Problems with Steam on IDNet?

[Aaron]

I haven't played any other online game apart from World of Warcraft for a while (which runs fine), but I took up the Left 4 Dead offer on Steam this week but I've had no luck whatsoever in getting a smooth online experience with it for the past few days.

On starting a game on a server it will repeatedly approx. every 10 seconds show the "retrying connection to server" briefly, but it's very unplayable with that interruption and I'm constantly getting stuck not being able to move in the game world. This is happening on any server I try.

Out of curiosity I installed Counterstrike:source from an old steam backup I had, but on most servers I try to connect to it is stuck on "Parsing Game Info..."

Also, I'm frequently losing connection to the Steam network in the steam client when trying either games online, friend's list going offline etc. Windows is out of the loop as I get both symptoms on XP and Seven. My router is in signature, but port forwards haven't helped and I don't think they should be necessary for online play unless hosting a server.

Any ideas what it could be?

[Niall]

You haven't got any other firewall software installed and running like Peerguardian? I know that loves to block Steam servers, or at least did.

I've actually done the same as you recently, and got a couple of games via Steam, but I've not tried them online yet. Windows firewall has also caused this to happen for me once as it seemed to ignore the Steam installation and additional games being added. I solved that by removing any reference to Steam from the firewall and then letting it re-detect the program which allowed me to let it through.

Some anti virus/spyware programs have resident shields which can cause this too. Basically run through all your security packages and check through the options to see if anything has recently been blocked. Also run the defrag program in steam if you've got any fragmentation as that can also cause issues.


Steam is great when it works, but when it doesn't it's a pain in the arse

[Aaron]

No I don't have anything like what you mentioned, in fact when I tried Steam on my dual boot Windows 7 (which is bare of any kind of software whatsoever) I still had problems playing online, which would leave it being down to being either my netgear router or IDnet at fault

[Niall]

Have you tried sticking your pc in the DMZ just to test? If that fails then I'd try tracerts/pings to the servers you're trying to connect to.

[Aaron]

I've fixed it, for some reason it was ticking the box on Disable Port Scan and DOS Protection in Netgear's configuration that fixed it. Server list loaded extremely fast and got into a CS:S server very fast without any parsing game info holdup.

But what's the real solution to this? I can't say I feel comfortable turning off that particular protection

[Aaron]

Been reading around that Netgear's firmware update V5.01.14 for the DG834G.v4 broke some online fps games, and they reverted back to the old firmware to fix this, maybe I will have to do the same to be able to keep the port scan and dos protection enabled.

[Sebby]

Ah yes, I recall someone else having the same issue.