Question Help with ping spikes

[acerly123]

Hi All,

I've been experiencing some extreme ping spikes that I would love some help to resolve. I will do my best to provide as much information as I can regarding the situation in this initial post, but obviously any questions that you may have please let me know.

To start, I have a satellite ISP who has been my ISP for the past 2 (almost 3) years, I've never had any issues until recently. Around Thanksgiving was the first "wave" of an issue, between the hours of 4pm to roughly 1am (with 8pm/9pm being the worst) my ping would hover between 400ms - 600ms. Prior to this, would hover between 20ms - 40ms. I chalked this up to being the ISP being stretched thin around the holiday.
The next "wave" came a week or two ago where I still experience the same issues as the first "wave" but now throughout the day up until it really spikes, my ping will hover around between 20ms - 100ms and spike randomly at 150ms - 400ms.

I've contacted my ISP, who has mostly disregarded the whole dilemma. The only suggestions I got from my ISP was 1.) confirming my router (a Nighthawk AX8) was current on it's firmware. I have completely factory reset it to set it up again, ensuring it's firmware was up-to-date. 2.) as I have an ethernet connection to my PC, disconnecting my router as the "middle man" and instead connecting my ethernet cable directly into the radio (not sure if this is the correct terminology, but this is what I have the plugs into my router to provide internet to our router). None of these suggestions have worked an it's still suffering the same issues.
So, while I do need to call and reconnect with my ISP's support, I figured it wouldn't hurt to post here to see if there were other suggestions just incase they're of no help.

Some other information that may be useful:

• We have no cap on data with this provider/plan, so it's not throttled speeds I'm experiencing.
• My "routine" hasn't changed, I mainly play Valorant or Overwatch with Discord and Spotify running in the background. Both games and Discord have ping issues.

 

[bill001g]

You must be using something like starlink. Most fixed satellite systems have latency of over 500ms.

Since it does it plugged directly into the radio it has to be the actual signal to the satellite. I guess in theory you could have some unknown process running on your pc using bandwidth, likely upload if anything.

Generally time of day problems are related to other people competing for bandwidth or if it was wifi interfering. I am not sure how these systems share the bandwidth. I know they limit the number of customer that can sign up for the service in a certain area. Once they get too many they stop taking new customers, not sure if that will be fixed when they launch more satelites or not.

Not sure what to suggest. The normal test is to run tracert 8.8.8.8. and then try a ping to hop 2....hop 1 if you plug in directly. This will test the connection from the radio unit at your house to wherever the ISP router device it. I can't say if that is on the satellite or someplace else. Doesn't matter a lot you can change much anyway.

 

[acerly123]

You must be using something like starlink. Most fixed satellite systems have latency of over 500ms.

Since it does it plugged directly into the radio it has to be the actual signal to the satellite. I guess in theory you could have some unknown process running on your pc using bandwidth, likely upload if anything.

Generally time of day problems are related to other people competing for bandwidth or if it was wifi interfering. I am not sure how these systems share the bandwidth. I know they limit the number of customer that can sign up for the service in a certain area. Once they get too many they stop taking new customers, not sure if that will be fixed when they launch more satelites or not.

Not sure what to suggest. The normal test is to run tracert 8.8.8.8. and then try a ping to hop 2....hop 1 if you plug in directly. This will test the connection from the radio unit at your house to wherever the ISP router device it. I can't say if that is on the satellite or someplace else. Doesn't matter a lot you can change much anyway.

I don't have Starlink, but I assume it's all similar equipment on a local scale as it's a small, local ISP. The latency of it never used to be as bad as it is now, hence my concern. I used to be able to run games that required a low latency to perform well.

Would you suggest that I run that test you've written at the bottom and see what it returns?

 

[bill001g]

What do you mean a small local ISP. Satellites are launched on rocket and orbit the earth. This is not something small company would even think to do.

What is more likely it sounds like is you are using what is generically referred to as a WISP. They work similar to cell tower but use directional antenna to talk between the customer house and the tower.

Could be the antenna got out of alignment and does not get a strong enough signal.

Maybe a new neighbor signed up for service and is somehow interfering with your signals.