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roganmaster · January 14th, 2009, 01:33 AM

I play Counter-Strike: Source competitively, and thus I need low latencies in game.

During the day in my college, I get latencies to my private servers below 20ms. During the night, I can't even connect to the Steam Client or any Steam Servers (anything UDP really). After a few weeks of thinking that this was a problem being fixed by the university (it uses its own ISP), it turns out that gaming internet is given less of a priority next to (what I'm guessing) TCP. At any given time of the day, I can go to pcpitstop.com and my bandwidth shows I download at anywhere from 24000 to 32000 kb/s. I get these speeds even at night when the bandwidth consumption is highest, so I know that the bandwidth is available, but because gaming is prioritized lower than normal internet traffic, I get the shaft. I need a way to bypass this.

Now, before you go off and say "Those bandwidth restrictions were put in place for a reason!!" Keep in mind that while yes, it is necessary for a university to put educational bandwidth first because it's an intellectual institution, few actually use the internet for that purpose, and the amount of users that actually do is so small that if everybody gaming was highest priority the educational internet users wouldn't even notice, but the Facebookers and Youtubers would. Everyone pretty much just surfs Facebook and Youtube.com or plays flash games in the night. I pay the exact same amount as everyone else to come to this college, and so I should be able to do what I want with my internet in my leisure time as long as it's legal (I'm not saying this to find out ways to do copyright infringement).

Now, I've tried all sorts of different things but to no avail. The thing that DID work to some extent was a program called AutoTunnel GG (ATGG) from ArtofPing.com, it basically masked my internet usage through some sort of tunnel. I don't know how it works, but it did work, with the exception that I had to connect to one of their servers - meaning I got around a 100ms latency because I had to route through their server in order to connect to mine. It did succeed in connecting me to the Steam Clients and it gave me a respectable latency considering that I'm in Portland, OR, had to connect to a server in California, and through the California server I connected to my Counter-Strike: Source server in Seattle, WA.

Now, this is why I am here. I need something like AutoTunnel GG that I can run from my computer or a computer I can LAN to so that I can bypass the gaming bandwidth filters. What I need is a mask to make my gaming look like I'm just surfing Facebook or something on the internet. I connect through an ethernet port in the wall, so I don't get access to any router. I do have a crappy little 8-port NetGear ethernet switch, but if there's a reason to buy a router I'll do it to get past this stupid bandwidth filter.

Please let me know if I have any options at all and if you can, please tell me how I can do it. Thanks!

January 14th, 2009, 01:33 AM	#1 (permalink)
roganmaster Junior Member Join Date: Jan 2009 Posts: 1	University Bandwidth and Gaming: HELP!!! I play Counter-Strike: Source competitively, and thus I need low latencies in game. During the day in my college, I get latencies to my private servers below 20ms. During the night, I can't even connect to the Steam Client or any Steam Servers (anything UDP really). After a few weeks of thinking that this was a problem being fixed by the university (it uses its own ISP), it turns out that gaming internet is given less of a priority next to (what I'm guessing) TCP. At any given time of the day, I can go to pcpitstop.com and my bandwidth shows I download at anywhere from 24000 to 32000 kb/s. I get these speeds even at night when the bandwidth consumption is highest, so I know that the bandwidth is available, but because gaming is prioritized lower than normal internet traffic, I get the shaft. I need a way to bypass this. Now, before you go off and say "Those bandwidth restrictions were put in place for a reason!!" Keep in mind that while yes, it is necessary for a university to put educational bandwidth first because it's an intellectual institution, few actually use the internet for that purpose, and the amount of users that actually do is so small that if everybody gaming was highest priority the educational internet users wouldn't even notice, but the Facebookers and Youtubers would. Everyone pretty much just surfs Facebook and Youtube.com or plays flash games in the night. I pay the exact same amount as everyone else to come to this college, and so I should be able to do what I want with my internet in my leisure time as long as it's legal (I'm not saying this to find out ways to do copyright infringement). Now, I've tried all sorts of different things but to no avail. The thing that DID work to some extent was a program called AutoTunnel GG (ATGG) from ArtofPing.com, it basically masked my internet usage through some sort of tunnel. I don't know how it works, but it did work, with the exception that I had to connect to one of their servers - meaning I got around a 100ms latency because I had to route through their server in order to connect to mine. It did succeed in connecting me to the Steam Clients and it gave me a respectable latency considering that I'm in Portland, OR, had to connect to a server in California, and through the California server I connected to my Counter-Strike: Source server in Seattle, WA. Now, this is why I am here. I need something like AutoTunnel GG that I can run from my computer or a computer I can LAN to so that I can bypass the gaming bandwidth filters. What I need is a mask to make my gaming look like I'm just surfing Facebook or something on the internet. I connect through an ethernet port in the wall, so I don't get access to any router. I do have a crappy little 8-port NetGear ethernet switch, but if there's a reason to buy a router I'll do it to get past this stupid bandwidth filter. Please let me know if I have any options at all and if you can, please tell me how I can do it. Thanks!