small outages. I guess it depends on what game because games that are totally running on your machine with no server should not show the error. I mean you can set some game to run off line and you can play them on a airplane even when they are installed from steam.
It all depends on what the game uses the network for,

In any case the only way for the speed to switch is for the port to drop and re negotiate the speed. This function is almost all hardware done by testing voltages as such. It is not really a software thing. So you need to hope it is a bad ethernet because the only other likely option is a bad ethernet port which you would then have
to find a way to replace.

 

[SinSilsa]

I apologise for the long delay between posts.

I'm finally about to replace the ethernet cable. I need a 15m cable. I was looking around on the internet and it says the best cat6 cable is the £5 one provided by Amazon? Can't be right surely. If I need a good quality one where are they? I bumped into a quality cat8 cable for £35 but it seems a little extreme and you specifically said 5 or 6. Could do with the help before committing to a purchase.

 

[bill001g]

Can't say for sure if that is a good deal or not. I have seen quality cables that long under $10 but you have currency differences as well as shipping location difference.

Key though is read the specs. They largest cost for a ethernet cable is the copper metal used to make it. Copper metal is still near record high prices.

What cable vendors have done is use methods to cheat and use less copper. They either use CCA cable which is actually mostly aluminum or they use very thin wires.

This is why you see so much of that flat cable being sold. It has less than 1/2 the copper metal because it uses wire size 30 rather than say 24.

A ethernet cable must be pure copper. It also needs to have wire size 22-24. Any cable that does not meet these requirement automatically fails to actually be a certified ethernet cable. You only have the vendor statements that it works and many will not work with some machines especially when they are longer.

Read the fine print. If they do not say consider a different vendor. The vendors that sell quality cables know they are competing with the fakes and make very clear what their specs are.

 

[SinSilsa]

That just confuses me even more.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ethernet-Cable-Zosion-Internet-Connector-Black/dp/B08PBSP3NC this is the one I came across, but the dumb dumb I am I don't know anything about all of this. 15m flat cable but it's a cat8 not a cat5 or cat6. It appears everybody recommends 5 or 6 on the internet but I have no idea which ones are meant to be good or not. As said above the cat6 cable reviews site I came across said the Amazon Basics RJ45 Cat-6 Ethernet cable is the best one at like £5 and is currently unavailable.

There is no way I'm purchasing anything until I know for sure what's good / ideal.

The cat8 cables certainly look overkill considering I only have a 70Mbps connection speed. FTTP Gigabit isnt even available where I live yet nevermind 40GB's. The shield protection and whatever other little features the cat8 cable come with are probably pointless too. So I can see why the cat6 cables are widely recommended for most people. I just need to know which one to get that is considered "quality" and not trash. Pure 100% copper, 15m, flat cable and what not is what I need. Please help so I can get one ordered asap.

 

[bill001g]

The main problem is the symbols "CAT5" and "CAT8" actually have no official meaning. The actual standards have names that are not all the user friendly. They have things like EIA/TIA and numbers.

Because of this companies make up whatever they want.

There just is no enforcement unlike other products. I mean certain kinds of wine can only be called certain names if the grape were grown in a certain part of france for example.

Bottom line the standards very clearly say Copper wire with size 22-24. Wires that are 30 awg mean the cable automatically fails the requirement and there is not a ethernet cable.

Amazon is too smart sometime. I would have to move my VPN to the UK I think to get it to work better. It knows I am in the USA and makes it tricky to search. They I guess know I am not really going to buy anything from that site.

Even for someone like me that knows very well what to look for it can be a big challenge to bypass all the crap being sold on amazon. So this first one I "think" is valid. Since amazon has a policy at least that cable that are CCA and not pure copper must disclose that you might
assume that these cables are pure copper wire. If you look closely at the photos you will see the wire is marked 24 AWG. And photo provided by real customers appear to be the same cable so they aren't using some stock photo.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/AmazonBasics-CAT5e-Speed-Ethernet-Patch/dp/B001TH7GVO?th=1

This is a example of when you know the cable is real but it is much more expensive. Look at the third photo. That actually has all the detailed standards names that real ethernet cables must meet.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Monoprice-Flexboot-Cat5e-Ethernet-Patch/dp/B00KXHFVK4

 

[SinSilsa]

It's turning into a bit of a nightmare this. I thought it would be straight-forward. I began checking Reddit and came across lots of threads recommending certain brands and Monoprice was one of them. I went to the .co.uk version and most of it is out of stock, 5 packs and needs to be imported from The Netherlands... The US version looks 100x better. So I started looking at some of the alternative brands mentioned and they too seem to be US based. Amazon listings for some of the products all say currently unavailable. Why is the quest for a good cat6 cable so troubling?

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Cable-Matt...le+matters+cat6+ethernet,computers,52&sr=1-20 I came across this one on Amazon but it's only £11.99, you have to read the full description to find "Conductor: 24 AWG Stranded Bare Copper" not sure if this cable would be considered good or not. This as been quite tiresome when I have very little idea on what's good or not + the drawbacks of being in the UK and not having the luxury of a US store with a ton of options and aesthetics. Hell, I don't even know if that cable linked is flat... I'm seriously tempted just to wifi the PC.

Thanks for the continued responses but I'm pretty stupid at all of this. Trying to sink in what's being said but I'm still coming up empty-handed when browsing.

 

[bill001g]

That one looks ok. It is your normal round 24 awg copper cable. Although in theory they could make flat cable with 24 AWG I have never seen it. They are trying to make very thin cables when you use 2 24awg twisted that make it pretty thick.

Although it is hard to be 100% sure both the cables I linked I think are instock. I have not figured out a way yet to force a UK delivery method.

Maybe it is because you are searching cat6 rather than cat5e.

Cat6 has no advantage really over cat5e when you run 1gbit. Cat6 cable actually has been a dead cable since it was invented. Many years ago there was discussion of running gigabit over 2 pair of wires rather than 4. The makers of the hardware decided on the 4 pair method so there never was a need for cat6 cable.
The cable manufactures of course wanted to still sell it so they like to pretend it is better. You really want cat6a to run 10gbit. Some 2.5 and 5g stuff can use cat6 but that all was created more than 15 years after cat6 was invented. I would always use cat6a if you are running anything faster than 1gbit there is not much difference in the price for cat6a over cat6. So pretty much you use cat5e or cat6a and ignore any other type.