Intermittent Single-Direction Packet Loss Through Hub Router

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carbondragon

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Dec 12, 2011
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Recently I've come upon a wave of packet loss in my network, and it's only on my computer. I've fiddled with everything I know to look at and have reduced the problem quite a bit but online gaming is still quite problematic.

My home network looks something like this. We have fiber running into the house and into our main wifi router, which is a Netgear WNR3500L. My family's main computer is attached directly to this Netgear. The Netgear is connected via a wired connection to a network port in my room, to which I have a Belkin F5D7230-4 v8000 set up to be a dumb hub and a wifi repeater. The incoming line and my computer are both plugged into the "wired computers" ports of the Belkin, as suggested in the tutorial I used to set up this configuration last year when it worked flawlessly. Both of these computers, as well as the Belkin router, are set up with static IP addresses.

Now for the major issue. When running pings from the family computer to my rig, I get a net 0% packet loss but going the other way runs up anywhere from 1-8% loss. I have some experience in testing for and eliminating packet loss but I've never come across a situation like this where only one direction of traffic through a hub is having problems. I would suspect the wiring could be causing the issue but as the loss is only in one direction, I feel like this is not the case but I could be wrong in this assumption.

Thank you for any help you can provide. This issue has been plaguing me for several weeks now and I'm completely out of ideas.

UPDATE

Using various combinations of the wires I have available, as well as a secondary computer (my school laptop), I have tried the following configurations:

Static IP; desktop; Belkin in network: 1-6% packet loss over a reasonable period. Unplayable due to packet loss.
Static IP; desktop; Belkin out of network: 1-6% packet loss over a reasonable period. Unplayable due to packet loss.
Dynamic IP; laptop; Belkin in network: no packet loss but massive ping time to Netgear in my own network and worse to IP 8.8.8.8.
Dynamic IP; laptop; Belkin out of network: no packet loss but massive ping time to Netgear in my own network and worse to IP 8.8.8.8.
Dynamic IP; desktop; Belkin in network: no packet loss over a reasonable period. Unplayable due to dynamic IP.

This all leads me to believe that it's something to do with my static IP configuration, but every other computer on our network is statically addressed and there are no IP conflicts. The problem also still seems to be one-way. Going from my rig to the family computer causes loss but going from the family computer to my rig is perfectly fine.
 
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There actually is not way to determine the direction of the loss with ping alone. The message from the sender could be lost before it gets to the far end or the reply could be lost on the way back. There really is not simple way to determine which is happening.
You could run a wireshark on the devices and you could see if you never received the message but it still doesn't tell you a lot what is causing it.

Since it appear to work with a address assigned by DHCP have you tried to use the router address reservation feature that assigns a fixed ip address to a particular mac. In effect it is a static ip assigned via DHCP.

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carbondragon

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I mean, it's acting as a hub since there's no switching going on. Really it's just a signal repeater since the cable under the house would exceed the 50 foot limit if it were routed all the way to my tower.

In any case, I've done some more testing and found that none of the accessible cables are bad. I'm currently running pings from my laptop with its wifi disabled and am getting massive spikes in latency but no dropped packets. Currently I am routed directly to the Netgear through the overly-long cable I've used to bypass the Belkin router in an attempt to peg it as the problem. I will edit this reply once I test the Belkin back in the system and see if my results are the same once its reinstated.

As of right now, I'm thinking that my network card on my desktop is the issue, somehow.

Update: Laptop kicks out insanely high ping regardless of its connection to the wired network. Desktop is now using dynamic IP and is getting 0% packet loss so far. This, however, is unacceptable for playing games since I have to host many of them and cannot open ports for a dynamic IP.
 
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Kewlx25

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"I mean, it's acting as a hub since there's no switching going on. Really it's just a signal repeater"

Technically hubs don't repeat signals. Any two points cannot be further apart than 100m when using hubs. With switches, the signals get regenerated and you can extend out to infinity.
 
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bill001g

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There actually is not way to determine the direction of the loss with ping alone. The message from the sender could be lost before it gets to the far end or the reply could be lost on the way back. There really is not simple way to determine which is happening.
You could run a wireshark on the devices and you could see if you never received the message but it still doesn't tell you a lot what is causing it.

Since it appear to work with a address assigned by DHCP have you tried to use the router address reservation feature that assigns a fixed ip address to a particular mac. In effect it is a static ip assigned via DHCP.

 
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carbondragon

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That's actually what I'm trying right now and it seems to be working. Is there a technical difference between reserving the IP and setting it statically?
 
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carbondragon

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Everything seems to be running fine now, although the game that I was having the most trouble with is still acting strangely. No surprise considering it's a Ubisoft title. In any case, thank you for your help!
 
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