Question During afternoon and later, my network is slower.

[PiKei]

During morning hours till 5pm. my ethernet speed is normal at 50 mbps download and 5 mbps upload(also the speed of my plan). During afternoon thought, the speed can get considerably lower and playing games is impossible. I checked my router, the configuration is as should be. I assume because many people in my neighborhood join the network from the same cross-connect box, the box needs to split the bandwidth evenly, and if they have higher speed plans, they get more bandwidth. So I am asking, is there a way to reduce the lag and increase the speed without opting for a better plan. Internet connections here in Greece are questionable at best generally and the customer service is even worse so I don't have many options I think... ALso, this problem occurred recently.

Here is a photo of a speed test:
Speedtest Result

 

[rgd1101]

if it is a shared no.

 

[PiKei]

if it is a shared no.

Well, I'm screwed, what's more annoying is that my connection was always perfect, I don't know why is this happening.

 

[gggplaya]

It depends, is it like the UK where multiple internet providers(resellers) share the same cabinet? Each provider is essentially sharing the same fiber bandwidth to the cabinet, but probably has their own allocation of bandwidth. Perhaps the the cheapest provider has too many customers and switching to another provider may free up some allocated bandwidth.

If only a single provider is used for the neighborhood cabinet, then there's nothing you can do. You are at the mercy of the ISP bandwidth to the neighborhood cabinet.

Edit: According to wikipedia, Greece does have the same type of "local loop unbundling" as the UK. So multiple ISP resellers can operate from the same cabinet. I would shop around for another provider that services your cabinet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_in_Greece

 

[PiKei]

It depends, is it like the UK where multiple internet providers(resellers) share the same cabinet? Each provider is essentially sharing the same fiber bandwidth to the cabinet, but probably has their own allocation of bandwidth. Perhaps the the cheapest provider has too many customers and switching to another provider may free up some allocated bandwidth.

If only a single provider is used for the neighborhood cabinet, then there's nothing you can do. You are at the mercy of the ISP bandwidth to the neighborhood cabinet.

Edit: According to wikipedia, Greece does have the same type of "local loop unbundling" as the UK. So multiple ISP resellers can operate from the same cabinet. I would shop around for another provider that services your cabinet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_in_Greece

Thanks for the reply, what you are saying is true, there is one provider that every other provider resells from, if that makes sense. But I found new info, the problem only happens when someone else is in the network, maybe a wrong config in the router or in my PC. For example today, I was in my PC when someone else suddenly joined the network from his pc and suddenly mid-game my ping went from 60 to 360 (not kidding). I assume the router can't split bandwidth properly(?). Also every, I don't know, 100 square meters there is a different cabinet, but they are so bad they can't support every house and every apartment with the bandwidth we pay for...

 

[bill001g]

You can only do something about traffic inside your house. If you are talking about a neighbor you can't do much since their traffic does not go through equipment you control.

So if this other pc is in your house, go steal the power cord and lock it up

In the end there is no fix for not enough bandwidth other than buying more. There are tricky things you can try but in the end someone is going to get less bandwidth and it might not be enough to allow them to do what they need.

So gggplaya can likely give you much more detail since I have not used this in years. There is a special form of QoS that will attempt to more equally divide bandwidth. It is easy to setup because it is based on the idea that all traffic is equal. This works ok for games but it can cause problems for other traffic at times and if someone in your house is using torrent that can get around any restrictions it seems.

The best way to get this is to get a asus router that supports the merlin firmware. There are other third party images that support this special form of QoS but I know of no factory image that does. Asus routers are going to cost a bit more than other brands but it is the only way to get merlin and merlin tends to have better performance than others.

Note to other who find this thread. Using QoS only works well on smaller connections like this one. Connections over 100mbps you have to be very concerned about the cpu in the router bottlenecking your connection attempting to run the complex QoS.

 

[PiKei]

You can only do something about traffic inside your house. If you are talking about a neighbor you can't do much since their traffic does not go through equipment you control.

So if this other pc is in your house, go steal the power cord and lock it up

In the end there is no fix for not enough bandwidth other than buying more. There are tricky things you can try but in the end someone is going to get less bandwidth and it might not be enough to allow them to do what they need.

So gggplaya can likely give you much more detail since I have not used this in years. There is a special form of QoS that will attempt to more equally divide bandwidth. It is easy to setup because it is based on the idea that all traffic is equal. This works ok for games but it can cause problems for other traffic at times and if someone in your house is using torrent that can get around any restrictions it seems.

The best way to get this is to get a asus router that supports the merlin firmware. There are other third party images that support this special form of QoS but I know of no factory image that does. Asus routers are going to cost a bit more than other brands but it is the only way to get merlin and merlin tends to have better performance than others.

Note to other who find this thread. Using QoS only works well on smaller connections like this one. Connections over 100mbps you have to be very concerned about the cpu in the router bottlenecking your connection attempting to run the complex QoS.

Thanks for the reply, it seems these are the only options I have. It's sad considering everything was fine for years but the problem appeared recently... I need to investigate further to see if there is actually a problem. Also, I rana speedtest in a different pc, and the result was even worse. Fuuny thing is that in the speedtest I get normal mbps (50) but the ping is like in the 300s.

 

[bill001g]

This is all because the isp and router manufactures use buffers to prevent data loss. This problem is called bufferbloat. Every application except online games benefits from this because it is used to prevent data loss in exchange for delays being added.
Games unlike almost any other form of traffic do not like delay and would prefer traffic to be dropped instead. Games are live data and do not need to resend lost data they just deal with it and only when it becomes a lot does it affect the game.

This data buffering is actually what helps things like speedtest get higher rates especially when you max the connection.

One thing I forgot. Since it appears you have a DSL connection you likely should use your current router as just a modem. If you already have a seperate modem this does not apply. The issue is I am not sure there still is a router from asus that has a DSL modem built in and you can load the third party firmware like merlin. It used to exist but I have not stayed on top of this to know if there are any dsl routers that support merlin.

 

[PiKei]

This is all because the isp and router manufactures use buffers to prevent data loss. This problem is called bufferbloat. Every application except online games benefits from this because it is used to prevent data loss in exchange for delays being added.
Games unlike almost any other form of traffic do not like delay and would prefer traffic to be dropped instead. Games are live data and do not need to resend lost data they just deal with it and only when it becomes a lot does it affect the game.

This data buffering is actually what helps things like speedtest get higher rates especially when you max the connection.

One thing I forgot. Since it appears you have a DSL connection you likely should use your current router as just a modem. If you already have a seperate modem this does not apply. The issue is I am not sure there still is a router from asus that has a DSL modem built in and you can load the third party firmware like merlin. It used to exist but I have not stayed on top of this to know if there are any dsl routers that support merlin.

My plan opts for VDSL+ I think. The thing is not only the games lag but everything I do that requires a conection.

 

[bill001g]

It depends on how loaded the connection is. The theory at least is if it is a single session say downloading a large file and a bunch of other small sessions needing bandwidth with them all being treated equal the other smaller sessions should get more.
This doesn't work though if someone was say streaming to twitch and needed say a certain minimum bit rate. Some video conferencing also needs certain rates or fails completely. You only have 5mbps so you could be overloading the upload more than the download.

All you can do it try it because your only other option is to find a way to get more bandwidth.

 

[gggplaya]

If the bandwidth bottleneck is on the Cabinet side, then there's nothing you can do on your end other than switch resellers.

If the bandwidth bottleneck is inside your house, then you can buy your own VDSL modem or set your current router to bridge mode and buy your own router. EERO, IQrouter and Asus routers with Merlin firmware have great Traffic shaping QOS algorithms that'll work well for your ISP speed. But if the speed is dropping at the cabinet, then these algorithms won't work well.