I am having an issue thats difficult to pin down. I have Time Warner Cable (spectrum) with 100/10 Mbit/s download/upload speeds. My PC has a gigabit ethernet card and an I7 4790k cpu with a 1070 GPU, so it isn't a hardware limitation on my end, at least I don't think. I am connected via ethernet cable, and never use WIfi. I live in an apartment complex, and every night from around 7pm to 930pm I cant even watch 480p Youtube videos without buffering. It is so bad that I will pause the video, and go walk my dog while allowing it to buffer. All other times of the day and night I can watch everything on 1080p or even 1440p with no buffering. It also seems to affect my in game performance, such as in GTA 5. During those "peak" hours, I see everyone as very laggy and jumping around in game. Not smooth at all, even if my FPS is 60+. If i do a speedtest at speedtest.com during this trouble time, I get the correct download and upload speeds, but it doesn't seem to translate into real life internet use. Time Warner says there is nothing wrong, and that it must be an issue with the servers I am connecting to. I find that hard to believe because as it gets later, everything seems to speed back up. I was considering switching to At&T and paying for gigabit speeds to see if that helps, but I am not sure if that would even fix my issue. I live by myself and do not share my internet, so that shouldn't be an issue either. Any advice or insight would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
TWC Internet Issue Questions (Ethernet Connection)
- Thread starter JBURNS489
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ahnilated
Splendid
- Nov 9, 2006
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You are sharing a pipe with everyone in your apartment complex. That pipe is probably not big enough for the requirements of the complex. Call Time Warner and tell them to fix it but bring proof. Do some speed and ping test when you are lagging to prove it to them.
Rookie_MIB
Distinguished
- Jul 27, 2013
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Well, there could be several issues, and it could be related to anything in between your connection and the servers you're trying to connect to. Remember that any connection between a server and your computer is going to be a series of hops, from one router to the next until it hits your destination. If you lived in New York for example, and the server you were trying to get to was in California, if a router was experiencing problems in Chicago that your traffic was trying to get to that could cause the issues you're talking about.
The way to find out is simple enough. You'll run a traceroute.
What you'll do (assuming Win7):
1) click the start button. In the search box, you'll type 'cmd' and hit enter.
2) This pulls up your command box.
3) type in 'tracert <servername>' and hit enter. <servername> is anything from tomshardware.com to google.com to youtube.com.
4) it'll start tracing the route to the server that it has, and give you response times. If you hit a set of response times that's excessively high or times out, there's your issue. Ideally you should have response times in the neighborhood of 50ms or less, 150ms is a bit laggy. 1000ms or higher is a problem.
The way to find out is simple enough. You'll run a traceroute.
What you'll do (assuming Win7):
1) click the start button. In the search box, you'll type 'cmd' and hit enter.
2) This pulls up your command box.
3) type in 'tracert <servername>' and hit enter. <servername> is anything from tomshardware.com to google.com to youtube.com.
4) it'll start tracing the route to the server that it has, and give you response times. If you hit a set of response times that's excessively high or times out, there's your issue. Ideally you should have response times in the neighborhood of 50ms or less, 150ms is a bit laggy. 1000ms or higher is a problem.
I sort of assumed it was something similar to that. Truthfully I dont really want to go through the trouble of proving to TWC that their service is terrible at certain times of the day lol. Do you think simply switching to At&T would solve my issue, or would I still run into the same problem?
Also, I will do the tracert later tonight just to see whats going on and will report back with what I find. Thanks you for help guys
I hear ya and I do realize that even if I am getting super fast internet speeds from my ISP, that the actual connection speed to servers could vary greatly. It seems to me though that the problem is on TWC's end, because it isn't just one website or one server that slows down. Online gaming, on any game, is very frustrating to play during those times because of the extreme lag. I am assuming that if it was just a single server or router issue somewhere, that the problem wouldn't persist across many servers. But it does, and only from 7ish to 9ish every single night lol. I will still run the tracert tonight when the internet seems to slow down to a crawl, and report back with the results.
This is my tracert information that I ran tonight, while having internet issues. I am not entirely sure how to interpret this though...Sorry for the small size, but can anyone help?
Also, here is a screenshot of my speedtest.com results that I ran 5 minutes after the tracert
Rookie_MIB
Distinguished
- Jul 27, 2013
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Well, looking at it, you definitely have a problem with latency going on. Once your packets leave your router (which is what I believe your first number will be as it is your computer to the router itself), the latency just drops to the floor. 300-500ms is SLOOOWWW. That could mean that your node is being flooded at that particular time like mentioned above and someone (or many someones) are doing a lot of streaming and such when they get home.
Keep that screenshot, and get some other screenshots by running a ping to youtube.com or any other server (like tomshardware etc) during the 'slow' time. You can try complaining to TWC, but they'll probably come back with something along the lines of 'well that max number is UP TO xxx mbits', and the 'fine print indicates you may suffer congestion during peak times'.
If it continues to be bad, keep complaining. I'm of the opinion that you should be able to hit 75% of your max speed 95% of the time.
Keep that screenshot, and get some other screenshots by running a ping to youtube.com or any other server (like tomshardware etc) during the 'slow' time. You can try complaining to TWC, but they'll probably come back with something along the lines of 'well that max number is UP TO xxx mbits', and the 'fine print indicates you may suffer congestion during peak times'.
If it continues to be bad, keep complaining. I'm of the opinion that you should be able to hit 75% of your max speed 95% of the time.
Im guessing if I switch providers, I would still have similar issues? I have a couple choices in my area for ISPs, but if all of their nodes are at capacity, I imagine I would have similar issues. Its frustrating because i like to come home from work and play online, buts its soo slow until later at night. I was watching youtube last night, and if I left the quality of the videos on auto it would play at 144p. Not 1440, 144p lol. I am leaning towards switching providers to at least see if ita better, as it seems easiest and less bitching required.
Just an update: I complained to TWC several times, and they kept telling me everything was fine. On top of that, I guess was in a promotion for new customers that ended, and my bill went up from 50 dollars a month to 75/month. I called at&t, and they offered me gigabit speed for 80/month. Needless to say I switched, and couldnt be happier. Performance is through the roof, and I can now watch youtube on 4k and never have to buffer. Thanks for all of your advice. I learned a lot about how internet works 
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