ATT Horrible service, Ping spiking terribly

[noelskenderi]

Hello, I have been having problems with my ping ever since I got this internet. For about 1 year, I've been using ATT 17Mbps. Every day or so, maybe for 5 minutes, maybe for 5 seconds, maybe for 20 minutes. I get around 500 - 3000 ping. Usually what happens is, it increases slowly every second, 1 second its at 300, then 700, then 1200. 1200 is the sweet spot of the spiking, that's where it almost always spikes too. On very rare occasions, it can spike to 3000. Or it can spike to 500 for 1 second and then go back to 30, or spike to 200 for 1 second and goes back to 30. It's very erratic, but it never lasts more than an hour. So I called ATT, they restarted my Modem, and my ping fixed... For 5 minutes. Also, I use an ethernet connection on my PC. But when it spikes, it spikes for both my wirelessly connected phone/laptop and my PC at the same time. So then I called ATT again, they replaced the actual modem. The ping problem fixed for around 1 day. Next day, it was happening again. So obviously, it's not any physical barriers if it even spikes with ethernet. So what could it be? The lady that I was speaking with on the phone, I asked her, what if it doesn't fix after you install another modem? All she was saying was, Sir, it will fix. She wasn't answering if "it doesn't fix" she was just saying it will fix. But guess what, it didn't. A quote on quote "IT Support" guy came over. He didn't even know what ping was. Then he said, after I literally pinged the google servers in CMD (ping google.com -t) he said, "It might just be the servers that you're connected too, if they're too far away your latency could be bad" WHEN IM CONNECTED TO THE GOOGLE SERVERS. Then he said, ATT guarantees 17Mbps not latency. So then I said, hmm, okay. Then he reinstalled the modem and everything was good. He gave me his phone number and told me to call him or text him if I have any problems. Next day, while my ping is spiking, I see if it effects my download speed. Sure enough, while I had 1200 ping, my download speed was 100kbps. I recorded a youtube video of it and sent it to him. No response. This is truly the worst experience I have ever had with any ISP. Here is the vid of my ping spiking, don't mind my squeaky voice.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWBz6P9mI54&t=11s

 

[jsmithepa]

My short answer, dump AT&T, go cable. I currently used Comcast which in the past forced me to buy their bundle package blah-blah and I resisted, since the beginning of this year they have allowed me to buy Internet only, cheaper! and 5x the speed! I jumped at the chance of dumping AT&T (DSL, no fiber). Unfortunately offers vary at each locale.

 

[failboat]

you need to check your router to see if their is a total bandwidth monitor.
bufferbloat causes latency.
you can only plug your pc into the router or modem and use resource monitor.
if you are getting any high latency when nothing is swamping the up or down then it's isp related most likely.

if that's the best service you can get and you want to be able to monitor/manage your net very well look at ipfire. you have to build a pc for it. you can get minimal stuff or maybe some ebay stuff for $200 or spend more and also turn it into NAS or use with other services. an old pc will work, but it needs two NICs. intel recommended.

with iftop you can see which local ips are using how much bandwidth in real time. it logs a lot of data for you. it has the best qos available for bufferbloat. $50 ERX can do the same qos.