[SOLVED] Bandwidth Issue?

[Evo9MRMB]

Hi everyone! So I know next to nothing about networking so I am hoping I can find someone who might have some insight on a long time issue.

I am a PC gamer and have lived with my parents for a while. Now they are TV watcher's and rely exclusively on that for entertainment while I rely on my PC for my entertainment. The issue is that sometimes their shows get pixelated, audio goes out of sync, or sometimes even losses the signal all together from time to time. They are rocking AT&T Uverse. Unfortunately this sometimes happen when I am gaming on my PC, usually an MMO so naturally they think my PC is somehow responsible. I strongly doubt this is the case and have tried to explain as much but I am worried that I might be talking out the side of my neck on this one.

Is it possible that my PC is somehow sucking up all the bandwidth while playing MMOs causing their issue? My PC is hooked up to a D-Link power adapter for Ethernet rather then direct connection or wifi.

Thank you.

 

[bill001g]

How big is your internet connection. Most important in this case is how big is your upload speed.

Other than when you download patches online games use very little. When you take patches of course it can use 100% of the bandwidth.

It depends between MMOs but most use well under 1mbps but they need this UP and DOWN. If you have a small DSL connection you can exceed the upload rates espeically if you use voice comms like discord in addition.

If you have a very large internet connection like from a cable company it is not likely you can have much affect...again being careful when you download patches.

 

[Evo9MRMB]

I don't have the specifics of the connection at this time but it is provided by a cable company (AT&T) but I will try to dig them up.

Still it sounds like the cable "signal loss" is more likely due to bad service from AT&T, not my computer. Also, not sure if this is relevant but during this signal loss for the cable, the internet in the rest of the house is not impacted at all.

 

[bill001g]

My answer was mostly based on your concern it way your pc causing it. ATT calls everything uverse from their 1gbit service to the worst dsl they offer. If it comes in via coax able it is likely a faster connection than dsl.

With a larger connection it is likely something else. You are pretty much back to standard troubleshooting.

Run ping to the router ip. You should see low latency and no loss. You must be sure to test on ethernet, wifi it is very common to see loss and delays.

Then run tracert to say some ip like 8.8.8.8. You want to run a constant ping to hop 2 which should represent the connection between your house and the ISP. This is the most common location for problems like this. You can continue to other hops if you see no problems but the farther you get from your house the harder it is to get fixed.

What you will want to do is call the ISP and show them no loss to hop 1 your router but loss to hop 2. Be careful they will try to blame over utilization so make sure you do this test with little running.