it only prioritizes the ports to the PCs that you have set up. Reason it might have jumped up is that it has to process what it's set up to do. If you have the DMZ set up at the same time then your defeating the purpose of the 4500s features and you won't use them. I believe gamefuel at least helps maintain a good and stable connection to what every your trying to connect with. I'm really unsure if it helps with throughput though. Trikein? Any input on this?
Gamefuel is prioritize traffic going through your router. It can, if configured to do so, improve throughput for a certain application, IP or port. This is at the cost of throughput for all other connections though, and the throughput can not be better then the throughput of the weakest chain in the connection from your computer to the game server. And in some cases, lowering your throughput can actually help performance. This is for a number of reasons, from how your ISP handles and prioritizes certain traffic (commonly known as throttling) to the capacity of the server your connecting to. Its like setting the speed limit on your driveway to be 100mph. Sure it gets you to the street faster, but it also increases the time you have to break, can cause accidents or stuff like that.
The real point I would like to make is the different between latency and throughput. Throughput, in terms which are relevant to this discussion, is the amount of data you can transfer in any one set time. Latency is the amount of time it takes it takes for a certain amount of data (32 bytes in most tests) to travel from your computer to the server and back, or at least in reference to the kind of tests most people are talking about when they talk about latency. A good metaphor is like moving to a new house. Throughput is the moving truck, with the focus being on getting as much stuff on the truck as possible, as quickly as possible, and taking the best route to the new house. Latency would be putting the new house into Google maps and seeing what it says for travel time. So yes, latency can be a indicator of a problem with throughput, but improving throughput does not improve latency.
A good test would be to do what is called a traceroute.
http://wiki.ocssolutions.com/How_to_Perform_a_Traceroute
Do one with your PC in the DMZ and do one with your PC out of the DMZ. Then compare the two, and see where the latency is occurring. It may just be when you have the computer in the DMZ, its not throttling the return packet that is returned as part of the test used to measure latency. Think of it as a false negative. You see latency and traceroutes and pings, and all that are actually more complicated then you think, they are just used in the tech world to try to isolate a problem. Where it can lead people astray is when they get obsessed with "getting the best ping" and loose sight on whats actually important; the best possible performance from the application in question.
But your in luck. Seems someone out there actually wrote a scientific paper on "The Effects of Loss and Latency on User Performance in Unreal Tournament 2003" which can be found at:
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.96.5187&rep=rep1&type=pdf
Theres more info there then you will ever need. Have fun :-)
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Topic: Unreal Tournament III PC support (Read 15722 times)