🚀 go-pugleaf

"Chris Cole" <tele...@tpg.com.au> wrote in message 
news:45162216@dnews.tpgi.com.au...
> Hi there,
>
> Myself, my partner, and a friend want to play 3-player Starcraft via 
> Battle.net (two of us in one house, and the 3rd is >1,000km away... a 
> little beyond the reach of WiFi).  =)
>
> With 2 machines on a LAN, using a single ADSL connection to the net, it 
> works, but is unplayably slow. I assumed this was due to problems with 
> Starcraft seeing two machines at a single IP address... it was designed 
> before people started using NAT routing on home LANs I guess.
>
> Interestingly, we just encountered the same problem with the following 
> configuration:
>
> One XP machine connected via ADSL and one iBook connected via dial-up.
> Third machine connected via ADSL from a different location.
>
> We could all join a game on battle.net, but it runs VERY VERY slowly, to 
> the point where it's just not playable. However, any combination of two 
> of the 3 machines can connect and play at full/normal speed over 
> battle.net.
>
> If anyone has any idea why this might be so, and any suggestions for 
> obviating the problem, we'd love to hear about it.

    Wow, that is an interesting situation...
    It's true that two players behind the same router can't play with each 
other.
    If the dial-up person can play with any one of the other two but all 
three of you can't play together, reasonably, then the only explanation I 
can think of is that the dial-up line can't handle the network load 
necessary for a three person game.  You see, Starcraft employs a 
peer-to-peer network protocol to implement its multiplayer game.  Because 
of this, for everyone, the game will be as slow as the slowest connection. 
This is unlike many other games, like Quake, where poor latency is your 
problem and no one elses...
    Unfortunately, there's really no good solution to this.  If you have a 
wireless computer, you can try to leech off of someone else's wifi 
network...
    Good luck!