- Jan 27, 2025
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I've been having an ongoing problem with my internet that is fairly noticeable but my ISP does not seem to have an answer for it after multiple visits and various attempts at fixing things. My initial guess was that it was a problem with their servers, but it made me/us aware of other problems they have seemingly fixed but the original problem has persisted.
Network Setup Info:
- ISP: Armstrong
- Modem: Netgear CM1000 (besides their own they switched out for now)
- Router: Netgear XR1000v2
- WIRED connection on both PC and PS5 testing.
- Brand new ethernet cable from Modem to PC from newly produced gear.
- I see similar ping spikes during Marvel Rivals on PS5 diagnostics just while watching the ping of the server status without even playing.
- No VPN usage.
- No notable bandwidth usage during testing at each time, so it's not people in my home using the bandwidth in excess during my own testing.
Background info:
Over a year ago I was having matchmaking issues with Street Fighter 6 and tried everything recommended to fix it, it wasn't that I was getting disconnected midmatch, it was that I was having problems connecting to people AT ALL in some cases regardless of what quality settings I chose. The only way I can describe it is that my connection and the game was looking for 4bar connections, but because my connection was so flaky it would fluctuate so much that no one would ever match up with those standards and it would avoid ME or them I guess. Some times it would work fine for several matches in a row, then it would "bug out" and start recommending me to join the EU servers even though I lived in the eastern US. This is when I started monitoring it with pingplotter and saw the ping spikes.
Initial attempt at solution:
I bought my own modem and router since at the time I only had the one from my ISP which was a combined modem/router combo. I skimped out on cost and just used whatever seemed recommended on Amazon at the time for an ok price. This did NOT solve my problem. Eventually I started running into other issues like my internet dropping out entirely for 1 minute and coming back, and eventually one day it went out for an extended period of time and my ISP said they saw signal issues every few pings.
Second attempt at solution:
One of the boxes outside the house had the cover completely broken before we moved here and it had been getting hit by all kinds of bad weather. This likely led to corrosion on the lines and fittings, so the guy came and completely replaced all that. The problem persisted.
I started looking into other causes and noticed that the modem I bought just so happened to be one of the ones with the Puma chipset defect. I don't know if it DID have it as if it was the problem but I figured it might be the cause so I wanted to get ANOTHER new modem to rule that out. At the same time I was testing for bufferbloat and noticed my router had what I thought was pretty bad bufferbloat at the time even though it got an "A" it made it seem like it could still be a problem, like maybe interferring with my SF6 problem originally. So I also wanted to buy the recommended Netgear router to help solve that.
Third attempt at solution:
I bought the NetgearCM1000 modem and a Netgear Nighthawk router that was supposed to have QoS options to help possibly solve the bufferbloat problems. Somehow this actually got worse, but the ping spikes problem persisted as well anyway. I got in contact with my ISP again and they sent another guy out and said one of the coax lines was "stiff" and could be a problem.
Fourth / Fifth / Sixth attempt at solution:
They replaced one of the coax lines outside, problem persisted. Called again told them it didn't fix it, they sent another guy again and replaced the line coming to the house. The problem persisted. Called again and they sent a different guy who completely redid the lines so our cable TV was separate from the cable internet and replaced basically everything except the one coming into the house/in the wall. The problem persisted. Effectively all lines would be replaced by here except the one in the wall.
Seventh attempt:
Called them again and they wanted to send one of the lead techs to run stuff on his laptop and see what he could check. They came and he didn't do anything with "his laptop" to check but decided to hook up their own "new" modem to rule out my modem and yet the problem persisted even right in front of their face. I had pingplotter going and two tech guys standing there watching and they could SEE it but kept saying they weren't familiar with what Pingplotter was showing.
I kept showing the guy the routing that was clearly THEIR servers and going into private IPs, likely still on their end, before the route went out into the network but he kept playing coy and saying he wasn't sure what it was showing in terms of "after it leaves their network" or what was happening with those IP addresses even though at least in my eyes it was clearly still the ISPs stuff.
Even though I've had the same problem the whole time I've ran ping tests that seem to clearly show it is network oversaturation cause it very obviously changes overtime even WITHOUT my own network using up bandwidth when no one is around to do anything.
Here is an example at 3am where it shows that there are NO ISSUES happening (ignore the 1st hop packetloss, I think that's Pingplotter Sidekick messing with my router)
Here is an example today in the afternoon, still not too bad but you can start to see the spikes happen.
Here is the example where the spikes start to really happen at 4pm:
Network Setup Info:
- ISP: Armstrong
- Modem: Netgear CM1000 (besides their own they switched out for now)
- Router: Netgear XR1000v2
- WIRED connection on both PC and PS5 testing.
- Brand new ethernet cable from Modem to PC from newly produced gear.
- I see similar ping spikes during Marvel Rivals on PS5 diagnostics just while watching the ping of the server status without even playing.
- No VPN usage.
- No notable bandwidth usage during testing at each time, so it's not people in my home using the bandwidth in excess during my own testing.
Background info:
Over a year ago I was having matchmaking issues with Street Fighter 6 and tried everything recommended to fix it, it wasn't that I was getting disconnected midmatch, it was that I was having problems connecting to people AT ALL in some cases regardless of what quality settings I chose. The only way I can describe it is that my connection and the game was looking for 4bar connections, but because my connection was so flaky it would fluctuate so much that no one would ever match up with those standards and it would avoid ME or them I guess. Some times it would work fine for several matches in a row, then it would "bug out" and start recommending me to join the EU servers even though I lived in the eastern US. This is when I started monitoring it with pingplotter and saw the ping spikes.
Initial attempt at solution:
I bought my own modem and router since at the time I only had the one from my ISP which was a combined modem/router combo. I skimped out on cost and just used whatever seemed recommended on Amazon at the time for an ok price. This did NOT solve my problem. Eventually I started running into other issues like my internet dropping out entirely for 1 minute and coming back, and eventually one day it went out for an extended period of time and my ISP said they saw signal issues every few pings.
Second attempt at solution:
One of the boxes outside the house had the cover completely broken before we moved here and it had been getting hit by all kinds of bad weather. This likely led to corrosion on the lines and fittings, so the guy came and completely replaced all that. The problem persisted.
I started looking into other causes and noticed that the modem I bought just so happened to be one of the ones with the Puma chipset defect. I don't know if it DID have it as if it was the problem but I figured it might be the cause so I wanted to get ANOTHER new modem to rule that out. At the same time I was testing for bufferbloat and noticed my router had what I thought was pretty bad bufferbloat at the time even though it got an "A" it made it seem like it could still be a problem, like maybe interferring with my SF6 problem originally. So I also wanted to buy the recommended Netgear router to help solve that.
Third attempt at solution:
I bought the NetgearCM1000 modem and a Netgear Nighthawk router that was supposed to have QoS options to help possibly solve the bufferbloat problems. Somehow this actually got worse, but the ping spikes problem persisted as well anyway. I got in contact with my ISP again and they sent another guy out and said one of the coax lines was "stiff" and could be a problem.
Fourth / Fifth / Sixth attempt at solution:
They replaced one of the coax lines outside, problem persisted. Called again told them it didn't fix it, they sent another guy again and replaced the line coming to the house. The problem persisted. Called again and they sent a different guy who completely redid the lines so our cable TV was separate from the cable internet and replaced basically everything except the one coming into the house/in the wall. The problem persisted. Effectively all lines would be replaced by here except the one in the wall.
Seventh attempt:
Called them again and they wanted to send one of the lead techs to run stuff on his laptop and see what he could check. They came and he didn't do anything with "his laptop" to check but decided to hook up their own "new" modem to rule out my modem and yet the problem persisted even right in front of their face. I had pingplotter going and two tech guys standing there watching and they could SEE it but kept saying they weren't familiar with what Pingplotter was showing.
I kept showing the guy the routing that was clearly THEIR servers and going into private IPs, likely still on their end, before the route went out into the network but he kept playing coy and saying he wasn't sure what it was showing in terms of "after it leaves their network" or what was happening with those IP addresses even though at least in my eyes it was clearly still the ISPs stuff.
Even though I've had the same problem the whole time I've ran ping tests that seem to clearly show it is network oversaturation cause it very obviously changes overtime even WITHOUT my own network using up bandwidth when no one is around to do anything.
Here is an example at 3am where it shows that there are NO ISSUES happening (ignore the 1st hop packetloss, I think that's Pingplotter Sidekick messing with my router)
Here is an example today in the afternoon, still not too bad but you can start to see the spikes happen.
Here is the example where the spikes start to really happen at 4pm:
Last edited:
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