[quote author=Beast link=topic=146.msg1267#msg1267 date=1260663323]<br />shaping of packets is usually handled by some robust appliance<br />[/quote]<br /><br />Actually lots and lots of stuff handles packet shaping, from the networking stack in your OS to the ethernet card in your computer to your router/modem/CO, etc.&nbsp; I don&#039;t mean to imply that all these things do shape your packets, but any of them certainly [b]can.[/b]<br /><br />[quote author=Beast link=topic=146.msg1267#msg1267 date=1260663323]<br />In most cases when playing video games at home you would want to adjust your router to handle you gaming app. As stated Doom doesn&#039;t use much space packet wise but this wont prevent the packet from going through unless your ISP is gay. When a packet doesn&#039;t reach the minimal allowed size to get bagged and tagged it gets filled with fluff aka 0&#039;s.<br />[/quote]<br /><br />I assume you&#039;re talking about Nagle&#039;s algorithm, which applies to TCP networking, and this is incorrect.&nbsp; The problem with TCP is that there&#039;s a lot of overhead to sending a packet, so if you&#039;re sending a lot of small packets, some software/hardware along the way sticks the payloads of those packets together, thus minimizing the impact of overhead.<br /><br />I probably confused you when I referred to it in my post, during which I also apparently was confused!<br /><br />The only thing zero-padding is ever used for is trying to fool sniffers for various reasons.&nbsp; Otherwise (unless you&#039;re using compression... which is pretty rare and incurs a noticeable impact on CPU usage) it just bloats your packets for no reason.<br /><br />[quote author=Beast link=topic=146.msg1267#msg1267 date=1260663323]<br />Simply add your game box to the DMZ for full throughput of data, if your not comfortable with this you can port forward a range and let udp packets fly around in it for you game box. <br />[/quote]<br /><br />Throughput generally refers to bandwidth, whereas placing a machine in a router&#039;s DMZ just bypasses NAT.&nbsp; The two are unrelated.&nbsp; Also SYN/ACK is all TCP, there&#039;s nothing of the kind for UDP.<br />