I know this is a SOF2 message board, but I think this message is important enough because it affects many FPS gamers.

Last Saturday I downloaded America's Army (from an AA recommended download site) to see how it compared to SOF2. First of all, there's no comparison -- SOF2 kicks tail; however, that discussion is beyond the scope of this post.

After downloading AA, I began to notice a SIGNIFICANT increase in ping times for SOF2 multiplayer and general internet surfing (not to mention serious lag in AA).  I have DSL and am used to pings of 35, 40, 60, etc...  All of the sudden, my pings were at 550 or 650 -- making the game virtually unplayable (I might as well be using 28k dial-up).

After getting confirmation from my DSL provider that the DSL connection was fine, I began looking in my program files to see anything out of the ordinary.

Sure enough, I found a 200 MB program call RSNet installed on my hard drive.  It was "created" on Saturday, the same day I downloaded AA.  As some of you may know, RSNEt is a product of Red Swoosh, Inc.  After surfing the internet, I discovered that Red Swoosh, Inc. is a company that installs a program on your computer (via a download of another desired program -- e.g., AA), and Red Swoosh basically uses your bandwidth for their own purposes (system diagnostics, market research, whatever).  So, essentially Red Swoosh was using my bandwidth for their purposes -- bast**ds!

I immediately removed RSNet, and my system is back to normal.  I'm gaming fine and internet surfing is back to normal.  Needless to say, I'm really pis**ed that this happened, not to mention the fact that I've been deprived of SOF2 multiplayer for three days!!!  I will now look at internet downloads with much more scrutiny.

Anyway, I hope this helps someone who may have experienced this problem (or atleast this can help someone avoid it).

To the forum moderators -- I may post this on the multiplyer support board as well since not everyone surfs all the forums(feel free to remove it if the duplicate is unnecessary and sorry for using too much of YOUR bandwidth -- I know how it feels ).

Peace.

Must have just been you bro, or you DLed something else that day with it. Because I don't have this crap on my computer, and I DLed AA when it came out.

After further research, I found this thread on EZboard:

It looks like people can get RSNet program by downloading games.  Maybe is just happens to some who doanload and not all.  Regardless, people need to check their systems and remove this crap.

http://pub9.ezboard.com/fcoolpcfrm7.showMessage?topicID=23.topic

"I got my copy when I downloaded a game from IGN, you should be able to uninstall it, all they are doing is using your bandwidth to dish out whatever file you downloaded from a site. "

So I guess it's like a P2P network w/o them letting you know, or they tell in the "fine print"

BA1792

Thanks for tip.  I did a search and found this RSNet on my computer and deleted it.

-AutoPilot

I found it on my system too, although the forum you posted makes it seem more or less harmless, and I also have DSL and haven't really noticed a difference in internet performance.  Good catch though, I uninstalled it and everything seems cool.  I can't get into that America's Army game anyway, it runs too slow on my computer.

I installed AA on Saturday. After reading this post I checked for RSNet but could not find it on my PC. Maybe it is certain DL sites that include it. I got my copy from NVIDIA.

I do however have the problem you are talking about.  The wasted bandwidth and high ping in SOF after running AA.  I assumed and still believe that it is caused by gamespy.  It seems to be a real resource hog even after you quit it.

I have stopped using it.  I was able to find the old gamespy 3d which is much simpler but usually I try to connect by IP and skip the gayspy all together.

I need my SOF patch!!!!!!!

I'm pretty sure its from Gamespot..they have a downloader you need to install fisrt before you can download anything...and it works like Limewire does downloads off of  many sources at once to make the download faster.  As long as the program isnt open it won't decrease your performance

That would suck, getting your bandwith stolen

I ran adaware and it found it. I nuked it.