Very high Ping & Jitter on wireless connection (and whole home network)

Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
C

ckincbloodmoney

Honorable
Dec 26, 2015
47
0
10,530
Hello TH community,
So within the past day, the internet quality on my wireless connection to my Asus RT-N66U "Dark Knight" router has been highly unstable. I'm not able to play any online games due to the latency ingame fluctuating from 30ms to 200+ms every second, making gameplay impossible. What I've noticed is that my speedtest results are pretty normal (we have Time Warner Cable's 25 megabit connection - so upload is usually 22+mb/s and upload is usually 2mb/s)...
HOWEVER, while doing a test through PingTest, I do tests to LA, which my ping should be on average 30ms to. I'm getting a 231ms ping + 55ms jitter. Normally, it should be 30ms ping, and less than 5ms jitter, but I'm not sure what's causing this large amount of lag. I know that jitter indicates fluctuations in ping, and that's exactly what I'm experiencing in games. Even a counter strike match on a LA server results in 200-530+ms ping, when it should stay stable around 30ms.
Test 1:
147113748.png

Test 2:
147114218.png

Test 3:
147114276.png


I should also note that yesterday my bro (who's a bit more knowledgeable on the router than I am - since he manages it) noticed that something was sucking up about 22/25 megabits on our 25megabit internet connection - through the ASUS router page We checked to make sure nobody was downloading anything, turned our phones off, I unplugged our 2 apple TVs (I hate those things), reset the router, reset our modem, etc. We know that nobody in our house was sucking up the bandwidth, yet somehow most of the bandwidth was being used for some reason. I don't think it could be someone leeching onto our connection, unless they can break a 25+ digit password....although there was an instance back in 2008 where someone on our street was remote controlling one of our PCs, but I don't believe this could be that.

Here are some specs if they help:
Router: ASUS RT-N66U "Dark Knight" Router
My Wireless Adapter: Rosewill RNX-N600UBE usb adapter (have had it for a few years, this thing is great)
ISP: Time Warner Cable 25megabit connection

We've tried the following: unplugging both router and modem and plugging them back in, resetting the router via the ASUS router page, unplugging my usb adapter and resetting its 2 antennae, disconnecting/reconnecting to the connection, etc. We've also utilized a new feature of our router's new firmware that lets us cap bandwidth per device - my mom loves to stream 2 hour movies off her apple tv (which can use 22mb/25mb of our connection - and limit the apple tv bandwidth to 8megabits or 15 megabits...we're still having our high ping and jitter problem even with the apple tvs turned off.


I'm decent with PCs, but not that knowledgeable of networking and whatnot, so please let me know if you require any further details that could help me identify the problem.
 
Solution
Solandri
Speed tests and ping tests over wifi alone are worthless. You must run tests over a wired connection to your router first. Then compare to the test results over wifi. There are three places the problem could be - your wifi connection, the router's connection to your ISP, or your ISP's connection. Most of the time the problem is with the wifi connection. So without a comparative test of wifi vs wired, you can't eliminate your wifi connection as the culprit and it's premature to blame the ISP.

If the wired test results are fine, then your problem is the wifi connection. Most of the time it's unreliable because of interference from neighboring wifi networks. Use a tool like wifi manager for your Android phone (I'm sure...
Sort by date Sort by votes
_Vass

_Vass

Honorable
Nov 24, 2013
604
0
11,160
i guess if you don't have the tools to monitor bandwidth use of specific devices your only option is to find out which device is eating bandwidth by trial and error testing. starting off without any devices connected and adding each device one by one extensively testing the connection after adding a new device.

//somewhat non-related but maybe a little ontopic. i had a network issue very similar to yours although i couldn't see if it was eating bandwidth. i knew for sure it was fucking my latency (in house) over, by ping testing. this was not just happening on wireless but on my entire local network. after several hours of trial and error i somewhat traced the problem back to my new samsung smart tv. unplugging that fixed it for me.
i just disconnected everything except my pc. i opened 2 cmd's 1 ping (modem ip) -t and 1 ping google.com -t and just let it sit there while i connect devices. both very clearly started showing bumps in ping on a fixed interval when i connected my samsung tv so yea. never really found an explanation for that but i think it fixed itself after a while (tv firmware update maybe?).
my 2 cents
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Solandri

Solandri

Illustrious
Jan 4, 2012
4,919
98
39,240
Speed tests and ping tests over wifi alone are worthless. You must run tests over a wired connection to your router first. Then compare to the test results over wifi. There are three places the problem could be - your wifi connection, the router's connection to your ISP, or your ISP's connection. Most of the time the problem is with the wifi connection. So without a comparative test of wifi vs wired, you can't eliminate your wifi connection as the culprit and it's premature to blame the ISP.

If the wired test results are fine, then your problem is the wifi connection. Most of the time it's unreliable because of interference from neighboring wifi networks. Use a tool like wifi manager for your Android phone (I'm sure something similar exists for iPhones).
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.kman.WifiManager&hl=en

See how many other wifi networks are visible inside your home, how strong their signal is, and most importantly which channels they're using. Try to set your wifi networks to different channels. 2.4 GHz channels cover 5 channels (so channel 1 uses frequencies from 1-5, channel 6 covers 6-10, and 11 uses 11-15). 5 GHz channels are completely independent, so if the wifi near your house is very crowded it's usually the only way to get a clear channel. Unfortunately 5 GHz has shorter range because it does not penetrate walls as well as 2.4 GHz.

As for the mysterious bandwidth usage, most new Asus routers have a guest wifi network enabled by default. I don't know if or how it sets a password to that network on your model router. So it's possible when you changed the wifi passwords, the password for the guest network remained the same and whomever was using your bandwidth was able to continue using it.

http://www.howtogeek.com/219808/warning-%E2%80%9Cguest-mode%E2%80%9D-on-many-wi-fi-routers-isn%E2%80%99t-secure/

Disconnect all known devices as before. Go into the router's settings and disable the guest network, then reboot the router. Wait a few minutes and login. On the Network Map page, it shows you how many clients are connected to the router. That number should be 1 (the computer you're using to access the router). If it's more than one, click on it and it should show you a list of connected devices on the right. The names are a guess based on which manufacturer owns the MAC address of that device (this can be spoofed so is not reliable). Use it to try to figure out which devices are still connected, and either unplug them (if wired) or turn them off (if wireless). Then reboot the router, wait a minute, and login.

Once it shows only 1 device is connected and the traffic monitor shows no Internet usage, you can start reconnecting devices one at a time to determine which is eating up all your Internet bandwidth.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Solution
R

rob0976

Distinguished
Oct 22, 2009
22
0
18,510
Again like I said in the previous thread 5G works very well if you have at least 200mb speed or higher plus you need to have updated Hardware which may include a Wi-Fi range extender if needed. 5G is superior regardless I have plaster walls but a good modem/router set up and I had gotten 73% so I just added a Wi-Fi range extender and now it's 100%.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
B

bill001g

Titan
Aug 9, 2012
28,365
2,766
125,640


You have been around long enough to know not to dig up old threads.

 
Upvote 0 Downvote
R

rob0976

Distinguished
Oct 22, 2009
22
0
18,510

It doesn't matter somebody's always looking for information.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
B

bill001g

Titan
Aug 9, 2012
28,365
2,766
125,640
Only when you post information that is correct. Repeaters just because of how they work will cut the speed 50% in best case.

The only way you go from 73% to 100% is if you installed it incorrectly. You will only get 100% if you installed it next to your PC. So the repeater still get the data from the router on the 73% signal. This will be the same speed as a pc at the same location gets. It then repeats the data reducing the total throughput by at least 50%. In addition you now have 2 radio signals that are subject to interference.

There is a big difference between signal level and signal quality.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
R

rob0976

Distinguished
Oct 22, 2009
22
0
18,510


That is why you cut off the 2.4GHz and I have plaster walls.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom