Random ping spikes and Packet Loss. Please help, can't find a solution.

Ben Said

Honorable
Jun 9, 2013
3
0
10,510
Hi Guys,

So I've had this ordeal for over a year now. I've been constantly phoning my ISP to ask for help but all they ever say is "Nothing is wrong from our end." They even sent a couple of technicians over to find the problem but to no avail. They come, tweak some frequencies or something and do a speedtest and think every thing is fine, then five minutes later, it's the same crap. I'll also admit that I'm not very experienced in networking :)

The problem isn't hard to explain really,every now and again my ping and download speed will spike up and down respectively. My ping will rise to 200ms when pinging to a server less than a kilometre away from my house, and my download speed will decrease by about 20/30 mbps (advertised speed is 60 down 2 up). This leads to problems gaming, it's almost impossible to play anything, games like COD4 will constantly tell me "Connection Interrupted" and lag me to the other side of the map, while some games kick me out because my ping is too high just for a split second. You see, everything will be fine for the most part, normally playing with a 60-80ms ping and then it just sky rockets to 400ms and I get kicked out.

Now, I'll have to admit that my network setup in my house is complicated. I've got a Cisco modem-router 2in1 in which the FTTC cable plugs into. I then have one ethernet cable running directly to my PC and one directly to a 15 port switch. This switch then has one or two computers into it and then another 3 wireless repeaters to get coverage throughout the house.

My ISP has tried doing some things and have told me to do somethings, the first thing they did was change the frequencies (which I don't understand) promising me this would fix it, it unsurprisingly did not. After that, a technical support guy told me that the repeaters were actually acting as routers and were interfering with devices on the LAN. He believed they were routers because they giving out separate IPs from the router (how can he identify they are routers on his end?) I thought this wouldn't help since I was plugged straight into the modem and was still experiencing the problem. I also did not believe them because I couldn't find the IPs of said "routers." I tried connecting to them to change their state but could not identify them on the network. Anyway, instead of hassling, I decided to switch everything off in the house, EVERYTHING. Everything that connected to the internet except my PC. The routers/repeaters, switch, other PCs, phones, tablets etc... This still didn't solve the problem.

So now I'm coming to you. What screenshots can I provide to you to help you help me?

Here is a speedtest of it working well: http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/3662288118

Here's the download speed dropping http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/3662296146

Unfortunately I can't get one where the ping is skyrocketing, now that I want it to happen. Although here is a screenshot from pingplotter showing the way to Google's servers, I blanked all numbers just in case but you can see the graph just in case: http://i.imgur.com/rmNtrND.png
 
Solution
You can to a small extent tell where these devices are located and who owns them. The DNS names sometimes gives you a clue but you many times need to dig through the address registries line arin.net. Still lets say you use comcast and the server is using timewarner and then lets assume timewarner and comcast do not have a direct peer and use level 3 to connect between them. Even if you were to figure out there was some trouble in the peer point between level3 and timewarner what are you going to do. Its not like you can call either of those ISP since you do not have any business relationship with them. This is only a simple case there could be very many ISP involved.

If you were to get very lucky and the problem was still within...
If you run the pingplotter thing when it is being bad which hop is it showing the problem at. If it is hop1 it is inside your house or your router. If it is in hop2 then there is some issue between you and the ISP. Anything beyond that tends to take lots of digging to find any information and many times there is nothing you can do to fix it anyway.
 

Ben Said

Honorable
Jun 9, 2013
3
0
10,510


It seems to change between hop 8-12. So it's not from me. If this was the case, wouldn't customer have the same problem?
 
You can to a small extent tell where these devices are located and who owns them. The DNS names sometimes gives you a clue but you many times need to dig through the address registries line arin.net. Still lets say you use comcast and the server is using timewarner and then lets assume timewarner and comcast do not have a direct peer and use level 3 to connect between them. Even if you were to figure out there was some trouble in the peer point between level3 and timewarner what are you going to do. Its not like you can call either of those ISP since you do not have any business relationship with them. This is only a simple case there could be very many ISP involved.

If you were to get very lucky and the problem was still within your ISP network maybe you could get them to fix it. The challenge will be getting to talk to someone who doesn't think reboot the router is the solution to all problems.
 
Solution