Right, just to put this one to bed...sort of.
At least I now know what is causing the problem. After all my tests etc, it seems that Packet Loss is not the primary cause! Packet Loss is bad, but is not the main factor in this case.
It seems my ISP, Talktalk, have restrictions on basically the majority of ports that are NOT used primarily for browsing. So you can browse all you like and use the internet as normal, but when it comes to using P2P software or online gaming on a similar port range then you are stuffed
Basically the ISP is restricting these ports, making it pretty useless to try and play games online.
The way I discovered this was that at 12.30 at night, my line would go magically go back to normal! This is because the ISP lifts the port restrictions at this time of night.
I have asked my ISP to lift the restrictions to port 63392 as used by most LFS servers, but as yet I have had no luck
As a test to this, HackerX ran a server on port 113, which worked perfectly. So obviously some lower ranges of ports are not blocked, probably those around port 80 used for browsing.
So those of you with similar problems, I would check with your ISP about what port restrictions they have. Unfortunately for me I will have to wait untill my contract runs out before I can switch ISP and return to normal use.
At least I now know what is causing the problem. After all my tests etc, it seems that Packet Loss is not the primary cause! Packet Loss is bad, but is not the main factor in this case.
It seems my ISP, Talktalk, have restrictions on basically the majority of ports that are NOT used primarily for browsing. So you can browse all you like and use the internet as normal, but when it comes to using P2P software or online gaming on a similar port range then you are stuffed
Basically the ISP is restricting these ports, making it pretty useless to try and play games online.
The way I discovered this was that at 12.30 at night, my line would go magically go back to normal! This is because the ISP lifts the port restrictions at this time of night.
I have asked my ISP to lift the restrictions to port 63392 as used by most LFS servers, but as yet I have had no luck
As a test to this, HackerX ran a server on port 113, which worked perfectly. So obviously some lower ranges of ports are not blocked, probably those around port 80 used for browsing.
So those of you with similar problems, I would check with your ISP about what port restrictions they have. Unfortunately for me I will have to wait untill my contract runs out before I can switch ISP and return to normal use.