Curse ye AT&T, you and your internet decided to start flickering on me. For some reason, it's been going on and off lately and is completely unpredictable. For a few minutes it'll be dead, then it will be on, and so on and so forth. Despite me turning my router on and off, it does not seem to fix the problem. However, the weirdest thing is that if I put up a stream from TL the stream will continue playing while the rest of my internet capabilities are dead. I can't even go on google.com or my home page, but the stream continues to play. I wouldn't know how to explain this to AT&T, even if I tried. Before I resort to calling AT&T and reporting their shitty internet, is there anything I should check or do?

Also, for my 1000th post I was going to make an awesome blog, but the post was wasted terribly in response to STX going on a selling spree with their players.

Some other details:

I'll disconnect from SC2's Bnet, but I'll remain in the game. Sometimes.
I disconnect from xfire repeatedly, and I have to manually reconnect every time.

qrs

United States3637 Posts

July 20 2011 04:22 GMT

buffering

and I don't know why everyone at TL cares so much about round-numbered posts; it's not like there's even a way to tell which post of yours was your 1000th after you make it.

JingleHell

United States11262 Posts

July 20 2011 04:29 GMT

Yeah, I haven't messed with a post count post yet myself. Maybe at 5k, if I've been a member for 6 months by then... Seems silly to post for a number when I haven't been active here all that long.

ketomai

United States2696 Posts

July 20 2011 04:31 GMT

On July 20 2011 13:20 Ryusei-R1 wrote:
Curse ye AT&T, you and your internet decided to start flickering on me. For some reason, it's been going on and off lately and is completely unpredictable. For a few minutes it'll be dead, then it will be on, and so on and so forth. Despite me turning my router on and off, it does not seem to fix the problem. However, the weirdest thing is that if I put up a stream from TL the stream will continue playing while the rest of my internet capabilities are dead. I can't even go on google.com or my home page, but the stream continues to play. I wouldn't know how to explain this to AT&T, even if I tried. Before I resort to calling AT&T and reporting their shitty internet, is there anything I should check or do?

Also, for my 1000th post I was going to make an awesome blog, but the post was wasted terribly in response to STX going on a selling spree with their players.

Some other details:

I'll disconnect from SC2's Bnet, but I'll remain in the game. Sometimes.
I disconnect from xfire repeatedly, and I have to manually reconnect every time.

Hey wtf this is the exact same problem I have. I've talked to them like three times and they can't figure it out so I was thinking about asking for a technician.

Do you live in Texas and have DSL? lol

edit: also streams like GSL's preload some and then play them delayed. If the stream kept running it probably stops at some point or the internet came back before it ran out of content.

Antiochus

Canada526 Posts

July 20 2011 04:55 GMT

I had a similar thing happen a few years ago. My internet would go down and I would be unable to log onto any sites but for some reason I would still be able to finish the game of Brood War I was in and my Hamachi connections were preserved aswell. Eventually I figured out that the modem couldn't make new connections but preserved the currently running ones, still don't know why but atleast I was able to finish my starcraft games

101toss

2395 Posts

July 20 2011 05:17 GMT

The DNS server is probably down, the direct ip connection to the stream would still be up

Probulous

Australia3894 Posts

July 20 2011 05:24 GMT

People, be not afraid, this is simply the wonders of the great wizard!

It is his almighty R1CHness that banished the flickering from your stream.

He knows the importance of a smooth flowing stream, none of that nasty drip-drop action.

ghrur

United States3166 Posts

July 20 2011 06:16 GMT

Try connecting to the google DNS server

What is Google Public DNS?
Google Public DNS is a free, global Domain Name System (DNS) resolution service, that you can use as an alternative to your current DNS provider.
To try it out:
Configure your network settings to use the IP addresses 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 as your DNS servers or
Read our configuration instructions.
New! For IPv6 addresses, see our configuration instructions.
If you decide to try Google Public DNS, your client programs will perform all DNS lookups using Google Public DNS.

rebuffering

Canada2422 Posts

July 20 2011 06:43 GMT

On July 20 2011 14:24 Probulous wrote:
People, be not afraid, this is simply the wonders of the great wizard!

It is his almighty R1CHness that banished the flickering from your stream.

He knows the importance of a smooth flowing stream, none of that nasty drip-drop action.

i lol'd. but seriously, should put this into tech support, many smart people here im sure someone knows something! GL!

MrNastyTime

United States45 Posts

July 20 2011 06:45 GMT

#10

I have the exact same problem. I can't wait til im able to say fuck u atnt hello comcast, because im tired of this disconnecting shit that doesn't let me play at my full potential.

well homie i hope you get you'r internet fixed soon

OmniEulogy

Canada2949 Posts

July 20 2011 07:10 GMT

#11

lol. of course... this is probably correct. That's really strange though. Call AT&T and complain for sure.

Morfildur

Germany4243 Posts

July 20 2011 11:11 GMT

#12

On July 20 2011 15:16 ghrur wrote:
Try connecting to the google DNS server

What is Google Public DNS?
Google Public DNS is a free, global Domain Name System (DNS) resolution service, that you can use as an alternative to your current DNS provider.
To try it out:
Configure your network settings to use the IP addresses 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 as your DNS servers or
Read our configuration instructions.
New! For IPv6 addresses, see our configuration instructions.
If you decide to try Google Public DNS, your client programs will perform all DNS lookups using Google Public DNS.

I agree, it's probably the DNS Server.

To explain:
Every time you open an URL, the name of the URL gets translated into the IP. This is done by connecting to the DNS Server of your ISP (AT&T in this case), telling it the domain you want to open and getting the IP back. If the DNS Server fails, your PC doesn't know where to send the data to and aborts whatever it is trying to do.

Once the connection is established, there is no need to ask for the IP until you close the connection and open it again (There are DNS caches, but it's hard to predict what/how they cache). Battle.Net uses Names instead of IPs for their services because that way, if the IP ever changes, they don't need to release a new version with an updated IP (and if the update server changes hell breaks loose). Since i think b.net doesn't keep a constant connection open but instead sends pings every few seconds, the connection can drop on b.net and websites can just not load while streams still run.

Anyways, it is hard to diagnose a problem if you don't have access to the hardware, so it might be totally wrong. You can always call AT&T with "It doesn't work sometimes, this, this and this happens, but that still works". Their technicians will probably have ideas about what it could be. Just follow the instructions of the hotline (even the stupid ones like "check your cables" and "restart your router") and then ask to get escaleted to a technician.