Frequent network disconnects unless using VPN

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elurchin

Aug 4, 2018
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For about the past week, I've had a significant amount of trouble playing games online. Specifically, regardless of how good my connection is playing a game, I will randomly lose internet connection for a few seconds. The outage lasts just long enough to disconnect me from a game and then my internet immediately returns. I believe the issue exists outside of games too, but it's not as noticeable.

What's particularly odd is I don't have any issues if I'm connected via my VPN. I've played for 2 hours straight with no issue on through my VPN, turned it off, and gotten disconnected within 5 minutes. The VPN server I connect to doesn't seem to matter.

I have Comcast and I use this for both my modem and router. There are usually about 3 or 4 other devices connected via wifi. My computer is the only one connected via ethernet.

I've tried:
- Power cycling my router
- Switching out ethernet cables
- Switching to wifi
- Using a different computer (both were Windows 10)
- Changing to Google's DNS (this seems to have made disconnects a little less frequent but last longer when they do occur)

The problem has occurred while playing:
- Street Fighter V
- Ultra Street Fighter IV
- Tekken 7 (doesn't allow online play when VPN is turned on)
I haven't had the chance to test with other games, but the disconnects have happened during matches, in lobbies, and from the main menu.

I'm at a complete loss here. What could be causing this? My only theory is the timeout between my router and the VPN is longer than it is between my router and the game servers, giving the illusion that there are no problems over the VPN. I have no idea how to test this, though.
 
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I doubt it is the timeout since the traffic inside the vpn tunnel to the game server would still have the same timeout and if the vpn is not transmitting data then the internal data can not also get through. Games do not tolerate any traffic outage or delay very well you would see lag.

But your in general your theory on the vpn being somehow different is likely correct. All traffic going from your house passes through lot of internet providers. The path can be different for traffic to different servers since many have different ISP. There can be problems between ISP or even within your ISP with certain fiber connections. So you will see issues if you use one and not the other.

So lets say there is some device in the...
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bill001g

Titan
Aug 9, 2012
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I doubt it is the timeout since the traffic inside the vpn tunnel to the game server would still have the same timeout and if the vpn is not transmitting data then the internal data can not also get through. Games do not tolerate any traffic outage or delay very well you would see lag.

But your in general your theory on the vpn being somehow different is likely correct. All traffic going from your house passes through lot of internet providers. The path can be different for traffic to different servers since many have different ISP. There can be problems between ISP or even within your ISP with certain fiber connections. So you will see issues if you use one and not the other.

So lets say there is some device in the path between you and the game server company that has a issue. If you go directly your traffic passes through this problem device. Now lets say the path to the vpn company is different so your traffic does not pass that device. What is important though is once the traffic comes out of the VPN on the VPN server site it must too follow a different path to the game company. If the problem device is close to the game company server the traffic can still pass through the problem device.

It is almost pure luck if a VPN will fix this issue. In general a vpn should make it worse since it adds latency to the communication. Many times you must try mulitple different VPN companies to get around issue like this.

I know the first time I every used a vpn service was because my ISP at the time took very long paths to some game company ISP.

If you want to test the theory what you do is run tracert to a number of the game company servers. You then run constant ping to the nodes in the path. Your goal is find which device you starts to see issues on. You would do similar to the ip of the VPN data center...with the vpn not up.
The path should be different.

What you hope for in best case is that you consistently find issues going through a device your ISP controls and can fix. If the problem is in a different ISP equipment then not much you can do about it.
 
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