[SOLVED] Experiencing gaming and live streaming issues while other internet services are still running smoothly ?

[rcaed001]

Hello,

For the past two weeks, I have been experiencing significant disconnects. However, these disconnects only affect online games (Apex Legends specifically but also affects Overwatch, Smash Bros Ultimate, and Splatoon 2), streaming to Twitch, and Discord voice calls. Prior to two weeks ago, I was able to stream online gameplay without issue.

Discord still works when the connection goes down—I can still hear whoever is on the voice call with me, and I can still chat via text in real time, to which my peers can respond via voice in real time. I am also able to browse the internet just fine, albeit with slightly slower load times on particular assets such as images and videos.

When streaming to Twitch, I am able to stream for fifteen minutes at a time with a healthy bitrate of approximately 4500-5000 kb/s before my bitrate drops completely to 0 kb/s. My stream software, OBS, will attempt to reconnect, and manages to reconnect and hit approximately 3000 kb/s before dropping again to 0 within seconds. It will continue this for anywhere between five and ten minutes before fully reconnecting, only to disconnect again after fifteen to twenty minutes of streaming.

When playing Apex, I am able to play for about five minutes before being disconnected from the server. While this is more specific knowledge that would be useful to EA, the error codes that I get are leaf, wheel, and net, almost always in that order, before reconnecting me. Like with Twitch, it only lets me play for a short period before disconnecting me for anywhere between five and ten minutes at a time.

The steps that I have taken to try and remedy this:

• Restarted my computer.
• Reset the modem and the router.
• I ran a test via the WebRTC Troubleshooter to see what issues I came up with. The results are as follows:
  
  
  
  Ran these results by a friend with more experience in computers than I, and he said that the issues above would be unrelated to my connection issues.
• Reset my PC's net adapter. Worked for about three games' worth of Apex, only to start experiencing connection issues again.
• Switched to a Google DNS server. No luck.
• Checked firewall settings to see if games and services were blocked. All clear.
• Disconnected everything, then reconnected things one at a time. Read that USB 3.0 devices can cause wireless interference if there were too many plugged in or too many too close together. My camlink (Elgato Camlink 4K), my capture card (Razer Ripsaw HD), and my wi-fi adapter (Netgear Nighthawk AC1900) all connect to my computer via USB 3.0. Momentarily, I was able to play Apex again after disconnecting everything from my PC except for my wi-fi adapter. The issues came back again later in the day despite the devices all still being disconnected.
• Switched wi-fi connections from the 2.4ghz to the 5ghz and back. Both connections exhibited the same issues.
• Upgraded my PC. This was less because of the issues and moreso an event I was planning for a while that coincidentally lined up with my connection issues. Upgraded from a Ryzen 7 2700X to a Ryzen 7 3700X, upgraded my RAM from 16GB DDR4 2400rpm to 32GB DDR4 3600rpm, and I moved from a microATX board to a full ATX with built-in wifi. Issues persisted, but everything is much smoother and snappier. Motherboard also has USB 3.2 generation 2 ports, so if it were related to the capture card and/or the camlink taking too much bandwidth from one or the other, I'd be able to support both on high res.
• Called my ISP. They won't send a guy over until this coming Wednesday.

My computer specs:

• CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 3700X
• GPU: Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070
• SSD: Samsung 860 Evo 1TB
• SSD: Samsung 970 Evo Plus NVMe PCIe M.2 1TB
• RAM: TEAMGROUP T-Force Dark Za (Alpha) 32GB Kit (2x16GB) DDR4 Dram 3600MHz (PC4-28800)
• MBD: MSI MPG X570 Gaming Pro Carbon Wi-Fi Motherboard

Wi-fi properties:

2.4ghz connection​

Protocol: Wi-Fi 4 (802.11n)​

Security type: WPA2-Personal​

Network band: 2.4 GHz​

Network channel: 10​

Link speed (Receive/Transmit): 144/144 (Mbps)​

5ghz connection​

Protocol: Wi-Fi 5 (802.11ac)​

Security type: WPA2-Personal​

Network band: 5 GHz​

Network channel: 153​

Link speed (Receive/Transmit): 866/866 (Mbps)​

I'm honestly at a loss and I really don't know what else to search or what else to do. I figured that while I wait for my ISP guy to come through, I'd offer the question here and see someone with a more discerning eye than I could check if there's anything more that could be done.

Thank you for any help you may be able to provide!
-RC

 

[bill001g]

So many things involved it is going to be hard to say.

You should never play online games and especially play online games and stream over wifi. Wifi is subject to all kinds of interference from outside your house. If you are extremely lucky to not have neighbors using wifi it might work.

I would first try a ethernet cable since it is extremely common for wifi to cause these issues. If it still does it on ethernet you can then start looking for software dependencies but it does no good to try that on wifi since it will affect your testing results.

 

[rcaed001]

So many things involved it is going to be hard to say.

You should never play online games and especially play online games and stream over wifi. Wifi is subject to all kinds of interference from outside your house. If you are extremely lucky to not have neighbors using wifi it might work.

I would first try a ethernet cable since it is extremely common for wifi to cause these issues. If it still does it on ethernet you can then start looking for software dependencies but it does no good to try that on wifi since it will affect your testing results.

Hi Bill,

Thanks for the response. Unfortunately my current living situation doesn't allow for me to use an ethernet cable—it's an older house with the only ethernet port in the living room, and the people I'm renting a room from aren't keen about me snaking a long cable across the house.

I figured that all bets were off with wi-fi and that it'd be hard to properly diagnose, but I figured I'd offer the question all the same.

 

[bill001g]

It is pretty standard testing. Ping stuff and see where the loss is. You want to ping the router IP and then IP past this in the tracert. If you consistently get loss in the ping to the router at the same time as you see problem in the application then it is likely the wifi causing it.

Problem is with wifi you always get some random loss and large delay spikes. It depends on how well the application handles this. Problem is it does not let you properly test the hop 2 which would indicate that the internet connection itself is taking errors.

If it appears to be the wifi the next option over ethernet will be to try powerline networks. Hopefully your landlord will allow the small box plugged into the wall near their router. Moca is even better since it will run at gbit speeds but you need coax cable in both rooms.