Question Finally a clue ? Desync/input lag issues I've been having

[User1990]

Hey!
So today I tried a different cable today to see if discord dcs I've been having for a while would stop but they didn't. Noone else in the house/discord dcs from discord calls, dcs only happen in discord but it still seems weird to me that I'm the only one getting this.
I even tried a pcie ethernet card and was still dcing from discord.
While plugging the cable back to the original PC, I left my PC without ethernet cable for around 10 minutes.
Then I came back and plugged it in to play a game and to my surprise something completely different happened.
The game felt insanely good, every shot was connecting.
First rounds were literal perfection then it became a bit worse but still pretty playable compared to what it usually is.
I've notice this happen before but didn't pay much attention to it as it felt "stupid".

Could it be interference coursing through the ethernet cable and could getting a better cable help ?
If not, what could unplugging the cable for 10 minutes have caused ?

I have a cat8 s/ftp that costed 20 euro for 10 meters, so pretty cheap for a cat8 i'd say? Don't even know why I have a cat8 on 100mbps connection.
Thinking of getting a cat6a s/ftp PANDUIT 10m.

Any ideas ?

 

[CodeConnoisseur]

From what you describe it's not an issue with your Internet connection, especially if it's only Discord and not any online games. Discord has a voice diagnostics menu you can access by clicking on the "Voice Connected" green text and selecting "Debug", what does that show when the issue occurs? You're looking for anything under Transport > Routing Failures or Voice > Packets Lost.

 

[User1990]

From what you describe it's not an issue with your Internet connection, especially if it's only Discord and not any online games. Discord has a voice diagnostics menu you can access by clicking on the "Voice Connected" green text and selecting "Debug", what does that show when the issue occurs?

I don't get that choice when clicking on it. Dcs last like half a second, just enough to hear the 2 beeps(disconnect/connect).
How come my game felt this good after disconnecting the ethernet cable for 10 minutes and replugging it bugs me more than the discord dcs. I've been tried to fix the game that runs poorly for so long and it happened randomly by disconnecting the cable for 10 minutes?
Should I get a better cable ?

 

[CodeConnoisseur]

I don't get that choice when clicking on it. Dcs last like half a second, just enough to hear the 2 beeps(disconnect/connect).
How come my game felt better after disconnecting the ethernet cable for 10 minutes and replugging it bugs me more than the discord dcs. I've been tried to fix the game that runs poorly for so long and it happened randomly by disconnecting the cable for 10 minutes?

You need to enable Advanced > Developer Mode in your Discord settings to see that menu. What do you mean "runs poorly"? Sounds like placebo effect, disconnecting and reconnecting shouldn't improve speeds. You can run a speed test to confirm this.

 

[User1990]

You might need to enable developer mode to see that menu. What do you mean "runs poorly"? Sounds like placebo effect, disconnecting and reconnecting shouldn't improve speeds. You can run a speed test to confirm this.

I've been getting desync ingame, game feeling like it runs on 400ms constantly with low ping.
I would call it placebo but it happened to randomly work after I unplugged/replugged my cable to check if discord would stop dcing.
I wasn't trying to fix the game and so I never expected it to work better after doing that. That thought did not even cross my mind.

 

[CodeConnoisseur]

I've been getting desync ingame, game feeling like it runs on 400ms constantly with low ping.
I would call it placebo but it happened to randomly work after I unplugged/replugged my cable to check if discord would stop dcing.
I wasn't trying to fix the game and so I never expected it to work better after doing that. That thought did not even cross my mind.

Okay, this context was missing from your original post. The "The game felt insanely good, every shot was connecting" almost sounded like an unrelated comment. It does sound like it could be packet loss. You can try ping -t google.com for a while from a command window while on Discord and playing the game. You can then press Ctrl + C in the command window to get statistics.

 

[User1990]

Okay, this context was missing from your original post. The "The game felt insanely good, every shot was connecting" almost sounded like an unrelated comment. It does sound like it could be packet loss. You can try ping -t google.com for a while from a command window while on Discord and playing the game. You can then press Ctrl + C in the command window to get statistics.

I've tested these but the crazy thing is that nothing has changed to my connection.
Only thing that changed was me trying different cable and leaving the PC without a cable for 10 minutes.
Could be complete coincidence and game just happened to act "nice" at that exact game.
But I haven't played a game that felt this nice for so long and it happened after I did that. Pretty weird.
But again it could be a complete coincidence.
I also haven't dced from discord(yet) after doing that. And I'm still on the same cable I was originally getting dcs.

 

[bill001g]

What i would do is open a couple cmd windows and leave constant ping run.
Run the first one to your router IP...this should check the cable and the ports in router and pc.
Leave the second one run to 8.8.8.8. This will test the actual internet connection.

When you see strange issues you then have collected data and can see if anything looks strange. Intermittent issues are very hard.

It is highly likely the cat8 cable is a fake. These are only used in data centers where you need 40gbit ports. The cables are priced very high but companies that can afford equipment that have 40 gbit ports can afford them. The ones you see on amazon and almost any other retailer selling to general consumers are likely fakes.

You only need cat5e to run 1gbit...it will even run 2.5 and 5g. Cable that have bigger numbers do not run any faster or better. The cable you list is mostly used for 10gbit connection. The problem with it though is it is a shield cable. Shielded cable are really only used in data centers and in industrial installs. Shielded cable required special ground connections to the shield...these are special grounds not the same as the ground in your electrical wires. It is not something a home use is going to have. Technically if you do not ground the wire it will act as a antenna and actually increase interference. But in most cases it just nothing but waste your money.

Many of the fake cable work ok at shorter distances. If you do not get any loss with a ping command then I would continue to use it. A new cable what is most important is that the wire be pure copper and have wire size 22-24. None of those flat cables that have much too thin wire. If you can not find these spec clearly spelled out find a different vendor. All the good vendors know about all the fake cables being sold and clearly tell you this information.

 

[User1990]

What i would do is open a couple cmd windows and leave constant ping run.
Run the first one to your router IP...this should check the cable and the ports in router and pc.
Leave the second one run to 8.8.8.8. This will test the actual internet connection.

When you see strange issues you then have collected data and can see if anything looks strange. Intermittent issues are very hard.

It is highly likely the cat8 cable is a fake. These are only used in data centers where you need 40gbit ports. The cables are priced very high but companies that can afford equipment that have 40 gbit ports can afford them. The ones you see on amazon and almost any other retailer selling to general consumers are likely fakes.

You only need cat5e to run 1gbit...it will even run 2.5 and 5g. Cable that have bigger numbers do not run any faster or better. The cable you list is mostly used for 10gbit connection. The problem with it though is it is a shield cable. Shielded cable are really only used in data centers and in industrial installs. Shielded cable required special ground connections to the shield...these are special grounds not the same as the ground in your electrical wires. It is not something a home use is going to have. Technically if you do not ground the wire it will act as a antenna and actually increase interference. But in most cases it just nothing but waste your money.

Many of the fake cable work ok at shorter distances. If you do not get any loss with a ping command then I would continue to use it. A new cable what is most important is that the wire be pure copper and have wire size 22-24. None of those flat cables that have much too thin wire. If you can not find these spec clearly spelled out find a different vendor. All the good vendors know about all the fake cables being sold and clearly tell you this information.

Thanks for the advice.
Yeah I thought so too, my cable doesn't seem any good either.
So if I end up getting a new one,do you not recommend getting a shielded one ?
I searched for a good brand online and the only one I found that exists in my country too is PANDUIT but I can only find a s/ftp at 26AWG.
Seems to be pure copper.
Would this not be good ?

Also, what am I supposed to get if not s/ftp ? U/utp ?

 

[bill001g]

The larger the number the thinner the wire. 26awg would likely be fine but 24awg is what the spec says.

You really want UTP cable. Mostly the shielded cables are going to cost you money for nothing. The would need the special metal wrapped rj45 plugs....and then you need special jacks in your equipment to connect. You see shield cable with the normal plastic rj45 which means you can't ground the shield. The company making them has to know this is a stupid thing to do.

Panduit I think is a brand name but it also tends to be a term used a type of conduit. This is all commercial use stuff where they worry about fire spread in factories and offices.

It unfortantly takes a lot of digging to find good cables. I would bet 90% of the stuff on amazon is fake flat cables. Although in the last couple month copper metal has been a bit cheaper over the last number of years the cost of copper has almost doubled the cost of cables so they now use thinner wire to reduce the amount of copper used.

I would just keep searching. Normally cat5e and pure copper tends to be your best search. You can also try cat6. There is almost no difference in the cost to make cat5e and cat6..again it is all the metal. Cat6 is just more popular even though it does not work any different than cat5e.

 

[User1990]

The larger the number the thinner the wire. 26awg would likely be fine but 24awg is what the spec says.

You really want UTP cable. Mostly the shielded cables are going to cost you money for nothing. The would need the special metal wrapped rj45 plugs....and then you need special jacks in your equipment to connect. You see shield cable with the normal plastic rj45 which means you can't ground the shield. The company making them has to know this is a stupid thing to do.

Panduit I think is a brand name but it also tends to be a term used a type of conduit. This is all commercial use stuff where they worry about fire spread in factories and offices.

It unfortantly takes a lot of digging to find good cables. I would bet 90% of the stuff on amazon is fake flat cables. Although in the last couple month copper metal has been a bit cheaper over the last number of years the cost of copper has almost doubled the cost of cables so they now use thinner wire to reduce the amount of copper used.

I would just keep searching. Normally cat5e and pure copper tends to be your best search. You can also try cat6. There is almost no difference in the cost to make cat5e and cat6..again it is all the metal. Cat6 is just more popular even though it does not work any different than cat5e.

Thanks again.
After a bit of digging this is what I found.

https://www.panduit.com/emea/en/pro...-cords-accessories/patch-cords/nk6pc10my.html

Would this be good enough ?
It's a cat6 UTP,24AWG and seems to be copper based aswell.

 

[bill001g]

From what I can tell it looks ok. Google translate is not very helpful on that site.
Although not as common as the flat cables you also see fake cable made from wires that are not copper. They use copper clad aluminum...CCA. Almost all vendor will disclose if they are using CCA...amazon now requires it. From the little google translate did I didn't see it mentioned if it was pure copper or CCA. If the photo was better you can many times tell based on the marking on the cable. You look for things like EIA/TIA , which means they paid to have the cable certified.....well they paid for the right to claim it is certified.

My guess is the cable is good.

 

[User1990]

From what I can tell it looks ok. Google translate is not very helpful on that site.
Although not as common as the flat cables you also see fake cable made from wires that are not copper. They use copper clad aluminum...CCA. Almost all vendor will disclose if they are using CCA...amazon now requires it. From the little google translate did I didn't see it mentioned if it was pure copper or CCA. If the photo was better you can many times tell based on the marking on the cable. You look for things like EIA/TIA , which means they paid to have the cable certified.....well they paid for the right to claim it is certified.

My guess is the cable is good.

Standards Met

Exceeds ANSI/TIA-568.2-D Category 6 and ISO 11801 Class E, complies with ANSI/TIA-1096-A (formerly FCC Part 68, meets IEC 60603-7, supports IEEE 802.3af/802.3at and 802.3bt type 3 and type 4 PoE applications, cULus Listed; UL 1863 and CAN/CSA-C22.2 (UL File E129886), RoHS Compliant

On the original site, seems pretty good!
Thanks once more, will see if it improves any of the issues I have and update!

 

[User1990]

From what I can tell it looks ok. Google translate is not very helpful on that site.
Although not as common as the flat cables you also see fake cable made from wires that are not copper. They use copper clad aluminum...CCA. Almost all vendor will disclose if they are using CCA...amazon now requires it. From the little google translate did I didn't see it mentioned if it was pure copper or CCA. If the photo was better you can many times tell based on the marking on the cable. You look for things like EIA/TIA , which means they paid to have the cable certified.....well they paid for the right to claim it is certified.

My guess is the cable is good.

It has made a huge difference imo.
Game feels more responsive now, even if I happen to get some packet loss it feels like its nonexistent.
Will see if it keeps working like this or changes behavior.