Good internet speed but unstable high ping in game?

[SuperScottPrime]

To start off, I'm not tech savy and not familiar with lot of troubleshooting techniques and IT vocabs.
My speed test shows that my internet speed is pretty stable and I don't really have problem browsing and doing small things but when I play my online games (Heroes of Newerth), my ping in game shoots up 500ms+ and is very unplayable.
I have not had this problem about a week ago and it barely started.

I also tried ping test and during the test it shows packet loss which I don't really know what that means.

I have a very high end built gaming pc, i5-4670k,msi z87-g45,8gb,gtx770 4gb so I know it's not due to pc lag.
My ISP is Charter and I really doubt calling them would change anything..
So is it possible for anyone to tell me what the problem might be and how I can fix it in the simplest way?

 

[Sevenater]

Hi there!

Play at least 3 online games and see if the problem is consistent with all of them, if not, you can isolate it to the game. Some games simply don't have good connection because of limited server availability, HoN might be one of them, it's an older game some argue is dead, compared to a game like CSGO or LoL where they have dedicated servers all over the planet!

TL;DR: Could just be the game, if not, who knows!

If this helps please select best answer so anyone with the same problem can know what's wrong!

Thanks and have a wonderful day!

 

[Kewlx25]

You could try a gaming VPN.

 

[Drseevee]

Wireless or wired.

I game on wireless and that can cause ping spikes only when gaming. I presume your on wired but hey some people like me are stuck with it.

Also even though you've got plenty of bandwidth perhaps something on your network is interfering. It also happens when peeps are on youtube stealing my bandwidth, I have nowhere near as much as you and it bottlenecks. The key is to find where the bottleneck is. It could be the game servers, your network or a whole number of things.

One thing I do to try and isolate where the latency is coming from is to open command prompt (windows key+R on the keyboard then type cmd and hit enter) and use something like;
ping 192.168.1.1 -t >C:\users\username\desktop\ping.txt

the 192.168.1.1 should be the ip address of your router if you know it, if you don't in command prompt type ipconfig then look for your adapter like Ethernet adapter or wireless adapter and look at the address next to default gateway that is the address you should use.

and in open another;
ping google.com -t >C:\Users\username\desktop\external.txt
nb please change the username to your windows username, also this is for vista,windows 7, and windows 8/8.1, use "C:\Documents and settings\username\desktop\blah.txt" for xp or earlier

then with those running I crank up Battlefield (my personal favourite) or whatever is causing the issue and play a bit wait for a ping spike and leave (because its bad manners to stay online with a ping over 200ms 😉 ) close the command prompts and you should have two text files on your desktop. You can look through and see where your latency is if the numbers are >2ms for the one pinging your router you might have issues with your internal network and then it is something on your internal network that you have control over if those are all low and it is on the external one you know that you can get to your router in say 1ms but then it takes 300ms to get to google.com then its something between your router and google that is the culprit. If both are low ( 0.o unusual but not impossible) you should try to ping the game server if you know the address. Hopefully this might help narrow things down.

p.s. packet loss is when some of the data you send to the server is either corrupt or lost etc packet loss is bad if you have a fair bit of it. This could be the cause? It would cause issues with skype, gaming youtube but not regular browsing unless it was particularly severe.

 

[Ahmed_36]

Wireless or wired.

I game on wireless and that can cause ping spikes only when gaming. I presume your on wired but hey some people like me are stuck with it.

Also even though you've got plenty of bandwidth perhaps something on your network is interfering. It also happens when peeps are on youtube stealing my bandwidth, I have nowhere near as much as you and it bottlenecks. The key is to find where the bottleneck is. It could be the game servers, your network or a whole number of things.

One thing I do to try and isolate where the latency is coming from is to open command prompt (windows key+R on the keyboard then type cmd and hit enter) and use something like;
ping 192.168.1.1 -t >C:\users\username\desktop\ping.txt

the 192.168.1.1 should be the ip address of your router if you know it, if you don't in command prompt type ipconfig then look for your adapter like Ethernet adapter or wireless adapter and look at the address next to default gateway that is the address you should use.

and in open another;
ping google.com -t >C:\Users\username\desktop\external.txt
nb please change the username to your windows username, also this is for vista,windows 7, and windows 8/8.1, use "C:\Documents and settings\username\desktop\blah.txt" for xp or earlier

then with those running I crank up Battlefield (my personal favourite) or whatever is causing the issue and play a bit wait for a ping spike and leave (because its bad manners to stay online with a ping over 200ms 😉 ) close the command prompts and you should have two text files on your desktop. You can look through and see where your latency is if the numbers are >2ms for the one pinging your router you might have issues with your internal network and then it is something on your internal network that you have control over if those are all low and it is on the external one you know that you can get to your router in say 1ms but then it takes 300ms to get to google.com then its something between your router and google that is the culprit. If both are low ( 0.o unusual but not impossible) you should try to ping the game server if you know the address. Hopefully this might help narrow things down.

p.s. packet loss is when some of the data you send to the server is either corrupt or lost etc packet loss is bad if you have a fair bit of it. This could be the cause? It would cause issues with skype, gaming youtube but not regular browsing unless it was particularly severe.

so i did all that you just said because i have the same problem when i play dota and battlefield and both numbers are super high. like they go over 2000! so is my problem in the router?