[SOLVED] Random disconnects from game servers without network background activity.

[tgSparc]

So this little thing is driving me crazy, for the past few weeks I've been unable to game on my desktop because I will disconnect from every game 5-10 minutes in (LoL, SC2, Warzone..).
I tried just about anything, nothing seemed to work. Untill today, when I left a twitch stream open and tried again. This time, no disconnects or lag whatsoever. 2 games in, I shut off the stream and the following game I dc again like before.
Seems like as long as there's internet activity through my browser my connection holds but the moment it's only the game, I will dc.
Been thinking it might be some hidden sleep function somewhere (the one in adaptor settings is already turned off)..
All suggestions more than welcome! Thank you

Ps: PS5 on the same LAN line experiences no issues

 

[bill001g]

That is kinda strange because those games are constantly sending traffic so a port should never go to sleep.

The main difference is game traffic is using UDP where most other traffic uses TCP. This makes troubleshooting very hard. TCP every packet it acknowledged. You can generally tell why a session is terminated, maybe not exactly why but you can tell if there are errors and which end caused the drop.

Does a ping command keep it active or only some kind of stream traffic. Try to run a constant ping to 8.8.8.8 and see if that keeps it open. Then try a ping to the router lan ip instead. This is mostly to see if your router is dropping the session.

Does the event log show anything, not likely but maybe you get lucky.

 

[SamirD]

If you're on wireless, run a wire and see if it changes.

 

[tgSparc]

That is kinda strange because those games are constantly sending traffic so a port should never go to sleep.

The main difference is game traffic is using UDP where most other traffic uses TCP. This makes troubleshooting very hard. TCP every packet it acknowledged. You can generally tell why a session is terminated, maybe not exactly why but you can tell if there are errors and which end caused the drop.

Does a ping command keep it active or only some kind of stream traffic. Try to run a constant ping to 8.8.8.8 and see if that keeps it open. Then try a ping to the router lan ip instead. This is mostly to see if your router is dropping the session.

Does the event log show anything, not likely but maybe you get lucky.

Thanks for the reply. I will try again today with pings instead of a stream and try to figuere out who's dropping the connection. Will get back to you.

 

[tgSparc]

I'm connected via wire. Already tried wireless or wire with WiFi disable but same results

 

[tgSparc]

Pinging 8.8.8.8 while gaming does not work, the moment I dc the request times out for 8-9 pings and then comes back online

 

[bill001g]

So next you want to ping your router IP.

This is mostly to see if the PC itself is breaking the connection or it is your router. It could still be the PC even if the router ping works when the games fails but it might be a clue.

Problem is I have no idea what can cause this. Generally a router will only close idle sessions and a game has constant traffic.

 

[tgSparc]

Pinging the router also did not prevent the dc. However, it never showed a loss of connection to the router, so I would assume it's not that connection that is being closed?
Also, I pinged a random server/website while playing and saw 4 timed out connections towards it in cmd. Seems like it's the outgoing part of my router then no?

 

[bill001g]

Yea it seems to be the router but I could not even begin to guess what.

I could see if it always dropped game sessions after some period of time. UDP sessions have timers that are refreshed by traffic and there could be some strange bug. A completely different tcp session especially to another location should have no impact. I assume if you say stream on your ps5 while the game runs the game session still goes down.

Do you have a separate modem. If you could test with the pc directly into the modem it would give more indication if it was the router.

 

[tgSparc]

I have no second modem but I'll try and get one to try. Might, in meantime, reset the current one to factory and see if that changes anything.

 

[SamirD]

I have no second modem but I'll try and get one to try. Might, in meantime, reset the current one to factory and see if that changes anything.

No, not second modem. Just connect the PC directly to the modem and test if you still get disconnected. This is to determine if it is the router or something on the isp network or modem.