Odd connections problems with PSO 3

[Rarden30]

Hello all... I'm new to PSO, not to mention taking my Cube online, and am having a heck of a time getting online to play. What's most discouraging is that I've been able to get on a few times, but the game has always locked up and dropped connection at one point or another. I'm fairly new to networking so my troubleshooting skills in that department aren't so hot. First off, my system:

- Comcast cable internet (don't recall my cable modem at the moment)
- An SMC SMC7004AWBR Barricade wireless broadband router
- A Linksys WGA54G Wireless Game Adapter
- Gamecube Broadband Adapter (obviously )

My desktop PC is wired to the router, while my wife's laptop connects to the router with a Seimens wireless NIC. Combined with the Linksys that's 1 wired client, 2 wireless. Each time I've tried to play online my wife has been active on the network as well. The routers (192.168.2.1) DHCP is setup to give addresses in the 192.168.2.2-40 range. I'm pretty much out in the sticks and haven't enabled any security measures besides an SSID. This setup has worked fine for my desktop and laptop for going on 2 years now.

First night I have the game I setup the Linksys. I keep the fixed IP address (192.168.2.250) and plug it into the GC. I fire up PSO3, go into network settings and select automatic IP addressing. Fire up the game, things are great. I obtain a HL and play online for about 2 hours. Then the screen freezes. I give it a minute or two and then I get the "connection lost" message. About this time, my wife calls down that her laptop net connection just locked up.

I try to reconnect with PSO3 but am told it can't get an IP address from DHCP. I then check my wife's laptop and she's also somehow lost her IP and has grabbed an auto-assigned (Windows APIPA, not DHCP)address. But the desktop, to my surprise, is working just fine, and all link lights on the modem and router check out OK. I go back to the laptop, release/renew the address and it grabs a new one.

Unfortunately, my wife was working on some critical stuff online and I didn't want to risk interfering any more so I didn't try PSO3 again that night. So to sum up thus far, after a few hours, it appeared that both wireless clients on the network somehow lost connection with the DHCP, yet the wired client was fine.

Since then I've tried the game again a few times (with and without the laptop active) and the game works fine for a while (much shorter though... no more than 15 minutes) before I get the same problem. On the plus side, when it freezes it no longer seems to affect the laptop.

I've used combinations of DHCP on the Linksys and GC, DHCP on one but not the other, and fixed IPs on both. Results have varied from being able to connect for a few minutes before the connection dropping, to not being able to access DHCP, or getting to the DHCP but then not getting to the DNS.

Since the problem is pretty erratic I'm tempted to think my Linksys device is defective and just return it for another one. But I've read that running PSO3 through a router is problematic as well.

Any advice or pointers in the right direction would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance for any replies!

[Rich_T]

try running it without the wireless link ( ie- replace the wireless link with a standard bit of ethernet cable)
another problem might occur if you havent registered the MAC address of the gamecube BBA with your ISP ( especialy if its a cable internet service)