Question Desync, limited connection and slow connections

[lidgetta]

Hey all, I am having a very bizarre problem, and some techie friends of mine have tried looking into the problem, but to no avail. They suggested I utilize the potential power of this particular website in order to maybe shine some light on the situation, so allow me to try and explain myself.

The problem started whilst playing Civilization 6; I kept Desyncing every turn or so, not too surprising, it's common for the game to have this issue. Then I begun disconnecting from Heroes of The Storm's lobby, then my timer in Crusader Kings 3 began completely stopping whilst in multiplayer - only catching up after a few minutes have passed by, I will randomly disconnect from Discord, and have issues reconnecting (Tho I will eventually)I have tried entering DMZ mode; I have tried setting a static IP, changed to google DNS, Paused all anti-virus - changed NAT settings, tried port-forwarding.

My ISP, who admittedly has never been of great help, says they cannot detect any issue on my connection - I have tried 2 separate ISPs, and 2 separate Routers. I have tried Wireless and a Wired connection.

Event log shows no noteworthy events, Router logs shows no noteworthy events, Anti-virus shows no noteworthy events. Weirder yet, when my connection cuts out from Discord, I can keep playing games; and when it cuts from games, I can keep using Discord, it never seems to take out my entire connection at the same time, only arbitrary parts of it for equally arbitrary reasons.

As a disclaimer; my internet was fairly poor in performance, yet perfectly functional until a few weeks ago; this randomly began happening after having downloaded Helldivers 2 - i was since uninstalled the game and its intrusive Anti-Cheat but I am having a hard time believing it would have this significant of an effect on my system. So - Any takers?

06/04/24
Thank you for the replies, here are the specs, when I am back home I'll add in more details.

System specs:
OS Windows 11 Pro 64-bit
Power Supply1 x DeepCool PK750D 750w
Processor1 x AMD Ryzen 5 7600XProcessor
Cooler1 x Kolink Umbra EX180 ARGB
RAM1 x 32GB Corsair Vengeance DDR5 4800MHZ (2 x 16GB)
Motherboard1 x Asus PRIME B650-PLUS
Graphics Card1 x Nvidia GeForce® RTX 4070 12GB
Hard Drive1 x 1TB Samsung 980 M.2 NVME SSD (358GB used 571GB free)
Sound Card1 x Motherboard Integrated 7.1 Channel Audio
Network Card1 x Realtek Gaming 2.5GbE Family Controller

 

[Ralston18]

Update your post to include full system hardware specs and OS information.

Include PSU: make, model, wattage, age, condition (original to build, new, refurbished, used)?

Disk drive(s): make, model, capacity, how full?

= = = =

You stated "no noteworthy events": just for the record what events are being logged? For example: increasing numbers of errors and varying errors can indicate a faulty or failing PSU.

Source for Helldivers 2? If the source was not legitimate and/or some attempt(s) were made to circumvent "intrusive anti-cheat" I would not be surprised that all has gone astray.

Look in Reliability History/Monitor. Easier to use than Event Viewer and the timeline format might provide a clearer indication of when the problems began and what started the problems.

 

[bill001g]

I would put all the things you changed in your router back to default. If you can't remember I would reset it.

Things like dmz and port forwarding are only needed for a some special games that do not run with a central server or if you are hosting a server...say like minecraft..in your house. Although it generally doesn't hurt you do expose your machine to internet attack and it put more load in the router.

Try the standard tests.

Start with 2 cmd windows running in the background. Leave a constant ping to your router IP in the first and 8.8.8.8 in the second. Make sure you test on ethernet. When the game has issue quickly switch to these windows and check. You are looking for timeout messages or very large ...like greater than 100ms extra spikes in the latency.

If you see loss to the router it is most likely some strange issue with the pc or maybe the cable. It is seldom the router. If you see no loss to the router but you see loss to google (8.8.8.8) then there likely is a actual network issue and you can test more. If it shows no loss then it is much more complex. It could still be a network issue but possibly in another ISP network in the path. It also could be something that is not network related such as video drivers or settings just as a example.

 

[lidgetta]

To answer the first question, the Power supply - along with the entire PC is about 3 months old .Helldivers 2 was installed from Steam, and where was no efforts made to circumvent the anti cheat, simply an observation given the outcry over it.

Reliability monitor shows 0 events whenever this happens. To reply to the mr Bill, the cmd windows shows no ms change whenever it occurs with either off them - discord continues to work through all of it, but that's it. I have attempted to change routers, but with to no avail.

I have updated all graphics drivers, firmware; audio drivers, windows update - basically anything and everything that Avast Driver Updater claims can be updated. Any further suggestions?

 

[bill001g]

Discord is not really a live service it can hide issue with buffers. Games can not use a buffer to hide issues adding even 1second is way too much for a interactive game.
Your pings indicate that the problem is likely something other than network. You have to be very sure that the bug is not hiding from your testing. You want to wait until you see the issue in the game.

It can be so many things that cause issue with game that look like network issues but are something strange like a video setting.

 

[lidgetta]

Thanks for the fast reply!

Yeah the testing is indeed being done whilst the issues are appearing, Discord is indeed not a live service, but what i mean is that i am talking to people just fine, they are not hearing me any different, and i can still hear them fine; even when the games in question completely freezes up for 30 seconds at a time.

It's happening across 4 different games so far, so i am more than happy to try different settings if you can have any suggestions for something that the various updates wouldn't have picked up on.

Had 2 cmds running ping -t 8.8.8.8 and ping -t (Router IP) - the issue occurs consistently (in this case 5 times over the course of an hour) and the 8.8.8.8 only shows the normal variance of 1-2ms as it does even without issues; and the ping -t router shows <1ms at all times.

The only reason i suspect networking issues, is because of the sheer number of different games this issue manifests in.

 

[bill001g]

You could run tracert to the game server and then ping various IP in the trace to try to find one that fails at the same time. Problem is even if you would find it is router xxx in the path that is a of little value....other than you know what the problems is. You are not going to get stuff fixed that is in other ISP network or the game company network. You in many ways want the problem to be something on your machine since that you have full control over.