Problems using WinGate + 2 internet connections + gameserver

[Abducted]

Hello.

First let me tell me my specs and setup.
Server
Mainboard: Gibabyte GA-K8N51PVMT-9-RH (nVidia 6150/430 chipset)
CPU: AMD Opteron 146
Memory: 2x512MB Dual Channel
NICs: 2 Realtek PCI 100MBit NICs and 1 GBit onboard NIC.
GFX card: Onboard 6150 GPU.
PSU: 400W Zalman.
OS: Windows 2003 Server SP1

I'm using a trial version of the latest version of WinGate.

My setup is very simple. It's a home setup, just 3 computers on the LAN, no VPN or anything and basicly what i want is the server to be able to host 2 Urban Terror (Quake 3 Arena mod) game servers each on their own IP. I've turned off the DHCP service, POP3/SMTP/IMAP4 server and firewall in WinGate (or Windows for that matter). I do have a WWW Proxy setup to use both connections in rotation and a POP3 proxy server to make sure the right internet connection is used for the e-mail.

The 2 100MBit Realtek NICs are both used for internet connections (cable modems) 2x 20/2MBit. The 1GBit NIC is used for the LAN with ip/subnetmask 192.168.0.1/255.255.255.0

Here is the problem:
Both game servers run great each on their own IP, but every now and then people on the gameserver 'kinda' loose connection. Their ping goes to 999ms, they can sometimes still send messsages, but can't move anymore. Also every now and then i see a player that isn't influenced by it. So everybody would have ping 999 and one player would still have a normal connection. I have DUmeter installed to monitor my data traffic. I see an increase in upload at the moment people 'loose' connection.
Sometimes this happens after 15min of gameplay, sometimes after 4-5hours. One gameserver will hold about 16clients producing about 45-50kb/s UDP data traffic both upstream and downstream.

I used to use a Hawking Dual-WAN Router and that worked fine except for the fact that it couldn't (by far) handle my 2x 20MBit downstream bandwidth. But i had no problem with the gameservers then.

Any help/suggestions/comments are welcome and if there is information i left out let me know.

Thanks!

[genie]

How long does this problematic situation last? Does it disappear itself or you have to restart Wingate?

[Abducted]

When this happend u normally reboot the server, because the gameserver doesn't accept incomming connections anymore.

BUT, after a LONG night :( i did find out what is causing the problem.
I'm also running a bittorrent tracker on the server using the build in tracker from Azureus (Latest version, latest Java).
I'm only tracking 6 torrents with it.
If i run just either the tracker or the gameserver there is no problem. But if i run both at the same time it's just a matter of time before i run into problems. I've also tried running the tracker from a computer on the LAN and forwarding the TCP port with WinGate, but that has the same effect. Still problems after a while. I've also tried uninstalling DUMeter since that has to hook into the NICs in some way and i also noticed it doesn't give me a good reading anymore. (When downloading a torrent file from a LAN computer i dont see that traffic in DUmeter on my server, while i should acctually see it double. (comming in via an internet NIC and going out via the LAN NIC and vice versa for upload)) Anyway, uninstalling DUMeter didn't have any effect.

So the combination of the gameserver and the tracker (not even downloading a torrent) gives me problems. If i put the tracker on a LAN system and forward the TCP port, same problem. And of course the game server and tracker aren't running on the same port. :)

EDIT: I thought that "downloading" a torrent in combination with the game server didn't cause the problem, because i tried that last night, but apparently i didn't try long enough, because just now that reproduced the same problem. I then tried stopping and starting the WinGate engine and see if people would reconnect, after 5min nothing. Then i restarted the game server, after 5 min nothing. So i rebooted the whole server and there was atleast one person connected within 5min. Of course maybe they just didn't connect before :) I forgot to test if both connection still work right after the problem, but i did after restarting WinGate and if i check www.mijnip.nl i do see both IPs if i refresh the site.

So i guess it can either be a WinGate+Gameserver+Azureus problem or WinGate+Gameserver+Bittorrent problem or maybe just a WinGate and a whole lot of connections problem? But that seems unlikely. I'll try a different Bittorrent client/tracker and see what happens. But i really wish i could just keep using what i've always been using and the way i've always been running things with the dual-WAN router.

[Abducted]

Another update. I'm now using uTorrent and it's (crappy) build in tracker.
This seems to work.
But when i tried downloading a torrent using the other internet connection (gameserver and tracker are both using the same connection) i ran into trouble again. By telling uTorrent to anounce the IP linked to the other internet connection to the tracker and also telling it to use a HTTP proxy and having the WinGate HTTP proxy setup to just use the 2nd connection, i can make sure only the 2nd internet connection is used for it.
The download/upload started very slow, then all of a sudden it jumped to 'normal' speeds. At the exact same moment everybody on the gameserver 'lost' connection. Since i dont have DUMeter installed anymore i was now using the network monitor in Windows task manager. I noticed that when this happend traffic on the Internet1 (gameserver/tracker) NIC dropped, while at the same time there was a increase in traffic for the Internet2 NIC. Like all of a sudden the gameserver traffic that should be on Internet1 NIC switched to the Internet2 NIC. Of course this messes things up for the game server clients and might also explain they dont completely loose connection. But they are sending packets to the original IP, but probably receiving it from the other IP (which the gameclient doesn't accept) or something like that.
When i stopped the torrent (not the whole bittorrentclient, but just the dowload/upload of the torrent) all of a sudden things jumped back. Normal traffic on Internet1 NIC and no traffic on Internet2 NIC.
I've made a screenshot of things jumping back to normal again.

What i think happens is that the gameserver all of a sudden starts uploading via the other internet connection, while of course the game clients are still uploading to the original IP. This would explain why the traffic on the Internet1 NIC didn't drop to 0, but did fall to 50% of original (well a bit under 50% since normally upload is higher then download and now upload was going through the other connection)
Ofcourse why this happens i dont know. Like i said, when i was using the DUAL-WAN router this all worked fine. I could have the tracker and gameserver running on the Internet1 NIC while downloading a torrent using the Internet2 NIC.

I hope i'm still making sence to you guys :) Just so you know i didn't have to restart anything after the cliets on the gameserver 'lost' their connection. A few seconds after i stopped the torrent and when i noticed the data traffic switch back in Windows task manager people reconnected and everything was fine again.

[genie]

Hi,

Quick question - does this tracker installs its own network driver of any kind?

[Abducted]

As far as i know ti doesn't, but i also had the problem without the tracker and just bittorrent.