Furry:
This is the info I found on the ports;
Port 88 (UDP) Kerberos
Port 3074 (UDP and TCP) xBox <- most important!
Port 53 (UDP and TCP) DNS
Port 80 (TCP) HTTP
Lotus,
This is a good router even right out of the box. You mentioned that your cable company who you also work for stated your lines are good. I would think you would know this already but there is the cable companies standard of good line and there is an online community of a quality line. Most companies say if you are pinging under 200ms, that is good but forget about online game play.
Anyway, I think you should run some line quality checks,
Try this one and run it in the morning afternoon and night. I suggest you register on the site because it gives you a little more info when you run this test. It's free to sign up and the site is legit.
http://www.dslreports.com/pingtest
Also down load an app called pingplotter, it's free and safe. This program will show you where you are pinging high and if its your cable companies fault or somewhere down the line beyond their control.
MW3 is a very laggy game for but you should see some good games. Yesterday I played 10 games in a row with no lag. Usually its is 50/50.
Also stayed wired if you can, wireless is just no good.
Please post your results from pingtest.net and speedtest.net
Yeah, I've heard that same old story with the cable company since 2007. I even had the regional supervisor "head up" the search on my complaints. He had me pinging, tracert, etc and send him results. He claims he had his men out there testing at different times of the day and I was "within normal range". Well, yeah, I was under 200............just under it (178-197, I think). That sucks when it comes to gaming and once I told them I was a gamer, they didn't take me seriously and the supervisor stopped retuning my calls and e-mails. They think I'm a 41 year old crazy woman. lol, the cable guy that comes to my house (sadly its been too many times to count), calls me "the gamer lady" to all of his co-workers. (they've been out also).
I'll run the ping as soon as I get a chance and see what I get. I do regular tests at pingtest and speedtest. As long as I don't choose a server that's more than 400 miles from me, I get good results. I get anywhere from 18-25d /4 up. I pay for 30/4. Seattle is one of the worst since I'm on the east coast. My ping runs about 179ms at all times. speed is 5-8 down/3.5 up. Indiana ping is at 200ms. Now, Atlanta, which is 100 miles from me is 13-14ms ping. Pretty much any state farther west of Texas, I'm pinging 79-200ms. But, the game chooses who I get teamed up with/against. I have some friends I play with that's from California and they suck the life out of my connection. I go down to 3 bars in MW3, H3, Reach and literally, go negative every game. When they leave the party, I'm back in action again. geezz. The sad thing is, I/we seem to be the
only ones, except for maybe 2 peeps on our FL, that have these issues. Everyone else thinks we are whiners (they don't understand because they never see these issues). Grenading someone + full clip & they walk away (90% of the time) isn't a bad player. There is something wrong somewhere and I can't fix it. Its my ISP and they don't care.
See, I live out in the "county", just outside the city limits. I know I'd have optimum connection if I just lived 5-8 miles down the road (in downtown).
About 3 years ago, my connection suddenly was great, why, I don't know since it had been horrible since 2007. I was wrecking in Halo 3. I mean you could not out BR me. hehehe. It lasted about oh, 3-4 months. That was the most fun I had ever had playing. Then, one day, I signed on and I couldn't beg for a kill. I mean I tried everything to get a kill and it just wouldn't happen for me or my husband. It was like someone flipped a switch off somewhere. So, I do know what it feels like to have that awesome, godly host connection and go wrecking on kids singing "You can't Touch This". lolol
I'm just trying to squeeze as much as I can from wherever I can. Just a few milliseconds can make a big difference in mine and my husband's gaming. I've even played wired
directly to the modem before, for a few days and saw no difference, actually, it seemed a little worse.
I'm thinking of testing it with gamefuel off & make sure nothing is connected to the interwebz while we play.
Oh, what exactly does adjusting the MTU do? Has something to do with the amount of data packets allowed? Its been a while since I was in college. Mine is at 1500 but wouldn't it make things worse if I lowered it? 1500 is the max right?