Alright, so I'm at school, and I simply love the connection that they provide. BUT, everytime I try to play HL2 DM, I get disconnected for several minutes. I'm not sure why this happens, but does this happen to anyone else when trying to play games (people from universities mostly)?

I live on-campus at my university. I have no trouble connecting and playing games. Could it be a firewall issue?

Disconnects in the first minute or two of playing usually indicate that some ports need to be opened on your firewall. For some reason, this is only the case with old HL games on Steam, not Half-Life 2 or CS: Source.

Ports here:
http://steampowered.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/steampowered.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=160&p_created=1093381261&p_sid=4Wa8Mmwh&p_lva=&p_sp=cF9zcmNoPSZwX3NvcnRfYnk9JnBfZ3JpZHNvcnQ9JnBfcm93X2NudD0yNjgmcF9wcm9kcz0mcF9jYXRzPSZwX3B2PSZwX2N2PSZwX3BhZ2U9MQ**&p_li=&p_topview=1

I also believe that there are issues with certain hardware and software configurations (router or firewall wise) where this issue can't be fixed.

Some further disconnect reading is here:
http://steampowered.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/steampowered.cfg/php/enduser/std_alp.php?p_sid=4Wa8Mmwh&p_lva=&p_li=&p_page=1&p_cv=&p_pv=&p_prods=0&p_cats=0&p_hidden_prods=&prod_lvl1=0&cat_lvl1=0&p_search_text=disconnects&p_new_search=1&p_search_type=answers.search_nl

gah! firewall stuff...that's all greek to me. Anyone know how to find the firewall software on a computer and configure its ports?

I don't think your school will let you reconfigure the firewall.

If you're on XP, maybe try turning off the Windows Firewall when you play?

If Windows Firewall were blocking him he wouldn't be able to even play or get a server list.

Check your console when you lag out. If you're getting out-of-order fragments or millions of lines of the same thing, it's a problem Valve brilliantly included in Source - incompatibility with the latest Linksys router firmware.

heh.. not just source, HL1 doesnt work with the latest linksys firmware either.

Heh, my school stopped online gaming so it wouldn't be so trafficed (well, mostly anyway).

It's still frickin slow.

Wireless....
it sucks.

(for a dorm building with 200 people that is)