Red Alert II - Slow Lan Connections - Loading

[Hpro]

Just Set up two internet Cafes and Gaming places and having a connection Speed problem with RED ALERT II..
there are 40machines in the first place and 30 machines in the second place
ASUS AV7-E (No sound onboard) with
Duron 800
SDRAM 128Mb
Hard Drive Quantum 20Gb
Hub 16/100 Surecom * 2
Hub 10/100 Ethernet/FAst *2
Planet Lan Server
NIC Surecom 302
VGA Geforce II 32Mb
NO FLOPPY NO CDROM
Monitor 17" Pro VIZION
Vibra 128 Sound

When playing Counterstrike I can connect all 40 machines within a few seconds to the lan and there are no Problems whatsoever..

But as soon try to play Red Alert II with even only two machines connected to the LAN it will take forever to load the game (the game itself loads fast but as soon ) have clicked onto NETWORK and then created a New Game - pressing join after having created a new player on the second machine will take up to 5 minutes to just be able to see the guy who has created the game and another 5 minutes to have to switch to the player who has creaed the game.. finally it will stay there and nothing goes anymore ..but the machine doesn't HANG !!

Again there is nothing else running on the server or on the lan - does somone know how to get this working in a esay or complicated way - either will do..willt est them all..

Got all the setting right - I tested the connection with LAplink 8 for Win98 and I get a transfer speed of 26Mbps - also any other game including internet will run fast and fine.. It's completely over my head since I'm not a gamer and documentation of Red Alert II helps about as much if one is speaking Russian and the otherone is speaking japanese... meaning there isn't anything like a detailed doc..
Thank you guys for any even so impossible hint on this will try them all..

[Hpro]

Now after running the Inet cafe and Gaming place for a week or so we always had some connection and logon problems as described in my first message.

It was possible to run Counter Strike on all machines and almost any other game except Command Conquer or Red Alert 2 - then also later this past week Laplink (For Online Files Update since there are no CDROM in the computers..Only at the Admin computer is a CDROM) would lose speed and get thrown out if someone either changed the game or joined Counter Strike - never mind as for the moment Counter strike is the money making game .. but then on late saturday afternoon there was this really big Crash which locked up all the machines - therefore the machines had to be cold Booted.. Anyway I did every thing by the book but this time the book wasn't right I guess - So I did a complete New install of Win98SE and all the games and everything what comes with it - this by coming to a disk space of 10 GB yesterday afternoon (sunday) and then ghosted the Drive 1 by 1 then 2 by 2 and then 4 By 4 Drives to speed up the installation of the 40 Machines ..which still took about 10 hours all tohgether and then Setting up the LAN once more - Those are two Surecom 24 /100/100 Hubs .. (not 16 as stated in my first Post)
I still after the reinstall wasn't able to get it working and it still would take about 65 seconds to connect to a game or join a game, so I took a real good look at Winipcfg.exe and it told that the Autoconfiguration IP Address for the TCP/IP Adapter was set to 192.168.0.1 and so on for each of the NIC's.. Thus creating a lot of problem and I almost believed what some friends told me that the ASUS A7V-E is horrible if it comes to LAN...

finally I set this new again in the Network Applet I deleted all except the Surecom NIC and then Added
1.Microsoft Network
2.Microsft File and Printer Sharing
3.TCP/IP
4.IPX/SPX compatible Protocol..

Then I set (as I had alredy done before ) a uniqe name for each computer which would start with Esc01 and end Esc40, Made a new Workgroup and then I started to Play with the IP addresses, but still if I connected more than 6 machines to the HUB it would kill it all.Finally out of Ideas I thought that may a UNIQE IP address would be the way to go referring to the computer it was on the last number - so I made this following entry in the TCP/IP address box
100.100.100.01 for the first computer and so on until the last one which has 100.100.100.40 Submask Net 255.0.0.0
And there we go - All the slow connection were gone like blasted away ..Now we can play whatever we like and Red Alert 2 is Connecting without problems, Counter Strike doesn't STRIKE anymore the way it did with the Automatic Setting..Playing Counter Strike , Red Alert - using Laplink all at the same time no problem - the 40 machines will show up in My Network Neighborhood within 3 sec after clicking on the Icon as before it would take AGES (about 2 Minutes)

This all here just may be helpful to someone sometime when running into this kind of Problem - I think there is no need to place Fancy IP numbers in a LAN NETWORK just make them as easy as possible and here after two full days and two full Nights of work it's up and running perfect - It's monday morning almost 7 AM - Got to go to sleep - hadn't any sleep for almost 48 hours..

[HackinCowboy]

I'm not a big expert with networking, but it sounds like it had something to do with your DHCP. My guess is that it probably took too long for the DHCP to assign dynamic IPs to all the machines. Then again, I could be way off. Glad you got it working.