So recently I've been noticing frequent (every 10-20 seconds or so), large ping spikes while playing online games. It'll typically hover around 10-14, but then shoot up to 500 for an instant and it'll jump me around. I followed the advice on other threads and pinged google.com 100 times. Sure enough, it sat at about 14 miliseconds, but would jump to 500-ish for one ping and immediately settle back down to 14. I ran this while playing a game and found it to coincidence perfectly with the lag spikes I was experiencing.
I did a traceroute as others recommend, and it was normal. I ran it a few more times and then found this result would recur every few times I ran it:
Tracing route to b.resolvers.Level3.net [4.2.2.2]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 541 ms 8 ms <1 ms 192.168.0.1
2 61 ms 17 ms 26 ms 96.120.16.221
3 19 ms 88 ms 94 ms ae-110-rur01.royalton.tx.houston.comcast.net [68.85.252.165]
4 19 ms 18 ms 63 ms ae-29-ar01.bearcreek.tx.houston.comcast.net [68.85.245.85]
5 28 ms 28 ms 45 ms 4.68.71.109
6 23 ms 22 ms 22 ms ae-4-3612.edge2.Dallas1.Level3.net [4.69.209.9]
7 23 ms 14 ms 14 ms b.resolvers.Level3.net [4.2.2.2]
Trace complete.
I then went ahead and simply pinged my router and found it had the same problem as when I pinged google.com. It would typically have a ping of <1ms, but would occasionally shoot through the roof.
Ping statistics for 192.168.0.1:
Packets: Sent = 100, Received = 100, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 1ms, Maximum = 565ms, Average = 25ms
Again, this coincided with my lag spikes in games.
I know next to nothing about routers or how they work or anything, so my question is really what could be causing this? Is this just a "cheap router" problem, or is this something that can be fixed?
I did a traceroute as others recommend, and it was normal. I ran it a few more times and then found this result would recur every few times I ran it:
Tracing route to b.resolvers.Level3.net [4.2.2.2]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 541 ms 8 ms <1 ms 192.168.0.1
2 61 ms 17 ms 26 ms 96.120.16.221
3 19 ms 88 ms 94 ms ae-110-rur01.royalton.tx.houston.comcast.net [68.85.252.165]
4 19 ms 18 ms 63 ms ae-29-ar01.bearcreek.tx.houston.comcast.net [68.85.245.85]
5 28 ms 28 ms 45 ms 4.68.71.109
6 23 ms 22 ms 22 ms ae-4-3612.edge2.Dallas1.Level3.net [4.69.209.9]
7 23 ms 14 ms 14 ms b.resolvers.Level3.net [4.2.2.2]
Trace complete.
I then went ahead and simply pinged my router and found it had the same problem as when I pinged google.com. It would typically have a ping of <1ms, but would occasionally shoot through the roof.
Ping statistics for 192.168.0.1:
Packets: Sent = 100, Received = 100, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 1ms, Maximum = 565ms, Average = 25ms
Again, this coincided with my lag spikes in games.
I know next to nothing about routers or how they work or anything, so my question is really what could be causing this? Is this just a "cheap router" problem, or is this something that can be fixed?