Question Help with WinMTR test & ping issues

[t-nshi]

So I've been having horrible ping spikes for months now (WITH NO PACKET LOSS). My current setup is my pc hooked up directly to my modem via ethernet cable (no ethernet wall plugs or whatever). I contacted Riot support bc I play Riot games and they told me to run a WinMTR test. The results point towards my ISP, since the ping to modem is avg 1ms and when it goes to Roger's (ISP) IP and it spikes it goes from 12 to 500+ (had 1500 once). This happens when choosing amazon.com as my host, google's servers, and Riot game servers. I've complained to my ISP and told them they are messing up my traffic routing and whatnot but all they say is that they run tests and my ping is fine (im sure they're just looking at avg ping which is fine at 30 but it spikes to 500+, without the spikes it would be an avg of 12). I don't know what to do, any latency dependent service is unplayable. 🙁(((

Here is a test I ran for a brief moment (captured an especially bad ISP moment ):
image (insert image doesn't work sry :/)

 

[t-nshi]

UPDATE:
I'm not sure if it's just bad timing on the spikes part, but I ran a WinMTR test on an Ethernet capable laptop using the same cable and there wasn't any significant spikes??? What could this mean?? Faulty adapter??

 

[bill001g]

That is strange it has to be software but generally you would see the problem to hop1 also. Not sure generally a true modem is transparent but since the latency is only 1ms that means the device responding in hop1 must be in your house because it tends to be around 3ms for most people at least to the ISP equipment outside your house.

The most common one to cause this is any kind of so called "gamer" network software. It comes bundled with the bloatware with some motherboards and video cards. One of the common names is CFOSspeed but anything that you have installed that claims to do QoS or favor certain traffic you want to uninstall.

 

[t-nshi]

That is strange it has to be software but generally you would see the problem to hop1 also. Not sure generally a true modem is transparent but since the latency is only 1ms that means the device responding in hop1 must be in your house because it tends to be around 3ms for most people at least to the ISP equipment outside your house.

The most common one to cause this is any kind of so called "gamer" network software. It comes bundled with the bloatware with some motherboards and video cards. One of the common names is CFOSspeed but anything that you have installed that claims to do QoS or favor certain traffic you want to uninstall.

I don't have any of these, these tests are all done with no background processes too and my modem has no qos features or debloating features.

Edit: I have also factory resseted pc and modem, power cycled, tried new cable etc. no worky

 

[t-nshi]

That is strange it has to be software but generally you would see the problem to hop1 also. Not sure generally a true modem is transparent but since the latency is only 1ms that means the device responding in hop1 must be in your house because it tends to be around 3ms for most people at least to the ISP equipment outside your house.

Could you elaborate on this?

 

[bill001g]

A actual modem has no concept of IP addresses. It is pretty much as media converter so you will not see it on the tracert. This is one of those definition things. A router does what is called layer 3 which is IP addresses in this case. A modem is layer 2.

If you mean the latency that is basically a speed of light thing and data transfers slower in copper and even the glass in fiber and there is even more overhead in the software. Even people fiber to their house see a couple ms of delay the connection to the ISP.

 

[t-nshi]

A actual modem has no concept of IP addresses. It is pretty much as media converter so you will not see it on the tracert. This is one of those definition things. A router does what is called layer 3 which is IP addresses in this case. A modem is layer 2.

If you mean the latency that is basically a speed of light thing and data transfers slower in copper and even the glass in fiber and there is even more overhead in the software. Even people fiber to their house see a couple ms of delay the connection to the ISP.

do you have any troubleshoot ideas?

 

[bill001g]

Since the other machine works it makes it almost have to be your machine. I would retest the laptop just to be sure you did not get "lucky?".

I can't think of a way you can cause delays starting in hop 2 but not hop 1. Lets say it was packet loss rather than delay if data got lost going between your pc and the router you would see the loss in hop 1 and every hop past it. But if the data got to the router successfully the pc at that point can do nothing about how the router send or does not send it to the next hop.

All I can think of is somehow the pc is actually getting the response from the network with no actual delay but in the process of taking it from the buffer to the winmtr program something is delaying it.

Messy messy problem.

You can likely confirm this by booting a USB linux image and then run winmtr on linux. This should pretty much test everything in your machine other than the main drive since the boot image runs from the usb stick.

BUT even if this work you are back to what strange software is doing this or is there some strange windows setting. I really hate end machine issue, true network issues are simpler even if you can't fix them sometimes.

 

[t-nshi]

Since the other machine works it makes it almost have to be your machine. I would retest the laptop just to be sure you did not get "lucky?".

I can't think of a way you can cause delays starting in hop 2 but not hop 1. Lets say it was packet loss rather than delay if data got lost going between your pc and the router you would see the loss in hop 1 and every hop past it. But if the data got to the router successfully the pc at that point can do nothing about how the router send or does not send it to the next hop.

All I can think of is somehow the pc is actually getting the response from the network with no actual delay but in the process of taking it from the buffer to the winmtr program something is delaying it.

Messy messy problem.

You can likely confirm this by booting a USB linux image and then run winmtr on linux. This should pretty much test everything in your machine other than the main drive since the boot image runs from the usb stick.

BUT even if this work you are back to what strange software is doing this or is there some strange windows setting. I really hate end machine issue, true network issues are simpler even if you can't fix them sometimes.

Let's say the second test is lucky, spikes are random after all. And I think the miniscule delay in hop 1 is because its not just a modem but also a router (2 in 1). So is there any way I could resolve hop2 issues or is it entirely the ISP's problem? It can't be a windows settings because I have a clean installation.

 

[bill001g]

Not really. Your pc sends the packet to the router and then that is last it knows.

What winmtr is doing which is a bit different than tracert is it send a stream of ping packets to each hop and records the response.

So in all cases the packets are sent to the mac address of the router. Inside the different packets it has the actual destination IP address. So the router looks at the destination. For ones that match its IP it responds. For other IP it does its function as a routers and figures out where to send the packet next. In the case of a home user there is only 1 connection so it send the data to the ISP. The ISP router and every router in the path follows the same methodology except ISP routers actually have different paths to different locations.

If we assume it is a actual ISP problem, which is what it looks like if you have if we ignore the laptop, these are hard to fix. The ISP does not guarantee latency they might say "up to" some bandwidth. What they do tend to fix is packet loss. That is caused by defective equipment in many cases.
Latency is caused by data being delayed by some equipment. It could be defective but unlike wifi if data is damaged it is not retransmitted it is dropped and you get packet loss. Delays are almost always because data is being held in a memory buffer. Most times this is because some link is too busy to allow the data to be copied from the buffer onto the line.

Now unless you are using DSL your share the final connection between your house and the ISP with all your neighbors. They may sell 1gbit plans to 100 people but maybe only have say 3gbit total. They know that the odds of 4 people using a full 1 gigabit at any point of time is rare.
This used to be a huge issue when they use to say sell 300mbps plans and only had 1gbit. It is much easier to use 300mbps than 1gbit. The ISP will never tell you how many other people share the connection, the level 1 tech tends to not even understand this concept anyway.
You could be unlucky and you have a couple of teens in your neighborhood running torrents. Your average user is lucky if they use 100mbps even with multiple people in each house watching netflix. A gamer might download his 60Gbyte game now and then but not often enough to cause issues.

Maybe you get lucky and can get packet loss to show. So make your own winmtr, the ISP level 1 tech will not understand winmtr and try to blame the tool.

Open a couple cmd windows and leave a constant ping run to 10.0.0.1 (should be your modem/router) and 99.254.94.1 (this should be the first ISP router). I got both these values from your winmtr but you can run a simple tracert 8.8.8.8 to be sure they are the same.

You could talk to the ISP and hope you get a tech that is a little more skilled. The level 1 techs though are not really trained in networking they are trained in following their script and running the test tools the ISP gives them. They tend to not think outside their little box the work in.

 

[t-nshi]

Not really. Your pc sends the packet to the router and then that is last it knows.

What winmtr is doing which is a bit different than tracert is it send a stream of ping packets to each hop and records the response.

So in all cases the packets are sent to the mac address of the router. Inside the different packets it has the actual destination IP address. So the router looks at the destination. For ones that match its IP it responds. For other IP it does its function as a routers and figures out where to send the packet next. In the case of a home user there is only 1 connection so it send the data to the ISP. The ISP router and every router in the path follows the same methodology except ISP routers actually have different paths to different locations.

If we assume it is a actual ISP problem, which is what it looks like if you have if we ignore the laptop, these are hard to fix. The ISP does not guarantee latency they might say "up to" some bandwidth. What they do tend to fix is packet loss. That is caused by defective equipment in many cases.
Latency is caused by data being delayed by some equipment. It could be defective but unlike wifi if data is damaged it is not retransmitted it is dropped and you get packet loss. Delays are almost always because data is being held in a memory buffer. Most times this is because some link is too busy to allow the data to be copied from the buffer onto the line.

Now unless you are using DSL your share the final connection between your house and the ISP with all your neighbors. They may sell 1gbit plans to 100 people but maybe only have say 3gbit total. They know that the odds of 4 people using a full 1 gigabit at any point of time is rare.
This used to be a huge issue when they use to say sell 300mbps plans and only had 1gbit. It is much easier to use 300mbps than 1gbit. The ISP will never tell you how many other people share the connection, the level 1 tech tends to not even understand this concept anyway.
You could be unlucky and you have a couple of teens in your neighborhood running torrents. Your average user is lucky if they use 100mbps even with multiple people in each house watching netflix. A gamer might download his 60Gbyte game now and then but not often enough to cause issues.

Maybe you get lucky and can get packet loss to show. So make your own winmtr, the ISP level 1 tech will not understand winmtr and try to blame the tool.

Open a couple cmd windows and leave a constant ping run to 10.0.0.1 (should be your modem/router) and 99.254.94.1 (this should be the first ISP router). I got both these values from your winmtr but you can run a simple tracert 8.8.8.8 to be sure they are the same.

You could talk to the ISP and hope you get a tech that is a little more skilled. The level 1 techs though are not really trained in networking they are trained in following their script and running the test tools the ISP gives them. They tend to not think outside their little box the work in.

Thank you so much for this response, a tier 2 is coming over sometime this week, maybe he'll understand. If absolutely nothing can be done I guess I'll have to change ISP.