High latency spikes when playing WoW and Diablo 3, Help?

venomousx

Honorable
Apr 12, 2012
16
0
10,510
Hello

I'm having a lot of trouble with lag / latency spikes for the past few weeks and need help figuring out what the problem is. For most of the day my latency is 60-110ms which is expected for my internet. However, Occasionally when I'm raiding it will spike of up 4000-9000ms (The game is, obviously, unplayable at this point).

The trouble is, it's not all the time. Sometimes I can raid for 3 hours with my latency at a steady 70 the whole time. Others, it jumps to 700 right away. And sometimes like tonight, it shoots up to 5000 and stays there. Forcing me to miss out on raiding with my friends.

Where do I start to try and figure out what's causing this and how to fix it? As of right now I don't know if it's the game, my router, my isp, or something else entirely =/

Some Information I can provide on my end:

Operating system: Windows 7

Anitivirus: Avast!

Firewall: Windows Firewall

ISP: Rapid Systems Air (They use cell towers to transmit broadband connection.)

Router: Netgear wnr2000 v3 (Firmware Version V1.1.2.6)

I'm connected to my router using a Wired internet connection

Raid times: 8pm-11pm Eastern Standard Time (Including In case it matters, since this is when it most commonly occurs)

--------------------------

I actually managed to catch the lag issue by running two speed tests a few minutes apart. You can see the huge difference in download speeds here. (Note: I SHOULD be getting 10 download speed.)

http://i.imgur.com/7IPilUy.png

---------------------------
When I asked about this on the official Blizzard forums they asked me to do a "Path ping" and "Trace route" SO I'm including these in case it helps you guys make sense of my problem. (Haven't gotten a reply on their forums)

Path Ping to my World of Warcraft battle group
Computing statistics for 400 seconds...
Source to Here This Node/Link
Hop RTT Lost/Sent = Pct Lost/Sent = Pct Address
0 PC [192.168.1.2]
0/ 100 = 0% |
1 0ms 0/ 100 = 0% 0/ 100 = 0% 192.168.1.1
0/ 100 = 0% |
2 20ms 0/ 100 = 0% 0/ 100 = 0% 1.1.18.1
0/ 100 = 0% |
3 22ms 0/ 100 = 0% 0/ 100 = 0% riverview.rapidsys.com [198.92.96.233]
4/ 100 = 4% |
4 33ms 4/ 100 = 4% 0/ 100 = 0% level3.rapidsys.com [198.92.96.45]
0/ 100 = 0% |
5 39ms 4/ 100 = 4% 0/ 100 = 0% vl201.mag01.tpa01.atlas.cogentco.com [38.104.150.49]
0/ 100 = 0% |
6 56ms 4/ 100 = 4% 0/ 100 = 0% te3-2.ccr01.tpa01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.84.17]
0/ 100 = 0% |
7 65ms 4/ 100 = 4% 0/ 100 = 0% te3-3.ccr01.mco01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.47.185]
0/ 100 = 0% |
8 70ms 4/ 100 = 4% 0/ 100 = 0% te3-3.ccr01.jax01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.29.217]
0/ 100 = 0% |
9 40ms 4/ 100 = 4% 0/ 100 = 0% te0-7-0-16.ccr22.atl01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.30.25]
0/ 100 = 0% |
10 61ms 4/ 100 = 4% 0/ 100 = 0% be2099.ccr22.ord01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.28.73]
0/ 100 = 0% |
11 59ms 4/ 100 = 4% 0/ 100 = 0% be2003.ccr21.ord03.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.29.22]
0/ 100 = 0% |
12 92ms 4/ 100 = 4% 0/ 100 = 0% att.ord03.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.12.86]
96/ 100 = 96% |
13 --- 100/ 100 =100% 0/ 100 = 0% cr1.cgcil.ip.att.net [12.122.81.18]
0/ 100 = 0% |
14 --- 100/ 100 =100% 0/ 100 = 0% gar6.ipsin.ip.att.net [12.122.132.241]
0/ 100 = 0% |
15 --- 100/ 100 =100% 0/ 100 = 0% 12.122.251.14
0/ 100 = 0% |
16 --- 100/ 100 =100% 0/ 100 = 0% 63.240.130.206

Trace complete.

Trace route during bad Diablo 3 lag
Tracing route to 12.129.209.68 over a maximum of 30 hops

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.1.1
2 14 ms 19 ms 63 ms 1.1.18.1
3 38 ms 67 ms 46 ms riverview.rapidsys.com [198.92.96.233]
4 2773 ms 1099 ms 433 ms level3.rapidsys.com [198.92.96.45]
5 975 ms 1145 ms 957 ms vl201.mag01.tpa01.atlas.cogentco.com [38.104.150.49]
6 275 ms 235 ms 531 ms te3-2.ccr01.tpa01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.84.17]
7 112 ms 83 ms 190 ms te3-1.ccr01.msy01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.86.101]
8 82 ms 123 ms 249 ms te0-1-0-5.mpd22.iah01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.30.45]
9 709 ms 277 ms 603 ms be2068.mpd22.lax01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.7.158]
10 1485 ms 1712 ms 761 ms be2178.ccr23.lax05.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.41.118]
11 260 ms 101 ms 82 ms att.lax05.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.13.150]
12 135 ms 100 ms 137 ms cr2.la2ca.ip.att.net [12.122.129.234]
13 151 ms 200 ms 230 ms gar29.la2ca.ip.att.net [12.122.129.241]
14 108 ms 75 ms 231 ms 12.122.251.190
15 116 ms 94 ms 106 ms mdf001c7613r0002.lax1.attens.net [206.16.68.54]
16 166 ms 162 ms 112 ms 12.129.209.68

Trace complete.
 
Solution
That looks like a problem with your ISP and the way they are routing your traffic. You'll notice in the Diablo III traceroute that you are getting a decent latency, less than 100 until your ISP tries to route your traffic from its local node near wherever you are up to its backbone, where you get the 2773 and 1099ms latency. It could be that they have something misconfigured on their end, or it could be that they have their Quality of Service setup in such a way to have game traffic be a very low priority, and if their network gets congested, your game's packets are held until the higher priority traffic is routed, which could also account for the latency spikes. It also could be that they are running into radio interference issues if...
That looks like a problem with your ISP and the way they are routing your traffic. You'll notice in the Diablo III traceroute that you are getting a decent latency, less than 100 until your ISP tries to route your traffic from its local node near wherever you are up to its backbone, where you get the 2773 and 1099ms latency. It could be that they have something misconfigured on their end, or it could be that they have their Quality of Service setup in such a way to have game traffic be a very low priority, and if their network gets congested, your game's packets are held until the higher priority traffic is routed, which could also account for the latency spikes. It also could be that they are running into radio interference issues if they are using cell towers rather than cables as their underlying infrastructure.

In any case, you'll have to take up this issue with your ISP, there's nothing you can do on your end.

 
Solution

venomousx

Honorable
Apr 12, 2012
16
0
10,510
Well, damn, I was afraid that was going to be the case. At least if it was my router I could go out and fix it right away. My ISP is sort of annoying to get in touch with.

Anyway, thank you for the help! I'll work towards finding a solution with my ISP then.
 

venomousx

Honorable
Apr 12, 2012
16
0
10,510
Little update:

Tried bypassing the router, just in case, but it didn't help (still have the problem router or not)

EDIT: My ISP came out and decided to up my priority, and now things are much better. Guess that was the problem!