Qwest DSL lag spikes

I use my DSL connection mostly for playing Day of Defeat (A Half Life Mod) through Steam, and I constantly get lag spikes. Or atleat thats what they seem to be. My connection is 1.5m up/856K down, and when I run spped tests I usually get about 1000K up/760K down.
While i'm playing, sometimes my weapons wont fire and if I click the mouse enough, my internal pc speakers starts yellin @ me with each click. I occasionally get Connection Problem warnings too. Also, if I am running, sometimes even after I let off the button, I will keep moving in that direction. My PC has double the required RAM n Processor, but the video card is the minimum. I run a command in-game to show my framerate while I play, And it displays consistently throughout this eratic behovior, which is waht makes me think its a connection issue...
Can I tweak my connection or anything to help?
I have a Netgear NIC and an Actiontec gt-701wg modem/wireless router.

 

Hi Aku and thanks for posting this one. Been a while since I saw a networking problem where I didn't understand lots of the terms being used and it's sorta fun.

I started out doing some searching to figure out what you meant when you spoke of 'lag spike'. It turns out that is one of a number of terms the interactive gaming folks have been using to describe problems with the very unusual environment that internet adventure gaming presents. OK - a new set of problems can call for a new set of words to describe things. But I can't think of any way to help until I'm sure we mean the same thing by certain terms so ...

First off - please take a look at http://www.totalnewbie.net/articles/lag.html and see if you agree with the author. If so, that will be a good first step. If you have a different idea about any of the terms or situations he writes about, please say what.

Next, please say what you mean by the following in the context of your gaming issues:
- Steam
- Half Life Mod
- framerate

Give specs for your video card and for what the game minimums are.

The connection speeds you mention should be plenty fast and especially since lots of folks play with much slower connections so I think the problem is something else and we just need to track down what it is.

 

I have never seen a DSL connection with 1.5 or 1000k up. Nor have I ever seen a DSL connection with higher upstreams then down streams. If your truely getting those kind of numbers then sighn me up!

Most DSL connections have the upstream capped at 256k or 388k max with the downstream of 1.5mb max.

I would try to investigate your problem on www.dslreports.com