I have no idea what's going wrong. I have a very nice machine (quad-core 2.5 phenom w/ 4GB ram and a 260 card) with plenty of free HD space (over 1TB). It does use wireless, but the wireless router is whole 9 feet from my wireless card, and there is absolutely nothing else that indicates I have connectiviy problems. I play FPS games, I assure you the UDP protocol does not do well with bad wireless connections and it's VERY obvious.

It's started two days ago. It's utterly fine during the day, but during peak times I get disconnected every few minutes. It starts out the same way - I launch the game, it's very fast at first, but after two minutes I start getting slower and slower responses until I disconnect.

These are the typical symptoms of a TCP connection with heavy packetloss slowly stepping back until there is not enough bandwidth to maintain a good state. Either the connection times out or is disconnect for lack of responsiveness. You guys are having issues with load, so it makes sense this would happen.

But what totally and utterly destroys any attempt at making sense if this is that a friend in the local area plays without ANY ISSUES WHAT SO EVER. Ya, when the game goes down, he loses connection, but never loses connection otherwise.

This is getting ridiculous. If this continues, I can assure you I'll won't be playing the released game.

Dude, first off chill out for a few, take a deep breath and relax.
This can be caused by more than a few things on your system and off of it. Heres what I would start with off the bat.
1. check your firewall settings (windows"all versions since xp" has a trash firewall that will block connections with no popup window in the background)
2. open device manager and check the wireless card you have installed, check and see if it is set to allow the computer to power down the device. (though your using it windows has a bad habit of powering down devices (the laptop I'm on does it everytime it goes into sleep mode)) This setting can be found on the power management tab.
3. check your network settings on your computer (windows firewall and the router) and confirm that your system is sending and can recieve thru the TCP/ UDP ports that STO needs open. A good site to use is http://www.canyouseeme.org/
4. Next check with your ISP. Tell them your having connection problems and need a line test done, This will show if theres a bad line to your router or problems on their side to your house.

Also it would help if you posted some more info:
wireless card (what brand and model)
wireless router (brand and model)
OS: windows what version

Just a note: I run STO on my wifes laptop on a wireless connection, and the router is 50 feet away on the other end of our appartment.

laters

The problem, just as suddenly as it started, has gone away.

But I'd figure I'd answer the below quetions anyway

1) Blocking a port is a sudden disconnect of the connection. It is not a slow degredation of the connection. The symptoms of the slowdows I was experiencing are the typical effects of TCP. When TCP detects significant packet loss, it will assume a problem with the connection and will reduce the RSS window by half. This effectively halfs the available bandwidth. On a lossy connection, TCP will detect poor performance and halve the RSS window. Bandwidth will recover, but not by much, enough to make TCP try to up the RSS window. But then there is more packet loss, TCP halves the RSS window, it recovers... etc etc until the RSS window is too small to carry the payload required by the application (STO) to think it is "online", and therefore disconnect you.

As I said, this is typical of an overloaded internet pipe, as STO very likely could have. But it makes no sense when you consider a local friend has no problems whatsoever, unless their is a very very bad load-balancing mechanism somewhere within their network or server architecture.

2) I have already set my machine to high perf, and then changed only the settings I wanted. The wireless card is set to never power down.

3) While firewall ports are important, they are not the magic fix I keep hearing people proclaim them to be. NAT has been around for awhile now, both router manufactures and game makers have come to assume that in most of their customers households, a standard NAT router will be used and are able to successfully establish connections.

That being said, NAT problems are well understood and I can assure you my NAT table is not getting full. Whiel it is possible, its very unlikely that port forwarding really comes into play with client-side applications. Most cases are applications serving services.

4) The cable modem was just installed, and I made the technician tell me the decibel level of the line. It's well within optimal, and the signal-to-noise ratio is very low. My internet connection is very important to me considering my profession.

Some other items you should have asked after, but didn't

* Have I updated my wireless card settings? Most of the time, issues with wireless connections on Windows machines relate back to the drivers installed. Its likely that if I hadn't updated in the last few months, this would be the culprit. For the record, I update mine religiously because of the well known and well established issues with wireless drivers

* What are my graphics settings at? While I do have a powerful machine, wireless networks are very touchy about timing. And if I don't have a wireless card that supports TCP chimney offload, its quite possible I've got my settings to high for a beta game, and it's using up enough resources that my CPU doesn't have time to tend to the wireless connection properly

* Have you looked at the signal-to-noise ratio on the wireless connecton? - Often times, in apartment complexes like where I live, there are a lot of wireless routers. They all cause noise, which is why wireless has channels. Have I used an utility to verify that I am on the channel with the lowest signal to noise ratio?

* If your computer is only 9 feet from the router, have you tried a wired connection?

That took me 45 seconds. Was that cool, calm and collected enough for you?