ATTN: Western Networking/ITS

[Fascist Flakes (Jagr)]

Dear WCU ITS/Systems,

 

Your purchasing of a packet filtering software to prevent spyware for others is now effectively killing the gaming community. For the past 3 weeks now those of us who partake in games such as Starcraft 2 and World of Warcraft have been plagued with ridiculously bad lag during times that a large amount of data is being transmitted. Tonight, and other nights, while playing World of Warcraft I am fine until I enter a 25 person raid encounter. Upon the start of this encounter I watch my ping in game climb from ~120ms to over 500, and finally over 1000 at which point I either disconnect from the game or I become a detriment to my fellow members and cause us to lose the encounter. During this time at which my ping will climb to unplayable heights I am forced to endure 3+ second delays in anything that I try to do as well as predict for the encounters.

 

While in Starcraft 2 I will not lag until starting an online match versus someone, especially in a team based game with others. During this time I will assign commands to my units and will be forced to endure times at which it seems the game itself is frozen for 2-3 seconds until catching up. Often at times I will get a display window stating that the game is waiting on myself to catch up on the lag, and I have a minute to do so until it drops me from the game and assigns a loss to me. Often I try to play through the lag delays and try to do my best to continue on until I either win or lose at either my own or my opponent’s hands. Unfortunately when I do not win or lose during this time the countdown clock continues to go down to 0 every single time the lag window appears, and eventually will drop me from the game to give me a loss.

 

The time in which these problems occur can range from 9PM-1AM (times in which I raid, Monday-Thursday) to even earlier in the day as to when I try to play Starcraft 2 such as at 6 PM and on. During the weekends it is a problem earlier in the day and gets better late at night.

 

I understand that your packet filtering software supposedly does not filter any packets specifically relating to the ports for these games or any gaming at all, but there is something seriously wrong with your software and is impeding our ability to play games freely in our own free time. I do not speak for the Western Carolina Gaming Club as a whole but as a student that has been around for 4+ years this is the very first time that I have encountered any type of lag/delay on any game that I wished to play here at Western Carolina University. When the beta for the aforementioned game (Starcraft 2) came out in the Spring of 2010 there was absolutely 0 lag and 0 incidents in which there were issued caused by the internet here at WCU.

 

I understand that it is not the intention of Western Carolina University networking to limit or filter packets to inhibit gaming of any kind on campus. The WCU Online Gaming Club has provided a service for WCU to bring students to the campus of WCU and if these issues concerning lag with the said games, and other games that unknown to myself, it will detract students from attending WCU in the future.

 

I am willing to do whatever it takes to talk with anyone in Western’s IT Department/Networking Department to resolve this issue and fix it permanently so that the on-campus students of WCU can return to enjoying online games in the future.

 

If you are apart of WCU’s IT Services/Networking and by chance read this please contact me ASAP in any means possible, thank you very much.

 

Sincerely,

 

Tim Macior

Fascist Flakes

 

 

——

 

To all students affected with these issues here on campus please post and comment about this situation, including the games you are currently getting any lag on and the times that this is occurring for you. Please help me show ITS/Networking that this is a serious concern and needs to get fixed ASAP.

 

To the executives, alumni, and previous executives I am calling for your aid as well. Without you this club wouldn’t be where it is now and without your communications with the staff here on campus we wouldn’t have a server and other amenities that we have today. I ask of you to please contact anyone you may know here on campus and have them please read this. Please forward this thread to them or to please contact me. Please give me their contact information so that I can go directly to them and so that we can get this fixed.

 

I am asking for a theoretical call to arms by the WCU student base, alumni, and anyone affiliated and affected by the lag problems here on WCU’s campus.

 

Thank you again for reading, lets get this fixed.

[Phonetically Phamous (dice]

Does it affect real gaming AKA steam based games and consoles?

[Fascist Flakes (Jagr)]

Funny >_>;;

 

No, but seriously I don’t know if this is affecting anyone via Steam based games such as TF2/etc. If it is it would be another huge thing to add to the list of annoyances that have come with this filtering software.

[MasterP]

This is cute.

 

Your executives have all the contact information they need to resolve this problem. Light a fire under them and make them do their job.

[Lemm]

if anyone wrote that e-mail to clemson it they’d prolly just limit your bandwidth…

 

I love WCU Gaming, but since when is it IT’s problem that someone can’t game on an educational institution’s network. Seems like to me you’d have better luck taking this to Reslife first and having them go to IT.

 

But then again, I don’t know what I’m talking about.

[Freezer]

mitch… several people myself included have already tried. unfortunately stephen’s responsibilities are far more than making sure we can play SC2.

[MasterP]

Freezer said:

mitch… several people myself included have already tried. unfortunately stephen’s responsibilities are far more than making sure we can play SC2.

I talked to Stephen about this 2 weeks before this thread was made.

 

You know how ITS operates, you have to ask many, many times before anything gets done. If what you want hasn’t been done yet that means you haven’t asked or annoyed them enough. Unless they tell you that it directly violates a campus security policy or that it cannot be done due to , keep bugging them about it.

[Nickname]

I support getting ResLife i.e. Keith involved with this as it is certainly a detriment to all who live on campus and want to play games online— especially popular games like SC2 and WoW.

[Lemm]

Nickname said:

I support getting ResLife i.e. Keith involved with this as it is certainly a detriment to all who live on campus and want to play games online— especially popular games like SC2 and WoW.

 

This is what I said and I never even went to WCU.

 

Lemm said:

Seems like to me you’d have better luck taking this to Reslife first and having them go to IT.

[Kuros]

I would lean more towards the lousy networking equipment WCU buys than a packet filter. There is a reason that 90% of open networking standards are based on former proprietary Cisco protocols.

[Author]

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